That's a valid question and the answer is a resounding YES! While it's not harder to carry a plate of $50 food vs. a plate of $5 food, the service expectations of the guests paying for the former are far higher. I can tell you from experience, the more people pay for their food the pickier and more assholish they tend to be*.

That is absolutely true. But if the service was that bad, you should be speaking to the manager. This is not to "tattle" on the server, it's so the restaurant can improve. I worked in the food service industry for 20 years so please trust me when I say the management wants to know these things. If they don't, they won't be a restaurant manager for long.

I don't either. Isn't that more of an East Coast thing? (serious question) I don't know anybody in CA who has even done that here.



*This does not apply to anyone reading LoT.

Has someone suggested this snafu was deliberate? (I ask that sincerely.)

I was going from memory, and played the odds that it was Kevy.

SM, I see your point about better service being expected in better restaurants, but I don't agree. I'm no more particular in a fine dining establishment than I am at a diner. The same attributes that will get you a better than average tip from me go for any kind of restaurant. Cheerful and effective and reasonably attentive service.

Perhaps super-attentive is expected in finer establishements, but I don't know why. I've gotten just as good and just as lousy service at all levels of restaurant price-point.



But I've "accepted" that the tip is based on the meal price. However, I don't figure alcohol into that price. I still tip a fixed amount on drinks, no matter what they cost, and a tip on food based on its price.


And I've been known to refuse to pay the level of "included gratuity" if the service is substandard. 99% of the time, however, even my standard tip is better than the included gratuity, so this is never an issue. Servers who work at establishments like the Jazz Kitchen that never figure an automatic gratuity get an automatic tip increase from me over the same service at establishments that presume to tell me what I should tip for service.

Well, they used to, at least in Sunnyvale. My dad was a mail carrier for 20 years and he came home with oodles of things over Xmas. Envelopes with $$, box after box of Sees candy, bottles of wine and champagne, homemade cookies, pickles, you name it. He probably carried home more in loot than he dropped off in the mail delivery.

Today, I do not tip the mail carrier simply because we do not have a regular carrier, it can change from week to week. It's not an easy job in a lot of respects, but US mail service is nothing like it was when my dad was a mail carrier.

I suggested that the money may have been lifted. There was enough cash sitting around on the table with no one directly watching it and the cash was mis-handled by the server (combining all of the cash even though the bills were separate) for that to happen.

The amount of money missing is large. It is more than any 2 people's dinner combined. It seems like a logical explanation to me because I honestly can't think of any other feasible explanation other than we were charged for items we did not order. If that was the case, I would think we would notice this on the individual bills.

I'm a generous tipper but find the whole thing stupid. I go along with price driving tip (if only because price is how the Feds will calculate taxes owed) but do place a minimum of $5 on the tip.

If I go to IHOP and eat breakfast for $8, they get $5. Because they work at IHOP. The only other places I regularly tip are:

1. Haircuts (I just go to Supercuts -- you couldn't tell? -- and give $5.
2. Hotel rooms for room service. $1-$2/day of stay (we generally don't let housekeeping in until the last day).
3. Taxis. Because I don't want anybody to say bad things about me in a Slavic language.
4. Those guys who open the cab door for you at Vegas casinos. Because doing so makes me feel like a whale (the good kind, not the kind I am).

Everybody else can go pound sand.

Well, there was no one in that room when we finished dinner other than the restaurant staff and members of our party.

I can't think of how this happened either, but I personally can't attribute it to outright theivery without some evidence.

It was the one armed man.

As a former valet, I take umbrage.

Maybe the money was lifted. On the other hand, when I waited tables, I remember watching the busy LA types who had lunch all throw money at the check as if how much it was didn't concern them. Every time that happened, the tip always came out under 15 percent.