The Verbal Tip

I can't count how many times a table has come in, had their dinner then raved about how great the food and the service was then left a really crappy tip. It's a bizarre phenomenon that I can't quite wrap my head around and it happens to servers everywhere. We refer to it as "the verbal tip". I try to think of different scenarios that might lead some people to feel a need to glow about how fantastic I was and how much they enjoyed their meal but not feel a need to pay me. This is all I could come up with.

1. You had a great time but spent a little more than planned and didn't have enough money on hand. (Not likely considering we accept all major credit and debit cards and if your squeezing yourself that tight you probably shouldn't be eating out at all).

2. You really enjoyed yourself but you don't know how much is the customary amount to leave for good service. (In that case either you are foreign or some backwards freak that must not have been living in civilization this whole time).

3. You loved everything but you still don't see why you have to tip 20% after you spent so much money on your meal. That should be the restaurants fault for not paying you an hourly rate not yours right. So you compliment because you didn't want to think your bad tipping practices meant I was bad at my job.

I am going to place my bet that #3 is the most likely scenario for a lot of these "verbal tippers" which is going to lead me to an explanation for why you should tip me and why you in fact do not want the restaurant to pay me by the hour to serve you.

Here goes.

#1. The restaurant prices your meal according to what product and labor costs them leaving room to profit on whatever the restaurant invests it's own money on. So if you calculate what it would cost the restaurant to suddenly triple the payroll for a giant chunk of it's employees then apply that to the price of your meal what do you think would happen? I would figure that your bill would be about 15 to 20 percent higher maybe even more whether the service was great or absolutely horrible.

#2. You no longer have to tip me so I no longer have quite the incentive to tend to your needs with the zeal that I used to. You remember the days when I bent over backwards, ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, put up with your rude demanding "I WANT IT NOW" attitude. I've talked to people who come from countries where restaurants pay servers hourly or include service charges in the bill and I heard service is horrible everywhere.

Telling me I did a great job is sweet and I like some positive reinforcement every now and again but I am just like every other human being that goes to work. We all wake up, work and try to do our jobs well in hopes to make money. Servers don't have a lot of opportunity for professional advancement so I raises come from getting better at what we do so we get better tips. Also, to all the people who think that they hate servers because they just see you as a paycheck... well for the time I am waiting on you thats exactly what you are. You have a boss too, are you nice to him and working your ass off for him just because he's a swell guy? No! You do it because its your job and he pays your bills whether you think he's awesome or a total dickhead.

Lesson #3: Verbal tipping is not really tipping.

Lesson#4: The tipping system is to your advantage