(no subject)

[hnpcc]

From bitterwaitress:

Australian- Resident of "down under," and one of the many foreign cultures which tip poorly.

Um, yeah, that's cos we have a minimum wage which is livable.

And a shitty tip is now defined as "under 17%?!?" Fuck, we thought 10% was pushing it.

Good luck guys is all I can say.

Comments

[valamelmeo.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not just the minimum wage. Here in the US it's understood that waitstaff (and some other professions where tipping is expected) make LESS THAN minimum wage, and are expected to make up the difference in tips.

And the standard US tip is 15%, though lots of people tip 20%. Personally I only tip 20% or more if the service is outstanding, and 10% if the service is awful.

[hnpcc]

Yeah I understand the less than minimum wage thing... tipping just isn't part of the culture here because the minimum wage for service is a living one (if that makes sense). Although tipping is coming in as people try and introduce it.. generally a tip here is rounding up to the nearest dollar/ten (depends on the bill size).

We were absolutely crappy tippers in the US, mostly because we'd either forget (yes, seriously - if it's not normal to do it you don't always remember. We actually went back to one place the following day to leave a tip for our waitress because we felt so bad once we remembered that we'd forgotten) or because we were going with Pulp Fiction as our reference point for tipping. A couple of places we didn't leave a tip because the service was absolutely lousy. They probably heard our accents. ;-)

20% is (from my cultural perspective! ;-)) bloody ridiculous. That's one fifth of the bill again.

The other thing we really had trouble with was the tax. Especially because we were moving around a lot so we were having to find out the tax anew every state we went to. The absolute pits was O'Hare airport in Chicago: I really wasn't expecting tax in (a) an international airport and (b) at Maccas. More fool me, I know, but I was tired at the time.

[valamelmeo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, minimum wage here is a big [political] issue. Some states have their own minimum wages that are a bit higher, but the Federal minimum wage is just above $5/hr, iirc. But waitstaff in most restaurants make about half that, on the logic that if they want to earn more, they'll serve better and get better tips (which is also why you get better service in places that don't pool everyone's tips and then split them).

Just from looking at that site you linked to, it seems that in major urban areas (particularly in the Northeast), 20% is expected rather than the 15% I was always taught. It seems that the general rule is to tip approximately double the tax (which should be noted on the bill), and taxes are generally higher there, so...

And sales tax doesn't just vary from state to state. It can also vary from city to city, and by "city" I mean municipality. And in all the cases I can think of (airports I've been to frequently) the airport was sort of considered as its own independent municipality, and as such could decide its own sales tax, which of course comes on top of the state sales tax. Total sales tax generally is somewhere between 7-8% around here, and that seems to be pretty standard, at least here in the Southwest.

I usually try to get a room with a kitchenette (or at least a microwave and a minifridge), do some shopping at the local grocery store and cook a couple of meals for myself, since in many places foods (or at least staple goods) aren't taxed. Besides, you'd be surprised what odd things you find in a supermarket. ;)

[numbat.livejournal.com]

The sort of tipping you're referring to is confined to third world dictatorships and nothing to do with us, at least yet.