Recently the cook (not me) took a well-deserved night off, so I ordered pizza, a large pie with mushrooms and sausage. The pizza place, which will go unmentioned, is just around the corner. Yes, it’s convenient. It’s also decent pizza.
When I went to pay, I was not happy to see an 18 percent charge as part of the total.
What’s this? I asked.
It’s a gratuity, replied the cheerful cashier. She was quick to add that I could always reduce the percentage or wipe out the tip entirely. Your choice.
My choice? Really? Here was a kid, most likely working her way through school, who just told me I could take money out of her pocket, cash that might go for books, clothing, a dining card. What kind of a monster did she take me for?
Gratuity already included is just one of the features ruffling feathers among the eating public during this high season on the Cape and elsewhere. Kitchen fee, community fee, hospitality fee, delivery fee – it’s a darn fee-for-all.
A lot of the vitriol for these add-ons can be found online, in restaurant chatrooms, where I ran across one diner furious that when she asked for a glass of water she was told no because the place didn’t have a filter to clean up the tap water before serving. It must be a ploy to get her to BUY a drink, she said. No doubt, lady, no doubt.
Complaints about servers late to the table, cold food, watery cocktails … it’s all there online, including backlash against the fees.How dare they try to slip one past us? Aren’t these whole-belly clams already pricey enough?
Steve Clark is president and CEO of the Mass Restaurant Association, but that doesn’t mean he’s immune to these annoyances. At a recent restaurant show in Boston’s convention center, he got himself a Diet Pepsi from the fridge at the concessionaire. In other words, Steve did the work. Still, a gratuity charge was waiting for him. He wiped it off his bill before purchasing said Pepsi. Good for Steve!
As far as root causes of this current situation, Clark said, cost variability is the killer. If an owner is charging $15 for a cheeseburger based, in part, on the box of tomatoes he needs going for $8, and suddenly that box shoots up to $19, what’s he to do? Price the cheeseburger accordingly, say, at $25 or $30, or strategically spread the higher cost through these fees? The latter seems more digestible.
In college, I was a waiter at an Italian restaurant. It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, and that includes the sweaty factory stints on my resume. Trying to keep five tables of eaters happy is no mean feat. Somebody’s going to ask for a salt shaker that actually works or other small task, and you’re going to forget and there goes your tip … gone, baby, gone.
Because of that experience, I never tip anything less than 20 percent, even when the food is subpar and the waiter is as hapless as yours truly.
Clark, the restaurant chief, puts the tension between customer and eatery into much-needed perspective. ``We’re all losing the battle,’’ he told me. Customers are paying more, while restaurants are trying to survive the slimmest profit margins they’ve ever seen.
Still, I believe I have a legitimate bone to pick that night I showed up for my pizza. The gratuity already included is insulting. I don’t want to be told how generous I should be.
When I asked Clark if there was a remedy, the man did not hesitate. Pay with cash, he said. Avoid the percentage questions lit up on the pay screen, the math, the guilt-inducing looks from the cashier. Go home in peace to mangia!
