[IDEA] Gratuity tracking

I'm a pretty generous tipper when it comes to leaving gratuities for waiters and waitresses at restaurants and also service personnel in general (I tip 25% at the hair salon I go to). Having worked in the food service industry before, I know how stressful the environment is and that good tips can go a long way to improving your mood. I always tip at least 15%, on average probably 18% or so.

However, I had an especially bad night recently at a local restaurant that shall remain nameless. The service was abysmal. Let me list the number of things that went wrong:

1. There was considerable confusion between the waitresses as to who was actually serving us, leading to delays and repeated questions.
2. It took forever for them to take our order or give us the check. It wasn't even that busy for most of the dinner.
3. One of the drinks we ordered (a lemonade) never showed up. We weren't billed for it, but still...
4. We asked for two of the dishes to come out together. Didn't happen.
5. We had one water refill the whole hour we were there, and they didn't even check on us to see if we needed anything. I had an empty glass for at least ten minutes while we tried to get their attention. To make matters worse, we were eating a somewhat spicy meal.
6. Their overall demeanor was fairly lackluster and not very engaging.

Now, I have a pretty tolerant view towards food service, but that was literally the worst dinner I'd had in a long time. What I really wanted to do was confront them about it, but there were two reasons why I didn't. The first is that the restaurant was filling quickly and tying them up for ten minutes in an argument wouldn't be polite. The second is that honestly, who really wants to start a confrontation like that?

The general idea of tips is to provide a range in which a diner can reward good service. Even if I thought I had a subpar dining experience, I would still tip 15%. This night was such an incredible exception that I had to tip 10%. I still felt really guilty about it and almost changed my mind, but stuck to it in the end.

My concern is that from the waitresses' point of view, we just look cheap. After all, we clearly look like college students, and there's an unfortunate but probably truthful stereotype that college students are bad tippers. How could she distinguish between cheap students and legitimately pissed customers?


That's when I wished there was some sort of unbiased way of tracking your tips, like an online database. You could provide a code at the end of your meal that links to your tipping history. A waitress who sees that you have been an 18% tipper in the past and gave a 10% tip this meal would know that she should have improved her behavior. It conveys a lot more meaning when an outlier like that occurs than if you always tipped in the low teens.

I know this won't ever get implemented, if nothing else then because of all the practical barriers, but that night's experience still bothers me. I feel guilty for leaving a poor tip and not fully explaining why. Anybody else ever have this experience?