My Question of the Day: You and a group of friends go out for a bite to eat. Everyone has a great time, and the waiter brings you all your checks. Each of you pay your own tab, but you decide to pool your money to give the waiter a cash tip. Everyone puts in $3-$5, and the tip totals well above the suggested 15% gratuity.

Several weeks later, when you receive your debit card statement, you notice that your final total is more than it was when you paid the tab. You dig up your receipt and call the restaurant.

After being on hold for several minutes, the manager comes back on the line, tells you he found the original of your receipt and it shows that you added $2.00 to the receipt for the waiter’s tip. You have your copy of the receipt that shows you did not write in a $2.00 tip.

What do you do?

My 2 Cents: Steal big, steal little. Theft is theft. I would not just ignore it because it’s only $2. There’s no such thing as “only anything,” as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to stealing, especially stealing from me.

I’d contact the restaurant, ask for a copy of the original receipt, and then I’d file a police report. Call me over-zealous, but this is a scam, and I’m sure I’m not the only person that would have been overcharged in this way.

Think about it, a waiter/waitress does this to every customer everyday for one week. If that waiter/waitress has 200 customers during that time, that’s an extra $400 that he/she has skimmed from her customers. It’s just $2 on your tab, but adding that $2 to every person’s tab adds up big time. The whole idea of only taking a little from each person is to get those people to look at it and think, “It’s only $2. I don’t have time to fight over $2.” WRONG!

You’re not fighting for $2. You’re fighting to make sure honesty and integrity continue to mean something in our society. It’s bigger than $2.

This is how mole hills become mountains. When we ignore bad behavior, we are essentially encouraging bad behavior to continue and to escalate.

———-

The commentary doesn’€™t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

———-

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

My Question of the Day: You go to a restaurant that is very busy. You’re seated by the greeter, and your server passes your table several times assuring you s/he will be right with you. After waiting longer than you think you should, the server finally comes to take your order. The server explains that s/he is new and didn’t expect to have so many tables. S/he takes your drink order and says s/he’ll be right back to get your food order.

Again, the server passes your table several times without returning with your drinks but serving other customers and taking their order. After what seems to be longer than you think you should have had to wait, the server returns with many apologies, your drinks and to take your order?

The server takes your order, your food is delivered in a pretty timely fashion, but your server only checks on you once and forgets to bring you more napkins and water. The entire time you’re eating, you watch as your server flits between all his/her tables, constantly going back and forth, apologizing to other customers for forgetting this or that, and you can see s/he’s just having a hard time in his/her new job.

Do you leave a tip?

My 2 Cents: I used to be a waitress, and I know how difficult it can be when you start out.

I’d leave a tip and hope it encourages the server to stick with the job until he/she gets more comfortable with the position.

I very, very rarely do not tip when I eat out. The service has to be extremely poor and the server has to be rude before I don’t tip. If it’s really, really busy, and I can see that the server is making his/her best effort, I try to take that into consideration.

———-

Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

———-

BLKMGK I ALWAYS leave a tip, no matter what. I would also speak with the manager and let him/her know my observations.

WSFradio …do I leave a tip? HECK NO! I am big on leaving waiters a good tip, but bad service awww [bleep] naw.

JoshDamage no I do not tip for bad service

———-

The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

———-

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

FYI: You may edit your comment for up to 30 minutes after posting. After 30 minutes, your comment can no longer be revised.