Is this Slightly Presumptuous or just Simply Helpful?

[BookstoreEscapee]

Today I met my friend for lunch after my dentist appointment this morning (look ma, no cavities ). We went to a breakfast/lunch place that is next door to Store2 (my dentist is in the same town so I stopped there to say hi and my friend met me there), which is usually pretty busy, especially on weekends. Surprisingly, we didn't have to wait for a table, though the waitress did take a while to get to us. But the food was good.

Anyway, I paid, since her birthday was last week and I sent her a card that said I was going to take her to lunch. At the bottom of the check, they list what the tip would be for 15, 20, and 25%. This came in handy, as I noticed it as I was reaching for my cell phone to fire up the handy-dandy tip calculator (chocolate-chip pancakes topped with fresh strawberries, while yummy, do not add to my already-naturally-compromised ability to do math in my head).

So I found this quite helpful, but I wondered what y'all would think. Is this just a helpful little service they provide, or is it a somewhat presumptuous "gentle reminder" that one should leave at least 15%?

(For the record, the bill was $29, 20% would be, if I remember correctly, $5.42, and I gave her a $6 tip.)

[Boozy]

Is this just a helpful little service they provide, or is it a somewhat presumptuous "gentle reminder" that one should leave at least 15%?

Both, I think.
A lot of people are still going to leave less. And then they'll be extra sucky about it and complain because the restaurant hasn't figured out the 5% for them.

[powerboy]

I think that it is helpful. But I would still get my cell phone out, and use the tip calculator.

[Sofar]

Why not have a gentle reminder?

[Jester]

Is it presumptuous? Yes, a bit. So what? Being on front lines of the food service industry, I can tell you it is more than a bit helpful.

The New Job puts this same thing at the bottom of the check, with amounts for 15%, 18%, and 21%. Some people use this. Some don't. The cheap people are still going to be cheap, the generous ones are still going to be generous. BUT, I have found that a lot of people that might now know (i.e., foreigners to this land) what an appropriate tip is are leaving better tips. A lot of people circle the one they prefer, and use that exact number, no matter how odd it is. I find it has improved my tips overall, thank you very much. Count me as a fan.

And I would be a fan of it as a customer as well, except for the fact that I can do math very quickly in my brain, and rarely need such a thing.

Oh, and so far, not one person has every complained or commented about it. It is there as a guideline, and doesn't say anything about what is correct. Merely lists the amounts for those percentages.

[Becks]

I think it's a bit of both, but leaning more towards the "helpful" side of the debate.

[Kilamon]

(For the record, the bill was $29, 20% would be, if I remember correctly, $5.42, and I gave her a $6 tip.)

You don't need a tip calculator. If you double the first digit (the 2) you'd get 20%, which would be $4, and noting that the second digit (a 9) is larger than a 5, you can add another dollar, or 2 since yours is a 9. That totals up to $6 for a 20% tip. If you only tip 15%, just do three-quarters of your 20%, or $4 in this case. It is easier for me to do it like this than struggle over exacting math.

I find the automated 'tip suggestions' on the receipt to be presumptuous as it assumes that I have received service worthy of a tip. I will generally always give a 20% tip, but I had had a few occasions where I've left 10 and only a couple where I left none (and one of those I wrote on the check 'pathetic service' cause I was pissed).

[Witch of Endor]

I got a celphone this week and was amused to find that it had a tip calculator.

Also, I took my boyfriend to breakfast at Golden Griddle on Sunday, and I was calculating the tip in my head as I took the bill to the register. The debit machine calculated the tip for me automatically (and gave me the option of changing or refusing it) and my estimate would have been just over that.

Honestly, I'm appalled at the number of people who can't do the math. I'm sorry, but I don't think there's a genuine learning disability that covers most cases of this. Maybe there's such a thing as a legitimate neurological dyscalculia, but it's probably rare. I used to be cripplingly afraid of math myself, so if you feel that you're in that boat, there's hope if you genuinely want to learn. It's not an insurmountable mental disability, most of the time.

15% is an easy percentage to calculate on paper or in your head. The thing to remember is that 15% is the same as 10% plus 5%. No matter how 'uneven' a total your bill comes to before tax, you can always use this.

Step 1: move the decimal place over one space to the left in order to get 10%. If your food bill is $12.63, 10% would be $1.26.

Step 2: find the other 5% by cutting that total in half. Half of $1.26 is $0.63.

Step 3: add 10% to 5%, and get 15%. In this case, $1.26 + $0.63 = $1.89. Round up to the nearest dollar if you don't have the small change. Never round down. I'd probably leave $2 on this bill.

Alternately, sometimes you can use the tax amount to calculate the tip. If you live in a state where there's 5% sales tax on food, just look at the tax amount on the bill and multiply it by 3 in order to get 15%. In Ontario, restaurant meals have 14% tax, so I'll just leave that amount again and round it up (total cost: price of food + tax + tip which is about the same as the tax).

If more people knew how to do this, fewer table staff would get stiffed, and fewer big groups of people would be splitting their bills evenly when the cheapest meal was $10 and the most expensive was $25 (not that I'm bitter...).

[Sofar]

How to figure eighteen percent: Take your bill, $7.43,* and move the decimal point to get ten per cent, 74.3 cents. Double that, and you get $1.49. Move the decimal point again to get two per cent, 15 cents. Subtract that from twenty per cent and you get eighteen per cent, $1.34.

*Apparently you just had dinner for two some time in the nineteen-sixties.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Usually what I do is just round to the nearest dollar, move a decimal to get 10% and double that to get approximately 20%. Which is usually what I leave, but I'll adjust up or down if I feel it's necessary.

[Witch of Endor]

*Apparently you just had dinner for two some time in the nineteen-sixties.

I know a nice place, but it closed thirty years ago... care to take a spin in the TARDIS?

[BookstoreEscapee]

*Apparently you just had dinner for two some time in the nineteen-sixties.

hehehe, our lunch for 2 was 29 bucks!

[BusyBee]

As an Aussie who fully intends to visit America someday (I have 3 friends that have been nagging me for years to come see them ), I'd definitely appreciate something like this. I know when I visit I'm going to be constantly asking my friends, very quietly, "Should I tip now? Do we tip for this? How much do I tip this guy?"
And seeing as I hate doing math in my head - I can, with not too much trouble, but I still hate it! - having a neat little summary of options would be excellent!

[AirHostess]

Sounds like a good idea.

In the UK the average tip is 10%-12.5%.

[Alfie]

In the UK the average tip is 10%-12.5%.

They tip in the UK? I went there in February, and didn't tip anyone. I'm going there again in July, so I will have to remember that! Are you supposed to tip at M&S (the cafe bit), or just at really nice restaurants? I really don't understand the whole idea of it, as we don't tip in Australia.