Garden Tips

I don’t. A lot of restaurants just send your food out with whatever waiter is back there at the time. Why should they get a tip? A lot of pizza places expect you to tip also, when you come in a pick up your own pizza. I don’t do this either. You tip a waiter because they wait on you. They take your order, they bring you drinks, they bring you food, they check on you several times during your dinner (usually when your mouth is full) and they offer you dessert.

Also, if you know the waiter expected a tip, that means he implied he wanted one… and that right there is worth not tipping, even if you are sitting in the restaurant. I actually had a waiter mumble to another waiter something about wanting a good tip… and he didnt get one. A tip is something a waiter earns.

I personally don’t see the need to tip when you have driven yourself to the restaurant and you are walking in to get the food. You’re not really being waited on. If someone brought it out to your car, then I think a couple of bucks would be in order, but I don’t think it’s the same as a delivery person or a server waiting on you at a table. Some people probably think they’re entitled no matter what. Sounds like your guy at the Olive Garden is one of those folks.

it isn’t expected, however, it is appreciated. sometimes just rounding up to the nearest dollar is nice enough. if you are a regular and you get the same person, it may be nice to tip a little extra once in a while.

yes. a good rule of thumb is when anyone at a restaurant provides you any type of service that had to do with the handling of your food or drink (besides management unless they waited on you), give them a tip. this includes but is not limited to: servers, to-go people, bartenders, bussers (only if no servers, servers usually tip out the bussers).

you can also tip hosts and hostesses or Maitre Ds for hooking you up with a nice table.

It depends, I worked at P.F. Changs and we didn’t just take the order over the phone and then hand it to you, we had to pack the rice and make sure all orders were correct. We were the ones in the back taking care of your order.

The tip was always appreciated.

Let me tell you guys something, I work at Outback Steakhouse as a to-go server. It is my only, and I stress ONLY, position at the place. I do make $ 7.15/hr, but that just barely pays the bills. Only about 50% of the people who order take-out actually tip, and when they do, it’s a pittance. I do agree that we are not offering the full dining experience, so we should not be tipped along those lines, however, we work just as hard, if not harder than the dining-room servers. We not only have to answer the phone (and promptly- 30 seconds or less is our rule), we are in charge of boxing up all the orders neatly and accurately, meaning we have to take care to check all the food to see that it’s presentable and made to customer satisfaction, and boxed in a way that ensures that the food stays in the condition it needs to be (hot or cold) for the whole ride home. We also make sure all orders go out when they are supposed to, which is ten times harder when the kitchen is slow to make our food (they often leave it until last, because they have in-house food to make), and we have to nag them to get it out on time, plus we have to wait for people to show up to get their food, and they’re often late, which means while we’re still getting other orders and making sure those are being efficiently processed, we have to keep checking to make sure the first people aren’t left out there waiting when they’re 20 min. late picking up their food. Then we get people who show up and keep us running back and forth for things they forgot to ask for on the phone, which takes even more time, and we get almost zero help from the management or the other servers, whose idea of helping is to tell me my orders are getting cold on the counter while I’ve got two orders on the phone and three cars outside. I love my job, so please don’t think I’m bitching just for the heck of it, because my point is that for those of you who think we don’t do much and therefore don’t deserve a tip, we work our butts off, and often don’t get half the payout the servers do, when they have tons of help; they have a person to prepare their food to make it presentable, some other server runs it, the busser cleans their tables, and the bartender makes their drinks and some other server can run those, too. They still do a lot more than to-go servers do, so they deserve higher tips, but to-go servers deserve something also. Keep in mind, too that the person bringing out your food often isn’t working alone, they have to split tips when more than one to-go server is on, so that $ 2 that seems generous to you may not be worth so much when they split it between three people. I will say that, on the whole, we appreciate any tip, but $ 2 on a $ 100 check is WAY below what you should give, even for take-out. Plus, it chaps my behind when I see a Mercedes or a Lexus pull up and they stiff me, especially since those people are the ones who typically order a lot of food, then they leave me zero on a $ 60 bill. Better service begets better tips, I’ll give you that, but I hate seeing an obviously well-off person act like a cheapskate.