In the US credit card/debit card tips are paid out to the wait staff nightly. There is a kind of check out procedure where they add up all the money owed to the restaurant and subtract out all the credit card tips that are paid to the restaurant. So the waiter walks out each day with the all the tip money. The waiter will be taxed on credit card tips, because their is a record of them, but it is up to the waiter to report all cash tips, I have a feeling most waiters forget a buck or two then ; )

F.

a great hug from Chile,
F.

I have a hard time supporting the American tipping system because it is not very social. Very often waiters here are paid super, super dumping wages or nothing at all. In addition they often have no contracts. This means no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no benefits. If business is slow, they get send home and just don’t earn anything that day and the boss doesn’t have to pay for them. This basically adds up to modern day slavery. On top of that waiters here often have no clue what they are doing in terms of gastronomic standards and etiquette. They are usually superficially friendlier and all smiles but what I need is someone who is polite, efficient and knowledgeable, not someone who says: Hi my name is JOhn and I’ll be your waiter, who tells me his life story and asks for mine and who comes by at least three times to ask me how everything is going while I am either chewing or talking. Both options are impolite and result in a lower tip. Also most Americans do not know the silverware code but at least waiters should know. Emily Post sure knows it. When the silverware (fork and knife) form a V on your plate you are still eating. When they are laid out next to each other, so to say bundled and are diagonally across the plate, you are finished and only then can the waiter take your plate.

Anyways, by giving them rather generous tips I support the owner’s slave system and the lack of gastronomic professionalism. When you go to a restaurant in Germany where you pay 80-100Eur per person, the wait staff can be expected to be professionally educated. There are schools that will give you an apprenticeship that lasts three years just to become a waiter. Now that’s refinement. In those cases I would be willing to tip 15% but it is not necessary because these people get a salary and benefits. So I tip around 10% which is on the slightly generous side for Germany especially if the bill is 100+ Eur.

In France they tell you that 15-18% of the price goes to the waiter. That is not to be seen as a tip but his salary. I think that is actually quite fair as they do get small tips on top of that.

Overall, a waiter in a good or luxury restaurant can make $4000 p.m. here and could never make that in Germany. However, if you count the benefits and the US waiter had to pay for those same benefits the salary would be comparable but not the level of service.

Oh, and while I’m on it: is there a reason I always got a light beer (eeergh!) when I simply asked for “A beer, please”? A subtle comment of me being a tad overweight? Can anybody enlighten me?

In the US, on the other hand, waiters always react like this is something incredibly complicated and onerous. It probably has something to do with not including the tax in menu prices, which is really, really STUPID.

It’s probably one of the modern world wonders of stupidity.

I really, deeply, absolutely don’t care how high the tax in the state, county, town is or how many dollars go to the IRS, I just want to know how much I have to pay in the end.