The Jazz Kitchen Bill Cluster Fornication

[Alex]

A story. I'm am of course not accusing anyone there of similar behavior. It just triggered the memory. (But seriously, I blame scaeagles.)

Back in my first year of college a high school friend was at the same school but in a different room. He shared a pod five people and I hung out with them a lot. A pretty nice group of people. Every few weeks we'd all eat out together at table service restaurants.

One of the guys frequently forgot something at the table or would use the bathroom and tell us he'd meet us out front, etc. But we never thought anything of it until one night late in the year another member of the group did forget his sunglasses and went back in just in time to see our fine friend stealing the tip we'd all left. And we realized he'd been doing it all year long.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

My personal rule in groups is to take the raw cost of my food and add 25%. It's the easiest amount to figure, and covers tax as well as a higher than 15% tip, regardless of which county you're in. And then most of the time I'll round up to the nearest dollar.

My personal rule is to take the bottom line total and add 20%. 20% is easier to figure than 25% (IMO - 10% is easiest and just double that) and it keeps things safe. Again, I know not everyone agrees with this, but it is my policy.

Unless on the rare occasion I get bad service, I would rather give too much than too little. This holds true especially in places where I go repeatedly (lunch for example). My regular lunch partner and I have a couple of places we frequent and we can always count on great service and extra perks.

Originally Posted by SzczerbiakManiac

On a side note, have restaurants stopped automatically adding gratuity to large parties? Did something happen to make them change that policy?

As Lisa mentioned, Jazz Kitchen is the oddity that does NOT automatically add the tip to large groups (though will upon request).

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

My personal rule is to take the bottom line total and add 20%. 20% is easier to figure than 25% (IMO - 10% is easiest and just double that) and it keeps things safe. Again, I know not everyone agrees with this, but it is my policy.

Wait wait wait.

That's a 22% tip.

When we're talking #s like $730-$800, a few percent is pretty important.

It's clear that not enough money was left. But based on that, $120 I think is somewhat exaggerated. I just looked more closely at your math above. You did 20% of the nearly $800 AFTER TAX amount, coming up with $160 - the $40 in change.

Well, the before tax amount would have been $730. That would mean a tip of between $109-$146 (15-20% of $730). Figuring that everyone's fudge factors are a little different, $125 would be a reasonable tip assumption. Take away the $40 that was there, and it's $85 of shortage.

That's a fair bit different than $120 and is approaching a range that looks more like collective and bad estimation than incompetence and/or thievery.

Again, it's still egregiously under paid, but it's far from as bad as your decision to leave a more-generous-than-societally-agreed-upon tip makes it seem. I'm not saying that a 22% tip is unreasonable, especially considering the lengths they went to to accomodate us, I'm just saying that it's unlikely that most people had 22% in mind when doing their math.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Did everyone miss this? Emphasis mine.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Well, the before tax amount would have been $730. That would mean a tip of between $109-$146 (15-20% of $730). Figuring that everyone's fudge factors are a little different, $125 would be a reasonable tip assumption. Take away the $40 that was there, and it's $85 of shortage.

That's a fair bit different than $120 and is approaching a range that looks more like collective and bad estimation than incompetence and/or thievery.

THANK YOU to my husband for figuring this out.

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Did everyone miss this?

Not at all. It's just that now I don't know whether to send Kevy $10 or $6.32.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Not at all. It's just that now I don't know whether to send Kevy $10 or $6.32.

Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about the discrepancy myself. Though I'm leaning towards sending $10 for the two of us still. He shouldn't have been stuck with covering the difference either way, so I do think it's still fair to attempt to recover as much of what he laid out as we can for him.

I mostly did the math to point out that the shortfall wasn't as dramatic as it appeared based on the original math, not because I feel like Kevy made some horrible decision that should cost him $40.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about the discrepancy myself. Though I'm leaning towards sending $10 for the two of us still. He shouldn't have been stuck with covering the difference either way, so I do think it's still fair to attempt to recover as much of what he laid out as we can for him.

And given how many other times this has happened and he's covered I think it's the least we can do.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Alex

One of the guys frequently forgot something at the table or would use the bathroom and tell us he'd meet us out front, etc. But we never thought anything of it until one night late in the year another member of the group did forget his sunglasses and went back in just in time to see our fine friend stealing the tip we'd all left. And we realized he'd been doing it all year long.

C'mon Alex: you're among friends. You can admit that it was you who was going back to pilfer the tips to support your drug addiction.