Originally posted by: ADigitalMan
Really BAD service gets little to nothing. I will often leave a penny on really bad service just to drive home the point that I thought about it and established worth accordingly. If the service was adequate, 15%. If it was awesome, 20%. Usually it falls somewhere in-between as I like to round the bottom line to whole dollars when practical.
For those who don't know the etiquette, you should tip on the pre-tax value of the meal, not the bottom line. Also, check the bill to see if the gratuity was automatically added in. That's often the case with large parties. My family all went out for Thanksgiving this year and the gratuity was added in. We almost missed that. Adding another 20% onto 20% would've been, what, a 45% tip in the end?
Really BAD service gets little to nothing. I will often leave a penny on really bad service just to drive home the point that I thought about it and established worth accordingly. If the service was adequate, 15%. If it was awesome, 20%. Usually it falls somewhere in-between as I like to round the bottom line to whole dollars when practical.
For those who don't know the etiquette, you should tip on the pre-tax value of the meal, not the bottom line. Also, check the bill to see if the gratuity was automatically added in. That's often the case with large parties. My family all went out for Thanksgiving this year and the gratuity was added in. We almost missed that. Adding another 20% onto 20% would've been, what, a 45% tip in the end?
When service is really bad, if you don't tip at all, usually they server will usually just think you are cheap. If you tip something like a penny or a nickel, then they are more likely to get the point that their service sucked.
I don't like the automatic gratuity for large parties thing, but resturants do it because large parties have a nasty tendancy to take up lots of time, servers, and space, and then they never tip or tip really low, figuring that either "someone else must of got the tip" or that "the big order we gave makes up for it."