Food the service industry, "if you dont like it then..."

Well, my company has a limit of £90 (approx $150) for hotel bookings.

I personally spend as little of the companies money as I can, because I'm not one of these guys who takes the piss when they can claim exes. If its clean and I can get a good nights sleep and its got free Wifi, I'm happy with any hotel. (maybe this is because I used to work away 3 nights a week so I got used to it, I appreciate maybe if you dont travel much it can be a bit of a novelty)

I have paid a booking fee for concert tickets, when paying online, but there is always another way to buy the ticket if you want to (ie - queue at the box office)

With an Airplane ticket, you might have to pay tax on top, and Ryan Air/EasyJet./etc have a lot of piss taking charges, but they always have some obscure way to avoid them (ie - you dont have to pay £10 credit card charge if you use a prepaid Mastercard issued by a Bulgarian bank or whatever)

 

We are "hidden fee'd" to death at every turn. We know and understand, going into the transaction, that a hotel room advertised for $99.99/night does not include taxes and other service fees, and that the true cost of the room may not be realized until checkout or at least until we've signed for the room and they have our credit card info. When my SO is visiting in the States, it baffles him why at least taxes aren't included in the advertised prices for products. It's nothing more than a marketing ploy used throughout the US to manipulate potential buyers into believing that a product or service costs less than it actually does. It's amazing how many Merkans are shocked when they get their bill which of course, proves how well the ploy still works.

Being honest and including taxes and gratuities in the list price of the menu item would not be the American Way. We really don't want to know that our $35.00 sirloin dinner is going to cost us $50.00. We like being fooled into thinking we're getting a "deal" even when experience has shown us that we never do.

 

I wasn't very clear in my above post, made it while at a party from my phone. I really don't have a problem if a place has a line and has auto added the tip. There have been times when I've seen the added tip and thought the service was above par and added to it. Otherwise I simply draw a line through it and leave it at that. My problem is solely with a restaurant (maybe it's been restaurants and I just didn't notice?) where they're adding it and calling it a tax. I'm convinced this is so a customer will look at it and think "oh, there's no tip here... better leave one."

As for-

You can't. Maybe your direct supervisor can't. But I'm betting somebody can make that line read anything they want. For several years I sold Christmas wreaths (there's a member of this site that received one of my wreaths) both on-line and at a stand. I had a basic POS system from Costco that allowed me to process CC's. In the software I had trouble removing the tax line (Oregon has no sales tax) the manual simply didn't explain how to do it. At first I just set it to 0% but when I tested it I got an error message. It read something like- "Null error line X." I ended up calling my brother who owned a restaurant at the time to asked him and he told me "just set it to 0%, that's what I do." "It won't accept 0%" "Well call the place you got it and ask them, mine takes 0% just fine." So I called. Took hours on the phone to get it to accept 0% and the lady I spoke to kept telling me "sir it's set up for you to do business legally, legally you have to charge your customers a sales tax." No, no I don't. Not here and not in four other states. I finally got it accept 0% but the system clearly wasn't set up to be user friendly in non-sale tax areas. In the manual I did find a page and half of how to add an automatic additional charge. Could have been a % or a set fee per transaction. Even had several pre-formed messages you could select such as gratuity, fuel surcharge, maintenance fee etc.. I also found detailed instructions on how to change that line to read anything I wanted, with a 30(?) character limit. They were also instructions to add additional lines. I could have made a line read "Rum and Fun Fee" and made it charge each customer $20 if I wanted.

For many years my ex-wife worked at a large chain grocery store decorating cakes in their bakery. Every year or a few times a year the local news or sometimes the national news would run a story on how many stores bar code scanners were over charging customers on a regular basis. Often it was a sales item that was still being charged the regular amount. My Ex insisted this was just "a mistake, we're not trying to cheat people on their bill." She would really get worked up, like it was some personal insult to her or people were calling her a thief. I pointed out, on more then one occasion, it's not you but clearly someone somewhere is in fact cheating the customers. Her response was always 'no, it's a simple mistake." "Really? Because as the news story (always) points out the mistakes never go in the favor of the customer. No one's getting under changed but many people are getting over changed. If a mistake always goes one way it's not a mistake. If I came in the store regularly and 15-20% of the time claimed I gave you a $20 for my morning coffee when in fact I handed you a $5 or a $10 would you think I was trying to scam you or simply making a mistake? You might think it was a mistake if I did it once but if I repeatedly did it you'd be telling all your co-workers "watch out for that guy he's always trying to claim he gave you a larger bill then he did."

As for the above argument about whether a business can add a fee or tip to a customers bill I think it's pretty crazy to think they can't. Even more crazy to think "if I don't want to pay the service charge I should, by law, be allowed to serve myself. Nuts, just plain nuts. Almost every business seems to add some kind of fee anymore. Fly somewhere... landing fee, airport usage fee, baggage fee. Hell both cruise ships and airlines regularly add a fuel surcharge. What are you going to do? Offer to row or flap your arms real hard? That's just insane.

 

Why not just quote one headline price?

I would rather pay £10 for some pasta and meatballs than £8 plus have a mandatory £2 for someone to carry it 10 yards from the kitchen to my table.

Its just about fair business practice. Its just about treating customers with some respect. Quote one price, and have that being what you expect to be paid for the thing. Is that really an unreasonable expectation?

 

Because a) if it rings up as 10 instead of 8, I now have to tip out on my sales AND my tips. And b) I do a hell of a lot more than just carry the food to the table, thank you.

 

What does a waitress do for me?

I walk in, I take a seat. They come over and I tell them what I would like to eat. They bring the food to me. Thats it.

I am not trying to deride the job, I am sure it can be hectic and stressful when you are busy and have a lot of tables to look after, but the fact is for me personally the waitress does at most 4 things:

1 - take my order
2 - bring starter and a drink
3 - bring main and a drink
4 - bring afters and a drink

Is that worth paying £10 for for two people's meal? I would happily pay up front and the POS passes my order straight to the kitchen, issues me a number, and I come up to the counter and collect my food when my number is called. And if I want a drink, just have a bar and I'll go up and order it myself. No problems.

(they also take payment, but I'll be buggered if I should pay for the privilege of paying)

 

Why is it unreasonable for a customer to want and expect the charges they are going to given to be clear and straightforward?

 

So let me be clear. You PREFER for the cost of your meal to be divided into 2 or 3?

What possible benefit is there to the customer for service and food to be split into separate charges?

 

You're living in a different world to me, and in my opinion many people

"excellent service"

They ask you what you would like to eat, they bring it over to you.

I dont see much scope to make value judgments. As long as they get the food on the table rather than drop the plate on your head by mistake, and manage to bring the right meal, they've done their job satisfactorily. It isnt even down to the server how quick it is (as others have said above) its the cook who manages that.

How can they excel beyond the minimum standard of bringing the right food, while it is still warm, and placing it on the table?

If I had an especially nice meal, surely its the cook who deserves a tip for excelling my expectation, not the food carrier?

 

I now understand why Plan9 loves StrangeFamous.

Keep up the good work, brah.

 

You dont know me if you think I wont give a man an incentive not to drop a plate of food over my head!

And I think I am maybe being painted as a caricature of myself here.

I do normally tip when I have a waitress service, and I normally tip about 10% which is the standard in the UK. But you shouldn't have to pay extra to get a great service. You shouldnt have to pay 25% extra on your bill to be treated respectfully by the staff in a place you eat out at. And yes, I understand that this is the culture in the US, and you are abiding by a set of unwritten rules, I'm just challenging that and saying it is a sorry state of affairs. It is a sorry indictment on the industry that you feel you have to pay over the odds to get an excellent service.

I would rather waiters get paid a decent wage and didnt rely on tips.
I would rather if you DO leave a tip it went to the person who served you and the head office didnt take it (which happens in a lot of chain restaurants in the UK)

_

As for the "don't care" stuff... that's down to the people, the manager, and the company.

I can promise you that nobody on my helpdesk at work doesn't care about the merchants unless they pay us a lot. And if we have to jump a bit higher or more quickly when one of the big merchants who has 100 outlets has an issue, nobody EVER will say "oh, I dont care about this guy" or "lets just put him off" because he has one tiny site in the middle of nowhere and he only sells $1000 a week on our card. Every person aims to give a good service to every one of our "customers." And if anyone didn't, we'd have to find them a job somewhere else in the company (although I hope I wouldnt hire someone who had that view in the first place), because they couldn't work on the desk if they thought good service starts when a "customer" is paying above a certain level.

And I am not boasting or claiming I am setting some extreme standard of service. I do an average job probably, but this is a minimum standard. EVERY customer is entitled to respect.