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Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

> I've read lots of articles about how Americans hate their tipping culture.

You misunderstand.

There is tipping in restaurants, and then tipping in other places where it's much more traditional to not tip.

While some people don't like restaurant tipping, it's generally the other type of tipping the ruffles feathers. But in those cases, you don't have to tip.

> But tipping is optional

Again, you don't understand. No, tipping is not always optional. It's known and part of the bill in certain circumstances and this is known ahead of time.

> If you don't tip you both help society improve

I don't know, having been to European and American restaurants, I find the American restaurants to be far better at service. Couple that with free refills and other amenities (like again... actually good service), I wouldn't see it as better.

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If the waiter interrupts you when you don't need anything, it's bad service. If the waiter is not there when you need something, it's bad service. American restaurants tend to err too much in one direction and European restaurants in the other. It's up to you to choose which way you prefer.

I personally prefer going to restaurants when I'm in Europe and using delivery in the US.

Good servers should have ways to anticipate our needs and be proactive.

I've got a real pet peeve about something. I order my drinks and meal and the server starts dropping stuff on the table, and when the main course comes, they set it down and then ask, "is there anything else you need?" and due to whatever mental issues I have, I am fundamentally unable to tell them, on-the-spot, "yes" because I do not know what is missing. As soon as they turn their back and walk away, my mind refocuses on the food and I notice that yes, I do need something else. But they have gone away.

Even worse: if I'm a regular and I know how their food is served, I may anticipate stuff, like "can you put a second cup of butter with that?" or "could you add more tortillas?" and they always go "yeah" and then they don't do it. Because there is some unspoken restaurant rule that says they are supposed to serve the dish as-is, and then the customer expresses his needs, and there is a back-and-forth like that. It feels like an absolutely ridiculous charade to me.

Many dishes are deliberately served with not enough bread, or not enough sauce or dressing, in order to induce the diner to speak up and say "yes please bring more" (implying "ooh I like this food and I want to keep eating the rest of it") which is, again, a ridiculous charade, but seems to be a universal written rule for table-service restaurants in the USA.

And guess how this plays out when a table-service restaurant packages up food for delivery instead? That's right: they can never include enough dip, enough dressing, or enough bread/tortillas to complement your entrée, because they are still adhering to the "back-and-forth with the server" rule, but there is no server, only a taxi for your burrito, so your taxi driver eats all the gratuity, and you eat half the meal before running out of dipping sauce.

I will give bonus credit to a particular Ethiopian eatery here which just closed down, but if you ate in their dining room you'd ask over and over for more injera, but their delivery orders were miraculously packaged with extra injera to consume with the entire meal. Bless their hearts.

I don't mean to be rude, but have you ever considered that most people simply don't ask for extras like that?

When asked "is there anything else you need?", the most common replies by far are going to be along the lines of the next drink order or where the restroom is.

If anything, most people never finish all the sauce or bread. The restaurant is not trying to gauge what you want, but what makes the most sense based on how everyone else consumes it. Why be wasteful?

Most people? Most people? Are you somehow a better fortune-teller who knows what transpires at "most people"'s tables?

I cannot even comprehend "next drink order or restroom". Waitress just set down my main course, hot and ready to eat, and I don't know where the bathroom is? Didn't I wash my hands on arrival, or just after ordering: here's the menu back and please direct me to the restroom? The waitress is literally asking if she can bring me something so that I can begin eating. That means: condiments, utensils, send this plate back it's wrong. If my drink's empty, she proactively points it out and offers a refill. She wants to know if she is gonna return to this table, or if she's done and she can serve others now.

This is an objective experience. I can promise you that I'm not being unreasonable about sauce or bread. It's not a matter of drowning food or trying to use more sparingly. There is always objectively less than half as much sauce, as food to put it on. I have literally argued with waitresses about how much sour cream to bring out for potato skins and they seem simply forbidden to anticipate that. They will come out with 1.5oz instead of 1 and point out how much bigger the container is... when I need 3oz or more just to finish the plate.

Or in a Mexican restaurant: fajitas or some other DIY dish, comes with tortillas alongside it. The customary method is to scoop the fajitas into a tortilla and make your own tacos as you go. But there are 5 servings on the plate and only 2 tortillas. The math ain't mathin' and there is literally no way to fit in a skillet full of fajitas in 2 of any size tortillas.

That Ethiopian restaurant knew exactly what they were doing. They gave enough injera to eat a little bit of the meal. The injera is your utensil, and you cannot eat Ethiopian food without it. Imagine if you gradually ate your fork during a meal and your fork disappeared 1/3rd of the way through it. You would probably ask for 2 more forks. That is injera in action.

How do you know that "most people" would never finish 2 tortillas? Do they just like, stop at 1 tortilla and 1 scoop of fajitas, and then tell the waitress to just trash the rest of their meal? I cannot comprehend this assertion. Often, running out of tortillas just prompts me to start eating with a fork. It's not wrong, but it's not customary Mexican dining: you put 'em in the tortillas because that's what tortillas are for, and tortillas are overflowing endlessly from every metate on the planet.

They know how to spam you with food, because the free tortilla chips know no bounds, and they'll refill your soda without asking first, but somehow it takes an Act of Congress to put down adequate, complementary servings of tortillas. It's fucking obvious.

No. When I finish half of my potato skins and the sour cream runs out, then I ask for more, because the full plate of potato skins is what I paid for off the fucking menu. I want to finish my meal in a normal way, please. I fucking ordered enough food to eat and I didn't order 3x as much so that they can throw it in the fucking garbage when I leave. I will do the tortilla dance and keep asking for tortillas until I finish the fucking fajitas plate because I paid them to eat in the customary fashion, and they know exactly how it works.

Restaurants do care about this charade, because if the diner sits at the table asking for more bread, they'll probably ask for more cocktails or dessert, and they'll consider raising the tip. More time spent dining, and asking for more, is profitable for them. It is profitable to over-serve large portions for the main course, because it looks generous, feels satisfying, and it doesn't cost much more to do so.

And again, this absolutely craps out when they wrap it for delivery, it gets to your door, you run out of sauce and/or bread, and you indeed trash 2/3rds of the fucking $60 meal because it's not worth eating incomplete food.

And yes, I do mean to be fucking rude, when I get second-guessed like that.

The extras you listed are all excessive carbs or saturated fat. People are conscious of this and usually try to eat less of the (flat)breads/sauces and more of the meat and veggies.

Your point about cost doesn't make sense either. It's actually the cheaper food you're wanting more of so you can "fill up" or something. That's the opposite of what people usually complain about. People want more of the meat or finer ingredients. It's true that people used to serve and eat more carbs, but as you said, it's now getting thrown away so they don't bother anymore. It's not a psychological scheme. The world around you just changed. Hence why you now have to ask for more.

You're simply not in the majority opinion, but that doesn't mean there aren't restaurants that would prefer someone like you as a customer. The rest of us would be feeling equally ripped off if we ate at the kind of place that you prefer.

Specifically, with the example of fajitas, people do in fact eat way overloaded tacos and that is 100% traditional. So is mixing the extra fajitas with the sides like the rice or beans. So is tearing a small piece of tortilla instead of making a taco.

> people do in fact eat way overloaded tacos

I overload my tacos (and I tear injera as you describe) and it is still a physical impossibility for the surface area of 2 tortillas to carry 5 servings of fajitas. Impossible. Tortillas are cheap, abundant, and low-carb. There is no rational reason to serve so few.

I’ve actually had several delivery instances where the eatery completely left them out. Later, I ordered extra on the side and they omitted them all. It was crazymaking.

I'm unfamiliar with US tipping culture.

What would be examples of those "other places"?

What would be examples of the tip being part of the bill?

For me, if it IS on the bill it's a service fee and not a tip. If it's not on the bill, it's technically optional by definition regardless of social norms that'd make it practically mandatory.

Restaurants will usually add an automatic 15-20% gratuity (automatic tip) for large parties, usually 8 or more.

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