Never tip in Chinese restaurant?

what happens when you tell the bus driver to keep the change, is it considered a tip? do they keep it?
I never tip unless its keep the change cos I dont want it.

Well in London all buses are now completely cash free. If you don't have an osyter card or a contactless card you out of luck and you won't be allowed aboard
 
They always have a choice, having a job that doesn’t require working Christmas Day isn’t difficult.

yes they did, and for the restaurant as a whole, a significant premium is charged. 10% on top of that as a service charge is taking the mick. As I said, we always leave a good tip. Did the restaurant distribute the service charge.

Also, Christmas day staff get paid a premium (or my wife did when she a restaurant)

Points are:

My post has nothing to do with OP
The money was not the important thing, it was the principle (the place does not normally apply a service charge and it was not mentioned on the menu)
Of course, I could have refused, but I did not want to embarrass my family and the principle of it offended me a lot
 
I get a double zero buzz at the Turkish Barber once every three weeks. I rarely tip, but last week I paid the bill of £7 with a £20 note and told him to keep the change as I wanted to tip for Christmas. I swear he thought I was drunk! He says that's too much and I was like no it isn't, merry Christmas man. Clearly people don't tip him much, even at Christmas.

I'll usually tip in restaurants but I like to think it gets pooled as the waiter/waitress didn't do all the work. If I knew for a fact that the owner took the tips then not only would I withhold the tip, I probably wouldn't eat there.
 
He says that's too much and I was like no it isn't, merry Christmas man. Clearly people don't tip him much, even at Christmas.

Then you walked out and he was like "**** you man, I don't even celebrate Christmas, don't remember you leaving me a Ramadan tip in back in the Summer Bro..." :p ;)
 
It was a wee bit awkward, I'll not lie. Maybe more so for the guy waiting to go next!

I guess at least hairdressers do sometimes get tipped, it shouldn't really have been completely unexpected.

The real balla move would be to tip people who would never expect a tip... like after your next GP appointment. "Thanks for the blood test results Doc, you did a real good job, here's a little something extra" (hand over envelope containing cash) :D
 
For the last, at least 6 years, we go for Christmas dinner to our local Italian which we go to a lot and are on first names terms with all the staff. Obviously on Christmas day you expect a premium. This year it was £60 for a 3 course meal which is always good. We always leave a tip but this year there was a 10% service charge. In normal conditions I would leave 10% up to a max of about £20 unless it was a big group and then you all chip in. £35 tip for 5 of us including a 13 yr old. Sorry. Won't see you next year.

Restaurants must love big groups as the service charge is basically money for nothing, plus the alcohol flowing free.

When you could probably make the same at home with the money from the tip alone, then something's not right there.

Perhaps one reason for restaurants not doing so well these days. People changing their dining habits going to coffee shops, brunch etc where there is no obligation to tip.
 
Restaurants must love big groups as the service charge is basically money for nothing, plus the alcohol flowing free.

When you could probably make the same at home with the money from the tip alone, then something's not right there.

Perhaps one reason for restaurants not doing so well these days. People changing their dining habits going to coffee shops, brunch etc where there is no obligation to tip.
service charge for groups of more than 4 or whatever makes no sense to me.
any other business woukd welcome big groups buying stuff, night clubs might give you a free bottle of champagne (where my step son used to work did for groups of more than 10)

why does say a group of 6 people at a restaurant cost more than than 3 seperate groups of 2 people eating at the same time? how do restaraunts try to justify it
 
Last time i went into a restaurant for a meal at the end i gave them a tip.

I told them to try the chippy round the corner! :p
 
why does say a group of 6 people at a restaurant cost more than than 3 seperate groups of 2 people eating at the same time? how do restaraunts try to justify it

Well I guess they can't really... but from the waiters perspective a bigger group probably means a higher chance of taking a hit on the tip otherwise...

A couple dining will often just have one person paying the bill and giving a tip - sometimes they might split the bill but even then it is obvious if a tip has been left by one or both people.

4 tables of couples would be preferable to a waiter/waitress than one table of 8...

when you get to one table of 8 you have a higher chance of muppets who can't keep track of what they've had and then potentially underpay, so perhaps a few members of the group throw in the correct amount plus a tip, some other members of the group forget a drink or a side and throw in too little and the table finds out that all the cash they've put in together, in spite of half of them tipping still doesn't come to the right amount... so everyone throws in a pound more to bring it to roughly the right amount and the waiter gets to keep 50p. Or worse still some complete and utter tool collects up all the cash, puts it in his pocket and hands his card to the waiter for the exact total with no tip... and everyone who did tip is too polite to say anything in either scenario.
 
Well I guess they can't really... but from the waiters perspective a bigger group probably means a higher chance of taking a hit on the tip otherwise...

A couple dining will often just have one person paying the bill and giving a tip - sometimes they might split the bill but even then it is obvious if a tip has been left by one or both people.

4 tables of couples would be preferable to a waiter/waitress than one table of 8...

when you get to one table of 8 you have a higher chance of muppets who can't keep track of what they've had and then potentially underpay, so perhaps a few members of the group throw in the correct amount plus a tip, some other members of the group forget a drink or a side and throw in too little and the table finds out that all the cash they've put in together, in spite of half of them tipping still doesn't come to the right amount... so everyone throws in a pound more to bring it to roughly the right amount and the waiter gets to keep 50p. Or worse still some complete and utter tool collects up all the cash, puts it in his pocket and hands his card to the waiter for the exact total with no tip... and everyone who did tip is too polite to say anything in either scenario.

You’re suggesting a tip should be compulsory there though which it really isn’t. That said I do get your points
 
As far as I know services charges in UK rarely go directly to staff. They certainly didn't in nineties when I was working as a waiting staff in my student days and I've done all levels in that game, all the way to posh silver service places.

Service charges (after taxes and surcharges) usually pay for laundry, restocks of crockery and cutlery, losses for the day and whatever little's left may be distributed between staff based on so called tronc points based on job role or length of service. In practice, the smaller the place, the more likely for the owners to rob their staff from tips and the bigger, more prestigious and higher the rating of the place, the less tronc fund money filters down to the floor staff. Various bodies and programmes investigated issues with service charges over the years and famously the higher the prices, the more money would vanish on the way. Restaurants within Harrods group allegedly were notorious for soaking up 3/4 of service charges before distributing tronc among the staff, while Michel Roux restaurants didn't even classify services charges as distributable tips for their employees. When I worked at top London restaurants around St.James' Street it didn't matter if we served 600 people or 60 people, tronc at the end of the month were the same pitiful sums. Tronc fund was simply a way for the owner group to laundry the money with expense forms and not pay NI on half of the wages.
 
nobody has ever answered "waiter" when asked what they want to be when they grow up

They sometimes answer actor or actress, though. And that's pretty much the same thing in practice.


It's not because of pity, but because I like doing it. That said, I'm a saffer and back home waiters and waitresses don't even get paid in many cases, their tips are their bread & butter. Aussies are the worst, I think the day an Aussie tips hell will freeze over.

I agree - the way wait staff get paid in the USA and have to fawn for tips is awful. But if you start standardising tips in the UK in the same way then I'm convinced our system will just turn into the USA one, with wages being cut and staff expected to live off tips.

And that is why you dont get your bin emptied when its too full or the extra bags you put out along side it taken away ;)

Might be true in the days where people had long-term jobs and small communities. But what's the chances these days of your binman at one Christmas being the same binman as at next. Or even remembering which of the long row of identical houses was the odd one that tipped them. I'm guessing you don't live in a city?
 
Well I guess they can't really... but from the waiters perspective a bigger group probably means a higher chance of taking a hit on the tip otherwise...
A couple dining will often just have one person paying the bill and giving a tip - sometimes they might split the bill but even then it is obvious if a tip has been left by one or both people.

4 tables of couples would be preferable to a waiter/waitress than one table of 8...

when you get to one table of 8 you have a higher chance of muppets who can't keep track of what they've had and then potentially underpay, so perhaps a few members of the group throw in the correct amount plus a tip, some other members of the group forget a drink or a side and throw in too little and the table finds out that all the cash they've put in together, in spite of half of them tipping still doesn't come to the right amount... so everyone throws in a pound more to bring it to roughly the right amount and the waiter gets to keep 50p. Or worse still some complete and utter tool collects up all the cash, puts it in his pocket and hands his card to the waiter for the exact total with no tip... and everyone who did tip is too polite to say anything in either scenario.


Someone I was seeing for a while would always leave very small tips. I'm a fairly big tipper - partly because I'm nice but mostly because I'm socially awkward and find it embarrassing. We'd usually split the bill which I didn't mind except that it led to this awkward dance around the tip at the end of every meal where he'd try to leave 50p or something and I'd want to leave a few quid. If I put more down it led to recalculating and "you've divided it up wrong.". I sometimes used to sneak a few extra coins onto the plate before we left by being the last to get my stuff together as we left, though plastic made that even harder.
 
A couple who I am friends with do that and it's infuriating. You end up putting more in because their tip is so pathetic.

They will happily have £50 worth of food and drink with really good service and think £2 is enough.

They came to America for our wedding and claimed that people out there tip as part of the sales tax. For example their logic was: food bill = $50 + 12% sales tax + 5% tip = nearly 20% tip!
 
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