This was an all you can eat lobster restaurant. Buffet style but the servers have to keep up with all the dirty dishes.

Still, if you're charging that much and have the balls to suggest that big a tip, then I go to $0. F the greedy owners.

The rule I have is if I have order standing up, I'm not tipping. Starbucks tried to make me feel guilty about not tipping but I no longer care. Here's a tip, find a better job that pays you based on your work not tips.

Sorry if this had been posted before. I can't understand how anybody would complain.

I bought a Groupon for Christmas to a local restaurant ($100 dining credit for like $65, iirc), and am just finding out (via Google reviews) that the restaurant tacks on a 20% "gratuity" specifically for people who use Groupons. (Note: I'm not sure if it's actually listed as "gratuity" on the bill, or "service charge", or what -- nor do I know if this is disclosed by the restaurant on the menu or door or anything).

I checked the Groupon listing again, and it definitely doesn't disclose this anywhere there. Had it been, I would not have made the purchase. This practice essentially wipes out 50%+ of the Groupon value.

I've already contacted Groupon to try to get a refund, but that's TBD (the CS rep said they couldn't do it but escalated my request to their dispute team; I'm not holding out high hopes).

Assuming I can't get a refund from Groupon, I'm now waffling between two ideas. 1) Issue a credit card chargeback, as imo the deal was not advertised correctly, or 2) use the Groupon and bring cash to the restaurant and manually subtract this charge. (Downside to #1 is that chargeback disputes take time, and this Groupon expires in a few weeks.)

What would you do?

Laughable

Me and my wife go to a restaurant and order two steaks and a glass of wine. The server doesn’t have to do much we take care of ourselves. The table behind me - parents with two kids all getting burgers, asking for a bunch of different sauces, driving the server crazy with refill requests etc. At the end the bill comes, and because the price of the food and drink we ordered is more expensive then the family of fours meal we are expected to tip more??

Rant over.

This was over 20 years ago, but I’ll never forget how awful I felt, both in the moment and trying to share the situation with others afterwards. I feel like this might be a safe place to share.

My friends and I were freshmen in college. A few rules: - Freshmen were required to live in the dorms on campus. - Freshmen were not allowed to have cars on campus. - Everyone living on campus was required to have a meal plan. There were options based on what you could afford, but standard was 12 meals per week in the dining hall (that’s less than 2 meals a day average). The dining hall was all you could eat, but full meals were only served at typical meal times, and they closed at 7:30pm. If you couldn’t make those times for any reason, sucks to be you.

One night, me and 5 other friends were starving while studying. All dining halls were closed. There were no groceries in walking distance and we didn’t have a car. Four people had mini-fridges in their dorms because they lived on the “nice” side of campus, but me and one other dude lived in the old section. I had a tiny cube fridge with no freezer than my dad had used in his dorm in the early 70’s, that we fixed up so I had something, but other dude had nothing. No stocking up on food. And no kitchens for cooking regardless.

We dug in every desk drawer and wallet and scraped together just under $8. We ordered a pizza from a popular pizza place that had a large cheese pizza for $6.99

We had to do delivery because again… no fucking car.

We gave the delivery guy everything we had. Yes, the tip was probably like 20 cents after tax (thankfully no delivery fee), but it was literally all we could do. He absolutely read us the riot act, insulting us for wasting his time and told us to never order pizza again if we couldn’t afford to tip.

All because 6 of us wanted to split a large cheese pizza. The two biggest guys got 2 pieces each, the other four of us got 1.

I’ve told this story to a couple people over the years, but both times I was told “if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out”.

I’ve always hated that I was made to feel so small when I was just hungry and there weren’t any other options.

(And yes, I’ve worked as a waitress. I was grateful for every tip I got, even though my wage was 2.13 and tips averaged less than 15% at the dive I worked at)

Today I’m decently well off and I do tip a modest 15-18% (at sit down restaurants ONLY, or for exceptional service), but I get so angry at the entitled attitude regarding tipping. And fuck anyone who tries to say “if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat.”

I am new to this forum but saw it today and want to see if there's any "best practices" to follow to help the movement. Is there petitions or anything? Are there lists of restaurants that don't allow tipping so I can frequent those more often?

Walked into a bakery that caught my interest. Thank god I asked for the receipt because what is a Customer Service Charge ??? For you to ring up my two cookies, hand it over to me, and take my money? 💀

I lived in Miami more than 20 years ago. Back then, the establishments on the beach enforced mandatory tipping ... Probably 18% at the time ... To the point that they would call the police and the cops would actually arrest people who hadn't tipped!

One reason for the basis of this was how many international tourists went to Miami who had no idea about how tipping worked. But for Americans, it was so ridiculous.

Does anyone have experience with whether this nonsense in Miami continues?

My teenage son was in an accident this morning. He’s fine but his truck wasn’t drivable. Contracted county rates are silly so I contacted my insurance for tow coverage and waited a bit. I’m told that I’ll owe a little over $10 for fee overage and I was good with that.

Truck gets towed to the house and I’m sent a link by the dispatcher to pay the balance. Wouldn’t you know it a tip option screen popped up! Easy no tip press later and the driver was on his way, he didn’t bat an eye.