Tipping the balance

My ever-faithful reader A. Smedley sent me this a couple days ago:

Hey, Mouth ... all these years I have tipped based on the total bill (tax included). There are others in my family, I recently observed, who tip based on the pre-tax amount. What is the current expectation? For instance, last night I paid a bill that totaled $113.95, including the tax. I left a tip of $20, which puts me slightly over a tight-fisted 15% tipper but less than a lavish, devil-may-care 20%er. But, which is RIGHT? Before sales tax or including?????

Ignoring the excessive use of exclamation points, it's a good question. I tip on the grand total, tax included, trying to hit it somewhere between 16 and 18 percent. I just learned (thanks to my tech-savvy 11-year-old) that my phone has a very easy-to-use tax calculator on it. It specifically asks for the post-tax total with which to calculate. I use that as Exhibit A in defending my argument.

More on tipping

Very interesting discussion at Zagat Buzz today. It starts like this:

My husband thinks it's rude for a waiter to pick up a paid bill before we leave the table. He prefers the waiter to wait until we leave before the tip is revealed. Thoughts on this?

Well, my thoughts are that hubby is right (it happens once in a while). It seems rude for the waiter to pick up the check because (A) then the server then knows the customer's chosen gratuity, and (B) because it somehow signals that the meal is "over" along with the attendant service.

Still, professional waiters wrote in that somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of checks are unsigned, or the math is done wrong, or the credit card is left behind. Thus, the waiter giving things a little look-see cuts down on goofs and lost cards. Also, late in the evening, the management needs to run reports that hinge on having all checks accounted for.

With a cash payment, waiters should pick it up while saying, "I'll be back with your change," instead of "is this all set?" or something else that essentially asks if the tip has been finalized.

I gotta tip for you

To all you fans out there--which, technically, amounts to my mother and someone named Richard Guzinya so far--sorry for the lag on posts. I had a wireless card die on me in Minneapolis. But before I launch into fascinating tales of the Betty Crocker kitchens and Native American wild rice harvests, I'd like to pause for a moment to talk about tipping.

I tip 18 or so percent on the total bill, not the pretax total. I never punish a waiter for the kitchen's mistakes; if a restaurant is insanely busy, the server doesn't bear the brunt of my frustrations. I will tell a server when he or she has done a good job, and I will express dissatisfaction as well. Very, very seldom does my tip dip below 15 percent.

But that's just the kids' stuff. Tipping quandaries like this I'm still figuring out:

• You have a drink at the bar, you move your tab to your table (if you tip the bartender 15 percent, then tip the waiter 15 percent, you've tipped twice on the same drinks).
• Free valet parking at a restaurant. What's the standard tip? (This is especially vexing when the restaurant has a huge, no-need-for-valet parking lot in back. Why can't we park our own dang cars?)
• An order-at-the-counter restaurant in which you pick up your food, grab your drink and bus your own table. There's still a line on the bill for tip--do you? On the other hand, how about an order-at-the-counter restaurant where they bring you your meal and you leave all your detritus on the table? Very different scenarios, really.

Then there's non-restaurant tipping:

• You have a wireless card die and the hotel's tech support comes twice and can't fix the problem. Do you tip twice? At all?
• A plumber comes to install something correctly that he had previously installed incorrectly.
• You have your house painted. The painter owns the business, so essentially you're paying him directly. Is tipping expected? Insulting?

Give me your tips on tipping...