Tonight one of Holly's work clients threw a little appreciation party at a restaurant. I don't work for the company, but other spouses were going and lets be honest I'm not one to pass on half priced appetizers and free drinks.
We got there about half way through happy hour, and by that point all the other people already had several appetizers (or at least whatever they hadn't gotten to yet) in front of them. Everything looked really good. Standard bar appetizer fare, but it all looked awesome. We ordered fried calamari, tangy boneless chicken wings, and chili cheese waffle fries. Again it all looked and smelled great. Problem was once we started eating it was just so mediocre. Calamari was ok, bit too much batter, not enough meat. Wings had a great looking sauce, but none of the flavors in it were strong enough to even be distinguishable. Chili on the fries was merely canned chili doctored up with some sauteed onions and jalapenos.
The purpose of this blog post was when the check came. What is the etiquette on tipping during happy hour. Generally if you use a gift card or coupon or other discount you still tip on full value of the check, but that is when you choose to not pay a full price. But what about when the restaurant is offering the discount? Are you expected to know what your bill should have been and tip on that or should you assume that the establishment is making sure their servers are properly compensated? Our bill which in addition to the food, included three well mixed drinks, a soda and a water came to about $14 (free booze, but they charged us $2 for a plain diet coke--huh?). I know that the value of our stuff should have been more than that, but there was no prices listed anywhere for the liquor, so how can we even know the value. I could have seen them costing $4 a piece, but also could have seen them being $7 or $8. And to top it all off the waitress was either quite bad at her job, or she just didn't care about doing well for a big party not expecting tips from partial checks and was just not trying. End of the story, is if she did a great job, there is an argument to be made for a decent tip...but she didn't.
