host

If you stop at the bar for a drink or three before you are escorted to a table in my section, as a courtesy to you, so that you are not subjected to the inconvenience of having to conduct more than one credit card transaction while patronizing our establishment, the amount you spent on drinks is transferred by your bartender, (your bar "tab") to the account of the server team you are seated in the dining room with.

You are not expected to leave a separate tip at the bar, if you accept the offer by your bartender to transfer your tab. 95 percent of the gross revenue in our establsihment, including tips, are paid by our patrons, via credit or debit/bank card transactions.

The gross amount including sales tax of your transfered bar tab is totaled nightly, with all other bar tabs transferred to tables assigned to us, is multiplied by .17, and that amount is deducted from our team's tip pool.

So, if you are seated at one of my tables and your tab of $50 is transfered from our bar to your combined bar and dining check, $8.50 is automatically deducted from our team's total daily tips. If you tip ten percent on the total bill, my partner and I end up paying $3.50 for your bar drinks, and if your total tab was $200 and you tipped us a total of $20, instead of the $40 tip we would predicatbly receive from local patrons (we lost the opportunity to serve them because you came into town and took their seats...)

...we end up with $11.50 for the "pleasure" of serving you, vs. $31.50 we would have received on the same amount from our regualr clientelle, plus the 3 percent, ($50 X .3 = $1.50) we would have received from the 20 percent tip, vs. the 17 percent tip we paid to the bar on your $50 bar tab transfer.

So we received the opportunity to serve you, and we grossed $11.50 froum your tip, vs., $33.00 on that same $200 check with the $50 bar tab in it, from the locals, and we sufffered the frustration of paying part of your bar tab.

The tips included in the 95 percent of transactions in our establishment that are "cashless", are paid to us weekly in a conventional paycheck. Payroll taxes are deducted identically to the way taxes on our $2.13 hourly wage are deducted.

We treat you with consideration, down to the detail of having a system intended to avoid you having to pay more than once, during your combined visit to our bar and our dining room.

There is no "alert" regarding any expected gratuity. Not on the wall, not printed in the menu. We have too high of a regard for you, our patrons, and too high of a regard for our own reputation and abilities, to ever mention or to print tipping or tipping guidelines. If we begin our business relationship with a low opinion of you, what does it speak to about us, an establishment patronized by less than the best cutomers?

Just as you are expected to make payments in the local currency or with credit cards honored in the country you are visiting, you are expected to "get up to speed" over a period of time, with how the dining relationship works. We don't discuss it with any of our patrons, we are literally at your
mercy. Our finest restaurants employ professional staffs. Do you want a 20year old university student helping you to choose a $200 bottle of cabernet, and then decanting and pouring it for you and your guests, or a professional with ten years experience and the familiarity of great American wines that frequent trips to Napa valley wineries and regular local tastings from wine distributors previewing, in house the newest available vintages and varietals, brings to your table.

We are instructed by our management and we agree to offer our best advice to you on our opinions of the best wines to accompany your menu selections and your varietal preference and not the most expensive. We want you to come back, and we want you to tell your friends how enjoyable your dining experience was.

At the fine dining level, "the business" is actually more of a venue to attract patrons who appreciate and regularly purchase high end, high mark up wine and champagne. We host famous and accomplished foreign and American patrons from all walks of life, from the hot football and basketball player to the cyclist Lance Armstrong and the statesman/cleric, from South Africa.

We enjoy a classless society in our best restaurants. You can come in and sit at the next table from a hollywood movie star or a prime minister. You can sit and sip your $2.00 ice tea next to the billionaire drinking the $750 a bottle, French Bordeaux.

I've asked you why you tip the way some of you do, and I've attempted to instruct you on our tipping customs and norms. Because I serve some of the most admired and accomplished people in the world, and received their praise and generous gratuities for the experiences I have helped them to enjoy, when you react by posting the insults some of you have, in that demeaning, "I am better than you are", tone, I know I am not the lowly creature you make me out to be.

I am a professional and I wait on many professional, well mannered, appreciative patrons. I work in a top level restaurant. The tipping arrangement, unspoken as it is, works well for us, more than ninety percent
of the time.

A set hourly wage rate would not suit the best and most experienced of my colleagues. Our culinary school trained chef, his kitchen staff, and our hospitality school trained managers, all work for a set rate of pay each day, negotiated and agreed upon in advance. No tip that you decide to leave is partly distributed to them, and they do not expect it.

This thread was inspired by an OP in another thread, authored by someone who was unaware of the origins of references by service staff in US restaurants to "Canadians". I don't condone stereotypes, but I understand how they come about.

When I worked in another city, a member of the local Canadian consul's office was a regular patron. When he was presented with his bill, he always provided a credit card and his Canadian diplomatic I.D., and instructed me to remove the sales tax from his bill, stating that he was exempted from having to pay it. The process required to remove the tax required contacting a manager and took several minutes to accomplish. This gentleman routinely tipped just ten percent on the total amount, after the tax was removed.

I never got the impression that his regular request to remove the tax was a stereotypical act by Canadian diplomats, but his tipping pattern was similar to what experience in the business had taught me.

I read calls for changing how we are compensated for serving you, and a myriad of opinions predicting why you would deduct from the upper limit of the amount you would tip for service. I know that no other method of compensating the best servers at the highest rated establishments would do justice to the level of service that they provide. Have you ever requested a round of drinks for you and your guests of your favorite "top shelf" beverage only to be told that it is unavailable at the bar, but, if you can put up with a brief delay, a member of your service team will be sent to a nearby liquor store to purchase it for you, from funds out of his own pocket, and after he returns pours all of your drinks, and has presented you with the bottle and its remaining contents, and your dinner bill, and after you've noticed and brought to your servers' attention, the ommission from your itemized bill, of the charge for the bottle or the drinks poured from it, only to be told by your server, there is no charge for it tonight sir, "it is on us"?

I've seen it happen, and many other inspriring gestures from both patrons and their servers. At what level dining experience, would you determine that a higher hourly wage, "built into the menu prices", compared to the way the best servers at the best restaurants are compensated, would be "good enough"? Where do you suppose those servers who are the best, working at the best places, came from?

Maybe from the restaurant you dine in this evening. I see too many of you posting in ways that are intended to shortchange me, but actually you are shortchanging yourselves, in ways you may not yet have enjoyed the life experience to appreciate.

Criticism of the obnoxious ways that American tourists conduct themselves in during foreign travel, are common in this thread, but there is an absence of opinion posted that these obnoxious tourists ever send home the employees of the businesses who host and serve them in those countries, poorer than they would have been if those Americans tourists had not patronized the businesses where those employees worked, that day.

The core of my communication to you is, because of my experiences dealing with some of your countrymen, I do not expect much from you, in exchange for providing you with the best service and overall dining experience I am able to. It isn't your fault, and I am not blaming you, but....now that I and others have explained to you why we have acquired such low expectations. you are responsible for how you react to the information we've shared with you.