Tips- cash or credit card?

Question for you hard-working restaurant staff...

I was over at Meridian Cafe today and had a scrumptious breakfast! I used my charge card, but I wondered afterward if I should have used the charge card for the meal and then tipped in cash. What is proper etiquette/most helpful? Does the wait staff have to wait for the cash given to them by charge card users?

PS- I googled it and saw a site about "skimming" and tip fraud...almost makes we want to go cash-only in a restaurant now!

Marie, they only have to wait until the end of a shift. That old saw about servers preferring cash tips is mostly just a myth, these days - they have to pay taxes based on a percentage of their sales which are ALL captured in the computer, so unless there's two or three people in collusion, it's pretty difficult to game the system for any significant amount of money. People who actually serve for a living can confirm or deny this, but I imagine bill on card/tip in cash is just about twice as much trouble as all one way or the other.

[Robin Garr]

For what it's worth, I always tip on the credit card, the only exception being the kind of downscale place that puts out an obvious tip jar.

Personally i like to use my card to leave a tip so i can track it for my personal reason... i do agree with marsha she pretty much is dead on with her statement.

I do always wonder however, when dining at some of our Latino or Asian run establishments, if they actually dole out the tips at the end of the night.

Not to sound prejudiced, but with the obvious language barrier at most of these places, I find myself wondering sometimes if everything is on the up and up. And most of the time I will tip in cash when frequenting a place where I don't feel comfortable about putting everything on the card.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Or am I just being overly cautious.

I know the credit card companies charge a percentage of the sale as a fee. So does a % of the tip disappear if I tip on my card?

My boyfriend John, credit card processing expert and trainer extraordinaire, answered that question this way: "The merchant pays a processing fee on the total amount. If the tip is included, their processing fee will be incrementally increased - but most merchants are not taking that out of their servers' tips, they are just writing it off as a cost of doing business with their credit card processor." Although I suppose somebody, somewhere is backing it out of their servers' tips - but it would probably be more trouble than it was worth to do the math - it would be only fractions of a cent per transaction.

[Robin Garr]

Am I the only one who feels this way? Or am I just being overly cautious.

I guess I'm having a hard time, Dan, figuring why you think an Asian or Latino place would be any more or less likely than any other to screw around. Seems to me that the owner and waitstaff generally speak the same language.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Or am I just being overly cautious.

I guess I'm having a hard time, Dan, figuring why you think an Asian or Latino place would be any more or less likely than any other to screw around. Seems to me that the owner and waitstaff generally speak the same language.

I guess it's the language being spoken that I don't understand that gets my spidey senses tingling sometimes... Being in the Bizz I tend to notice every little thing in a restaurant including conversations in and around the service areas...Personality quirk I have I guess...

I have had the same thoughts in more than a few places run by Anglos as well... I don't feel I'm trying to single out anyone or group. I'm just voicing an opinion. The rest of the globe has different tipping practices than we do, I was merely trying to suggest that some places may do things differently...Like pooling or withholding until the end of the week, etc.

I waited tables briefly over 4 years ago.

Regardless of whether the tip was in cash or on a CC slip, I walked out of the door with all my tips every night.

Here's how I remember it working:

1. Close out last table
2. Print out sales information that corresponds with my specific server number (which I used to enter all sales)
3. Take my stack of cash and credit card slips to manager
4. Manager compares my stack to printout. The credit card tips were given to me out of the cash sales I made.
5. Close out computer account by declaring sales percentage for tax purposes.

In regards to taxes (step 5) it would be easy(ier) to fudge the reported percentage (if one chooses to report less than 100%) if there was not a CC paper trail.

I was told by management that this following information is true, but maybe someone could clarify. The tip included on a CC slip is only rewarded if 1) the slip is signed and 2) the math is correct. If someone leaves 12 bucks on 60, but totals the amount as $62, mamagement enters $62 as the billed amount and gives the server 2 bucks. Like I said, I don't know the legal backing of this. As I have always believe this, I use the "customer copy" to test my math - as not to short the server. Math's not my specialty.

I have waited tables off and on for several years now, and as an experienced server I can tell you that we much prefer cash tips to credit cards. We only have to report our credit card tips at the end of the night, so the more cash we get, the better!

Matt if you get audited by the IRS, you will have a hard time explaining that you only got tipped on credit card sales. They will audit the restaurants records and determine what the ave. amount of sales are credit vs cash and you will owe interset and penalties. You will also bring the IRS down on your fellow servers/and friends. You are required by law to report all tips you recieve. If you think you can outsmart the IRS, get in line at the courthouse.

Yikes. Your employer(s) haven't been doing you any favors if they've been letting you walk without reporting cash tips. Those days are over. Danger Will Robinson!

I know the credit card companies charge a percentage of the sale as a fee. So does a % of the tip disappear if I tip on my card?

I worked at an establishment years ago that did just that. At the end of the evening all cc charges were turned in and bookkeeping would back out the tips from cc's minus the same % paid to the bank. So if I got a $5 tip on a cc it back something like $4.85. I called the labor department and was told , while cheezy, it was legal. After that I always tip in cash if I can.

We at Ray's use a Tip Jar, and also have a line on our CC tickets for tips.

I'd guess we get more than half our tips in cash, but we do get a lot via credit card.

We give our staff the full amount of the tip (even though we pay a 2.5% fee on CC tips). When multiple Baristas are working, they split tips in a manner they deem fair. All crew members walk with their tips at the end of the shift.

So for us, it makes NO DIFFERENCE if you tip cash or CC (I guess, as the owner, I'd save a few cents if you tip cash, but I can live with it).

I have been Club Manager at a large establishment where tips were pooled. We'd have ten bartenders, plus several security and bussers, etc. I would count out the tips, distribute to the bartenders, then they'd tip out the security and bussers. The staff always thought they were getting shorted. I suppose the manager could easily skim in a case like that. So much easier in a small coffeeshop....

In the future, cash will fade away, and be something only old people use, kind of like using checks to pay in a supermarket. Heehee.....