Benefits of Tipping
Sunday, November 20th, 2005 -- J. DoeA few weeks ago I tried to explain to somebody why I prefer to pay a tip in a restaurant because it leads to better service.
The server wants as big a tip as possible so will often go out of his/her way to give good service.
They responded of course that the system in Italy of paying all the waiters and waitresses more so the clients do not have to leave a tip is better.
Since in all restaurants you have to pay a cover charge (usually 1 to 2 Euros) and a 10 percent service charge it amounts to paying the same money for eating a meal at a restaurant anyway, I didn’t argue wholeheartedly. Maybe I should have.
Yesterday Buzzurro and I went to a restaurant/pizzeria. I should have known something was wrong, by the lack of other customers in this restaurant, but, well, we eat dinner early in Italy (7:45pm) so it’s not uncommon to find only 1 or 2 other patrons in restaurants.
We went to a large restaurant with beautiful artwork on the walls and 2 floors. 3 waitresses were gossiping amongst themselves in the corner on the first floor..
” The customers will surely come later.” I thought to myself.
The waitress sat us at a table on the second floor. Then she went back to talk to her friends.
We decided what we wanted to eat right away, and signalled that we wanted to order. All to no avail. Nobody came up to take our order, so Buzzurro went down the stairs to where the waitress were all congregating and talking to each other and said:
“We are ready to order now.”
Our waitress gave him a dirty look as if to say “Don’t interupt my conversation !” But went to our table anyway and took our order.
10 minutes later she brought us our food. She slammed it on the table and stormed away.
Excuse me for ruining your day, lady, by making you work, but YOU are getting paid and WE are paying.
When we were done with our meal the same thing happened to us. Nobody was in sight and we wanted our bill so we could pay and leave.
Finally Buzzurro went down the stairs and saw our waitress talking to the other waitresses, who hadn’t moved from the spot either. He asked for our bill.
Our waitress replied without interest “Yeah, OK” But 15 minutes later when she still didn’t arrive at our table we just got up and went to the cash register, where there was somebody.
We repeated our order. Paid. And Left. The whole time of course our waitress was still in the corner with the others talking.
Now I understand why there were hardly any customers in the restaurant. The food was OK, but the service stinks. Who wants to pay for that ?
Under a tipping system our waitress would have received a very small tip, and she would have wisened up fast and changed her behavior if only to get bigger tips.
Under the non-tipping system that they have here she was paid the same whether she was nice or not.
There was no incentive to be nice or friendly at all and as you know from reading the many posts on this blog, being nice and friendly is not a natural trait of North/Central Italy.
As a former waitress and current patron, I completely agree with you. Not only are waitstaff dependent on the tips (their ‘pay’ from the restaurant is usually no more than 2.15/hr) but the WHOLE reason for the job is to garner tips.
Personally, I loved being a waitress. Great job if you know what you are doing, and if you are single, which I was at that time, it can be very fruitful for your social life.
Thanks for coming by my place!
I am sorry for my bad english, but I am italian… it is normal, no?!
I think you are wrong when you say that this is the problem of a no-tipping system: as you know, not every restaurant in Italy has a bad or inexistent service, but sometimes it is very good. Where is the difference between each others? Well, I think the first difference is in the boss, that could make a big difference in the service. The second one is in the town or city where you go to the restaurant: in a little town they should be nicer with tourists; in a big city, like Rome, Florence, …, with lots of tourists, they don’t care to miss or lose one or more customers. They could say: who cares?
Anyway, I don’t like to be bad-treated by the watress too!
Bye bye
Io concordo
Ciao!
Francesco, While service may be much better in a small town or in Southern Italy I still think it is not as good as when the server has a stake in the relationship betwwen server and customer. I have had friends in the US who were waitresses and they had nice bosses and mean bosses. Obviously they prefered to work with nice bosses, but it was the tipping customer who was most important.
P.S. your English was fine
Customer service, non existe!