Come Into The Restaurant
By Alice Edwards – Updated August 23, 2023
In America, restaurants do not pay their servers a livable wage. Instead, owners of restaurants expect customers to leave large tips, so servers can survive and afford necessities like food, water, clothing, and shelter. Now, one waitress from New York City is coming forward to complain about how a large party of Europeans failed to leave an adequate tip on a $700 bill when the server was counting on them to tip at least twenty percent per American customs.
While it is customary for American diners to tip servers between fifteen and twenty percent, tipping is not as common in other parts of the world. In Europe, restaurants pay their servers a livable wage, so tipping is based on exemplary service rather than as being a requirement of the diner.
Waitress Madison Tayt turned to Twitter to share her outrage at a group of European diners who failed to understand that it is customary to tip at American restaurants. She was outraged that she was given just a seventy dollar tip on a seven hundred dollar bill when she should have received a tip closer to one hundred forty dollars.
“Lmao, I f**king hate Europeans sometimes, on God,” she wrote in a now-deleted Twitter thread. “This table just left $70 on a $700 check after chilling for HOURS. My manager even asked about their service, and they were OVER THE MOON about their service, so he explained the customary tip is 20 percent, and they were like, ‘ok’ and left.”
She added, “What’s even worse is they had one American at the table (the son’s [girlfriend] from the sounds of it) like B**CH DO SOMETHING.”
After her tweet went viral, Tayt deleted it and tried to remain out of the spotlight. Fortunately, she did not reveal the restaurant where she works as a server, so her employer probably did not learn that she had complained about the European diners who failed to provide a big enough tip to the waitress.
One person commented that Europeans are “basically the worst customers.” Tayt replied that she was willing to “overlook” the differences between Europeans and Americans so long as they “at least tipped appropriately.”
She added, “I understand a lot of the qualms with European’s behavior in restaurants comes from cultural differences (camping at tables, being a little brusque or forceful, etc.), all of which I’d be willing to overlook if they at least tipped appropriately.”
Joe Stefanelli, the CEO of Cryptech Solutions, claimed it was customary to only tip ten percent in many parts of Europe.
He wrote, “In Europe, ten percent is standard for excellent service. I just learned this in Amsterdam. I tipped twenty-five percent and was asked why I did that. Instead of trying to ban them, maybe you should get out and explore the world more. There’s more than just the US.”
Do you think foreign customers should have tipped an American amount?
