When I get the bill at a restaurant, I'm always surprised. How did my $9.95 meal turn into $20?... well... if you ordered a drink, your $9.95 was actually $11.95, but you ordered some queso at the beginning and split the cost with someone, so you're actually at 13.95, tack on the tax and you really owe $15.17. So you just got the bill, and for some reason you were thinking around $10, but you are now staring at $15.17... so you then tip the waiter his 20% and you just paid out roughly $18.50... for your $9.95 meal. And although $9.95 is actually only 5 cents short of $10, somehow those smart marketing punks made me think it was $9....
So when I'm about to give the waiter his measly $2 (20%)... I'm frustrated because I just spent twice as much as I was thinking. I paid $18 and all I got was two enchiladas, rice, beans, some queso, and carbonated high fructose corn syrup... So I'm feeling sick, and I paid almost $20 for some Mexican food that was worth about $3.25. So from my consumer standpoint, I'm frustrated when I write my tip and feeling particularly cheap at the moment.
So what is the solution?
Don't go out to eat. $18.50 is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for food that will cost you an exponentially larger amount of money in health bills down the road.
What about when it is actually a good idea to go out to eat?
There are occasions when my well thought out and wonderfully constructed above solution doesn't enter into reality. So, if for instance you find yourself staring at the hypothetical $15.17 from above, what do you do? I have noticed that tipping a waiter is one of the few times in life when a small amount of money actually makes a
huge difference to someone. If you don't believe me then you have no friends who are waiters and you haven't read
Joel's blog post about it. If you give one of your friends $10, the person says, 'thanks', and is probably actually appreciative for the money, but they'll probably forget about it pretty soon. However, if you give a waiter $10, and your meal was $10, it can make their day. $10 to make someone's day? That's worth a lot more than $10 to me.
From the consumer's perspective it's a bit different than the perspective of a waiter.... Joel said, "And when you give a 4 dollar tip for a 20 dollar meal (instead of a $3 tip) it won't go unnoticed. That little extra dollar goes a long way to validate your waiter as a person. Sounds a little melodramatic, maybe, but it's true." .... But you forget that we're still shell-shocked by our mathematical inadequacies and trying to figure out how $9=$20... (Ironically I think $9.95 is about $9 and $18.50 is approximately $20)
But, what if, instead of being cheap to salvage your already over-priced meal, you give the waiter a 6 dollar tip? Or a 7 dollar tip? or even a 10 dollar tip... I mean, you're already spending 20 bucks on some mexican food that is worth $3.25... if you spend $30 on it, would your bank account really be suffering that much?.... But the waiter sees a really good tip when they were expecting about $3, and it really means something.
I have never been a waiter, because I don't have the patience for it. So I don't know what it's like.... But I know multiple times I have decided to actually give a 50-200% tip (the 200% was at IHOP and my meal was like 5.25, I'm no saint)... the waiters have FREQUENTLY said something.... A couple of them followed me OUTSIDE the restaurant.... One of them for a $7.00 tip.... 7 bucks and you have people chasing you to say, "thank you"? That's borderline insanity to me. But it is the life of a waiter.
Try it. God has blessed us with far more than we could ever need, and we certainly DO NOT deserve it.... Be imitators of God therefore and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us... love a waiter (they count as the least of these (just kidding Joel - that was a reference to your 'inequality' statement)) <- (yes I did double up on the parentheses and then use parentheses to explain the double up)
So when you're shocked staring at the $15.17 that should be $9.... Write in 9.87 on the tip line to just round it off to 25.... Or make it $15 and rock their world... it's up to you.
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