Today a person was telling me how infuriated they were as they booked to go to a restaurant to celebrate an occasion. There were about fifteen people or so and this place happened to be a favorite for the person this event was for. So while making the order apparently the staff then told the person that because of the size of the party they will be forced to pay an 18% gratuities fee which is essentially like a mandatory tip. The person got kind of upset that they were forcing them to pay this as it wasn’t told to them beforehand. It wasn’t contested though as no one likes to make scene.
Technically a restaurant shouldn’t be able to force any tip amounts on you. If anything it’s one of those things where they would like to get tipped a certain amount but to be a requirement isn’t valid to my knowledge. It makes me think in this case it’s similar to how if you attend an event and they ask for donations then anything you give there is voluntary. They could suggest they want to be donated a certain amount but it should only be a suggestion.
Would you be confrontational in this situation out of principle? Thing like tip shaming is a thing oddly enough. While it’s a nice gesture to tip people it just seems wrong to essentially force this on people as if it is a requirement. If you want to make more then you need to charge more for the food as an example and let people decide the value worth of your business. I suppose in most cases like here people don’t actually argue back and so it has become a habit of sort.