I have a great deal of skepticism believing wait staff adjust their behavior for better or worse tiping. The fear of losing a job is what keeps them doing good work. An occasional rare individual will be personally motivated to do good work for its own reward.

I also tip my barber.

When I tip, I leave cash, even if I am charging a credit card. I thereby encourage wait staff to not report it as taxable income. Bad law making criminals of us all, and all that.

I remember when it was 10% (the then-acceptable gratuity). My parents tell me that it used to be 5% back in their day.

I remember when it went to 15%. To be honest, 15% should be about right. Now they are carping that “anything less than 20%” is rude and cheap.

My take on that is this: Get another fucking job. You can move boxes at UPS and work MUCH MUCH harder than waiting tables or pouring drinks. You can work construction and work much much harder than you will in resturaunts. What we have here Welmer is social psychology at work. The waiters get to compare you to other customers, many of whom are loaded financially, and they will deem you low-class and can “act” mad at you if you only tip 15% (even though that was the standard all through the mid-eighties to mid-nineties). As the recession drags on, and its going to for another six-months-to-a-year almost for certain, more and more waitstaff will be glad anybody is going out to eat, period.

Note: I cannot digest gluten (wheat, bread, pasta, beer, rye, most sauces) without getting very sick (a “flu-like” achy feeling for the rest of the day, extremely bad diarreha, a rash appears on my ewbows that itches intensely and requires hydrocortisone cream for several days). Since becoming extremely gluten-intolerant, Ive had to learn how to cook much more, which Im getting pretty damned good at. Im enjoying eating at home more than ever before, and have found that it can save you a very suprising amount of money if you do it right (meat, fruit, steamed veggies, home-made tea).

BTW—if a waiter really sucks, they only get 10% from me, but this has only happened 3 times in my life. Im usually right at 20%. Im a very easy customer. I dont try to mix-and-match from the menu, generally only require one drink refill at the most, and usually order a water along with my beverage just so I dont even have to do that. I generally wont send anything back even if its done wrong. Im not hard on them, and dont bore them with extraneous chit-chat, and am professionally courteous to them. In other words, I dont ‘make them earn their money like many many women Ive dated over the years do. A waiter probably has to only walk to our table 3 times when serving me.

This tells you everything you need to know about the subject.

I wonder how the service is there?

Plus, since I go to the same places, I see it as building a rapport. The waiters and waitresses know who I am and they know I tip well, so I figure at least some will put out more effort to take care of me. Basically, I’m paying extra to move myself up the hierarchy of customers so I get more attentive service. This trick has produced real results at some places and not so much at others, but I try to always tip high regardless unless something far out of the ordinary happens.

Back when I made much less money, though, the big question of how much of a tip to leave was always a quandary for me. I generally stayed in the 15-20% range, adjusting up or down slightly to make my total payment an even dollar amount.

As for the waitresses flashing boobs at me, can’t say I’ve had that problem a whole lot. I guess either I’m that naive or I’m not the kind of charming guy waitresses care to show off for–probably the latter. But then again, I always eat at the bar and the places I frequent have attire that doesn’t really allow for that, so maybe that has something to do with it.