Multi-Party Tipping

Awhile back, I blogged about service in restaurants, and the practice of tipping, even when it may not have been warranted. If you haven't read it, check it out here:The Perfect $5

Saturday introduced a new wrinkle in the tipping game, a little thing I like to call, Multi-party Tipping.


Saturday, Becky and I accompanied a group of 4 other friends to the Grand Victoria Casino. Before we entered the gaming arena, we decided to eat at the fabulous buffet. Twenty bucks a person is a little steep, but oh well, the food was pretty good...maybe not 20 bucks a person good, but still.

It's always been a pet peeve of mine when you have a "large party" of people with separate bills, all parties seem content to leave their own tips for the meal. If each person drops a Lincoln on the waiter, then he scores $15 for that hour on top of his wage. Let's do some math and see if this is really just me being a pain, or if I may be right on this one.

Exhibit 1: NUMBER OF TABLES

The way I see it, we were a party of 6, HOWEVER, we were only there for one hour and I know we were not this guy's only table. As a rule, I like to double the sales tax for the tip (more if the service was good, less if it was not good), so on a $40 bill, 6% sales tax is $2.40...doubled and rounded up, $5. If each each of the three groups leave $5, then he gets $15 for that hour, plus his wage, which, if we assume for the sake of argument it's half the minimum wage (because most waiters work on tips) then he's up to (approximately) $18 an hour. Throw in the 3 other tables he's waiting at $8 per table ($3 wage plus $5 tip per table) and he's making a staggering $42 per hour!!

Do you make that much? I do not.

Exhibit 2: THE SETTING

I will only touch on this because it shouldn't matter that much, however, we were in a buffet, and this guy only had to refill our drinks and take plates away. I should really be a waiter, cause that's not too hard to do for $40 an hour.

Exhibit 3: ONE TABLE, ONE TIP

I figure between the 6 of us, averaging 2 plates per person, you get about 12 plates for the waiter to clear. Well, what if Current World Hot Dog Eating Champion Joey Chestnut, and former Champ Kobyashi sat down together and cleaned, oh 30 plates each a piece? That would be 5 times more dishes than my party consumed, but they would leave the $5, double the tax tip. Is that fair? I believe one table, one tip. Maybe the tip calculation per table would be reflected in the number of plates, the number of visits the waiter made, or something like cost of one meal divided 5 (or something like that.)

The prosecution rests.

Now, defenders of the waiters may fire back with the following.

Exhibit 1 Defense.

If you like to pay double the sales tax, and were paying for the entire party, the bill would have been $120...sales tax on that is $7.20, making double the tax $14.40!! So, leaving $15, technically would have been double the total tax on the table.

Exhibit 2 Defense.

Do you really believe the only thing this guy does is fill drinks and bus your table? (Honestly, I've never worked in food service, how the heck do I know??)

Defense rests.

In my closing argument, I would like to say it's preposterous to think that for an hour clearing my table and filling my drinks, this guy deserves a wage higher than what I make doing my job...ok, my job's easy, so that's not a good argument, but that's a moot point. What I wanted to say is, I believe a simple group tip would have been more appropriate, instead of dropping $15 on this guy for his normal hours work. What about the girl who doesn't get a party of 6 table in her nightly rotation?? She only makes $30 an hour!! And that, my friends, is an injustice...

What do you think? Help me justify my position, or change my ways. Please leave me your verdict. Thank you.

(Please let me know your verdict on the BUFFET restaurant, and if the verdict would change for a regular sit down place...oh, say Outback Steakhouse for example.)