> 1. most restaurants add a 15% gratuity for all parties over 10 people This is part of the bill. It is printed on the check and is calculated at the till. There is no grey area with the automatic 15% gratuity - it is NOT optional, and there is no argument for not paying it. It shouldn't even be called gratuity. The restaraunt is protecting the wait staff from the tipping habits of large parties, which have a tendency to have this very problem - everyone pays to the penny and leaves without paying any gratuity, which is a significant part of the income for the staff. I've only been to one or two of these meetings, but I would like to thank the organizers for their service. I wish I had time to go every week, as it's a great group. As an aside, I am a cheap bastard, and I come from a long line of cheap bastards, like my father, and my father's father (the stories I could tell). But in our book, the tip is 15% for showing up. If you're rude, the service is slow, or the food is bad, you get...wait for it...15%. If you go out of your way to help us enjoy ourselves, then the tip goes up. Also, the burlier and scarier looking the bartender is, the more his tip goes up :) That isn't to say that I won't let the owner or management know if the service was lousy - but I will not stiff the wait staff out of part of their paycheck. If you have a grumpy waiter, not tipping him isn't going to fix the problem. It's going to make him more grumpy, and management isn't going to find out about the problem to fix it. The waiter has little incentive to make you happy, other than a few extra bucks - but management has LOTS of incentive, to get you to come back again, and the friends that you tell, and their friends... They WILL fix bad servers. And the swift sword of restauranteer justice is much worse than missing a few extra bucks. Adam _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list