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RE: Are people spending less money these days?
We cut back on how often we eat out, as well as the size of the meals we order.
One part was to cut costs and the other was because we realised we just eat too much food, more than we needed so we were gaining in weight.
If we eat at a restaurant we still tip though, my wife and I both appreciate good service and also that it's hard to greet people with a smile when you have been on your feet all day.
As for large groups of people not leaving a tip? Well that's just deplorable, from where I come from it's expected that you pay, usually around 10% of the bill!
Up until a few years ago there was an 18% gratuity put on any party of 8 or more. At the bottom of the check instead of giving a place to tip on a large party it would just have the gratuity printed there. Most people accepted that if you went out to eat and you had 20 people you were meant to pay 18%. Occasionally though somebody would scratch out the 18% gratuity that was printed on there and write a big zero next to it and then they would even recalculate the total to not include it. I often wondered if those people really thought that we were going to take the gratuity off. Nowadays though it's illegal to put any gratuity included automatically.