Have you ever taken a group of individuals to a lunch or dinner? Was the service terrible? Did you get the bill and the gratuity was already added? If yes, I completely understand.
My office recently took a group of individuals from the tourism industry out to lunch in Decatur, Alabama. Most of these individuals work at our local hotels and recommend places to eat all the time to their clients. We called the restaurant ahead of time and told them we would have a party of 20 at 11:30 am for lunch.
At this point, you would have thought, that they would have assigned someone to take care of the group. Instead, we had one waitress get drinks, one take food orders, a different person brought out the food, another one did refills, and yet another one gave me the bill. With all of that being said, the service was horrible, the waiters were arguing, and it took forever to get our food.
I ordered a cheeseburger and fries, when it was brought out they gave me no condiments nor did they ask if I wanted any. The bun was twice the size of the hamburger patty, with no cheese, a pickle, slice of tomato, and piece of lettuce. This was one dry burger. I asked one of our 5 waitresses if I could have some ketchup and mustard, she said sure. So I waited, and waited, and waited on the ketchup and mustard, but I gave up. After, everyone had finished eating she brought some packets out. I said, “I really don’t need those anymore”.
At 1:30 pm, I finally asked for the check as the entire group was getting up from the table. I had people making comments like, “I would only give them 10% gratuity”. I was given the bill and the gratuity was $29.17. These women DID NOT EARN this tip money. It was a give me! Who started this rule about group gratuity? Why should these waitress work, if they know they don’t have, to get their tip money?
