TIPS: To Insure (im)Proper Service
February 8, 2009
That is what the acronym stands for these days.
I played in a poker tournament yesterday, and placed nowhere near the money.
Story of my life.
Our tournament lasted almost three hours, and while the staff in the poker room was great, the drink service was a little slow. To say the least.
At one point, after 45 minutes without seeing a waitress, I personally went to find a lady to bring us drinks.
She assured me that she would send someone over “immediately”.
Twenty “immediate” minutes later, we finally got a waitress who admonished one of our players that he could have “one drink only!” when he was ordering for himself and his wife. She erroneously assumed that he was getting two drinks for himself at once (perish the thought).
After an hour absence, I think the waitress should have brought over a keg, but I digress …
Excalibur Poker Room Cocktail Waitress
Tips are the grease for the cogs of the Las Vegas economic machine.
As I have stated before, there has been a large service decline here in Vegas. In my opinion, service levels between now and 2001 are like night and day.
Years ago, waitresses used to practically pester me to give me drinks, and I got service with a smile everywhere I went.
Now, it’s very hit and miss. You can still find great service in town, but the likelihood that you will not is increasing.
Despite the decline in service, the same level of tipping is still expected.
Herein lies part of the problem.
I think we have gotten to a point where tips are so expected that people no longer work for them.
“Here’s your drink, yeah it took half an hour, so what, gimme at least two bucks or I will tell the other servers that you are a deadbeat.”
I know a fair amount of people in the service industry. Most of them are great people. However, when we get on the subject of tips, I always find myself on the opposite side of the argument than they are.
They inform me that I should always tip because that is how they get paid, and I insist that they should earn it as if they were in business for themselves. I don’t tip my mechanic when he screws up my car.
Now, before you get me wrong, I suppose I have to clarify my own tipping habits.
Locals and non-US foreigners are often lumped together and stereotyped as being poor tippers, but that is actually not the case with me.
Of course, living here and being in casinos nearly every day, I can’t overtip or I would go broke in short order. I’m not Diamond Jim Whaletipper, but I tip $2-$3 for every cocktail waitress beverage. I tip the poker dealer on every win. I often place bets for Blackjack dealers, I give the cab driver 10%-30%, and I give food servers 10%-35% depending on level of service.
Sure, nobody’s eyes light up in this town when I tip them, but I think I make it worth their while to serve me.
I am starting to re-think my habits, though, for a number of reasons.
First, I do not agree with employers who pay less than the minimum wage on the premise that the customer will pay the rest of the wage. Wages are mandatory. Tips are optional. How do you pay someone a theoretical wage?
It should be a business’s job to pay their staff. Anything we give over and above is a gratuity to “show gratitude”.
To make matters worse, The Internal Revenue Service taxes Vegas cab drivers on tips that they often never receive. The cab companies take money out of each driver’s check for tips that they were “supposed” to get for that ride … even if they do not get them.
Don’t ask me how that is legal, because I couldn’t tell you.
This policy is one of the reasons that taxi cab scams such as long hauling are so prevalent in this town.
This also shows how far the “mandatory” nature of tipping has become. People are now taxed on their tips before they ever earn them … if they ever earn them.
This helps instill the “entitlement” mentality of the receivers of tips. After all, if the employers aren’t paying them, and they are getting taxed on the tips … then in their mind, we all have an obligation to pay these “gratuities” … service be damned.
I’m still trying to figure out how they tack on a 15% gratuity for parties of 8 or more, or for room service deliveries. If it’s automatically added, it’s not a tip. It’s a bill, and you could possibly be arrested for not paying it … even if your service sucked.
Every magazine and “tourist guide” you get once you arrive in Las Vegas stresses that the town “runs on tips” or some similar statement, and they even go so far as to give you “standard” tipping guidelines, but they never educate the tourist about what they should do if service is sub-par.
The standard Vegas position is … always tip. Period.
I think that tips have been interwoven into the Las Vegas economy too tightly, and this represents part of the reason that we are seeing service decrease.
At this point, tips are expected and largely unappreciated. If you don’t give one, the rationale is that you are a deadbeat … servers no longer examine their own behavior to see if they may have been responsible in any way for a lack of a tip. It’s always the customer’s fault.
The sheer amount of people positioning themselves between you and what you want, just to get in the tip queue, is starting to get stretched a little thin now. This brings me to one tip that I will never understand.
The hand pay.
If you win a jackpot on a video machine, every staff member within earshot comes to “congratulate” you, and they proceed to hang out until you get paid.
The casino does not hand pay you because they want to congratulate you. They hand pay you so that they can check the video tapes to make sure you did not cheat or that the machine did not erroneously pay you. Remember, a malfunction voids all pays and plays, and you can bet your ass that they are looking for a malfunction.
Depending on the amount, they also hand pay you in order to alert taxation authorities that you won money.
That’s kind of like tipping to get kicked in the nads.
Given that a hand pay is rarely for your benefit, I don’t understand why people tip for it.
If I ever hit that elusive Royal Flush, my next best friends/employees are going to be extremely disappointed as I shout out “Hey, thanks for being so excited for me!” as I thrust 100% of my winnings in my pocket.
That is one gratuity that I will simply never give, regardless of the custom.
For the record, when the waitress finally came around to the table yesterday, everyone I saw getting a drink … tipped her.
The next time you find yourself waiting an hour for a beverage in the Excalibur, now you’ll know why.
Once again … you’re welcome.
Written by SPRUNT on February 8, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Viva La Rex!!
I think everyone should print this out on small cards and take it to Vegas with them. When the waitress takes an hour to come around, she gets a card instead of a tip. If she’s on the ball, she gets a card along with a tip and a genuine “thank you” (the card is to let her know that her effort was noticed and the tip wasn’t given without thought.)
We should have similar cards for valets.
Written by Troy in Las Vegas on February 9, 2009 at 12:04 am
As you know Rex, I work as a valet at a local hotel. Indeed half of my income is tips. Yes half. yet I never expect one to be given so i always work for it. The guests door is always held open. They are always helped with their luggage. All the things that you would expect a valet to do I do. Maybe I will get a buck out of it. And when the guest tips me a single dollar, I always enthusiastically thank them for it.
Honestly though, there is a certain group of individuals who are stereotypically non tippers so they do not get the same level of service from me and my co workers. Pretty much you can expect not even a thank you or sometimes you’ll get, “I ain’t got no singles. I catch you lata bro’”
The other day I heard a cab driver tell a Japanese passenger, “You are in las Vegas. You have to tip everybody. At least 20%”
I heard another cabbie tell a European passenger, “Oh a fifty cent tip. You’re a really nice guy.”
The way I see it, the cabbie should expect a wage for getting the passenger there safely. if the cabbie gives direction or advice or free club passes or even just makes friendly idle chit chat then a tip should be expected. i think a tip is for providing good service above and beyond the minimum expected. I highly doubt the driver with the thick Vietnamese accent made much idle chit chat at all with the German tourists. The fifty cents was probably generous at that.
Tips should certainly not be expected or given out freely for piss poor service.
The problem with that, and as I said earlier, once you are labeled a deadbeat or ‘Mister Stiffy” then expect poor service the rest of your stay.
Tipping as you go or even before hand is the way to go. before hand is indeed a risk as you may get poor service anyway.
rest assured, when you come to my place, if you tip me when you drop your car off, I am going to remember and you’ll get a little extra hustle when you want to pick up your car.
When I first moved here I was given this piece of advice from a fellow barback- “This town is run on comps and compliments”
Written by Troy in Las Vegas on February 9, 2009 at 12:07 am
Just to be clear- This was at the Excalibur where you got shitty cocktail service?
So it is fair to say-
The EXCALIBUR has shitty service.
I just wanted to make sure i was completely understanding where and that everyone else knows we are talking Excalibur.
Written by Clint on February 9, 2009 at 11:18 am
I’ve always had excellent cocktail service in the Excalibur poker room. I’ve had way too much to drink there. I’ll even go as far as to say they have brought my drinks TOO quickly in the past.
OTOH, I agree with you regarding tips. I’ll also say that I make my living as a waiter in a middle of the road Tex-Mex restaurant in middle America. I hate the way a lot of my co-workers feel about tips. If I give a table inferior service, I am willing to accept a poor tip. Not a lot of waiters feel this way, but I do.
Unfortunately, I have a hard time leaving a completely shitty tip for a person working in a tip-based industry, no matter how bad the service. Maybe things are different in Vegas because of the tipping culture and prominence of literature that explains proper tipping etiquette…but there are still plenty of people out there that will leave a horrible tip despite acceptable to superior service.
Written by McGoo on February 14, 2009 at 6:56 am
Recently I watched a documentary on Vegas service, they claimed that the Vegas cocktail waitress has to pay a percentage of her tips to the Casino, I thought it was around 60 cents on every dollar tip received? anyone know? Personally I tip for good service, I also tip simply because I want the waitress to come back around, and getting a drink for a buck or two tip is still great value, Beer and booze is expensive in Canada.
Written by jinx on February 16, 2009 at 10:21 am
I tend to agree on the hand pays, depending on the size I may tip something, but am cautious with it and don’t want to get caught in the moment. For a big win in VP or slots though, I have tracked down the waitress and gave her an extra 20 on occassion, that’s based on usually getting great service during my time spent there, and the way I look at it, is based on RNG if they wouldn’t have brought me that drink at that time before that set me on the path to push the silly button at exactly the right point, then I wouldn’t have hit it, probably makes no sense overall, but those waitresses as I said have given me great service up to that point, and in every case have shown general appreciation.
Written by bob on October 10, 2009 at 9:14 pm
I know this waitress, Kathy, and she dosen’t deserve this sterotype. Not all the waitresses are like that. I’m a bartender at the same casino, and most of us aren’t like that. Granted, you come to the bar more than twice, and stiff me, I’ll slow down a little too. So would you if the frickn’ IRS is taxing your tips, the son of a bitches…………………..