This is the fourth in a weekly series where I, Jonathan Frakes, ask the Drowned In Sound community questions taken from the show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction which I hosted from 1998 - 2002.
Whatās the right tip?
I donāt tip
I tip according to the service I receive
I tip a fixed percentage
I am a generous tipper
0voters
What do you think of tipping culture?
I like tipping as a concept
I donāt like tipping as a concept
0voters
Give us your thoughts about tipping, and how it differs in different places.
Tipping is a nightmare. Iāve put that Iām a generous tipper, because thatās what people Iām with tell me if weāre trying to work out a tip in a restaurant or whatever. I think basically out of awkwardness I donāt want to tip too low.
Currently though I am a generous tipper due to having spent the majority of my working life in hospitality. Always cash, never a card gratuity, and always handed directly to the server.
Also nearly always add a drink for the barperson into any round over 3 drinks.
Itās total bullshit. In my job, if I fuck up or have to deal with a dickhead I still get paid the same. Why shouldnāt that apply to everyone? Itās not even consistent with other service jobs - you canāt pay less for your groceries if thereās a queue or the checkout assistant doesnāt smile at you enough
As @Hostile_17 says, non-optional service charge (or just include it in the food prices if itās a flat %) is the way to go.
I got a Deliveroo on Friday and forgot to tip the driver and I canāt do it retrospectively because I ordered on the website rather than the app and I felt bad about it all weekend
Genuinely puts me off visiting the US (a little bit, not saying itās a dealbreaker) ā do you have to tip everyone? If itās one of those hotels with a guy at the door, do you tip him, and how much? Is a dollar insulting? Is five wildly generous? You canāt tip $5 every time you go in and out can you? Fuck it, Iām staying home.
I tip generously on Uber and Uber Eats to make up for the guilt of using Uber and Uber Eats and itās nice when they make use of the āThanks for the tip!ā functionality and you get a wee notification later that day/evening
Best one was during Cheltenham week some guy who was watching the racing in my pub won Ā£20k so gave me Ā£250 to put behind the bar to āget you and your mates as drunk as I amā. That was a good afternoon.
aka the Ticketmaster model: you think itās cheap until you get the final bill and there are loads of add-ons.
Business should be upfront about how much something costs, and that includes restaurants. If a plate of food costs Ā£23, make it clear on the menu. Not charge Ā£20 and add 15% when the bill comes.
And make sure you pay all your staff enough so that they donāt have to rely on tips, or a handout from the service charge.
We werenāt allowed to accept tips and used to get them pro rataād over the whole year, as we used to only really do private events (weddings, conferences, etc.) - got split between the front of house, kitchen, events team, gardeners, etc.
Would have to tell people I couldnāt accept cash tips and they would give us cigars and stuff (#cambridgelife) as if it were some smart loophole - mate Iām seventeen what am I going to do with this? (Answer: smoke it on the top floor of vodka revolution on a student night, obviously)
Tips are very good for if you want to make that really good joke about āIāve got a tip for youā and then itās like āalways make sure you wash your glasses firstā or what have you
Counting out my tips at the end of a shift was the highlight of my service industry days even if it was next to nothing. Whatever I had in tips was what I could spend on getting some dinner on the way home from the co-op. Always hated the super busy days when staff hadnāt shown up and I ended up working three times as hard and thereās bound to be a drop in service as a result no matter how hard you try and so you get fewer tips for doing more work than ever.