Earlier in the week I had an e-mail asking me to write about my tipping philosophy when I go out to restaurants, bars and clubs: How much do I tip, what makes me tip extra, what makes me tip less? All right, here you go.
All other things being equal, when I’m out at my usual hangouts Downtown I tip 30% or a dollar a beer, whichever is greater. The 30% tip is a little higher than the industry average, which is probably 15-20%. I consider it a way of being respectful, of saying, “Hey, I know how much it can suck at times to be a bartender/server and I know your job is harder than it looks. Thanks for taking good care of me.”
On certain occasions I’ll switch over to the dollar-a-beer rule. Mainly I do this when I’m buying the beer at a discount from normal price, such as the Fire Sales at the Saucer and Pint Nite. I started doing this following a late-night discussion at McGuinness with some off-duty servers last year, when they complained that on discount beer nights they work just as hard but make a lot less money because the tabs are lower. So on Pint Nite, I might order 5 beers, have a tab of $12.50, and leave a $5 tip, which is 40% but is a more accurate reflection of the work my server did than 30%.
My tips are based solely on the job the server or bartender does, not my opinion of them as people. I can think a server is the greatest thing since sliced bread on a personal level, but unless she does something extraordinary related to her job (I’ll talk about this in a minute) she’ll get 30% or $1/beer. On the other hand, if a server is someone I don’t really care for personally, it won’t stop her from getting 30% or $1/beer as long as she does her job well.
Sometimes a server will try to get me to deviate from the rule above, hinting around that “we’re friends, so you should tip me extra.” Or even worse, hinting “I’m hot, so you should tip me extra.” In either case I compute 30% in my head and then deduct a couple of dollars, just to give them a financial slap on the wrist for being bratty.
So, what makes me tip more than 30%? Well, I’ll give a few examples:
1) One night I was at the Saucer, watching the Dempseys. I was standing on the floor, in front of the pool table, and had an empty beer. I had been buying beers from the bar, but the line was way long and if I went in there I’d lose my good vantage point for the band. One of the servers saw me, realized what was going on, and said, “Paul, do you need anything? You’re not in my section but I’ll take care of you.” And my glass was never empty for the rest of the night. I tipped her 50%.
2) The two Rapscallions trivia team members who tend to hang out at the Saucer the most are Mikey and me. So one evening after trivia was over, everyone got their tabs and discovered that they had been entered as Mikey/2, Mikey/3, Mikey/4 and so on, in the computer. That’s fine for everyone else, but I come there enough that I should be on equal footing with Mikey, at least. I was the last to tab out, and the waitress brought my check: “Paul/1.” I tipped her 50%.
3) One night in summer ’06 I went into Blues City’s back bar. I hadn’t been in there in 9 months but the bartender not only remembered my name, but what beer I liked to drink. I tipped her 100% because that was really cool.
Now we turn to the other side of the coin… what do I do when I get lousy service. Well, for starters I look for reasons why it might not be the server’s fault. If the bar is packed, I don’t hold it against her. If she takes me a long time to bring food out, I tend to believe it was the cooks’ fault and not the server’s. I’ll ask questions like, “So are you feeling all right today?” and oftentimes I’ll get a story about how they got in a car accident or broke up with their boyfriend or stuff like that. In that case I don’t hold the bad service against them. Everybody has bad days.
If the service is bad and I just can’t see any reason to justify it, I’ll lower my tip amount to 15%, which is still average. It’s completely horrendous I’ll pay cash for the tab and leave the exact amount, leaving them to wonder if I just forgot to tip or if I did it on purpose. But it’s EXTREMELY rare that I resort to this. Maybe once every couple of years. I look for every reason not to.
One more thing to cover – tipping as a means of showing off. Meaning, tipping extremely excessively (100% or more) when there’s no good reason to do so. This is a MAJOR no-no. Do this and from that moment on, you are the ATM. Sure, they’ll encourage that kind of behavior, sure, they’ll take the money, but they won’t respect you. The message it sends is, “trying way too hard to convince people that I’m a big shot.” You can only get away with this if you actually ARE a big shot. Fred Smith could get away with it. Pau Gasol could get away with it. Most other people in Memphis can’t and shouldn’t try. Even worse: Leaving an excessive tip, then bragging to other bar patrons that you did so.
Anyway, that just about wraps it up. To summarize my tipping philosophy: 1) Be respectful. 2) Be fair. 3) Don’t show off.
Another post yet to come today, maybe two.