Ask A Bartender: How Much Should I Tip?

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Friday, March 20, 2015

Kai Soderberg, GoLocalPDX Contributor

GoLocalPDX has previously weighed in on the issue of tipping, but this time it's from a bartender's perspective.

No matter what your thoughts about tipping are, the custom has embedded itself too firmly in American culture to go away anytime soon. When a restaurant does take the leap of not accepting gratuities, but instead paying their workers a livable wage and reflecting the increased labor cost in menu prices, it gets noticed. They become the exception to prove the rule. 

Because tipping is the established norm, and service industry professionals rely on it for their income, you kind of have to tip if you want to be a decent human being. I generally start at 20% (the current average) and go slightly up and down based on the service I get. 

The only time it is okay to not tip anything, is if you’re bartender has an attitude. 

If you go to a place and act like a respectful human being, order your drink loudly, clearly and politely and your bartender is still a jerk, here is what you do: Ask for the check. Pay it. Leave no tip. Leave no sweaty cocktail napkin with a passive aggressive explanation written on it explaining why you didn’t tip. Leave the bar. Never come back. Don’t yelp about the bartender. Don’t talk about the bartender. Bury the experience. Maybe a year or two later you’ll run into him in the frozen foods aisle of Safeway and you’ll have a hard time because of it. And then, an hour or two later, you’ll say, “Oh yeah. That was the bartender from that one place. That guy was pretty rude.” There is no need to take an experience beyond that. Life is too short to harbor resentment towards absolute strangers. 

If your bartender is inefficient and incompetent, just tip him or her less. Maybe they’re new. In a few months, you can come back. They’ll either be better at their job or not around anymore. Maybe they are there and they’re still incompetent. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is a kind of charm to perpetually incompetent bartenders and servers so long as they have a good attitude. At least they’re making an effort to get by in life. One of the reasons why people go to bars instead of drinking at home for much cheaper is for human connection. Don’t let resentment get in the way of making these connections with other people. 

Even the surliest or the most pretentious bartender may not be a horrible person. Bartenders are people just like you with struggles of their own. The greatest skill a bartender can have is the ability to suppress emotions, but very few can do that- and in terms of psychological health, nobody should. Mostly bartenders become products of their bars. 

If your bartender is surly, it probably means the place where you are is overwrought with jerks. It may even mean that you are a jerk. Maybe you just look like a jerk. But sometimes from the other side of the bar everybody looks like a jerk. I call this the Travis Bickle complex and have fallen victim to it a few times over my decade of serving drinks to people.

Thankfully, I’ve had the resolve to get myself out of these situations by moving on either physically or emotionally. I will say that my weakest moments- when I have been surly to reasonable people- earlier in my career, were rectified by customers who smiled, thanked me, left and never came back. 

Related Articles

• Ask A Bartender: (Why) is Local Better?
• Ask A Bartender: Shaken or Stirred?
• Ask a Bartender: What Should I Order?
• Ask A Bartender: What’s A Good Morning Cocktail?
• Ask a Bartender: What’s With All The Bitters?
• Leather Storrs: Why Restaurants Should Get Rid of Tipping

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