Tipping waiters , when there is service charge ?
Well, I live in Germany at the moment, and they add a service charge to the bill as well. The custom here is to just leave whatever change of a dollar is left over on the table for a tip, so if my bill is 12,49€ and I give him 15€, I will just give the waiter the ,51€ change and pocket the 2€ coin I get back.
The service charge is “in lieu of” tipping and is to make sure that the staff get what they would have. If you tip in addition to paying the service charge, you might be paying an equivalent of 30% for the service of the wait staff, and I think that is excessive. If you have a party of more than 8 people, some restaurants automatically put on a service charge or a cover charge. Even in France where service is included in the price of restaurant meals, it is customary to leave a few extra Euros for the server.
My kind of rule of thumb on this is that if a service charge has applied then I don’t tip, unless the waiter I’ve had was particularly good. It was maybe just that at that restaurant that that waiter told you they never got the service charge because that’s where it’s supposed to go, which is why waiting staff are usually minimum wage- i.e the restaurant doesn’t (in theory) need to pay more than that because the service charge and/or tips supplements that. I disagree with that, I know for myself that waiting is hard work and I think if waiting staff got paid a decent wage to start with then standards of service in restaurants would be much higher but I’m just an ex-waitress so what would I know?
There is usually a service charge there for larger parties because the server will end up working twice as hard. Some nicer resteraunts might have service charges no matter how many people you have. They have this because the waiter works their butt off for less then minimum wage and people still dont tip them. If you had great service and will definelty be coming back then of course you can always tip more then the service charge. If the service was bad and you wouldnt of tipped more then the service charge anyways then no dont tip more. But its there becuase lots of people dont botter to tip at all.
