I was recently out to brunch at a well known restaurant in Tel Aviv. When my date and I ordered our meals and drinks, we also asked for glasses of water. Water should be brought to restaurant tables – clean, cold and free of fruit wedges – as soon as patrons sit down and they should never have to ask for it, but nobody told this to restaurant managers here.
Anyway, when the food came to our table, the waiter explained to us that the restaurant had run out of glasses, so there were none to bring us our water. We asked three or four more times through the course of the meal and after we were done eating. Each time, the waiter apologized and said that the restaurant was so busy that they had no more glasses available, so we couldn’t have glasses of water.
At some point I remarked that if I owned or managed a restaurant and we somehow managed to miscalculate the number of glasses necessary to keep all our patrons happy, I’d take responsibility by sending someone out to buy new glasses really fast, or at least paper cups. Or if I couldn’t provide glasses of water to my patrons, I’d call the grocery store around the corner to deliver a crate of bottled water, and give one bottle to everyone who asked.
The waiter told us that, due to the acute glass shortage, the kitchen staff was under orders to wash and prepare only glasses for juice and soft drinks, not for free things like water.
How do you tip a waiter in a situation like this? When he left, I told my date that I didn’t think I could justify tipping him in full because, even though the situation wasn’t primarily his fault, tipping is for service, as distinguished from the price of the meal, and if bad service merits a good tip, they may as well charge a gratuity and lose the opportunity to earn a great tip for exceptional service. She said the tip should be unaffected because it wasn’t the waiter’s fault.
I decided to leave half a tip and to use the other half to buy a bottle of water in the kiosk next door.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
In practice, waitstaff estimate how good a tip they can get, and wait accordingly; rather than improving service across the board, tipping therefore tends to improve service for statistically tip-heavy groups, and worsen service for others. All the while allowing management to get away with sub-minimum-wage payments to the staff… more countries should do it like Japan: no tips, waitstaff refuse tips if you try to give them, and instead get paid reasonably by the restaurant.
How would exceptionally good or bad service be recognized in Japan?