I believe there is a rule at least about capping the tip on a bottle of wine so if you order so absurdly expensive wine you leave a flat $ amount for that (forget what that is).
I recently learned about the Resort Airline checkin thing. I was under the impression that they work for the airline and cannot accept tips. But you are supposed to tip them?
I would treat this situation as I treat dropping of my bags/checking in at the airport curbside checkin (skycap). That is, I would tip them a couple of bucks per bag.
FWIW when I fly, on the occasions that I check a bag, I always seek out the skycap. I find it often takes far less time to get my bag checked (less waiting in line), and I am more than happy to spend a few extra dollars to save some time when Iām at the airport.
As @gparkins noted, resort check in are the same airport employees as the airport curbside check in (skycap).
I do want to mention how servers are taxed as income. The government expects and reports as income a percentage of all checks they have created. They will also have to ātip outā support staff. You might not agree with the US system but a personal disagreement does not change it. A server cannot āopt outā of paying the tax even if it for a tip they never received.
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Great point. To be fair on this point though, if they receive a large cash tip (over what is reported), they also usually do not report that extra amount. To a certain extent, it does work both ways. This is less of an issue now with so many tips being left on CCās and there being a tracking of it, but when it was mostly cash, tip amounts reported by the service industry were usually vastly under-reported.
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But they also pay the taxes on the tip for the check they have to pay out of pocket for those guests that decide to leave without paying (yes - even in Disney).
Donāt disagree, but it is important to know and understand how the system works, even if we dislike it.
Another thing to consider for those comparing lower cost establishments to higher cost ones, the amount of tables/customers a diner server can turn through their tables in an hour may be far greater than what another experience can. So that diner table, at $35 average table may turn it twice in the hour, where the character meal server may have the same group at the table for 60-90 minā¦I do usually consider time on what end of my tipping range I tip.
Yep, its a ebb and flow of advantages and disadvantages. I disagree completely with this practice, but it is a practice. Security should not be a servers jobā¦
If the server at a buffet just gives us initial drinks and doesnāt clear anything until after we leave, I tip closer to 10%. If my used dishes magically all disappear each time I visit the buffet, our drinks are replenished regularly, they check on our needs, maybe even give us advice on dishes to try, weāll tip >$20 as we would for solid true table service. (That said, since we have 4 kids and fell under the party of 6 rule, the 18% often saved us money as we only tipped on top of that for stellar service.)
Generally, you are not expected to tip on alcohol. At fine dining, you might separately tip the wine steward. Or at a bar, you tip the bartender.
The rationale for basing the tip on the amount of the bill is that higher end restaurants intend to provide a higher level of service so will hire the better servers, so moving on to a higher priced restaurant is how professional servers advance in the industry.
And the point that tips are often shared with staff besides your server is spot on. At a buffet, this includes the runners that restock the buffet and keep it tidy.
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I always forget this because thereās no sales tax where I live. Every time I travel Iām shocked at the bill 
Thank you for the reminder.
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Do you tip at BoG lunch where itās supposedly QS but a person carts the food over to your table?
Iāve heard this before, but I think some restaurants force servers to ātip-outā the bartenders for a percentage of whatever sales came from the bar.
I agree with whoever mentioned expensive bottles of wine. If I was paying $500 for a bottle, I probably wouldnāt tip 20%on that. Although if I could afford the bottle, an extra $100 wouldnāt be a big deal, so who knows.
No you donāt need to. Some people leave a couple of dollars.
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Who was I kidding?
Iāll try to be calm and reasonable.
Hereās why I donāt like the US tipping system.
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Transparency
It is not actually clear who gets the tip. Is it your specific server? Is it pooled amongst all servers? Is it shared with back-of-house staff? Does it all go to the restaurant owner? Are servers forced to make contributions to other staff based on an assumed level of tipping? I donāt know. Itās not explained. Different restaurants have different policies. I also shouldnāt need to care. It shouldnāt be any of my business. -
Minimum wage
We are told you have to tip 18-20% because waiting staff get paid a dismally low minimum wage of a few bucks an hour. It is true that this is the wage they get. But all the people they serve are all supplementing this very low wage so that the total can in fact be extremely high. At a typical WDW character buffet meal, the tip is around $8 per person. For that the server takes the drinks order, delivers the drinks order, hopefully keeps the drinks topped up, clears the plates and finally brings the check. A table of four is tipping $32. They are in the restaurant for an hour at most. The waiter is serving, say, four tables at a time. Theyāre easily making an additional $100 per hour. Let me say that again. Theyāre making one hundred dollars an hour. For easy work. What do you earn per hour? I make about $60 an hour. I have two undergraduate degrees and thirty years experience. Iām paying my server a rate nearly double the rate Iām paid. But letās all focus on the $2.15 minimum wage they get and ignore the huge extra amount in tips they make. -
Quick service vs Table service
QS staff are not tipped. TS staff are. Explain this to me. Oh! The QS staff get a high minimum wage. Yes good point. And thatās all they get. Not a cent more. The table service staff, who have a much more pleasant job, get paid a lower minimum wage, but get a huge uplift in income from tips. Why? There is no logical reason for the difference. As Iāve said, I think TS staff have the nicer job. They work in a nicer environment. They get to interact with customers (plusses and minuses there, admittedly). QS staff work in typically hot, cramped conditions under high pressure to keep the line moving. -
Steak vs Salad
The tip is based on the cost of the food. Why? Is bringing a fillet steak to the table more onerous than bringing a green salad? Is it three times more onerous? The tip is three times as much. -
Higher tips prompt better service
I think this is a huge myth. The best service Iāve had at WDW is from non-tipped employees. The worst service Iāve had is from the tipped ones. The tipped ones are constantly hustling. The non-tipped ones are focussed on guest experience. I think of guest relations CMs who do their best to resolve your issue and make you walk away happy. Front desk CMs who do their best to find you a much better room than the one you were allocated. Or the mens room attendant at GF who gave me a paper towel after Iād washed my hands and reminded me Iād left my bag on the side, and who resolutely refused my attempts to tip him. His minimum wage might be more than a table server, but he literally works in a toilet. -
10% to 15% to 20% to ā¦
The āacceptedā rate of tipping has climbed for no obvious reason over the last few decades. Has the work got harder? Has the service improved?
What mystifies me about these debates is why people just seem to accept the system and then try to find a logic to support it. Or they throw their arms in the air and say āwell, thatās just the way things are doneā ā we all know what other practices that argument has supported in the past. Or it gets aggressive and turns into, āif you donāt like it, donāt visit our countryā. Really? Thatāll be good for your economy.
The US tipping system is arbitrary and unfair to almost everyone involved, directly and indirectly. It places an unfair and unwanted burden on the guest to determine the income of the servers. It fails in its alleged primary objective of improving service quality ā good service is found in non-tipped positions every bit as much as tipped ones ā and it provides servers with a perverse incentive to steer and pressure customers towards options that they donāt really want, and to provide them with rushed service to clear the table for the next group of tippers.
Around these parts an arms race seems to develop where people fight each other to show what awesome tippers they are (and, by implication, what phenomenally good people they must be ā certainly better than the rest of us).
For the record, I always tip 20% because the 18% / 20% thing is ludicrous and petty. For genuinely outstanding service Iāve given 25%, for genuinely disappointing service Iāve given 15%.
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Itās regulated in the UK and, while the business remains a challenging and competitive one, good restaurants thrive. Thereās plenty of choice here. And the jobs to go with it.
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Um, no. At a restaurant you tip on the total bill, food and alcohol. Not tipping on alcohol is just one of the argument points used by the anti-tipping crowd. I have never seen any reputable tipping/etiquette guide say this.
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FWIW, itās illegal in the US for the restaurant owner or management to keep any portion of the tips.
A couple of articles if youāre interested in where tips go, including specifically under Florida law.
Iām not saying itās a great system, and it must seem very odd if itās unfamiliar, but it mostly works.
I donāt know about non-tipped CM specifically, but in much of the US service industry, there is incentive pay based on customer feedback (surveys, mentioning an employee by name on Twitter, etc). Tipping just cuts out the middle man and letās the customer establish the incentive pay.
What do you mean by this?
It really doesnāt. The anti-anti-tipping crowd are very aggressive about how you must tip 20% or youāre a scumbag.
Did I miss that post?
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So if I order a $20 bottle of wine I tip $4. If I order a $100 bottle of wine I tip $20? Why the difference? At this point itās just a wealth tax.
There are also a bunch of fundamentally unfair things around tipping (if you are into that, Freakonomics has 4 podcast episodes on it).
How much money you make on tips varies a lot based on your race, age, gender and how good looking you are (yes, researchers actually did that experiment). It does not seem to correlate that strongly with quality of service, although that is harder to study.
I am glad that being a waiter at a Disney restaurant can be a job that pays well. I would (strongly) prefer if they included service and tax in the food price and just charged me that directly, with the staff receiving the same take home pay.
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