WTF?

I hit the tipping point (pun intended) at lunch on Thursday at Mahony's.

A 7 person work party traveled in 2 different cars to lunch, and I was with the first group of 3 to arrive. As we placed our order at the counter, the remainder of our squad walked in. The girl working the register asked if we were all together, to which we replied yes, thinking that she would just put every order under one name even though we were paying separately.

Then she layed the smack down like Tyron Mathieu on an unsuspecting Northwestern State wide receiver coming across the middle.

"OK, we have a 15% gratuity charge for parties of 6 or more."

Say what?

I struggled to hold back from unleashing a list of sarcastic inquiries as to exactly what service would be performed to warrant this added charge. But I have experience as the low man on the totem pole who often unjustly receives the lion's share of customer complaints, most of which are based on managerial decisions over which the victim of the tirade exercises no control. So I bit my tongue, took a picture of the receipt, enjoyed the onion rings as always, toughed it out through a terribly dry cochon de lait po-boy, and walked out the door feeling that the time had come to take a stand.

In my humble opinion, yelling out my name when my order is ready and then carrying my po-boy from the counter to my table does not constitute "service". Don't get me wrong - all of the employees were smiling, courteous, and performed their duties well. But at no time did anyone walk over to our table and offer to refill our drinks, fetch extra napkins, or ask if we were enjoying our food.

I understand that large parties have the tendency to linger and occupy coveted table space for longer periods of time than a deuce or 4 top would. But Thursday lunch at Mahony's is not the courtyard at Bayona on a beautiful Friday afternoon in spring or the dining room at Stella on Valentine's Day. I understand that volume is the name of the game and that the faster the tables turn, the more money a restaurateur makes. Had gratuity not been automatically added, I probably would have dropped a dollar or two in the tip jar. I do the same when I go to Felipe's, The Store, Creole Creamery, and the like. But at all of the aforementioned, it is my option to do so.

But we are still talking about a po-boy shop that bills itself as "a tribute/throw-back to the old neighborhood Po-Boy shops of New Orleans". I wonder if Clarence & Lefty's had a similar policy?

Dueling Bloggers: Tipping

Photo courtesy of the New England Wedding Blog.

Peter: I'll be honest - I have no concrete notion of what is proper tipping etiquette.  Some people (maybe most?) calculate gratuity based on the pre-tax total. I have always based gratuity on the bottom line total including tax, and I don't know exactly why other than because that's how my Dad always did it. I usually tip 18% unless I am constantly trying to get the waiter's attention away from his iPhone to refill my water glass or futily searching for him while he is on a smoke break, in which case the tip gets knocked down to 15%. For higher end restaurants, I usually bump it up to 20%.

Rene: Daddy Warbucks and his pocketfuls of greenbacks over here. You probably spend a good amount of time tipping everyone and anyone who looks your way. Two things, first I usually tip on the pre-tax dollars. Real misers tip on the pre-tax and pre-drinks amount, but that seems a little cheap to me. Also, I try not to judge tipping by the location or style of a restaurant. Consider the humble breakfast waitress. She gets up at 4 a.m., refills coffee near endlessly, makes sure your eggs are scrambled softly, fetches you an extra biscuit, and snags the Sports page for you. All of that work and the bill is $12. I was always told and try to follow (when I do eat breakfast out) to tip breakfast waiters and waitresses over 30%. Maybe I am just more considerate and appreciative than you, Warbucks.

Peter: Here is an interesting question emailed to us by a faithful Blackened Out reader named Kelly: Is it customary to tip on take out? I always tip on takeout, but usually only to the tune of a few dollars. My rationale is this: If the bartender handles take out orders, and the bartender makes a living on tips, then throw him a couple of bucks. Here is another question for you, oh King of Corkage: When you bring a bottle of wine to a restaurant, do you calculate gratuity solely on the corkage fee or do you calculate based on the value of the wine that you brought in?

Rene: I do tip on take out, but usually only by adding a dollar and rounding up to the next whole dollar. So let's say the bill is $27.39, I would tip $1.61. This is stupid and it doesn't really make sense. No one is actually serving me anything, consider it a guilty conscience. Also, I must add that the growing proliferation of restaurants that take credit cards and print a receipt with a gratuity line has created an almost Pavlovian reaction to tipping. Listen up, dry cleaners, Walgreens, liquor stores, if there is a gratuity line, 9 times out of 10 you can trick me into leaving a tip.

As for corkage, I usually just add a base line amount to the regular tip based on how the wine service went. For instance, when we dined at Meson 923. The wine, a White Burgundy, was constantly taken from the table and placed in a wine bucket across the room chilling it and destroying the almond cream and mushroom aromas. Now despite my repeated requests to stop doing that, I may have been able to let it slide. If, and this is a HUGE if, I didn't have to get up and traipse across the room to retrieve said wine each time our glasses were empty. For that wine "service" I added $5 to the tip. For anything approaching competent service I'd probably do 20% of the cost of the wine to me added to regular tip.

Peter: If it takes forever to get your food, do you discount the server's gratuity even if the problem is most likely attributable to the back of the house? What about if the restaurant is understaffed (through no fault of the server), and therefore the server is spread too thin?  The service industry is a tough way to make a living, and the front of the house gets the brunt of the complaints because they are the ones dealing face to face with the customers. The back of the house gets paid the same no matter if the food is good or bad. Such is not the case with servers, but I try not to punish a waiter for problems outside of his control.  The only service issue which has the potential too drastically discount gratuity is if I am waiting an extended period of time to either get my check or run my credit card.

Rene: This brings up a very interesting argument. As we have talked about before, in Europe and elsewhere service is included in the price of the meal. In America, is tipping a way of passing the cost of service from the restaurant owner to the consumer? I say yes. But that this is not a bad thing. The number one thing we hear from friends and reader (they are pretty much mutually exclusive) is service complaints. If prices were higher and service was included, people would complain that they are paying for a service that doesn't please them. This way the patron decides the value of the server's wages. However, it should be the role of management and the kitchen to ensure the waitstaff is in the best possible position to make the most amount of money. When that happens, regardless of the restaurant, everyone wins.