Thursday, December 20, 2007

Tip of the day

Graci and I just got back from dunch (a bit too early to be dinner, way too late for lunch--dunch), which almost ended in my being arrested for manslaughter. At the table next to us, a lovely American family was coming up with ways to stiff the restaurant. They settled on picking a stray hair from their kid and dropping it on the last little bite of steak on one of their plates. When the waitress came over, they were all, "Uh, miss...we hate to bother you, but we found this hair on our steak and now we think you should, uh, probably take that off our bill."

The waitress picked up the hair, looked at the tow-headed child and said, "Huh. That's strange. We don't have any blondes working in the kitchen."

"Well, we don't know where it came from. But, we think it's gross. And, we probably shouldn't have to pay for that."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, "I'll take it off the bill."

"Oh, and can we get a little bowl of grapes for the kid?" To throw on the floor. That's what they meant to say, "Can we get a little bowl of grapes for the kid to throw on the floor?"

As blondie peppered the restaurant with fruit, the lovely American family began studying the bill and discussing the tip.

"Well, all I'm saying is it isn't any more work for her to walk out here with a $16 steak than it is for her to hand you an $8 burger. I don't see why we should tip her more for that."

And this is where the near manslaughter came in, because it was all I could do to keep from stabbing them with my fork while saying...

You don't see why?!? I'll tell you why. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW IT WORKS. When you decide to go out to eat, you are deciding to pay for service--15% is the minimum for standard service. If you can't figure that out, move the decimal point, multiply by 2, and make it 20%. Consider the other 5% a too-stupid-to-do-math tax. If you get exceptional service (and, in this case, the moment you handed her that hair and she refrained from bending you over and shoving it up your cheap ass, it became exceptional service), you tip more.

Them's the rules. If you don't like em...EAT AT HOME.

11 comments:

CS said...

I find people who tip poorly appalling. But even more appalling was the hair on the steak scam. That's just sorry.

nina michelle said...

until the invention of the cell phone I paid the too-stupid-to-do-math tax. now my cell has a calculator. imagine ME thinking about going back to school? ack!

but I am with you on the price we pay to be served. its the same if you need a babysitter. people stiff their babysitters too. "Its too expensive to pay you the going price once we had dinner and a movie." grrrrrrrrrrrr

Terroni said...

cs is back...yay!

oooh...pretty new picture of pretty nina ;>

Anonymous said...

T - how did the exam go?

Terroni said...

It went extremely well...like so well, I think they may have switched mine with a much smarter person's.

dive said...

These people deserve to die.
Messily.
Please let me kill them.

nina michelle said...

*nina blushes*

thanks babe!

j-dub said...

I would have accidentally launched a fork in their general direction, had I not been afraid of hitting an innocent bystander.

grr....selfish tippers make me seethe.

Susanlee said...

That's disgusting. You totally should have tattled on them for the steak scam. Or at least given one of them a swift kick on your way out the door. Slimebags.

Maria said...

I would have tattled too....or better yet, I would have leaned over and said, "I saw how you scammed this restaurant and you have a choice here. Either pay up or I will call the cops and give them your license number and tell them that you ran over my foot in the parking lot. Your choice! Either do the right thing or take some karma with you."

Losers. And to teach their children that this is acceptable? Ai yi yi!

Eric said...

Thank you.