tipping for an infant? and another ??

[kcashner]

Yeah, I'm very familiar with paying full fare for a child...I've cruised with DD as a single mother since she was 4. Yup, you pay full fare for the first two passengers regardless of age.......and now that DD is all grown up and in college, I cringe over the single supplement. It's almost as cheap to sail with 2 people as with one paying the supplement. Oh well, we each have to do what our family make up dictates if we want to be in a cabin on the ship.

 

[lcarterbridges]

Im sorry to just drop in on this post and leave my opinion....
I dont intend it like that...
However just to give another perspective...

We are from the Uk and therefore NOT used to this whole tipping everybody for everything thing.
We cruise every year, and tip of course accordingly...but we very much believe that a tip is not something that is automatically deserved..a tip is an added bonus for what we believe is service above and beyond what is expected of the staff anyway.
Here in the UK a member of staff anywhere is extremely surprised and gratefull and honoured to get a tip, they feel great that they have obviously provided a service beyond what they are being payed for in the first place.

Sadly over in the US we have had the most horrible service (particuarly in restaurants) of anywhere in the world due to this automatic tipping. The staff have NO incentive to work any harder than the basic. (Particuarly on the DDP where tips and not optional!)

I feel the original poster was made to feel bad for even thinking about not tipping for her infant/s.

I personally would NEVER tip for my infant unless someone had gone out of their way to provide a really special service for my infant.
As I see it, in a restaurant there is no possible way that your server can provide a service above and beyond what they automatically would for an adult, for an infant.
The most they can possibly do, is bring a plate of something mashed to your table, or warm a bottle...and to me this is not EVEN doing as much work as basically expected for an adult (serving 2/3 courses, drinks,taking orders etc) let along anything above the ordinary so why on earth should they expect a tip?

Maybe it is just a huge gap in opinions because things work so differently over here, but the feeling I get in the US is that a lot of staff are cocky and unhelpful because they expect a tip is coming their way no matter how they serve.

I do not mean this to sound as rude as im sure it does!

We are on the DDP with a party of 8 in Sept and will have to tip even the worst servers with the rest o the mugs

However I just wanted to post another extreme of the opinions on here...I would not be automatically tipping for my infant.

*please dont kill me!!!*

 

[tvguy]

Speaking on the size of the tip regarding the bill...Servers pay taxes which are determined by their sales. Hourly salary is about $3 these days. If every person paid a set fee, let's say $3 on whatever they ordered, servers might be paying taxes on money they didn't get...Serving is a difficult job, I don't advocate paying a hefty tip if the server was terrible. I was a server in the past and have little patience for incompetence...just pay what is deserved, adding to or subtracting from as needed, but keep in mind that servers must declare sales. If your bill is bigger, servers pay more in taxes.

You bring up a good point. The IRS does assume that a server is getting an 8% tip on every tab, but I would never tip less than 15% even for bad service, so they would never be shorted on that.
Another good point....and a foreign one to someone who lives in California, and I had to do research on this, 9 states do allow tipped workers to be paid less than Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Not sure how the feds let them get away with that. Here in California, nobody can be paid less than the state minimum wage of $8 an hour, excluding tips, except in San Francisco, where the minimum wage for all workers is $9.79 an hour excluding tips.
And someone else noted another issue in the cruise industry, where you have a number of non-westerners as passengers......people who come from cultures where either tipping is not the norm, or in some counties, a tip if considered an insult.
And I should note that for the past 35 years I have worked in an industry (Broadcasting) that has suffered from salary errosion. It is not uncommon for us to have college interns who work in the food service industry discover that their dream job in TV...the job that requires a 4 year degree, pays less than they make waiting tables.