20%

I guess waiters are too.

I am always surprised that Americans are not rioting in the streets over low minimum wages- and their next to non-existent holidays.

Every socially developed country (a category the USA could well drop out of!!) extracts taxes from wages. Most such countries require employers to pay according to the expertise required, and time/effort expended in delivering a service to consumers on the employer's behalf. The US seems increasingly to be moving to another model. Experience of other models than the US model shows very clearly that there is no/little incentive provided by the tip driven remuneration model so common in the US!

Get out and about the world more, people. There are other, better ways of doing it. Less exploitative - better recognising the 'dignity of labour'!

I'm sorry but it is ridiculous to be taxed on wages that are not set in stone. And 2$ an hour is abuse. I don't understand why people accept this and than lay the blame on the customers!

They should go on strike or something and demand reasonable wages. But I think they probably like this system because the Americans I meet that have worked in the service industry always tell me how much money they make from tips.

Tips are not compulsory, if they were they would not be tips. The amount of tip should be based on the service received.

I thought the tipping thing was very uncomfortable in the US when I was on holiday there. The waiters are fishing for tips so obviously it's uncomfortable and one time two of them even had an argument over who was entitled to our table! They were standing right next to our table arguing!

#12 --

it is quite hard to work out what is the right thing to do

No it isn't. You must have read something about it beforehand, and read that the right thing to do was 15-20%. I notice that only once you made a mistake upwards (still within the range of "the right thing to do"), and routinely tipped below 15%. It's odd that you difficulty resulted in mistakes all in the direction that kept money in your pocket.

#22 --

Most such countries require employers to pay according to the expertise required

Could you explain how that works in Australia? Here, aside from the minimum wage, the market basically sets compensation, if we include labor unions as an element of the market. Has Australia abandoned the market? Everyone's wages and salaries are set by the government?

I am not going to get into the whole "tipping is bad/tipping is good" debate. That has been done to death on there. When you travel you live with the quirks of the place you visit.

I would say in Washington DC area tipping ranges between 15% and 20%. If you get really bad service (as we did not long ago, obviously you tip less than 15% or not at all. If you get great service you head toward the 20% line. Also, if you are served at a table (not McDonalds or Starbucks) you generally don't tip less that $1.00.

Bars I generally tip a buck a drink, but since I don't spend a lot of time in bars that may or may not be standard.

I don't generally take cabs so I don't know on that one.

Taking the advise of the person trying to get the tip is probably not the best measure of how much to tip.

Standard Tips in the places I have lived:

In small town Illinois (the mid west and the center of the country) tipping ranges between 15% and 20%

In Chicago, a midwestern city (the 3rd largest city in the US) tipping ranges between 15% and 20%

In Washington, DC (a fairly hoity toity/fashionable and expensive town..at least compared to the midwest) tipping ranges between 15% and 20%.

In any of these places, a 10% tip is cheap, rude and is only done if the service was exceptionally bad. It is just bad manners and rude. These tipping rules do not apply at fast food counters or if the tip is factored in. Cabs are more by feel. Also remember that tour guides in the US also frequently survive on their tips.

you are definitely being rude to your waiter if you tip less than 15% no matter how large your bill is.

Tip whatever you feel the service deserves.. Isnt that the point of tipping, i mean otherwise everyone would just charge 20% more right? instead of expecting it.

but in the US there is a fairly standardized understanding that normal service is between 15-20%, exceptional service is 20%, and poor and substandard service is 10%. The point of tipping is that the restaurants here dont pay minimum wage, and since i assume you are not coming to the US to lobby for better wage laws, you would generally be expected to follow our customs.

a 10% tip is cheap, rude and is only done if the service was exceptionally bad.

Rule of thumb on this: A 10% tip should be accompanied by a nasty note explaining what the waiter did wrong. If it wasn't bad enough to leave the nasty note, it also wasn't bad enough to leave the short tip.

--M.