My late father-in-law was the person who educated me about tipping servers. I’m typically in for at least 20% and have gone as high as 30% for truly exceptional service and / or when frequenting favorite establishments, places I’m going to visit regularly. It absolutely builds rapport with the staff, in my experience.

If my late FIL hadn’t impressed this upon me sufficiently, the gratuity-related horror stories told by my kids, all of whom worked in food service at some point in their youth, would have done the trick haha.

There wasn't one for "no tip for take out" but the pole requires something be checked so I checked:

"It's bullshit. A couple bucks is standard."

I've never tipped a cashier (store or restaurant) for going to their location and buying a product. Certainly I would tip a food delivery person, and a lot more than a waiter just carrying my food from the counter to my table.

sorry, I am sick of the entitlement attitude that people are owed shit.

I've cut way back on tipping in the last few years. Mostly because servers couldn't get things right.

Since the great Covidian plauge. I have stopped eating out as much as we had in the past. The quality of the food we have been served, the service in general, and the general friendliness of the staff has fallen below a standard worth paying for.

If the waitress rests her hand on my shoulder and calls me "Sweetie", tips may equal or exceed 30%. If she leans wayyy over me from behind whilst refilling my big ol' tumbler of swait tay, the tip may equal 40%.

I make no apology for being an olde schoole , white, red-blooded, easily swayed American male.

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
If the waitress rests her hand on my shoulder and calls me "Sweetie", tips may equal or exceed 30%. If she leans wayyy over me from behind whilst refilling my big ol' tumbler of swait tay, the tip may equal 40%.

I make no apology for being an olde schoole , white, red-blooded, easily swayed American male.

And what if it’s a dude? 40%+? Maybe he’ll tickle your balls, too.

I don't tip carry out at all; handing me a bag of to-go food doesn't warrant a tip.

I tip table service as much as 20%, less if something sucks and it was clearly the server's fault (bad attitude, too inattentive service, etc, and I don't punish servers for kitchen mistakes or management/staffing issues that aren't their fault).

Occasionally, very occasionally, I tip more if they're super cool, super hot, or otherwise offer extraordinary service, big parties, birthdays/etc, special things.

As for Delivery, I don't waste money on Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc, and only order direct from pizza joints or local Chinese food, etc. 20% is my standard here.

My standard starts at 20% if my expectations are met. It drops to 15% and declines when my expectations are not met. It would also depend on what caused my expectations to not be met. As far as take out from places local that we frequent I tend to give 10% and sometimes more depending on how well we are treated and how often we frequent the establishment.

All that goes out the window in places with high min wage, which in turn inflates that cost of my meal.

I was a busboy at a pretty nice place in high school. I had several customers seek me out
and give me a five or ten because I gave them better service than the waitress.
And I have done the same thing a few times.

This generated a lot more discussion than I guessed.

I looked up the author, and they’re Philadelphia based and their etiquette person is California based so they were locked down much harder and longer than I was. I don’t know much about the restauranteurs lockdown experience in KY. I initially thought some of my differing opinions were lockdown experience related, but the further I read it became apparent that the differences were the author, etiquette person, and restauranteur were progressive idiots. I choose to be an above average tipper (eg I gave 25% last night because she was awesome. For example, they were out of my favorite dish but she knew the off menu options available and got the kitchen to make my favorite dish with a different fish species), but articles entitled attitude, calling tipping racist, etc. drove me to the bullshit choice.

As far as reduced tip, as someone who used to work for tips I know the difference between service issues (eg scatter brained, glued to their phone, smoking out back instead of waiting, etc) and issues not their fault (eg kitchen not timing all dishes to be done at same time, missing doneness, etc). I only reduce tip for service issues.

As far as no tip, I concur with the other posters who give a penny. I don’t want to give the impression that I forgot but instead deliberately gave a shitty tip for their shitty service. Fortunately, this has been an exceptionally rare event, but they truly deserved a penny.