I understand cheap people. I do not agree with them often but I understand.
I tend to believe that tipping in the US kind of works, but I have to admit that in a perfect world waiters [and other tipped employees] ought to be paid enough that tipping would not be needed.
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Agreed, I don’t like the tipping system, but it is expected in the U.S. so I just consider it part of the bill if I am going out to eat. I’m no Mr. Pink.
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Now. What about the other way around? This is not entirely hypothetical situation as it has happened to me a couple of times (but very rare). Basically, guests disagree with you (host) that you are giving a tip that is too big. I have had guests who tried to pick up the cash tip I left behind because the they think it is too much and wasteful. My argument is always that I pay for the meal, so I get to decide how much tip I want to leave – even if they disagree.
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Wow, I’ve never heard of\seen such a thing. I’m not sure how I would handle that situation (short of stabbing their hand with a fork as they tried to save me money).
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Interesting. When I pay, I have almost always paid with a credit card so my friends would not know what I was tipping.
I have added cash to the table when the host appeared to be stiffing the server, though, as I mentioned above, but I have never had someone object to that practice. If the host said no, I would probably leave with my party and try to come back before the server left for the night. It is dishonest to my host, but only mildly so. Better than defying them to their face and tipping more.
But if you were the host and your guests object to the amount you are adding to the amount you paid, then they are completely in the wrong. I think.
Let me ponder this a bit.
One case, I remember is a elderly relative and I think I was still young, maybe when I was in college. I think the other case I remember is more like a little argument, and it has more to do with should someone leave a tip for take-out. You can imagine that some people believe that you should leave a tip for take-out and yet there are plenty people who do not believe in this as well. Believe or not, I feel if I am paying for the meal or take out, then I get to decide. Anyway.
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Money makes people crazy. In so many ways.
Too much money leads to one kind of crazy.
Too little money leads to a different kind of crazy.
Watching money move from one person to another person or business leads to yet another crazy.
Thinking about ways that money makes people crazy? Leads to yet another kind of crazy.
I am bushed. It is after 10pm. I think I need to sleep on this one.
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To be slightly transparent, I should say these are not guests-guests like coworkers, more like family or say hypothetical girlfriend. So in their mind, they may be thinking that they are educating me or that I am wasting the cash-pool e.g. Oh, my god, my husband is wasting our son’s college fund. (a bit joking, but you get the idea)
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I’ve had a friend tell me, after we had dinner together, that his wife was angry with him that he didn’t force me to tip less at a restaurant where we ate.
He emailed me at midnight after I got home to tell me that his wife insist he email me to tell me I tipped too much.
The restaurant happened to be a cheap dumpling place where staff are likely paid under the table, so all the more reason for me to tip them well.
She’s a control freak. She might be the boss of him, but she isn’t the boss of me. Haha.
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Ok… that is a bit weird, because she is a bit distance from you. However, I can see she tries to control her husband though. e.g. they are really sharing the same cash pool for the family. Every extra dollar he spends, it is one less dollar for the family.
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She is seriously pampered.
While he makes more than she does, they both have good jobs, and she came from a comfortable background. Her grandad owns lots of real estate apparently. Her cheapness isn’t about the budget for the kids. It’s a control thing.
I’ve been more than generous with gifts for their children. I picked up the tab. None of her business trying to tell another woman how much she should be tipping, let alone asking her husband step in to push her cheap agenda.
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I firmly believe this. Just like “my house, my rules,” the corollary is “my money, my choice how to spend it.”
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That’s just bizarre. And takes “bossy wife” to a whole different level.
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Even though I disagree with her, sometime I try to understand why she feels she need to tell you how to tip. The only explanation I think is that… she wasn’t really telling you. She is making her husband to understand that despite you tip a lot, he should not. e.g. (sorry to say this) You set up a bad example for him, so she need him to know you are not the norm and so she need him to tell you this because this will prove he understands (this is a wild guess)
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She’s also about 10 years younger than me, which made it funnier to me, for whatever reason.
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my tipping amount depends entirely on the service provided by the waitstaff.
attentive, timely reactions gets a +
lackluster performance gets a minus
Maybe she thinks you’re getting senile and did not realize how much you tipped 
The same night, she had decided to buy dumplings to take home for their freezer.
She ordered 4 orders of dumplings. She didn’t read the fine print. The restaurant didn’t have 4 orders of the dumplings ready, so the dumplings makers made the 4 orders while we waited, after I had paid for dinner.
The dumpling place serves 12 to an order if you dine in, and 24 to an order if you order frozen or fresh dumplings to go.
The hostess brings 4 x 24 = 96 dumplings, and the wife says she only wants 48. Refuses to pay for the 3rd and 4th order that she asked them to make, not knowing how many were in the order. I offer to take them.
The wife insists that she only will buy 48, and she also won’t let me buy the extra 48. We are not talking a lot of money. This was 10 years ago, and the 96 dumplings might have cost $50. The restaurant let her have her way, and I think it was mostly because I had given them a nice tip 20 minutes before. 
I am still friends with the husband, but I haven’t seen the wife in 4 or 5 years, since the last time when we met up, and she got up to walk around with their kid rather than stay and visit while I visited with her husband.
I think there is a power struggle between us and she’s avoiding dinners with me.
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I really think she thinks you are setting up some bad examples. 
I am not entirely joking. To her, I also don’t think it is about money. She thinks it is a teachable moment for the restaurant and they need to learn. So you offering to buy the rest of the dumplings is ruining the teachable moment.
First, you are a bad influencer for the husband. Now, you are letting the restaurant stealing money from her.
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I think, she should be careful about trying to teach her elders. LOL. I get what you’re saying.
I was tipping well because those servers were underpaid.
It was her mistake to not realize what she had ordered, and this type of restaurant does not have a big margin. I follow Buyer Beware. I take my lumps. I will speak to the manager if the food is bad, but if I unintentionally order too many dumplings, I pay for them all and eat dumplings for a week. Or give them to a friend.
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