Pay the bill with a credit card, but tip in cash always!

If the restaurant is taking ALL the tips, all the time, there’s no way their waitstaff is making $6.20 an hour.

Just locally-owned restaurants, mostly ethnic (Indian, Chinese, Mexican. etc.) who serve food they actually eat, not exclusively “Americanized” versions.

What the heck are you even talking about? Talk about being off topic.

Put a cork in it already. There are systems in place to deal with wait staff and income taxes. This is way ofd topic. Perhaps you think waiters are terrorists too? ;)

You offer even further proof that wait staff are stiffing the IRS (in effect everyone since that shortfall has to come from somewhere). So the 2% or so of people that stiff you on a tip gives you the right to only pay tax on 8% of the rest of the tips? What about those that pay more than 20%? I love how people try to rationalize doing something illegal. Get some ethics.

Lisa,
I lived in Denmark for a year. They don’t have tips. Because of this you got horrible serivce and you were still expected to round up the bill.

In addition, I pointed out that the common amount to tip is based on the total on the bill and NOT on the quality of the service (ie: why does the steak house gal get more in tips than the greasyspoon for working less?).

Hogwash, I was a waitress before I finished college and I took home $150 a night at Applebees on a light night for work that did not require a high school education.

Tip based on how good the service and don’t feel obligated to meet some society prescriped 15-20% standard.

It’s nice to see that people who have never worked in the restaurant business think they know how the system works everywhere. I wouldn’t go to their workplace and assume that they’re trying to rip their fellow employees off. If anyone were truly ripping other people off, it wouldn’t take long for complaints to come through and for them to have to look for work elsewhere.

I think the point Trent is trying to make about cash tips is that when you pay for your tip with a credit or debit card, often your server will lose a portion of the tip to a transaction processing fee or shady management, and will thus receive less than you intended to leave them. He’s trying to make sure that servers aren’t screwed out of a share of their tips.

I doubt he was encouraging you to read into his remark any misreporting of income to the IRS. In fact, his entire section on cash tipping mentions nothing about taxes but discusses restaurant management.

Instead, I go to a dessert-only specialty place and spend another $8-$10 per person to die in chocolate heaven!

Some other countries don’t do the whole tipping at food establishments thing. One just expects proper service and just payment of the servers.

I never ask for anything special (no substitutions or anything), so why should I tip?

Yes, I do tip, but I go out to eat so rarely now days that when I do I am in a group of more than 6 or 8 so get stabbed with an automatic 18-20% tip anyway.

For a long time I worked at a local tavern. We had a kitchen, and it was a very popular lunch spot. During lunch shifts all tips were collected into a big pool, and all staff was equally tipped out, including the kitchen staff. Everyone was pleased with this arrangement, it seemed fair to all of us, as kitchen staff and bar staff were interchangable.

One year the gov’t did its semi-regular employment audit and told us we were in violation of the law in this tipping respect, since the employees felt that the sharing was a requirement, not a choice. It turns out that there are very specific legal rules for how tips are handled.

I can’t remember the specifics, but the breakdown was something like this:

Servers can be required to share n% w/ bussers, and m% with host(esses), and x% of drink tips w/ bartenders.

Bartenders can be required to share n% w/ host(esses). And can be pooled by requirement.

Any other sharing is voluntary. So there was an all staff meeting about this, and the end result was an agreement to do sharing the way we had before. It was a unanimous thing except for one girl. She wanted what she made and all of it. Of course she didn’t work there very long because no one would share w/ her and it turned out she ended up barely making minimum wage that way.

Anyway, I diverged from the point a bit which is:
Trent the instance of the christmas bonus restaurant may be in violation of labor laws. You should reccomend to a server there that they contact the govt, anonymously even, about that situation. It is an insult to the servers.