How to tip at a restruant and a bar.

I have been eating out a lot lately and I have noticed service on a large range from down right undeserving and horrible to outstandingly amazing. This broad range of quality of service can be seen within the same restaurant too. The tip that we leave, is always determined in a whispered, frantic, discussion between me and my girlfriend at the table. So I've decided to come up with some kind of scoring system to easily judge how much of a tip the waitress or waiter deserves, not based off what percentage people think is enough. Now before you go and curse at your computer screen and say that I'm a tight-wad person, read this example of poor service.
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One evening me and my girlfriend went to a well known, very popular local seafood restaurant in our home town. She doesn't usually eat very much so we usually just share one order of whatever we feel like eating. She's full, I'm full, and we're happy and saved money. So this particular night we did our usual order of 2 drinks, and 1 meal. We get the bill and notice an added 18% gratuity to the bill. The waitress didn't do an outstanding job. She was kind of rude to me and smarted off in a jokingly way, but that doesn't mean I tolerate that kind of thing. She brought two plates and then the food on a third. We only needed two plates including the one with the food on it. So my girlfriend gave her one of the empty plates back, and then I gave my girlfriend the other empty plate. The waitress said "she doesn't want that, she just gave me hers." I wanted to tell her to shut up that I know what my girlfriend wants, but I bit my tongue because I was very hungry and didn't want her to shit in my tartar sauce I asked her to bring me.

The place wasn't very packed. Maybe 5 tables were sat and we got our food rather quickly... but undercooked. My girlfriend actually had an allergic reaction to the crawfish because it wasn't cooked enough. However, that was much later into the night that we noticed that. So we get our bill... and there is the 18% gratuity added to it. I thought to myself, "Did we cripple kitchen production? Did we have to get tables moved together? Did we have a party of 5 or more?" No. No we had one order of fried shrimp and crawfish on one plate for two people. The waitress was rude, unprofessional, and I always seem to get the same bitch every time I go there. I was very upset that this was automatically added to the bill. That restaurant will never see our business again.

To show the waitress, whom didn't seem to come back to the table after she ditched her free ride tip bill off to us, how much I was upset; I didn't pay it. I mean... I paid for the food, but I left exactly 18% less money than the total of the bill. I wonder if they will take her tip out of her tips. Yeah, because that made sense...

So the next time we went eat out was at one of the local truck-stop diners. I didn't leave a tip that time either, because the woman didn't even say anything when she walked up to the table. She just stared at us like we were gonna shoot her cat after we were done eating. She walked up to the table, and fucking stared at us. Plain and simple. I said "uh... she wants a dr. pepper with no ice, and i want a coke." She scribbled some shit on the paper and left. That right there is a damned insult. What the fuck are you doing waiting tables if you can't even say hello? To make a short story shorter... it took her 10 minutes to return with the drinks, and another 45 minutes to bring the food, which was hot, surprisingly enough. Her tip - $0.00. For not saying a fucking word, not coming check on us when I needed some more ketchup, coke, and dr. pepper, and plopping the plates down. How do you plop someone's plate down on the table? What the fuck is wrong with you? I'd hate to see how you put your kids to bed.

The scoring system: Restaurants

They'll start off with a 20% tip. That's very generous but let's take a look at the things that will fuck that all up.

Sitting at the table: Some do this when they take an order. You get, no tip. - And you better hope I don't have a straw yet, cuz I will shoot the paper of it at you when you walk away, bitch, don't invade my personal space.

Screwing up the drink order: To me, this is the most important part of a meal. I don't want to eat a steak, and then drink milk. So don't screw my drink order up. If you do, you're only getting 10%. You're not gonna get shit if you don't fix it.

Screwing up the food order: This includes not cooked all the way, wrong food, or cold food. If you do this, you get 5%. I go to specific restaurants for a specific food, not to try new things at your leisure.

Assuming you can keep the change: If the total is say, $34.75 and I give you 2 $20 bills. DO NOT assume you can keep the change. I will speak to the manager, and I will try to get your fired with some sad story of why I needed that money. I know its dishonest, but there is no blow lower. If you want a tip, do you job right with a smile on your face, be nice and don't fuck up, and you'll get tips. Stealing gets you in jail. Offer to bring my change back to me and I'll say you can have it, or I'll just leave it on the table with more money or whatever.


The Bars -

Tipping at a bar is simple. $1 for every beer you buy, and $2 for every mixed drink. Bartenders put up with a lot of shit. I didn't realize this until I actually started to date one. It is VERY rare that a bartender is rude, or untimely. It's a fast paced environment with rapid customer turn over rates. I WANT my bartender to be as fast as humanly possible and say as little as possible unless I ask a question about a drink or some shit. Bartenders have to hear sob stories, get hit on, have rude comments made toward them, and they are all done by drunken idiots. Most bars don't allow them to drink or even talk on the phone, they are there to be your alcohol slave.

Which brings me to an important cardinal rule for bars and restaurants.

Don't fuck with the people who handle your food/drinks.

They can and WILL fuck your shit up royally. I've seen it done over and over and it can get ugly. Just remember, you can't taste vinegar when you're already drunk, and saliva is tasteless on a burger. You've been warned.

When I was just a kid, maybe around 4 years old or so, I woke up on the night of December 24th to a noise I had never heard before in the middle of the night. The way my parents house is designed is that when I opened my bedroom door, you can see into an office that was part of the living room. But a semi-section of wall blocked view from the living room to my bedroom. In order to see in the living room you had to walk into the office a little bit, or travel back up the hallway toward the bathroom and enter the living room there...

So here I am, 6 years old, and I want to know what this noise was. So I got up and went investigate. Being a huge fan of police forces, military and James Bond... i was trained. I was like a shadow ninja so that whoever, or whatever, didn't hear me, or see me coming. I was used to slow crawling up to my cats and walking around as not to wake them. I was good at this shit.

When I got my full view of the living room my heart sunk. I saw my father there eating Santa's cookie, my mom was drinking some of the milk and then she screwed around with the fireguard on the fireplace as to make it look like a 350lb man could fit through that tiny hole. Dad then brought in a few more presents that look like Dillard's boxes wrapped in your local 99 cent store wrapping paper.

"What the..." is what I thought as I came to a crashing realization that Santa is not real. That bastard Santa wasn't the one who kept bringing me navy blue slacks, socks, ink pens, and pencil erasers on Christmas... it was my parents! I went back to my room and stayed awake all night running this over in my head. No Santa? No Reindeer? That means... no Eastern Bunny either. Which explains the huge amount of candy in the basket being everything my mom loves to pig out on. She still put out Easter baskets for me well into my 20's. She did this because, that's what she does. She has a hard time dealing with change, and loosing something. She was loosing me as the innocent kid she once had, and I've changed from what I used to be, into someone who is stronger than even myself had ever imagined I could be. All those years of my mom putting out the Easter basket for me, has led her to become what the doctor says is "borderline diabetic". Too many sweets will do this to you. It's wrong to steal candy from me, regardless of when I was a child or not... I'll hurt you.

I've strayed off course...

A lot of you don't mind getting socks and ugly navy blue slacks for Christmas. That's fine. Pens and Pencils make you tingle? Good. Just keep it to yourself. I was pissed off. I raised hell every year after that about getting slacks, socks or some other stupid non-toy item. Bring me a bike, a Nintendo, an RC Car for fucks-sake! I even threatened to my mom that I would skin Santa Clause alive. Yes, even after I knew that Santa was irreversibly my father. No, I would not have skinned my dad. Sicko.

One year, my mom left a sales receipt on the table after she got back from what she said was "Christmas Shopping". Yet again, clothes, clothes, socks, clothes.... PENCIL ERASERS!? What the hell have I done to make this woman think that I'm totally IN LOVE with pencil erasers? It was time for a full deployment of resources, a battalion of insults, and a swift execution plan.

I waited till my parents went to bed that Christmas Eve. I made sure I sneaked enough coca-cola to be WIRED awake by that time. Sure enough, I was. I had cat-like hearing in that old house, my footsteps were unheard even to the cats... walked right passed two of them. I crept across the living room at what seemed to be 1/2 the speed of molasses moving uphill on a cold day. And I planted my bomb. It was a bag. A duffel bag full of all the slacks, socks, erasers, paperclips, and uniball ink-pens were contained within. On the outside of the bag I left a "Return to Sender" address label I found on my dad's desk, and a small note that said "Dear Santa, you don't have to bring me this anymore. I'm sure that if I needed them that bad, my mom and dad would buy them for me throughout the rest of the year." I let out a very faint chuckle reading over the note before I bolted. I sneaked out the living room, careful not to step on the cats, and went into my room and laid next to the door with the door locked, and my ear under the door, next to the floor so I could hear.

Now the slick execution. I gave the wall, right next to the door, a quick hard jab. Enough to make the sound travel throughout the house, but not enough to cause alarm. It worked, my parents woke up and thought it was me, but they checked the living room to see the bag instead of heading directly to my room. My door was locked, so they couldn't just barge in. The knocked and called my name... but I didn't respond with anything but a fake snore. I climbed back into bed, and fell asleep. The next morning I awoke to a Nintendo 64, a brand new mountain bike, more lego's than I knew what to do with and a $100 gift certificate to Toys -R- Us from Sant.... MY DAD?!?! Wow... I must have struck a nerve, that never happened before. Christmas was mighty fine this year... mighty fine.

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So that is the story of when I found out Santa wasn't real, and what I did about it. Unfortunately the very next year I was back to my ugly floss and erasing expeditions.

Guide Review - Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 Ultraportable Laptop

3/3/08 – The Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 had a number of updated features over the previous P7000 series in a number of different ways. The most notable of these is the larger 12.1” LCD display that increases the overall size of the system. It is no longer a system that tends to be cramped for extended use. Of course, the extra space also means that it is larger and heavier than previous models.

One nice upgrade for the LifeBook P8010 is the use of the newer Intel Core 2 Duo SL7100 low voltage processor. This finally brings the P series to dual core processors across its whole product line. This gives it a significant boot in performance from the older system but it isn't as fast as many competiting ultraportables. The 1GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory also holds it back somewhat as most are moving to 2GB. Thankfully the system uses the less memory intensive Windows XP Professional operating system over Vista.

Storage space has been increased in the LifeBook P8010 to a respectable 120GB of storage space. This isn't as large as some on the market but provides a good middle ground between the performance of the system and storage space. As always, the LifeBook P series includes an optical drive that isn't as unique as it once was in the ultraportable market. The dual layer DVD burner allows it to record or playback CDs and DVDs.

Another puzzling design decision is the use of the date Type II PC Card slot over the much faster and more flexible ExpressCard designs. This apparently is more for compatibility with older expansion cards than future expansion. That is probably the best way to sum up the experience of the LifeBook P8010 as a system that tried to update but falls short by relying on the past.