Question for waitstaff/bartenders/pizza guys

[wolfie]

Background: A major chain of truck stops has a promotion on where you buy a gift card ($25 minimum) and get a $5 coupon. Since I eat at that chain a lot, this is a good deal for me. What I need advice about is that when you get to the cash register and pay with the gift card, it prints out a couple extra lines: "tip" and "total".

When paying with a card, but leaving the tip as cash at the table, what is the recommended way of filling out these 2 lines? I wrote "cash" on the tip line, and copied the pre-tip total onto the "total" line.

Let's not turn this into a general discussion on tipping - I'm just looking for the proper way to fill out the slip when paying by card and leaving a cash tip.

[lvsssycat]

All you need to do on both receipts is just put a line in tip area and put total on total line.

It's not necessary to write cash.

[TheSHAD0W]

I typically write a zero with a horizontal line through it in that space.

[Jester]

It's the exact same as when you pay with a credit card but leave a cash tip. A zero or line in the tip section, and the subtotal written in as the final total. I see it all the time.

[Sapphire Silk]

Let's not turn this into a general discussion on tipping - I'm just looking for the proper way to fill out the slip when paying by card and leaving a cash tip.

When I give a tip in cash, I draw a line through the tip line and put the price total down. I don't put cash; when I delivered pizzas I under reported my tips to save on taxes and I'm sure a lot of servers do the same thing.

[wolfie]

I didn't write down how much cash, merely wrote the word "cash" (to indicate that there was a tip, just not charged to the card). BTW, I wouldn't make that admission - someone from the IRS might be on here, and AFAIK, there's no statute of limitations on tax fraud (they'd call it that if someone underreported income) in the U.S.