The TIP

MDC informs about THE TIP .

When you charge a meal on a credit card, if you want the servers to be assured of their fair share, you should leave the tip in cash, more than one server has told me.

Here’s why, summed up by Steve Dublanica, a former Manhattan waiter and author of the waiterrant.net blog and Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper’s Quest to Become the Guru of the Gratuity:

1) “Server can take that money home at night. When tips are distributed by check (often later) it’s never, ever accurate. Not malicious intent usually, just lazy bookkeeping. But sometimes its greedy evil.” (Some eateries do give servers their credit card tips when they leave, but then again, some servers say those totals don’t seem right.)

2) “Some owners outright steal tips,” Steve says. “Usually happens in a pool house (note: that’s when servers pool their tips among themselves and probably busboys, and everyone shares.) Another ploy, he says: “using tips to illegally pay for non-table serving employees — pastry chefs, banquet managers. Also, owners have been known to create no-show jobs and pay their daughters, drivers, siblings a full waiter cut out of the tip pool. Illegal.”

3) “Owners have forced waiters to give the kitchen a cut of the tips. Illegal. Instead of paying their hardest-working (kitchen) employees more, quite a few owners will steal it from the waiter. This is an old story.”

4) “Some owners make the waiter pay the credit-card vig (fee charged by card companies per transaction) on their tip only. So if my tip is 20 dollars I may have to pay 60 cents. But some owners will make you pay the entire vig on the whole check. Illegal.”