An African-American woman was telling me that when she recently received poor service at a restaurant she ended up still giving a 20% tip in part because she worried that the waiter would attribute the low tip to her gender/race and not to the poor service. So she tipped highed but expressly complained about the poor service.
This strategy gets the message across, but forces people to have an uncomfortable conversation.
An alternative strategy is to give a mixture of torn and untorn bills. Say one regular 20 and one $20 bill that has been torn in half. The tipper realizes that your not cheap and were willing to part with $40 but penalized the server for something.
Berkley Professor Peter Menell told me that when he was a waiter in the catskill that European guests at the beginning of their week's stay would sometimes tear a $100 bill in half and give him half of it at the beginning of their stay, and the other half at the end if his service was good (taped bills will be honored if you have all the parts)...
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I still like the "penny tip" if I feel service has been ineffective. I usually try to take multiple items into consideration when tipping, including how overworked the particular server may be. If I feel they have simply been a goof off, or if they get the order wrong and don't care, then I tend to be more harsh than if I am in a restaurant that is obviously understaffed.
Also, the quality of service expectations play into tipping. If I am at a $50/plate restaurant, I expect quality service... If I am at Waffle House, I expect nothing but food (and not necessarily what I ordered!).
A flawed idea due to treasury department rules: more than 50% of a bill is considered legal tender. If you have an eye and a full nose of a president you're going to have enough to get the bill exchanged at a bank. So, either be awefully precise with the cutting, or be sure that everyone gives the server a smaller half... talk about "making money".
I usually subscribe to the traditional "rules" of tipping - 15% for adequate service and adding or subtracting based on actual performance. However, my wife will not hear anything of it. Her family has all spent time working in food service and out of guilt, she automatically tips 20%.
Unfortunately, I don't think that the educational value of a tip amount works on bad staff. If they were the kind to wonder why their tip was so small in the first place, they'd probably be the kind to have earned a better tip in the first place. Human nature.
No need for the withheld tip to go to waste. How about leaving the waiter a card/receipt saying, "A donation in the amount of ___($$$) has been given in your honor to ___(worthy cause)". You can purchase a bunch from your favorite charity, and hand them out when needed.
i can't believe tipping restaurant staff made it to an idea. why not tip whatever you want?
In the USA waiter/esses are taxed 8% of the meal. If you tip nothing, then they had to pay to serve you. If you got reasonable service and left no tip then that makes you a stuck up inconsiderate fat pompousass that charged the waiter/ess for the privilege of serving you!
This does not seem like an effective strategy. Pay for the quality of service you receive. If you feel strongly enough that the service was very poor or very good, let management know.
There will always be some servers who feel that race is an issue, but good servers know that it isn't.
And, contrary to what another poster commented, the 8% of meals served is just a guideline that is used in some restaurants.
besides the obvious illegality of intentionally defacing federal currency, which is not really even worth contemplating, the fact is that if you leave them only half a bill, you are wasting your money just to be an ass to the server. if you want to get your point across that you were dissatisfied, either confront them or leave a note,perhaps customer satisfaction cards should become standard, "here's your menu, and your satisfaction card, please be kind or i'll be fired" the whole idea of tearing your money in half is just an example of a major modern societal defficiency, everyone has become passive-agressive, and completely non-confrontational. either tell them what they did wrong so they may improve, or if they were just an unfriendly person who should not be working with people perhaps tell their manager, but don't waste your money just to be a jerk.