i'm bored come talk to me

[Pascal]

In my experience in Europe, tipping is way less expected and far less common. People will still tip for large-ish meals, but it's rare for people to tip at most bars.

[chemist]

when i played in gotheburg, sweden, you weren't allowed to tip the dealer. What's with that.

Good policy,
removing the incentives and reducing the risks for any corruption.

I think that is what's with that.

[spoonitnow]

Good policy,
removing the incentives and reducing the risks for any corruption.

I think that is what's with that.

Check your PMs.

[surviva316]

I don't think I would enjoy eating in most places if the servers were paid higher and tipping was not a given even if it cost me pretty much the same. . . .

I don't know how much I want to dip my toes into this conversation, but I will point out that people tend to way overestimate the correlation between tips and quality of service. The business is just much more complicated than that. Just as a couple of salient examples:

1) Scheduling servers is a very complicated thing to balance, and how many servers are on the schedule will much more highly correlate with your service than how much the servers give a shit. The reason scheduling servers is complicated is because staffing 4 servers for a night instead of 3 cuts into everyone's pay by 25%. Even hiring bussers, hostesses, bartenders, etc. has drastic effects on how much everyone in the restaurant makes. For any place that has managers that give a shit about their workers' morale and stuff, this generally leads to there being AS FEW help staffed as can possibly keep the restaurant standing upright.

I found this especially true in fine dining where there are far more corners to cut: not doing the french press at the table, pre-bussing silverware with by hand instead of using a tray with a black napkin for display, spending less time on the specials and wines and stuff, there's seriously like infinite corners that can be cut in fine dining, but people will still get their food and get charged the correct amount.

Anyway, this point isn't me taking a side because I'm not naive enough to think that changing it to a system where the restaurant pays for the servers' wages will lead to more staffing than necessary to keep the place standing upright, but I'm just saying that the guests don't hold the magic wand to decide how much the servers make. A lot of it is still about pleasing the managers so that they give prime sections and trust you with more tops and all that stuff.

2) And this one's important so I probably should have put it first: there is a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH higher correlation between how much a server makes and how big their bills are than there is with how good their service is. This does not at all lend to great service. Again, this is ESPECIALLY true in fine dining where a glass of wine can range from $7 to $50. Much more of the game of going home with an assload of money is talking people into spending more (or even going so far as ringing up the second most expensive wine when a guest trusts the server to choose for them) than it is about bringing stuff out on time.

I think it's great that two people in here have said that they tip based on how good the actual service was rather than on how much their ass got kissed, but don't kid yourselves and think that you two people in the universe of billions change all that much about servers' attitudes on how to make money. Not all servers are cutthroat (I was not a cutthroat server at all, mostly because I wasn't living off of my wages), but there isn't a server in their right mind who thinks that they make their money by getting free refills out in a timely manner.

I don't know if this post takes a side or anything, I just thought I'd clarify some misunderstandings about how the business works from a server perspective.

[Penneywize]

I can't believe such a promising thread turned into one exclusively about tipping.

(I know, I'm a buzzkill)...

Anyway I tip always 15% regardless of level of service except in extreme cases. I will tip 20% if all goes well. I never tip less than a dollar unless the drink / meal cost less than like $6.50, in which case always increments of 0.25.

Tipping. Super simple stuff.

[Pascal]

to get this thread back on topic...

check the sticky to get in IRC it takes like 90 seconds i'm bored as fucking shit what's up

or just talk to me in this thread jesus christ i'm about to go nuts

Does anyone use IRC atm? Why didn't you go pinting or play a game?

hey so why did ftr get rid of the reputation system? were there some busto ass pussy ass broke ass busta ass bitch ass people whining about getting neg rep?

edit: hell yeah i'm an ftr qualified member because i'm qualified to fuck yo bitch

Cos some people could give massssive amounts of rep cos the more you had the more you gave, so you could get rep from like 20 people and an old reg could be pissy and neg you and you'd be minus rep suddenly. Grats on being a Qualified Member, you gonna play any games with us?!

okay why the fuck are you posting in a gay ass soccer thread when you could be talking to THIS

Soccer is the nut sport, what sports do you play?

i didn't really leav ei just stopped posting much b/c i stopped playing poker and was focused on doing other shit, also yes i did notice the lack of question marks

i'm dating a chick who is learning to play scrabble really well, and along with that i've thrown together a few training thingies in PHP

lol anagrams - this one builds anagrams around 8-letter words from the north american scrabble dictionary since doing anagrams is one of the most common ways recommended to improve

Two Letter Word Scrabble Trainer - quick thing to help chick learn the two-letter words

Why don't you play poker anymore? I like your training stuff - any other ways, is it worth doing crosswords and puzzles and stuf?

lived in raleigh for about a year, #42 largest city in usa by population, have stayed in charlotte a lot, #17 largest city in usa by population, have been to philly for a week/week and a half at times for chess stuff which is top 5 largest cities etc and that's probably the farthest i've been from where i grew up, i don't really care too much for travel etc, i was in philly for chess events (the world open), i'm working for myself and doing alright with it, at a crossroads where i need to decide whether to expand with that or go back to school, leaning towards the first option

Why don't you like travelling?

because i can't put 100% of effort into both, also to this and the quoted part above, i'm most of the way through a BS in applied mathematics but i'm super disillusioned with the whole go to college -> get a job making someone else rich -> die scenario

I'm completely with you on this - if you had to open a business right now, what would you open and why?

i fucking hate when a waitress is giving you commentary about what you're doing or what you're eating, etc.

bikes gave a great example of the bitch saying you get the same every time and i'm like damn woman why don't you mind your fucking business and stfu

and don't even get me started on tipping

Yeah I caught a few of those. I made the fake list on a whim meaning to go back and revise it once I was done, but I never got around to it.

You said you're not a big fan of words with friends, is it because you can try and make a word and it'll instantly tell you it isn't a word so people go from stupid stuff but with lots of connecting letters to get massive points when they'd never be able to do that in Scrabble?

I've never played live with a dealer.

Why not?

Check your PMs.

No.

[spoonitnow]

Jesus fucking Christ Pascal.

There have been a few people in IRC everytime I've connected in the past month.
What is going pinting?
I doubt I'll play any games with FTR.
Soccer sucks.
I don't really know much about training for Scrabble outside of 15 minutes of research.
You can play Scrabble with different types of challenge rules. On ISC, the void challenge style works just like WWF. I just don't like WWF because I'm not really a fan of Scrabble.
I've played live in home games, but not with a dedicated dealer. I don't live near any poker rooms. The closest is something like a five-hour drive.
The "Check your PMs" was to Chemist.

[spoonitnow]

I hate when a business owner treats an employee like shit and then gets mad when the employee quits. The employee doesn't owe you shit unless they have agreed to do a certain amount of work at a certain rate.

[chemist]

I hate when an employee treats a business like shit and still expects to get paid.
Mostly when they are the chief executive saying they need big rewards for their big responsibility. But don't understand the meaning of responsibility when the business goes down the pan and they still want their big fat bonus.


Employee loyalty to a company doesn't get rewarded in these times.
Companies aren't loyal to their employees.
So Contracting is the answer; agreeing to do a certain amount of work at a certain rate.

[spoonitnow]

I hate when an employee treats a business like shit and still expects to get paid.
Mostly when they are the chief executive saying they need big rewards for their big responsibility. But don't understand the meaning of responsibility when the business goes down the pan and they still want their big fat bonus.


Employee loyalty to a company doesn't get rewarded in these times.
Companies aren't loyal to their employees.
So Contracting is the answer; agreeing to do a certain amount of work at a certain rate.

I think contracting is definitely the direction that a lot of industries have been heading for a while now.

[a500lbgorilla]

Contracting makes you more expensive. Salaried workers can work on several projects. Contractors just worry about the one.

[supa]

Contracting makes you more expensive. Salaried workers can work on several projects. Contractors just worry about the one.

True now but the more companies start contracting out their work the more the contractors will drop their prices to get the work. Eventually some contractors will be undercutting the others just to get the work, driving wages down. Just like what happened when construction went to piecework in the 80s. Everyone was basically making minimum wage.

[spoonitnow]

Contracting makes you more expensive. Salaried workers can work on several projects. Contractors just worry about the one.

I think this is too general of a statement. One counter would be that salaried workers are not as productive because they are not as driven to work as efficiently, so you end up paying them just as much because it takes them longer. You also have to pay them for time spent screwing off on the clock, and your tax liability is larger.

[spoonitnow]

So I made this shit today from some shit I had laying around to hold this chick's headbands (this kind of headband). It's got an owl engraved on each end because she likes owls or whatever. It's 6" x 5.5" x 15".

[Xianti]

So I made this shit today from some shit I had laying around to hold this chick's headbands (this kind of headband). It's got an owl engraved on each end because she likes owls or whatever. It's 6" x 5.5" x 15".

Looks more like a shoe rack.

[spoonitnow]

Looks more like a shoe rack.

Umm, both of her legs were amputated as a baby.







Okay not really.

[supa]

I sincerely hope you are banging said chick... legs or not.

[spoonitnow]

I sincerely hope you are banging said chick... legs or not.

It's a chick I've been seeing for a few months. I randomly had the idea after she was bitching about her headbands being piled up with nowhere good to put them, and I wanted to see if it would work. The stain is still drying, but we'll probably know if I got the size situation right by tomorrow.