Shaming Lousy Tippers Into Better Behavior

A new style of restaurant check has emerged that has the potential to mitigate an old problem we've all experienced: the great dinner out with friends that gets sullied by a less-than-savory settling up of the bill because there are one or more cheap tippers in the group. See if you recognize either of these scenarios:

• The check lands in front of you. You announce the check total. Everyone in the party throws in a wad of cash. Somehow the total doesn't cover the food and drinks, tax, and a decent tip (say, 18%).

• The check arrives, and everyone throws in a credit card. The restaurant does the division, either equally or to your specifications; each diner completes their individual check. Returning to the table to collect a forgotten item, you notice that the check on top of the pile includes a 7% tip.
  

Such moments are uncomfortable, and they can get ugly. If I notice an inadequate total, I will usually cover the deficit myself rather than make a scene at the table or stiff the server. If I can identify the cheapskate, I will have a private conversation with them about it later: “Don't do that again, or I won't invite you out with us again.” I've had friends shrug or get angry and tell me to go to hell. Others have apologized and agreed. I try to exercise as much tact as possible in this situation, but one way or another, I make sure they don't try to pull a similar stunt around me again.

Being a miserly tipper is a character flaw in my book, an impediment to friendship, and I eventually shun repeat offenders. I find it baffling when folks aren't ashamed about their cheapness and undertipping, but many are not. I suspect that some people undertip because they think their bad behavior is invisible: in the scenarios I outlined above, they stand a good chance of their skinflinting going undetected by their friends.

Enter a genius new solution: the split-but-still-communal restaurant check. (It's new to me, anyway: I wonder what the proper term for it is.) I got my first such check at dinner recently in a Boston restaurant. It works like this for a party of four splitting the check four ways. The check arrives, everyone throws in a credit card, the server runs them and returns with five copies of the receipt, which all look like this:
______________________________
Total: $200

Fred's Mastercard xxxx1234: $50
Tip: _____
Total: _____
Signature: _____

Jerry's Visa xxxx2345: $50
Tip: _____
Total: _____
Signature: _____

Louise's Amex xxxx3456: $50
Tip: _____
Total: _____
Signature: _____

Chloe's Discover xxxx4567: $50
Tip: _____
Total: _____
Signature: _____
______________________________

Everyone gets one copy of the receipt for their own records (that's four of the five copies). The last copy of the split-but-communal check is the restaurant's, and it must be filled out by each diner in succession. The tip you leave gets passed around; everyone after you sees it. (Signing last might let you get away with something, but you still risk being exposed if someone asks to see the check again, say, to "recheck their math".) It's harder to hide if you're screwing the server on the gratuity. Your bad behavior is far less likely to be invisible to your dining companions.

I love the idea of this new type of check splitting, and hope it catches on. It has the potential to shed a little sunshine on tightwads, perhaps shaming them into the humanly decent and socially customary tipping behavior they ought to be exhibiting. Lest we forget, restaurant server gratuities aren't just some nice-to-do-if-you-feel-like it, optional practice in the US. Quite the contrary: tips provide the lion's share of compensation to nearly everyone in the front of the house, including your server, other servers who help out, service waiters, buspeople, bar staff, and in some establishments, the sommelier, captain/headwaiter and/or manager.

For Massachusetts service workers who depend on tips, $2.63 is the typical hourly wage, a fraction of the $8/hour minimum enjoyed by most workers. Even worse, substandard tips bite servers twice: they are liable for taxes on a percentage of sales (which varies according to a somewhat complicated IRS formula based on the restaurant's past two years' credit and debit card receipts -- 15% is not unusual) even if you stiff them.

At the end of the day, I consider proper tipping not just the socially correct thing to do, but the moral one as well. I am hopeful that split-communal checks will nudge more restaurant patrons into the proper tipping habit. I wish more people had simply learned this as part of their upbringing, but many clearly haven't, and if social shame is what it takes to make them better restaurant customers and human beings, so be it.

*****

I've made some assumptions above, as follows:

• I assume that there is consensus at the table that the service was at least adequate, that any undertipping is out of cheapness, not a response to poor service.

• I'm also assuming that no one at the table is in straitened financial circumstances, that everyone can equally afford the cost of dining out, including tax and tip. One could argue that if you can't afford to pay your fair share at the chosen venue, you shouldn't be dining there, but that is a more complicated and delicate scenario than the one I'm addressing here.

• I take it as given that there will be unintended consequences to this new check type, like what happens when everyone in the party is a cheap d-bag. In such a case, it could backfire: the first Scrooge might validate everyone else's rationalizations of their own penny-pinching. On the other hand, it might drive a bunch of hedge-fund guys to try to outdo each other with the size of their big swinging tips. I can live with that; I just wonder what other unanticipated outcomes might arise.
  

• My examples assume that you usually play it loose when dividing checks, that you don't sweat paying for your friends' five extra cocktails or foie gras appetizer. Why wouldn't you care? Because at some point, you have been or will be the more extravagant eater/drinker. Some folks like to break dinner checks down to the cent. My friends and I like to skip the niggling at the end of a nice meal and just divide by round numbers – we figure it all comes out in the wash. Occasionally, we may do more math, e.g., to ensure our teetotaling friends don't have to subsidize our alcohol costs. But that only affects the pre-tip amount. Whether you divide evenly or itemize down to the blue-cheese-dressing upgrade, everyone still has to tip like a mensch.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the Restaurant, or, Dirty Laundry and Dining Out Don't Mix

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor share a tender moment
 in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966)

A funny thing happens when my beloved and I head out for a romantic dinner: we often get seated next to couples who are obviously having a miserable time. The comically bad first date is one common scenario. We still wince to recall the hapless dope at Khao Sarn Cuisine who got snappish with the server upon learning he couldn’t order egg drop soup or General Gau’s chicken at a traditional Thai restaurant. Given his date's cringing embarrassment, we rated the odds of her returning his subsequent calls as vanishingly low.

More pitiable was the couple at Casa Romero who were celebrating years of wedded bliss by loudly calling each other the vilest names I've ever heard uttered in a public place. (There's something about the C-word that just pole-axes the romance and tenderness of an anniversary dinner.) I kept glancing sideways, wondering when the crockery might start flying. The idea of divorce was being broached by the time we gratefully left, to which I thought, “Hmm, maybe not such a bad idea for you two.”

On another evening, at the new L’Espalier, a sixtyish man with the mien of an insurance executive prosecuted an excruciating fight with his garishly attractive, thirtyish paramour. Apparently he was remodeling their love nest and accused her of cheating on him with one of his contractors. She protested against what she characterized as insane, jealous delusions. The recriminations, too sordid to detail here, got uglier and louder, though the young woman did a better job of retaining her dignity.

The whole shabby business unfolded and escalated rapidly. In ten minutes, we went from being unwilling but slightly titillated eavesdroppers ("Ha-ha!, Ole Sugar Daddy and His Siliconed Hottie Mistress are having a little tiff") to feeling sad and ashamed for them. I think the tipping point was when we realized that this dinner was her birthday celebration. Or maybe it was just witnessing the bloom go off the rose of their romance -- perhaps once beautiful, now revealed as arid mutual exploitation -- in real time.

I got up and sought out the floor manager, who with the help of three servers deftly relocated us, our wine, and the second course of our tasting menu to another table out of earshot, though not line-of-sight. After a bit more sparring, Miss Decolletage finally stalked out. The old man sat there for another hour, sulking blackly with his entree untouched, knocking back a whole bottle of wine and a few whiskeys by himself. Happy effing birthday.

So, why on earth do people air out their personal lives like so much threadbare, stained underwear in restaurants where strangers can't look away? I have a few theories. One, to certain couples, restaurants afford rare moments of imagined privacy away from children and in-laws and telephones and texting, a seeming oasis for real conversation. Two, lovers let their guard down at the table, lulled by attentive service, warm atmosphere and good food, the illusion of privacy enhanced by a ring of unfamiliar faces. Three, flowing alcohol is often a lubricant, sliding open windows long barred by familial pressures, guilt, connubial obligation, or propriety.

Whatever the reason, you may find yourself dining next to a soap opera you didn’t ask to see and can’t easily tune out. With luck, you'll be at a place like L’Espalier, where a highly polished waitstaff will adroitly swoop in whenever a party of Battling Bickersons threatens to spoil your dinner. But more often, especially during restaurants' increasingly crowded weekend nights, the host simply won't be able to move you to another table. That's something to remember the next time your own conversation in a restaurant turns toward more intimate subjects. Chances are your neighbors are getting an earful of your private drama, and would really rather not.