Arrested for not Tipping

^&*%$ How in the hell could they even be arrested for this???

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If gratuity is mandatory, how is it gratuity?


If you’re frustrated by poor service at a restaurant, think twice before you decide to not tip. You may be in for a bit more than just a dirty look from the waiter.

"Nobody, nobody wants to be forced to pay a tip or be arrested for terrible service," Leslie Pope said when her happy hour ended in handcuffs.

Pope and John Wagner were hauled away by police and charged with theft for not paying the mandatory 18 percent gratuity totaling $16 after eating at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. with six friends.

Pope claimed that they had to wait nearly an hour for their order and that she had to get napkins and silverware for the table herself.

“At this point I became very annoyed because I had already gone up to the bar myself to have my soda refilled because the waitress never came back,” Pope said.

After the $73 bill came, the group paid for food, drinks, and tax but refused to pay the tip. After explaining the bad service to the bartender in charge, Pope claimed he took their money and called police. The couple was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.

“I understand that, you know, we didn’t pay the gratuity, but it was a gratuity, it wasn’t something that was required,” said Wagner.

The owner admitted that the group waited unusually long for their food, but said the pub was extremely busy that night. He said managers offered to comp the food, a claim the couple denies ever happened.

“Obviously we would have liked for the patron and the establishment to have worked this out without getting the police involved,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Stuart Bedics.

Police charged them with theft since the gratuity was part of the actual bill. However, it is doubtful that the charges will hold up in front of a judge. The couple is scheduled to appear in court next month.

 

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As far as I'm aware (under English law at least) you can get away with paying none of the bill if you can show that the food and/ or service was of insufficient quality to warrant paying.
You pay for goods/ service received - if they aren't up to an expected standard then the restaurant is guilty of fraud.

 

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They paid for the food, but they didn't leave a tip because of poor service. Since when is gratuity mandatory?

 

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honestly i woulda done the same thing and said im not paying 17$ for #@^@^ty service if thats terms for arrest. something needs to change gratuity is and always has been optional why buisnesses put it in as manditory is beyond me

 

When it's part of the price.

 

but how is it then a gratuity?

 

It's not really, it's just an added fee.

 

gra·tu·i·ty (gr-t-t, -ty-)
n. pl. gra·tu·i·ties
A favor or gift, usually in the form of money, given in return for service.

i dont see where any buisness has the right to include this in the price just raise the prices the % of gratuity then no one would say anything about it but to make it manditory its no longer classified by definition as gratuity

 

Apparently mandatory gratuities for large parties are a west-coast phenomenon

As Spidergoat noted, when it's part of the price.

To note your source article:

Pope and John Wagner were hauled away by police and charged with theft for not paying the mandatory 18 percent gratuity totaling $16 after eating at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. with six friends.

(Chang​

Out here on the west coast, this is common. Most restaurants are arranged to suit parties of up to six. Beyond that, they charge a mandatory gratuity because serving the one party requires extra labor allocation.

Additionally, the article suggests the charge won't hold up. The result of this is that restaurants will simply stop entertaining large parties, or else restructure their billing to accommodate.

Sensationalism often makes a good headline, but betrays the facts.
____________________

Notes:

Chang, David. "Couple Busted for Refusing to Pay Tip". NBC Philadelphia. November 19, 2009. NBCPhiladelphia.com. November 19, 2009. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Time-In-Prison--70426052.html

 

Sounds crazy to me. But then nobody really tips in Australia, restaurants just charge what they actually want for the food and service. So perhaps my perspective is skewed.

 

This isn't exactly unusual, except for the idiots who didn't want to pay

As Spidergoat noted, when it's part of the price.

To note your source article:

Pope and John Wagner were hauled away by police and charged with theft for not paying the mandatory 18 percent gratuity totaling $16 after eating at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. with six friends.

(Chang)​

Out here on the west coast, this is common. Most restaurants are arranged to suit parties of up to six. Beyond that, they charge a mandatory gratuity because serving the one party requires extra labor allocation. Hence the mandatory gratuity.

Additionally, the article suggests the charge won't hold up. The result of this is that restaurants will simply stop entertaining large parties, or else restructure their billing to accommodate. You know, like a surcharge.

Out here, we don't even blink at the idea of a mandatory gratuity when gathering the extended family for dinner out. Okay, maybe some people do, but whenever the issue comes up, someone inevitably starts doing the Reservoir Dogs bit, so the conversation usually ends with, "Dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick."

Sensationalism often makes a good headline, but betrays the facts.
____________________

Notes:

Chang, David. "Couple Busted for Refusing to Pay Tip". NBC Philadelphia. November 19, 2009. NBCPhiladelphia.com. November 19, 2009. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Time-In-Prison--70426052.html

 

Being a common local thing doesn't really make it better, people are travelling more and more and if it is considered outrageous by the rest of the US then surely it is going to result in lots of fights with visitors, which must be bad for business.

Ok so maybe it is a stretch to call the whole west coast "local".

 

Where I'm from usually parties of 8 or more have a mandatory gratuity of 15%. But if the service is bad saying so, has always been enough to get out of it. At least the few times I've been present when this has happened. My family has even gotten a whole dinner for free just because the waitress was so rude and disrespectful. If the customers have to wait themselves or constantly chase down other waiters, I think that qualifies as bad service.

 

This and that

It's not a matter of being better. Rather, I'm puzzled by people's confusion. The circumstance involved, documented in the source article, is hardly extraordinary.

• • •​

When I first encountered the policy, it was parties of eight. These days, there are plenty of restaurants that set that number at "more than six".

 

I haven't seen any of those...yet.

 

I've actually found "six or more" to be most common, where I live. 4-person tables are standard, and it's easy enough to stick a 5th person on the end, but with 6 or more diners you typically need to push together multiple tables.

 

The real issue with restaurants expecting people to pay tips is because they do not want to pay their waiters and waitresses decent wages .
It is stupid when you tip a cab driver, a waiter.....etc when in some cases they are better off than you . A waiter works in a clean, nice environment while others work in terrible conditions and get paid less or the same at him .
I think this tipping business is in the advantages of the business owners and also it is a follow the crowd attitude .

 

They could just try to give decent service.

 

The night club where I moonlight, the VIP servers are required to add a 20% "grat" to the check. They have to tip-out the bartenders and barbacks (looks dangerously like "bareback", but that's another story. . .), so they have to ensure that they are generating the income. Bottle service starts at $200 and that's the low end.

After the disastrous Browns game this past Monday (yay. . . go Ravens*), two players (Sean Rogers and Josh Cribbs) came into the club--in an oddly celebratory mood, and dropped upwards of $1,600 on a few bottles of Dom (yuk), Grey Goose and Patron. The server walked away with a cool $300-ish (after tipout) for two hours of work.

~String

______________________________________

*Such losses are especially salty for Cleveland, as many NFL followers know, because the Ravens are actually the "old" Browns team which Art Modell moved to Baltimore--

Sparking such jokes with punchlines like, "Eh that Jew survived, so much for German efficiency!"​

--and renamed the "Ravens". . . only to return home to kick the asses of their former home-dwellers. We got 'em back though! Take that Haruki Nakamura! Wait. . . he's actually from Cleveland? Grew up here? Oh. Fuck. Well. . . take that you damned traitor!

 

tiassa is right. Normally you pay whatever tip you want in Australia or none at all (side issue: i was really annoyed at the way they handle tips at the Casino restraunt in Adelaide, they put through my card transaction then brought it out for me to sign and then put it through AGAIN when i added the tip there by locking up twice the amount of the bill for 2 weeks till the transaction cleared. God i was pissed off because it was a Visa Debit card NOT a credit card which means they locked up my whole pay

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) but on certain occasions (for instance new years and large corprate funtions) a 10% tip is automatically added as part of the bill in some restraunts (and the coustimers know this when they book). There for if they refused to pay it they WOULD be commiting theft