Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for February 13, 2024

Not “we,” Rat. You’ve been banned. Pig can still go there without you.

Tip: Don’t ask for a gratuity, earn it.

I would not go there! Good for you rat!

Not only do they “suggest” a minimum tip of 18%, but they expect you to tip before you even get service.

Rat should just go to Subway.

great to be banned from that restaurant!

Round it up to the nearest dollar, Rat, and just leave. You can add a smiley face if you like – especially if your server did.

That’s not a tip, it’s a charge. I object to them upping the bill without my consent.

20, 25 or 30 percent tips? Talk about gratuitous gratuities!

The thing I object to is that the percentages shown are based on the total including the sales tax, not on the pre-tax subtotal. I was taught that you don’t tip the tax, so I base my tips on the pre-tax subtotal. It makes quite a difference here, since we have a high sales tax rate—8.625% on the entire bill.

Tips have gone from an appreciation to an entitlement. Not surprising, the generation of entitlement and participation awards. Fine, I don’t mind not giving these places my business.

20 to 30% of bill amount as tip? Whoa! Whoa! Whoas! What is you theenk me is some sorsta feelthy rich areesterocrat? What those cheap @## fancy pants extreemely expenseeve restaurant is not pays you any salary or wages so that you is has to live on tip?

When I was a mere boy, we tipped a nickle most places and 5% in the (very few) fancy places we went. Restaurants only. By the time I was off on my own, it was generally 10%. And now, so I hear from servers, 15% is a “spit in your soda” tip and they EXPECT 20% for doing nothing beyond the most basic. I’ve grudgingly started to give 20% rounded down to the nearest even dollar. But I also patronize places where the wait staff is at the very least friendly and helpful.

Imagine if we just paid people an actual wage, instead of depending on handouts from customers?

Tip: pay waiting staff a decent wage so they don’t have to rely on the whims and fancies of the clientele.

wow, the tip I got from the comments is to stay home. Figuring out the tip and spending enough to feed a family for a week for a simple meal ruins the fun of going out!

By law Servers are guaranteed minimum wage irrespective of your tips – the restaurant must make up the difference.

In my state the minimum wage is $15/hour except for restaurant waitstaff where it’s $6.75. (the restaurant has to pay more if wages plus tips don’t add up to $15/hour) I’ll consider tipping a Starbucks Barista when they take the job for $6.75/hour.

The restaurants need to pay their workers a decent wage and not have tips at all. Frankly, I wish the country would adopt the European practice of having the pric you see be the price you pay, taxes and everything already included.

I always tip 20% but that’s hilarious

If you add a tip to your bill and pay with a card, how do you know management will actually give that amount to the server.

Here’s a second tip: Shave off that gawdawful beard!!

I shouldn’t be surprised at the amount of salt in the comments…

To make it worse, they often precalculate the tip based on total plus sales tax. Tipping on tax? No. Gotta do your own math.

So much this.

Went to a Thai restaurant we like a week or so ago. We’ve moved past the bit at the bottom that calculates your tips for you. Now they just have a couple of lines where you check off the amount you want to leave. And of course, the lowest amount is 18%.

They’ve been ratcheting up the “suggested” amount for years. When we saw a show last week, we got a couple of cans of hard cider. On top of the $12 per can charge there was a line for the “suggested” tip – for handing me a couple of cans.

There’s a blowback coming. People are going to say “screw you” and stop leaving tips entirely.

remember it’s @ before # except after $

Plant your corn early………

So, you admit you’re a cheap miser!

We?

I tip what I feel they deserve.If they don’t like it,I WANT them to ban me!

Here’s a tip: tip your waiters if they do a good job. They flipping deserve it.

I don’t need to be banned from a place with tipping “suggestions” like that, I will voluntarily not return.

I leave 15 % for average service. 20% for above average. I have left 10% for sub par. If it’s counter service I leave no more than a dollar. The expectations for tips has gotten ridiculous

Is that the royal ‘We’ Rat? Or, did you manage to get Pig banned by association?

I’m with Rat on this one.

I never got a tip for anything but if somebody was going to be brooding in hatred over the difference between leaving me three dollars instead of two, I think I would just let them go in peace and frame their dollar.

Here’s a tip: Always tip your waiters and don’t be a cheapskate.

…Why is it a percentage? …it’s the same amount of work to serve a burger as it is for a steak…makes no sense…

If the ‘suggested’ tip starts at 20%, I evaluate the waitstaff’s actual service and might leave 15-18%. If I’m paying by card and the minimum is 20%, I don’t put the tip on the card; I run my own calculation and pay the tip in cash. I round up if the service was good. I round down if the service was poor; if the tip would be $15.01, but the service was good, that’s $16. If the tip would be $14.93 but the service was bad, that’s $14. And I never go back there again.

If a ‘mandatory’ tip is automatically added to the bill, I never return to that business.

It’s amazing how many restaurants go out of business in under a year. That’s what happens when customers come once and never again.

No, the proper comment to add is “How dare you?”

When I get stuff delivered, there is a spot for a “suggested tip”.

It’s true, most bad feelings come from being confronted by one of our own shortcomings. I’m not really angry at the person or situation that revealed my “badness,” but at myself.

Poor Pig didn’t do anything.

When did 20% become the new “lower gratuity percentage?” I thought it was for the best service.

What’s this WE business? Pig didn’t act out.

tips are iniquitous – these days they’re just a hidden charge (or surtax if you prefer)

Rat paid the bill. They should be grateful that he didn’t dine and dash.

A more accurate word is “Fee.” If paper, I write in, “See (cash) on table.” Otherwise, it’s 20% or zero, depending on server. There’s interesting YouTubes on this topic.

I’m picking up a pizza. Cashier says “would you like to leave a gratuity of 18%, 20%, or 25%?”

I say %15. She looks at me like I’m crazy, like I didn’t hear her choices. I stare back at her, like do you want a tip or not, lady.

Off topic – I’m not a GC Premium Member, and I’ve never had ads on my laptop before today, though I have had the ads when looking at GC on my iPhone. Now suddenly on my laptop it’s ads galore! Comments?

I’m a generous tipper, but why does the percentage keep increasing, instead of just the price? When the price increases, the tip will go up anyway.

Better tip: Pay waitstaff a living wage.

The newest sleight-of-hand is that restaurants add a tip (usually 15-18%) when they give you the bill and IN ADDITION, have a blank space for you to add a tip, with their suggestions of 18-20-25-30%s.

I have always been a very generous tipper, but recently, I decided that if they add the tip on their own, they decided to screw themselves out of a larger amount that I might have considered giving.

I’ve wondered why someone doesn’t sell a tip meter. It’s like a taxi meter with large illuminated digits, but the dollar amount goes backward over time. It’s sure to get you fast service, or thrown out of the restaurant depending on how fancy it is.

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeap!!!

Be interesting to see the kind of service Pastis gets if this cartoon becomes well known.

If it’s a sit down restaurant with wait service yes I definitely tip the standard 20 percent. If it’s exceptional service I’ll tip more. If I’m picking up a pizza and they have me enter a tip I choose none. Tipping for takeout is getting ridiculous

LMAO!

It wasn’t that long ago that regularly tipping 20% had me being considered a great customer. (If I felt like I really liked a place on my first visit, and intended to come back, I would tip 50% on my first visit in order to buy my way onto the fast track to regular treatment, but that wouldn’t last.)

I don’t tip a percentage, because the price of food has gone up ridiculously. I tip based on the effort and how demanding my party is. ie: number of refills, speed of service, attentiveness, did we have salads, appetizers, dessert?

Currently a DoorDasher and InstaCart shopper. Might be going back to Ubering soon too.Former Restaurant Server.

Some history and explanation

Part of the problem is that servers and a lot of other tipped jobs have a different minimum wage. Right now, the federal minimum wage for tipped jobs is $2.13, and has been since 1991. Up until 1996, tipped minimum wage was actually set at 50% of minimum wage. In 1991, minimum was set at $4.25, with tipped wage set to $2.13. However, it was permanently stabilized at that price. In 1996, when minimum wage was raised to $4.75, tipped wages remained at $2.13, and has ever since. This why when I was a kid, 10-15% was considered a decent tip. Now, however, anything less than 20% is an insult.It’s been several years, but most restaurants I’ve worked at only did a gratuity of 15% to the server for large parties. The customer is charged 18% gratuity, but we only got 15%.

Here’s another great thing for the restaurant owners and others who expect their customers to pay their employees wages. If an employee is tipped, they can count that against what they have to pay them. It doesn’t matter who pays the tip. Be it customers or…

Other employees.

Many restaurants institute a system called “tip sharing”. Basically, the server has to pay out to other “support staff”, usually bartenders (Who also have their own tables to take care of), Bussers, and Hosts. At most places it’s set at 3%. So if you eat somewhere and spend $50, but don’t leave anything, then that server paid $1.50 to serve you. That’s why the large parties pay 18% but the server gets only 15.

And of course, since that support staff is “receiving tips”, the restaurant gets to pay them less too. (Not usually as low as $2.13, but still not as high as $7.25)

(Continued in a response to my own comment…)

Here’s a tip: if you “suggest” 20%, I’m gonna counter with 0.

If you can’t afford the tip don’t go out to eat.

Sorry, but tipping a percentage is a ridiculous concept. It doesn’t take any more time or effort to carry an $10 entree or a $100 entree from kitchen to table.

Is that a coffee shop thing??? My pizza place is 15%, 20% and 25%! We go at least once every other week, AND they’re ALWAYS jammed, so we do 15%.

Covid-19 killed A LOT of businesses, but “The Town of Tonawanda’s” medium-to-large restaurants THRIVED! (One restaurant was able to BUILD A WHOLE EXTRA DINING AREA!!! But they offered free delivery and no seating for months.)

Yeah, I remember when a tip was 10%. Then suddenly you were a cheapskate if you didn’t involuntarily give 15%. Now the auto-systems start with a “suggested” 18 or 20%.

And if you want “other”? You can’t put in a percent, you have to do the math on the fly.

I’d make tipping illegal, and hold the employer accountable for a living wage. But I live in an idealistic world of my own, apparently. One local restaurant a couple of years ago tried out a “no tips allowed” policy, and the customers — the customers! — weren’t having it!

Tipping culture is promoted by companies who don’t want to pay a decent wage and try to shift the responsibility to their customers.

Pig: “What do you mean ’We’ve been banned.’”?

Mr. Pink’s rant on tipping in the beginning diner scene of Reservoir Dogs pretty much sums it up.

And Tipping is not a city in China.

Here’s a hot tip: Don’t bet money on the horse races!

Honestly…I kinda gotta go with Rat on this one. It IS irritating, particularly when the service is considerably ‘less than optimal.’

A couple of years ago a large group of us went to a restaurant to celebrate a birthday. I paid the bill for 4 of us. We had all chipped in on the very generous tip which we gave directly to the server in cash. I put the bill on my debit card and a month later, while balancing my checkbook, was shocked and horrified to discover that an additional amount of money had been added as a tip. I don’t blame the server. I’m pretty sure it was the business owner that did this sleazy trick. As a consequence I now make sure I have enough cash with me when I go to a restaurant and never again use my card. It is my belief that only the business owner ever sees the digital tips and they do not share them with their employees.

“We” ????

Stop with the BS. Pay the people a decent wage and an equally decent health insurance.

My German friend doesn’t understand tipping.

A hipster waiter asking for a tip? Ha!

Waiters here now earn $17 an hour. And we’re still supposed to tip?

The only way I’m going to leave 30% is if they cut up my meat and pre-masticate it. :(

“We”???

I don’t subscribe to the concept of “suggested tips.” Rather, I tip according to the service.

At Fazoli’s tonight we ordered from a kiosk next to the counter and it asked if we wanted to pay a tip. Fazoli’s is a “fast Italian” place half a notch above Burger King (or maybe a whole notch, and half a notch above Taco Bell). A tip? You’ve got to be kidding me.

When we get to the counter, the gal tells us they are out of one thing we ordered, and the machine that makes the other thing has been broken for 4 weeks. Really.

You know, if you can’t sell something, maybe you shouldn’t offer it. And if making adjustments to the computer is not possible or something you don’t know how to do, you could just post a notice next to the kiosk.

Our receipt didn’t have a link for providing feedback on our experience. But with a little effort, you can find a survey at the website. I sure did.

I didn’t mention the tip in my survey answer, but I did mention the skimpiness of the salad dressing packet.

By the time we got to our seat, I had no regrets about the no-tip decision.

Tip: Restaurants should pay their workers a decent wage so they aren’t begging the customers for tips just to have some take home pay.

Yeah we don’t do tips here & I’m happy with that.

Take the lobster with one claw back and bring me the winner

Tipping culture has caused me to no longer travel in to places that have out of control tipping. I prefer the Asian nations and central Europe

It may shock you to learn that some countries’ businesses pay their staff enough, and tipping is considered an insult. Just because you grew up with a local custom doesn’t make it universal.