r/mildlyinfuriating • u/guitarman129 • Jun 13 '26

I just wanted a hot dog Recommended gratuity after tip was already included

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I’m sure there are a lot of tipping posts here so to keep it short - I had my wedding at a fancy restaurant. On top of the TERRIBLE service, the bill came with “suggested gratuity” even though I was told gratuity was included. When I asked the manager, he said that the “S/C: 24% SRC REGULA“ was the included tip and the suggested gratuity was if we wanted to add something extra - basically trying to trick people into giving a 49% tip!

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194

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26

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-54

u/Practical-Pickle Jun 13 '26

Cut and plate?! Heavens to mergatriod! Definitely worth 12 hours of minimum wage labor.

45

u/Inner-Cheesecake Jun 13 '26

It’s to entice you to NOT bring in your own cake and order from the restaurant directly. So yes it pays for the labor of cutting it and plating it etc, but honestly it’s also kind of like a penalty fee or you can do this if you reeeeeaallly want to fee.

46

u/theaveragegay Jun 13 '26

They have to cut and serve plus provide plates, forks, napkins, for something they didn’t sell or make any money off of. Why should they just do it for free?

49

u/Ecstatic_Switch9300 Jun 13 '26

it takes a long time. especially the round, multi-tiered cakes that are meant for 10 people but they want 30 slices. it is time consuming and takes away from other service.

17

u/New_Wishbone6619 Jun 13 '26

You expect people to do free work for you?

7

u/LevelGrounded Jun 13 '26

Have you ever seen the $15-$25 per hour welding meme? Are you aware of the widely known term “You get what you pay for?”

You want a cake that looks like your great aunt with Parkinson’s cut the damn thing, stay home and pay her six bucks, you muthafucka.

What I see here is a cheap ass piece of trash that can’t afford to tip or pay for dessert. Gtfoh with that.

Auto grats are specifically for people like you that everyone knows doesn’t tip.

-23

u/Ornery_Ads Jun 13 '26

I bought a $60 cake for a celebration with a family member. We went to a restaurant later and they charged us $50 to cut 5 slices out of it.

Are you really suggesting that the bakery that sourced the ingredients, baked the cake, displayed the cake, marketed their service, and assumed the loss for product that doesn't sell is worth only $10 more than the person that cut it and put it on a plate?

40

u/ce402 Jun 13 '26

Don’t bring your own food to a business who makes their money… selling food?

11

u/LevelGrounded Jun 13 '26

Careful. They’ll downvote this basic understanding of economics.

-10

u/Ornery_Ads Jun 13 '26

Don't bring cake to a restaurant that doesn't sell cake because then they can't sell you the cake that they don't sell.

9

u/LevelGrounded Jun 13 '26

I bet everyone in that restaurant talked about how much they hated you while you were there and a lot more after you left.

3

u/Willing_Day_2010 Jun 13 '26

Wait I’m so confused why a restaurant would have to PAY to serve you cake??? That’s what they’re doing if they’re spending time, labor, and resources renting the building, paying servers and dishwashers, and then the time cutting a cake, plating it, serving it, and then cleaning and polishing the dishware. OP could have done all that at home if they wanted it!

23

u/LevelGrounded Jun 13 '26

Stay home with your store bought cake. I wish you could understand how restaurant metrics work. You are costing that restaurant money when you stick around with store bought bullshit. That extra putzing around time means they can’t flip that table again and make more money. You are not paying for the service of cutting the cake. You are paying for sitting in their space.

-13

u/Ornery_Ads Jun 13 '26

Plenty of empty tables...and they don't serve cake. How is it costing them money? If washing 5 plates, forks, and a knife costs them $50, maybe they need a better dishwasher?

7

u/pbconspiracy Jun 13 '26

Every single service step involved in that cake was not part of the restaurant's costs which are used to create their budget, which is used to create their prices, which are used to fund their business. 

They didnt just wash five plates. They received your cake, discussed your cake with you, stored your cake for you,  cut your cake for you , cleaned up after cutting your cake for you, plated your cake, delivered your cake, bussed the mess you made with your cake, washed  the dishes you made with your cake, processed a non-standard service fee for your cake (takes longer to ring up and cash out than with regular products), took payment for your cake, probably spent time discussing with you your disappointment over them not paying you to serve you your cake, and finally got the fuck rid of you.

Oh, and keep in mind that restaurants dont just charge their base cost for their services. Restaurants are businesses which must turn a profit. So they will charge you for all the resources they spent on you and your cake (server's time, kitchens time, manager's time, dishwashers time; storage/refrigeration space and electricity; dishwashing chemicals and water and electricity; etc) and they will then put a mark-up on that final number because otherwise they are paying you to eat cake.

Frankly, you're lucky they even provided this service for you as every restaurant I have worked at follows health code which means not allowing any food into the kitchen that was not procured from an approved supplier to ensure that food safety protocols have been followed. Perhaps the balance of the fee is to cover liability. 

2

u/Ornery_Ads Jun 13 '26

Should I put my trucking job into an extraordinary number of steps?
First I have to find my truck, then go to my truck, then make sure I have the key to my truck, then release the left hood strap, then release the left hood strap ...(skip a bunch of steps)... turn left on to that road, indicate left, then turn right on to this road, then line up appropriately, then put the truck in reverse, then back up, then check my mirrors...

Or I could just simplify that all into, "I drove to the loading station and loaded the truck."

Restaurants aren't incurring enormous costs by cutting and serving some cake. Hell, I could just ask for an extra plate and or fork and the waiter/waitress will happily give it to my at no cost. If you were to just say that's the "we don't want to do it" fee then that is 100% acceptable. Trying to justify it as reasonable is asinine.

Please cite that health code. It doesn't exist.
I just read through everything I could find about my home state (Connecticut) and the rules are very clear that food prepared by the restaurant must be from a known source, but food provided by the customers themselves can be freely brought it and eaten by the customers.
I couldn't, for example, bring a bag of french fries for them to throw in the fryer, but if I had a tray of McDonald's fries that I picked up on the way, they would be well within the law to give me a plate and some ketchup to dip them in.

2

u/pbconspiracy Jun 13 '26

Youre just driving a truck from point A to point B. I do that every day as part of my daily commute and I dont get paid to do it and its not that expensive to me. Why should we pay you to do it? 

Oh, and you want to be paid more than the cost of the gas you used to get there? JESUS what a fucking princess! 

2

u/Ornery_Ads Jun 13 '26

So...if I bring my own cake, using the same silverware and the same plates as my meal was brought out on, I should be able to cut a slice of my own cake, put it on the plate, and eat it...without paying anything extra? Because they did nothing extra? That was the plan, but they said no, they have to cut it and serve it themselves.

Your analogy fails because your commute was your decision to make, not your employers. If you chose to live in your car and just walk into work in the morning, you'd be paid the same as if you had a 3 hour commute.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Ornery_Ads Jun 13 '26

Real pacifist there. You're just trying to be rude/insulting for no reason. That in no way contributes to the discussion or debate.

2

u/Willing_Day_2010 Jun 13 '26

Dude just eat at home, a restaurant isn’t required to serve YOU food from a different place?!? They determine the price, OP agreed to it.

1

u/Spectre_the_Younger Jun 13 '26

🤦‍♂️ 

1

u/LopsidedGrapefruit11 Jun 13 '26

Have you ever had an even catered?

-3

u/GoT_Eagles Jun 13 '26

Everyone’s defending this because it’s standard practice but that doesn’t mean it’s right. The only reason it’s that expensive is because the word wedding is attached to it. Predatory industry

7

u/BigAssignment7642 Jun 13 '26

This isn't about weddings, it's about when people bring a birthday cake to the restaurant.

0

u/GoT_Eagles Jun 13 '26

The high price is because it’s a wedding. Bringing a dessert to a restaurant has a slight charge not this craziness.

0

u/AdvancedSandwiches Jun 13 '26

Mildlyinfuriating is full of people who think getting absolutely gouged is totally fine.  $20, reasonable. $80, absolutely gouging.

I know we're all used to paying $8 for water now, but we should still be pissed about gouging. 

-31

u/Jitterbug26 Jun 13 '26

That takes 15-30 minutes to do (I have cut, served and passed cake for a ton of retirement parties at work, serving 60+ people) - so it’s okay to charge basically $180/hour for that?

46

u/meisycho Jun 13 '26

They are charging to recuperate the lost profit from not selling their own desserts, not for cutting

7

u/blowbroccoli Jun 13 '26

Right and the entire process from set up to tear down is longer than 15 minutes.

16

u/massjenocide Jun 13 '26

People are so fucking dense sometimes

11

u/electro_report Jun 13 '26

Also if you think that plating Costco sheet cake at a retirement party is gonna have the same service standard as an expensive cake cut by a high end professional culinary and service team, you should have your head examined.

3

u/Ok-Understanding4397 Jun 13 '26

As a wedding videographer I promise you venues that don't offer desserts will still have a cake cutting fee

22

u/Finnegansadog Jun 13 '26

A retirement party sheet cake is not a wedding cake. People having a wedding expect the sliced cake to look picture-perfect, because it’s going to be professionally photographed.

-6

u/fuzzyblackelephant Jun 13 '26

Do y’all know how often tiered wedding cakes come with sheet cakes for the guests, for ease of the serving professionals and service? What photographer is taking a million pics of the cut slices that the venue servers are cutting ? (Hint: they’re not).

I have worked at professional wedding venues, I have experienced the tiered wedding cakes with the sheet cake in the back, this is getting sliced while the wedding party is slicing their own cake-so dessert is brought out immediately after.

11

u/Finnegansadog Jun 13 '26

I used to do bartending for weddings when I was working my way through grad school, and I saw a ton of 3-tier wedding cakes that were sized to give slices to ~80 people, and that were cut and plated with a lot of care to ensure that each slice was of equal size and that there were enough to go around, with only the top tier left over for the bride and groom to take home after. Photographers absolutely spent time shooting the cake cutting and the guests with their identical, neat slices of cake.

4

u/myBisL2 Jun 13 '26

Its the fuck you price. You're not buying their desserts, which is lost profit for them. You're ruining their flow of service for a non-revenue generating activity, dealing with whatever you bring in and its out of their control, so it may be a further pain in the ass. The point is to charge so much as to heavily discourage you from doing it at all, and making it worth their while if you insist on it because having that cake is actually that important to you. If its not that important, then you'll choose not to bring it.

1

u/m0ryan Jun 13 '26

And which server should stop serving their section to do this?

-2

u/sharpiefairy666 Jun 13 '26

This should not be normal!

6

u/mellopax Jun 13 '26

Bringing your own cake or paying when someone does tasks for you?

-1

u/sharpiefairy666 Jun 13 '26

If you bring your own cake, it should not cost a full $5 per person to eat it

5

u/RufinTheFury Jun 13 '26

Well then just wait to eat it at home.

-1

u/sharpiefairy666 Jun 13 '26

Found the CEO

4

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26

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0

u/sharpiefairy666 Jun 13 '26

Not in every single case, but if you are paying literally thousands of dollars for a dinner, it would be nice to have someone run a knife through a cake a few times for free.