Tipping: How Much, Where, When and Doing the Right Thing

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a nice restaurant with a couple of friends. When we entered the door, there was a sign that said please wait to be seated. So we stood by the sign it took several minutes before a hostess even came by. Finally we got a seat, were handed our menus and given some water. It took another 15 minutes before the waitress came back to order, and then another 40 minutes to get our food! Once we did get our food, the waitress never came back and asked us how our food was or if there was anything she could get for us. The food was even cold when we got it. We didn't even get the bill; we had to go up to the cash register and pay. This is a restaurant situation which happens all too often, and in the end it can be somewhat difficult to discern what to do for tipping.

In this case, we decided that we would not be leaving a tip. If there were problems and it was genuinely not the waitresses fault, I probably would have left the standard 15%. However we were given very poor service by the waitress and she did not do much to accommodate despite any problems that might have been going on in the kitchen. When you get really bad service and the waitress doesn't do much to try to alleviate the situation, it is okay to not give a tip. Feeling obligated to give a tip even though you got some really crappy service is not the right thing to do. You are then sending them a message that being rude and giving our poor services is an okay thing to do, because they'll get some sort of tip anyway.

When you get exceptional service, you should definitely reward the waitress. Good hosts and waitresses are very hard to come by. When one goes the extra mile for you, be sure to reward them. In this case you should give at least a 20% tip! If you go to a restaurant on a regular basis, and there's a good waitress who usually helps you, tip her better, because she will give better service to a loyal customer that she remembers rather than just someone who came in once.