"Gregory Morrow" > wrote in
message ink.net...
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/nyregion/11tip.html
>
[snip]

> A man from the New York City area was arrested Sunday night after his
> party
> of nine failed to leave an 18 percent tip, the restaurant's mandatory
> gratuity for parties of six or more people, which had been added to his
> bill.
>
> The diner, Humberto A. Taveras, 41, was arrested, fingerprinted and
> photographed for a mug shot in Lake George, a resort village about 60
> miles
> north of Albany, but he did not produce the $13.73 tip, which is a little
> less than 18 percent of the $77.43 cost of his meal. He faces a
> misdemeanor
> charge of theft of services and, if convicted, could serve up to a year in
> jail, said Larry J. Cleveland, the Warren County sheriff.
>
> Mr. Soprano said that many of his waitresses were college students and
> that
> others were single mothers.
>
> "This is for the hard-working people who work for me; it's not for me," he
> said. "These people work strictly for tips, and they work their tails
> off."
>
(Really trying to subdue a major rant!)
Now you went and did it. This subject is one of my pet peeves, if ever
there was one.

What the *#&^ is a "mandatory gratuity"???? A gratuity is your measure of
appreciation of services, NOT a required surcharge to subsidize under-paid
staff!!

Mr Soprano says, "This is for the hard-working people who work for me; it's
not for me. .........These people [many of them students and single moms]
work strictly for tips, and they work their tails off."

So, HE is the one not paying for their services! AND expecting to pass the
responsibility on to the diner, regardless of the level of "gratitude" you
feel toward your server. ??? After all, the level of service in a
restaurant can make or break its reputation and volume of business,
regardless of the quality of food.

I think servers who are professional should be paid a decent wage and
tipping should truly be a gratuity. In a perfect world, anyway. I'll try
to find an article I read on how mandatory tipping policy was conned on
Amercan diners, proported to be a French tradition, though it never was so.

Imagine standing at a market check-out... "Sir, that will be another 18%
because your purchase is so large and our baggers are really sweating on
this one." Most places give a DISCOUNT for larger purchases.