Hacker News Reader

Comment by rm999 | Hacker News Reader

Back when I lived in San Diego I took my parents to the Linkery. The service was so bad it actually reversed my opinions against tipping. The servers clearly didn't care much about making us happy, messing up almost every aspect of the order. They put meat in my food - I'm vegetarian. My father got his food 20 minutes after my mother and I did. The waiter forgot one of my drinks. We called over the manager who offered us a free dessert to make up for it. Guess what? The dessert was on the bill. I'm always happy to tip 20+% for good service, but being forced (yes, we asked) to pay the service charge added insult to injury.

This is just one data point, but the Linkery was infamous around San Diego for having much worse service than other places in a similar price range. I'm convinced their experiment with tipping was correlated with this.

View on HN

This is a question of the restaurant's culture, not an inevitable result of not tipping. I went to a prominent no tip restaurant in New York, and I've never experienced better service. The servers were warm and friendly, so every interaction them felt human, but they somehow managed not to interfere with the meal at all. They knew when to stick around so we could ask questions, and they disappeared as soon as we didn't need them. But I'm sure a lot goes into creating that kind of service. Adding or subtracting tipping is one of many variables.

I totally agree with you that bad service is not inevitable from no-tipping - some of the best service I've ever gotten has been in countries without tipping. And I do think The Linkery had particular issues, especially with the way it was managed.

But I left feeling the lack of tips enabled poor service. I personally am uncomfortable with the concept of tying someone's pay to an arbitrary decision, but a small or zero tip sends a very strong message to a server in a targeted way. I think it's hard for a manager to micromanage service; the way they can do it is pretty inelegant and probably often inefficient. The manager could have fired the waiter, but maybe he was just having a bad day. The manager could have cut the waiter's hours, but that doesn't fix the issue. Also the manager likely doesn't hear about a lot of issues that go on - many people prefer not to complain except in the most extreme circumstances.

but a small or zero tip sends a very strong message to a server in a targeted way

Such a system is completely broken-

-servers simply write off people who leave small or no tips as cheapskates, and... -cheapskates do take advantage of this to take offense at all opportunities and save themselves a tip, leading to an vicious circle.

It all just leads to an unfortunate cycle of assumptions and posturing. Getting rid of it would be fantastic.

Heading to their Yelp page[0] and searching the word "service" seems to agree with this account, fwiw. A few good reviews, to be sure, but mostly complaints about both food and (especially slow) service. Many complaints also about the mandatory tip. They had a 3-star average.

[0] http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-linkery-san-diego

Yelp itself provides an alternate way to provide feedback, which gives the restaurant a significant incentive to improve service but doesn't enable cheapskates to rip it off.

Interesting... if every restaurant in San Diego had tip-less systems, do you think that the 'average service quality' for the city would go down or would bad restaurants go out of business until an equilibrium was found that is higher? Maybe just variance in quality (from place to place as well as from patron to patron) would go down. I'm trying to understand why you seemed to be on one side of the argument but one experience at one place made you question it. I've had terrible experience at tipping places too and I suspect that it would take very strong management to break the existing culture of the service industry.

Presumably if enough people like you complained, the staff that was causing so much trouble would be fired, and eventually people who had a good work ethic/customer service would survive?

A restaurant can have management and cultural issues, tips or not, and such should be reflected in reviews. And from those reviews, if the serving staff aren't doing their jobs they should be fired (circling back to the management comment).

And isn't the cook really the part of service that matters most about a restaurant? If you want to talk about inducement, shouldn't a tip pool yield a better result, even if the guy who carries the plate walks a little slower?

but being forced (yes, we asked) to pay the service charge added insult to injury

The alternative is that the restaurant simply increases the price of everything by 18%. It really doesn't make any difference. As to being forced, most feel culturally forced (if not sometimes legally forced) to tip for even horrendous service.

No. Tips for waiters is an incentive to provide good service. Without tips they make very little. The establishment would not be forced to raise prices because that service charge is not going to the business. Cooks are of course importAnt, but lets be real; these are not chefs. They are cooking according to a very precise recipe. There's no room for innovation.

If the food is cold because the server took too long to bring it out it then it doesn't matter what it tastes like. If I don't get drink refills it, again, doesn't matter. If my order is screwed up when being entered it doesn't matter.

Servers are the face of the restaraunt. If servers made much less then the experience would be wildly different. Imagine the level of service provided by a cashier at your local McDonald's.

No. Tips for waiters is an incentive to provide good service. Without tips they make very little.

Are you talking without the context of the linked article? Because the idea behind the linked article is that a service fee is pooled and distributed among all staff (though still favouring servers, which is a nod to the past more than any rational evaluation of scope of importance). The linked article is that the servers still made a considerable amount more than their base pay.

And no, servers aren't by any measure the most important. I would dare say they are the least important in the whole venture.

No, I was responding to the parent comment. Pooling is fine. Have you worked in a restaurant before? Waiters can screw up any part of your experience (or, conversely, make it better). No other position in the restaurant can say the same.

Well, two take-aways from the article is that:

* They get less tips as percentage than they previously did.

* They give more of the tips to the non-waitstaff.

Both combine to reduce the wages of the waitstaff, so I'm not shocked that the service would be worse.

Chez Panisse and Per Se don't have the same reputation.

In that case you can pay on credit card and challenge the charge. Slightly unethical, yes. But no less so than what they did.

Is providing poor service _unethical_?

Offering a free dessert and then charging for it is outright fraud.

Or a mistake.

There comes a point where that is no longer a viable excuse. When the manager gets involved to rescue a situation after multiple screwups, you're way beyond that point.

I disagree. Charging a single person for a dessert that they were served never amounts to "outright fraud" as you think it is.

It can be a simple mistake, a boneheaded mistake, a major mistake or a colossally stupid mistake. But unless free desserts are promised systematically to a percentage of customers which are then billed for it, it's not "outright fraud".

It moves from mistake to fraud after the bill is argued over.

Fraud has nothing to do with volume. Charging a single person for a dessert that was promised to be free is sufficient. It doesn't need to be "systematically" done.

One could argue that this wasn't deliberate and therefore should not count as fraud. That's what was done in the comment I was replying to. But one cannot argue that this wasn't done to enough people and therefore should not count as fraud, because they have nothing to do with each other.

Ahhh, I missed that part of the original story. Yes, that's pretty terrible, and certainly not ethical.

I think so, you are not doing your job, yet taking the pay for it.

A server is still serving you, it's a qualitative issue.

The right action is to reject the service.

Send everything wrong back and leave. go eat somewhere else.

never do the CC thing.

Saying, "You will not be charged for X" and then charging for X is unethical.

When you challenge said bill, saying that you have no choice about paying for what you were told you wouldn't be paying is both illegal and unethical.

Yes, I agree, see below, I missed that part of the story.

That's not unethical, it's fraud. And if you go to a bank and say "I don't want to pay this they forgot my drink!" They will probably not even wait to hang up before laughing at you. If you get back service, don't go again and write a bad review or two.

How about "I don't want to pay this, because they said it would be free"?

That's why you get a bill to look at before you pay.

They got the bill, challenged it, and were informed that they had no choice.

They were informed they had no choice with regard to the service charge. Which, if California's laws in this respect are as odd as they sound, may be a legal barrier and not one at the restaurant. There is no indication in the article about them challenging the dessert.

> They got the bill, challenged it, and were informed that they had no choice.

The manager asserting that they had no choice doesn't mean they did; if they disagree, they could have refused to pay unless the offending items are removed from the bill. Obviously, that would have been an escalation, and they chose to acquiesce instead, but that was a choice.

consent under duress is not legally recognized consent.

Sure, but there is no duress in the story. Someone who has the title "manager" stating the restaurant's view of what is required isn't "duress".

The bank route is all or nothing. You don't get to say "I feel the service was bad, the manager said this $10 dessert would be free and it wasn't, therefore I want to start a chargeback on the entire $100 bill." No.

If the dessert is the issue, don't pay the bill until you ask the manager why it's on the bill when it was supposed to be free. Let them call the police if it gets to that point (it almost never does). But once you pay the bill you're accepting the charges. There is no such thing as "paying under protest" for stuff like this.

That's not true. You can dispute any portion of a charge you feel like.

A few years ago, I signed up for wireless internet service that ended up turning into crap after a month. I was willing to pay for the month where I got service, but I felt that they used false advertising to get my business, and as such they did not merit the activation fee.

Luckily, I paid with a credit card. My charge was $75, which combined the $35 activation fee and the $40 charge for the month of service. I disputed only the $35 and got my money back.

I wish I had your bank, then :)

It was just American Express. Not sure if they're special in that regard or not, but I like them.

Yes, but they also committed fraud when they charged for what they said they would not charge for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com