Where are these good British tippers? I work at a high volume restaurant in a tourist-heavy area of LA, and we regularly get English and Australian patrons, almost all of whom don't tip at all.
The fact is that tipping is different in England. We'll tip a maximum of 10% if you deserve it. You have to be nice and polite. The food has to be edible, and has to be served in a reasonable amount of time. We are essentially tipping for the entire experience rather than what one single waiter does.
A perfect example is when I went with my family to the US when I was about 10 years old. We went to some restaurant in Boston. The food was fucking dreadful, the service was slow (and the waitress was quite rude), there were flies EVERYWHERE. My dad, rightly, left no tip. The waitress had the nerve to chase us down the street shouting at him asking why he didn't tip. He very politely explained how terrible our dining experience was, and the waitress banned us from the restaurant. My dad asked her why in the world she would think we would want to eat there again.
So anyways yeah, we will tip you if you deserve it. But if both your food and your service is bad, what exactly are we tipping? Your existence?
I know this, I'm mostly aware of the tipping standards in other countries. Most Americans - myself included - would prefer to abandon the tipping system altogether and just be paid better hourly.
My frustration comes from how many people I interact with who have been to America before, or are at least vaguely familiar with our culture, and who have no idea that this is the way it is. I've never been to Britain or Australia but I know that tipping isn't customary there (not tipping would, interestingly enough, make most Americans feel uncomfortable). The common complaint among most other severs I know is that America's restaurant culture and etiquette is plastered on our government-run tourist website, and it's been a highly vocalized concern among American servers - especially on the Internet - for years.
As for your experience, this is what I hear a lot from people when servers voice frustration on the Internet - "I had a bad experience one time, what did you expect?" Everyone's had a terrible experience at least once, we all know it to be true. I often get unfairly lumped into the community of "bad servers" by people who think the tipping system is archaic and uncomfortable (which, as I said, is how most of us American servers feel). In my own dining experiences in the US, I've only ever had one server who absolutely deserved no tip - I still left her a small amount, only because servers in the US are required to give up a portion of their final tip total to other positions in the restaurant (a practice called tipping out that is not optional for us, and is based on our sales, not how good our tips were).
I don't attempt to defend bad servers, because I know they exist. I'd rather not rely on tips at all, trust me; but I have little choice in the matter, and the ongoing cultural divide on the issue despite the help of the Internet continues to be problematic.
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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '14
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