1w ago

Have you encountered this?

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You WRITE the tip amount on the receipt? How does the payment terminal know how much to take?
- It's entered manually, usually at the end of the shift. It's standard for most, if not all restaurants in the United States
  
  In Canada they just bring you the payment machine and it asks the percent you want to tip. There is a physical bill but its only used by the server to know what to enter really
  
  You tip in Canada? I was hoping this sad culture was limited to usa.
  
  It is sadly a part of canadian restaurant culture but not seen as mandatory. Canadian service workers are regulated to be paid at least minimum wage.
  Companies mostly use tipping here as an excuse for the wages to not come out of their own pockets. If tips received equal or exceed minimum wage then they don't have to fork out the cash. If the employee only made $10hr in tips then the employer fills in the rest.
  Because of this, I mostly refuse to tip. I'm not going to subsidise a restaurant paying their employees. If you can't afford to pay people you shouldn't be in business.
  
  Asterisk: there is such a thing as "minimum wage for tipped workers", which is lower than the normal minimum wage. At least in some provinces.
  For instance, in Quebec, the normal minimum wage is $16.10 per hour, but for tipped workers, it's $12.90$.
  And yes, my reaction to this is also "what the fuck".
  
  Thanks for the clarification. I totally forgot it isn't federally regulated.
  There are also student wages which allow you to pay students under 18 even lower wages. Fun stuff!
  
  Here in the states, the minimum for tipped workers is $2.13. Also, the federal minimum wage for nontip is $7.25. And they wonder why we can't afford McDonald's over here.
  
  Absolute madness.
  
  Unfortunately...
  
  Same in most of the world. Sucks that these machines brought tipping to places it didn't exist before. Used to be only shitty tourist trap restaurants asked for tips in Stockholm. Now all the machines do.
  Remember kids. Never tip, ever.
  
  That’s because everything needs a pin, if you pay cash this still works this way. USA only started using pins around covid time iirc and it’s still not universal.
  
  The PIN thing really confused me when I visited the US (right before Trump got in again). Like even the places that did support chip would just accept my payment without having me enter anything. First time I bought something I thought the machine glitched because I didn't even realise a payment could be made without the PIN
  
  It's getting to be less common. A lot of newer/trendier places are giving their wait-staff tablets (which are also handling ordering, seating status, etc), or at least portable payment terminals.
  Some of the big established chains have kiosks at the table where you can order apps/drinks directly, pay, play games.
  I've also been to several places that'll put a QR code on the receipt for payment. They may also have their menu online that you can get from a QR on the table. As an added bonus that usually means their online menu is actually kept up to date.
  
  Good point, I've actually used all those payment methods myself as well
- The server has to manually enter it.
  Here's their bullshit workflow:
  Print the check
  Customer reviews it
  Credit card is given to the server
  Card is swiped/authorized at the POS
  Server returns with the receipts
  Customer then writes in the tip amount and signs on the merchant copy
  Server takes the signed receipt and enters the tip amount back at the POS
  For whatever reason, the USA keeps using their signature, when the technology for pay at the table has been around for decades.
  Meanwhile, chip & PIN has been standard everywhere in Canada for the last decade, with some businesses using it for almost another decade prior to that. Mexico wasn't far behind either, so it's absolutely possible to adopt better methods.
  
  Money. Banks make money on chargebacks and disputes. The bad system makes them money. That's why we have the bad system. Money. Like always.
- The transaction remains open until the end of the shift. At the end of the shift, the checks are closed out with the updated tip amount included in the final charge.
  Going back to the picture...thanks, now I have to confirm the restaurants math is correct and I'm bad at math.
  
  The quick way I was taught to eyeball it is to shift the decimal over one place to the left in the total, and double it. That's 20%. In this case $30.53 > $3.053 > $6.106 ~ $6.10
  
  My coworkers would always tell me that when I worked in restaurants, but I never really figured it out with my A.D.D. brain and being distracted with serving customers. Now that I see it written out, that is helpful!
  
  I didn't know a transaction could be updated after the fact. That's wild.

234 comments