It never fails to shock me how a tip is demanded in the US. People simply refuse to listen to reason when we (yes, there are others!) tell them that leaving a tip isn’t necessary. Well, I’m hoping for too much here, but if you’re a waiter, here are 5 reasons why I will try my best not to give any money to you and why the reasons for tipping are crappy.
1. You act as if you’re my best friend
Just leave me alone ok? I don’t want to bloody chit chat with you. I want food. FOOD! Get it? It’s a restaurant. I go there to eat. I go because I want either Italian food, Chinese Food or something else which I can’t get in a McDonald’s. So I come to a restaurant to fulfill my cravings for it. I will pay for what I value – food. Not you.
Christ, you offend me – kneeling down next to my table, pretending to like me and chatting as if you’re my best friend when it’s obvious that all you’re after is the tip! I’m not a bloody money bag you know. I will pay the bill which includes the cost of the food, the environment and the salaries of the people involved – nothing more.
The only way to get money out of me that I don’t have to legally pay is by prying it out of my cold dead hands…
Bottom line: I don’t want to know your name, or interact with you for any longer than I have to in order to place my order. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the equivalent of a conveyor belt that brings me my food and a computer into which I input my order. Of course, I won’t be rude. But don’t expect me to interact with you any more than I would with some stranger.
Image Credit: cafemama
2. You don’t get paid enough
And this is my problem how exactly? It’s astonishing that customers are expected to make up for your employer’s cheapness in not paying you a decent wage. Please include the full cost in everyone’s bill thank you very much. I’ll pay it because I have to and the charge is there for me to see.
What’s really funny here is that no one seems to criticize the employers! All criticism is reserved for non tipping customers instead of the owners of the restaurant for not paying a decent wage. Wtf! Could it possibly be because you guys know you can make much more by tips and under report your income to the IRS?
3. You’ll spit in my food if I don’t tip you?
And I’ll shoot your kid if you don’t give me a million dollars. Seriously, am I even hearing this right? You’re actually using the threat of blackmail to make me pay you? Well as long as you’re openly claiming to be a criminal it’s all right I guess.
Fortunately that’s why I prefer buffets. Listen apart from it being illegal, this shows your poor integrity. But if you spit in someone’s food because they didn’t give you money you didn’t earn, then you’re a loser and deserve to be a waiter for the rest of your life.
4. Bringing me my food isn’t worthy of being paid extra
Did you cook it? Did you invent it? No. You picked it up and brought it to me. While it might not be easy, there are plenty of jobs which are much worse – shop floor workers for example. And I’ve been a shop floor manager, so I know. Face it – compared to other jobs, being a waiter is unskilled. You get paid what the market will think your services are worth. You don’t deserve more for your work over and above what your employer should pay you.
5. Money doesn’t grow on trees
I expect you to be grateful and pray for me at night if I tip you 10%. Be happy I gave you anything at all. I worked for the money in my wallet and by giving you some I didn’t have to, I’m doing you a favor. Learn to remember that when people give you something they don’t need to, it’s a favor. You don’t complain that they didn’t give you more!
By the way, the same thing above applies to all professions that demand tips including those on cruise liners.
So now that you understand why I won’t give you money you don’t deserve, stop with the “oh how could you?” attitude. I can. And I will.
Update: Here’s a rebuttal of the many silly justifications for tipping that people have given in the comments section.
If you don’t want to tip, then fine, make your own food and EAT AT HOME. if you don’t want to participate in a system by tipping, then you don’t go out to eat or drink at a restaurant or bar, period. Don’t make a worker suffer and waste their time to make your point. We have bills to pay, too, and if you believe that its not your responsibility to tip then don’t come in at all. Servers have to tip out on their sales to other staff so you not tipping means we are paying out of our own pocket to serve you now, so your bullshit attitude costs us our own money. Wanna eat out and not tip? To paraphrase you, it’s the server’s problem how?
It,s fine if you think the system is bunk, but you’re not gonna do anything to fix it by punishing individual servers when you eat out. Stick to fast food if you really must, especially since you don’t seem to want real service anyway. You seem like so much FUN in the first place.
And 10%? Go fuck yourself.
You might be the biggest and cheapest douche-bag in the entire world
Do you understand how food cost would go up if employers did that? Even giving servers 10 dollars an hour would make going out to eat ridiculous. You would be better off just leaving the 20% tip.
Stick to the buffets, it’s not a favor to tip, could you get up and deliver your own food and drink? Of coarse not. Stick to the shop floor because you have zero customer service knowledge. D-Bag!
I know this will fall on deaf ears but I was so offended by #1. If you are that outraged that people would be nice when you walk into a restaurant just stay home. When I get a waitress/waiter that smiles and chats genuinely I have a better dining experience! This is the point of dining out, if you would rather have no interaction with people you think are “below you” then just stay home. It is such a shame that you feel any waitstaff are nice to you because they are thinking about a tip. What if they are nice people? I truly believe that if I was provided excellent service then a tip should be provided to reward that. It’s people that are this rude and close-minded that really make society a worse place to live in.
This is why I tend bar instead of wait tables because if an ugly douche bag like this declines to tip on round one- there simply WILL NOT BE A ROUND TWO. Or if there is, the price just went up a buck or two to include my tip.
Obviously this guy does not realize how much work goes into being a food service worker, nor does he understand what hospitality is. The reason WHY there is a tipping system in place is so that we have an incentive to do our jobs to the best of our ability. When you go to a pub in England the bartenders are slow and not often knowledgeable. They are also probably not as clean. And why should they be? If they serve 10 drinks or 100 drinks it is all the same to them, they make the same amount of money either way. You will stand there are wait in a busy pub for EVER to finally be served by someone who sometimes won’t even pour the soda water into your “vodka and soda” and even the vodka is likely on a controlled pourer so the art of knowing how to pour an exact ounce free hand is taken away. If you notice most food service employees are good looking and well groomed. We cannot simply be shlubs. I spend lots of money on my hair, makeup and clothes to look a certain way when I work so that I make more money. There are factors here that go beyond just the workplace. I actually HOPE this jerk comes to my bar one day and gives me the joy of giving him good service on that first round and then abruptly RIPPING it away when he declines to tip so that he can see the difference. Also I am not afraid to share with him all the reasons why tipping is important and why he is the loser, not me.
You sir, are a fucking scumbag! I hope you have your food tampered with for the rest of your life.
You’d have saved time by titling this “5 reasons why I should be shot into the sun”
Hear hear!! :) Listen, if the food was a good price I wouldn’t mind, but most of the time it’s tipple the price it should be. I’ve been a server and never expected a tip, it was nice if I got one but never EXPECTED one! When I did get tipped it was either taken completely away by the boss or in very VERY few instances spread out to EVERYONE so in the end you were lucking to get $10 bucks at the end of the night. Don’t call the customers “GUYS” when there are females present, don’t kiss ass and don’t ignore them. If you follow these rules you’ll get tipped even if the person doesn’t usually tip, and if the person chooses not to it’s THEIR RIGHT!
You might be the biggest asshole the world has ever seen. You don’t deserve to be fed you entitled prick.