That is just terrible. And the Denny’s story (“actual people”) is hilarious!
Your variable tipping at counters exactly parallels mine. And speaking of fathers with offspring in the restaurant business, listening to me gripe about bad tippers many years ago changed my father’s tipping approach for the rest of his life, as he acknowledged to me many times.
Yes, my daughter’s experience did make me more sensitive to these issues too.
When you said “speaking of fathers with offspring” you upended my world for a second. I thought you were going to go on to say you were one, which is not my mental picture of you at all.
(On a design site, where I was – you guessed it – designdabbler, the tone of my posts led people to believe that I was a woman, the highest compliment anybody has paid me. They persisted in this belief all the way to my banning.)
I added a question to you in my post above while you were responding, so you may not have seen it.
So I could edit the title of this thread to make it about tipping instead of about the named restaurant if @Ferrari328 doesn’t object. Or I can split off the responses into a tipping thread.
And no, @fooddabbler, I am not a father with offspring, but an offspring (female) with a father. 
And I am the opposite. Who knew the world was so diverse?
Sorry, jumping boards from the NJ one. Hope everybody doesn’t mind. I worked in restaurants for several years through high school, college and occasionally afterwards. I came across a variety of tipping policies (pooling, percentages paid to certain servers, etc), but only 1 place required us to tip out the back of the house. If your point was that the back of the house is often not going to see that money; I agree completely.
Thanks. Very interesting.
Please jump in here more often.
Again - I’ll repeat since this always gets lost somehow - I do tip, I tip well, I just HATE our tipping culture. it is broken, unfair, and out of control.
Our insane tipping culture was originally driven by the fact that the food industry fought and won the right to pay serves significantly less than minimum wage - under the assumption that tips would make up the difference. So the original system was that we tip those who were getting screwed on their wages because of this new wage law. We have somehow morphed into a culture where we are supposed to tip everyone and anyone who “doesn’t make very much money”. That is insane to me.
Here is the problem with this story (not that your daughter didn’t deserve more money, etc) - But
Part of why I hate our tipping culture and how tips are expected as wages - I didn’t hire these people, I didn’t train them, I can’t fire them, I can’t promote them, I have no idea what they are making - as the customer I shouldn’t have anything to do with how much they make. If the boss/owner is happy with them and happy with their performance then he/she should pay them accordingly. If I’m not happy with my experience I just won’t go back. If I’m not happy with the service why should I now be required to either manage or train the staff either through complaining or totally stiffing them on a tip so that they notice I wasn’t happy.
I wish we would fight harder for a better minimum wage for everyone and get rid of tipping completely (except for when someone goes well above and beyond what you’d expect and you tip as a thank you).
To stay on topic for the post - If the employees in the takeout place are making minimum wage (not a reduced tipped minimum wage - e.g. $3/hr) then no tip should be expected (not that you can’t give one but it shouldn’t be expected). They are getting paid to do just that job. It becomes a grey area when you get into GretchenS’ example of when a reduced wage worker is the one fulfilling to-go orders.
In several of the restaurants I worked in, the hostess always fulfilled the to-go orders (we didn’t have tons of them, finer dining doesn’t get tons of take-out). She was paid well above minimum wage (not huge money but more), so should she expect a tip? She usually got some tip, typically not a 20% tip. But that was her job, she was tasked with it because she was getting full pay . . . .
How much does someone need to make before they don’t get tipped anymore?
Sorry this is just one of my “hot button” issues. It is such a broken system on so many levels that I can’t believe we all just keep going along with it . . . . .
Ferrari, I don’t see the name of the place you are referring to, or did I just miss it?
Count me among those who usually tip on takeout. I probably leave an average of 15%, 20% if a lot of work is involved and 10% if it’s a straightforward pizza. I also tip for counter service such as coffee and sandwich prep. I do regret, though, that the back of the house probably won’t receive any portion of the tip.
Thimes, I agree that our system is broken. I guess I feel that, until it is more equitable, I’d rather throw in a few dollars to try and balance things out. I, too, wish ferverently for a no-tipping culture, or just tipping for above and beyond service, and a living wage for all.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. Yes, there’s no reason to tip someone who simply hands you a bag.
On the delivery aspect, I guess I should have explained the full situation. There was nothing in the job description that said that that was what was required. It was added on. The walks were not insignificant: Za to the block where Garment District is, for example. A modest tip on such a service seems a reasonable expectation.
Does anybody know how much DoorDash, GrubHub, TryCaviar, etc., deliverers are paid? How much to tip them is another ballgame.
No, it was in the title of the OP but the tread got changed to tipping. It was about Cafe De Lulu in Malden.
Here’s my take on the reality of shared tips from a jar at a takeout place at the end of the day…
Owner / Manager at his/her desk behind a closed door. He/she dumps the accumulated tips on his/her desk, separates the bills from the change, and starts a set of piles. “Two for me, one for you. Three for me, one for you. One for me, two quarters for you.” When done, he envelopes the rewards and hands them to his staff, in a magnanimous gesture. Heaven forbid that any of his/her children worked there. That would throw the whole shared equation into the toilet.
I could not agree more, wish I knew where to sign up. Until we achieve it though, I am with @bear that I do what I can to balance things out – and I know you do too, even while you hate it.
@Thimes I found your response depressing in the face of many years of us tipping for counter service. If I’ve been naive in many many years of eating out, then, yes, that is depressing to me.
I’ve been dreading looking at this thread since I last posted because I am an eternal optimist and lately, I need more optimism versus cynicism. I have never worked in a restaurant/cooked in a restaurant but yet, I review places so I am vastly under-qualified. I’m sure there are plenty of crooked owners who grab the tip jar but for every one of those jerks, there must be some who actually share the bounty. In our house, we tend to patronize places that (hopefully) do the latter. When a small operation automatically adds on tip and if I feel right about it, I’m ok with it.
In any case, I welcome constructive debate. That has disappeared from our everyday lately.
I generally don’t tip on takeout, but I absolutely tip on delivery, even if there is a delivery charge. I know the guy running my pizza up the stairs in the rain isn’t seeing a dime of the delivery charges.
If I were to get takeout from a place that mostly does table service, I would probably tip, but we generally only get takeout from places that are takeout-only. I have always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that since there are no “servers” at these places that everyone is already making minimum wage or more and therefore tipping is not required/expected.
With you again on the broken and bizarre tip culture that has been created. There are some restaurants that have gone away with tipping entirely. I remember reading about Tom Colicchio doing it at his places and Per Se in NYC. Here is an article about it from a couple years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/15/478096516/why-restaurants-are-ditching-the-switch-to-no-tipping
I realize I’m taking us off course from the tipping on takeout issue. I usually follow what other posters have commented above. Yes for deliveries, no to throwing it in a bag, yes if someone went above an beyond, yes if it is around the holidays/I’m a regular/they smile at my toddler/I’m feeling extra flush.
I’m always fascinated by American tipping threads. They always provide such an insight into a foreign culture.
I live in a low/no tip country and, most often, visit other low/no tip European countries. The fascination comes not just from the level of tip - I understand “minimum wage doesnt mean minimum wage for you” - but from the occasions when Americans will tip. Such as here - it would never even cross my mind to tip for takeaway and I think staff in my local takeaways would be really surprised if anyone ever offered a tip. Not even of the “keep the change” variety.
But, in that, is the fun of internet discussion forums. As I have often said in real life, in spite of the language being broadly the same, America is the most “foreign” country I ever visit.
Thats so funny. I felt the same way when traveling through the British Isles. I think it is the “common” language (even though often times I couldn’t understand a word people were saying - I’m talking to you Ireland and Scotland) that makes you expect common behaviors, so when the expectations and behaviors are so different it really smacks you in the face.
That and since the US is so huge, we don’t have a single tipping culture. Ask someone who lives in NYC and you’ll get incredibly different tipping answers than someone in a smaller city. NYers tip EVERYONE, especially at the end of the year - people the rest of the country would never consider tipping (doormen, service guys, salon workers, anyone and everyone - tips left in hotel rooms for maids . . . . you have to be from very specific places for that to be an expectation in the US - again, not that these people don’t deserve more money, just the expectation and culture around it).
My friend, Paul, practices law in Kentucky. He knows two people in my metro area - me, middle class and from the south of the area and another guy, working class from the north. I can drive to the other guy’s town in 20 minutes or so. Paul says he can understand me perfectly (so long as I don’t speak too quickly and don’t use many colloquial terms) - but he really struggles to understand the other guy’s accent.
On the hand, I thought I was generally OK with American east coast regional accents until the last but one trip, where I also struggled to follow some of the accents from the “deep south” states like Alabama.
