To Tip or not To Tip

Everyone has one, from your neighbor to your mother; everyone has his or her very own restaurant horror story. Most of us have more than one.

Several years ago a group of us were dining out at one of the chain restaurants. We had all eaten at this particular location before and never encountered a single problem. So our expectations were that we would be sharing an enjoyable evening amongst friends.

Right from the start clouds of doom began forming on our dining horizon. What was presented to us, as a twenty-five minute wait somehow became a seventy-five minute wait. No problem we thought, its Friday night these things happen. We were in the bar having a few cocktails before dinner so we accepted the delay without complaint.

We were finally seated after close to a ninety-minute wait, which in reality is not bad for Los Angeles on a Friday night.

Our next sign of impending doom appeared when we arrived at our table. Though someone had apparently attempted to bus the table there were still a few soiled napkins and used silverware scattered about. The table was filthy and the previous diners either had a child with them or they had been raised by wolves because the floor beneath the table held the scattered remain of at least one meal.

Without batting an eye our hostess, with a straight face, told us to take a seat and she would send someone over to finish cleaning the table. This is the point where we should have headed to the nearest In & Out for Double-Doubles and fries but no we must have been feeling rather masochistic that evening so we stayed for the floorshow. A busboy finally showed up, wiped down the table and brought us utensils and water. He even remembered to bring a sweeper to clean the buffet out from under the table.

We perused the menus, made our choices and looked about us expecting that some member of the wait staff would swoop down on our table pad in hand ready to take our orders. Of course that was entirely too ask. There was not even a restaurant employee within shouting distance of our table. Finally, just about the time we had begun to second-guess our asking the busboy to remove the floor level buffet our server arrived.

Talk about a waitress with a chip on her shoulder this woman was hauling one of the Giant Sequoias around behind her. Surly, snotty, snobbish I mean if you had seen her on the street you would have crossed to the other side just to avoid her. By this point in time we were really not concerned with whom our server was we just wanted to eat.

It was a simple order really. Everyone ordered ribs and baked potatoes easy to prepare easy to deliver right. Wrong. When she finally returned with our food instead of six orders of ribs there were three. Instead of the other three ribs we had received grilled chicken breasts. We attempted to explain to our lovely server what our actual order was but having to think seemed to confuse her so we finally asked for a manager to come to the table. He corrected the problem and replaced the chicken plates with rib plates.

It was not until we began eating that we discovered that all of our potatoes were undercooked and two of them were not cooked at all. We did not even bother to mention this latest development to the restaurants obvious choice for employee of the month as she was busy whispering sweet nothings to one of the busboys. Not once during the meal did miss sunshine surprise us with a visit to ask if we needed anything else.

Finally we managed to gnaw our way through the last of the rib bones and we decided it was time to head for home. The atmosphere was just too heady for our taste. We were finally able to get the personality queens attention and managed to convey our need for a check so we could leave.

Once we divided the tab a small debate ensued, to tip or not to tip, that was the question. Most of the table was on the anti-tipping side. Two were for leaving a moderate tip as they felt that it was proper to leave something. My vote was for leaving a dollar tip. I felt that leaving no tip was too obvious and leaving a moderate tip was undeserved. My point was a one-dollar tip for a seventy-five dollar tab was just subtle enough to be insulting. I was able to sway my fellow diners with my convoluted logic and we left one dollar.

Now for the punch line: as we headed for the parking lot we heard someone shouting for us to wait. We stopped figuring maybe one of us had left something behind. Turning we saw our waitress running toward us waving our one dollar tip. Upon reaching us she started ranting about how it was customary to leave at least a fifteen percent tip and that one-dollar did not cut it for a seventy-five dollar tab. I in turn informed her that it was customary to provide service worthy of a fifteen percent tip and since she hadn't she received the tip she deserved. At that point I reached out and removed our dollar from her hand and informed her that chasing a customer out to the parking lot was such a classless act that she no longer deserved even that tip.

With that we turned and walked away leaving one stunned waitress in the parking lot.