Tipping & Etiquette Stories

I work in an iconic family restaurant in Austin, TX. During the holidays, a lot of tourists visit the city, especially at Christmas time. This past Saturday, just before Christmas, the restaurant got slammed at lunch time. The hostess sat a family of 13 people at one table, followed by another table with 4 people […]

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I love my family. Not a common way to start a culinary horror story, but I just want to make that clear. I love my siblings, no matter how silly or thoughtless or just plain idiotic they are.

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I work for a corporate chain so customers are not always of the best quality, but I try not to prejudge my tables because they seem to surprise me now and then.

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I’m one of those English people who doesn’t particularly understand “tipping” just because we don’t do it here (or very seldom!).

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I under-tipped recently and wanted to share my story. My wife and I stopped at a popular restaurant for Sunday brunch. The hostess seated us on the patio; due to cool weather we were only the third table (of nine) to have patrons. One of the others was finishing up before paying their check, the […]

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Fortunately, this didn’t happen to me, but I did witness it. It was late night, maybe 1:30-2:00 am in Anaheim, California, and I’m with a bunch of friends from Northern California. We decide, hey, we’re hungry. What’s a good place to go that’s open that late at night? Well, we chose a chain restaurant that specializes […]

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Back in college, the large group of my girlfriends and I would get together once a week and go out to eat. We were usually broke, but we always enjoyed ourselves… best of times. That is until the brother of one of the girls started dating The Wicked Witch. The sister would invite the brother’s […]

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I decided to sneak out with my daughter for a certain dessert. We arrived there and got a table quickly, and ordered a single dessert to share. The waiter never brought us water. After 10 minutes I had to flag down another waiter to ask for water. It took another 15 minutes to get the dessert. I […]

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Many years ago while working at a very popular restaurant that had a 2 hour wait on a Sat night, the servers and I got together after work and decided we couldn’t run after patrons who stiffed us, but we came up with an idea that worked. Mind you, this was before the ATM/check card […]

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I was working the closing shift one night when a group of six came in late. I had two other tables that were almost finished with their meals. I approached the new table of 5 ladies and one man. The man was talking to the women and did not acknowledge that I was standing at […]

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This is for a great number of Brits out there, travelling the world, dining out, and just being so mean. I am 100% sure that they are not as unaware as they pretend to be about tipping practices in the countries they travel to. I am of course a waitress who has been the receiver […]

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My wife and I saw this in the early 90’s, and we still shake our heads about it. We went to a moderately upscale restaurant in coastal California and were seated next to a party of four, two men and two women, who were in their late 30’s. They had finished their appetizers and were […]

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