'Where's my tip?'

CONSUMER WATCHDOG | Friday August 27, 2010 00:00

Until we met the waiter.  To begin with he seemed to be in a tremendous hurry.  The very moment any piece of cutlery was put down, he was there to whisk things away.  While I am all for attentive service it should not feel like they are desperate to get rid of you.

Also while there is something to be said for being elegant, cool and restrained it doesn't mean your face will break if you smile occasionally.  Just once would have been nice.

Finally there was the bill.  The moment we had finished, without asking he dumped the bill on the table, without even a word.  Despite our problems with his cattle-herding approach to service there might still have been a tip if he had played his cards right. But here you need to know a little peculiarity my family and I have.  We never add tips to the debit card payment, we much prefer to leave cash.  At least then there's a chance that the waiter might see it in his or her pocket.

Unfortunately our supersonic waiter didn't know this so when he saw that we had added nothing to the bill for his amazing services but didn't see the cash we've left on the table, he got cross.  His exact words were: 'Excuse me, you haven't included the service charge!'

Let us get this straight.  Tips, service charges, gratuities are at the discretion of the customer, not at the demand of the waiter, OK?  Tips are up to you and me, not the staff.

This is not the first time I have had this exact experience, where a waiter has demanded a tip.  On each occasion we were actually going to leave a tip but as soon as the demand was made the cash was back in the wallet like a flash and the manager summoned.

I think waiters and indeed entire restaurants sometimes forget that while we are obliged to pay for what we have consumed, there is no obligation to pay for things you don't agree have been delivered.  In fact, let me correct myself.  There are even circumstances in which you don't need to pay for the food.  If you get a piece of chicken that is raw in the middle you have Consumer Watchdog's permission to send it straight back and to demand that it's taken off the bill.  Same with the restaurant service charges you occasionally see on bills.  Obviously if you didn't agree to the charge before ordering you don't have to pay it.  That's also absolutely, 100% true of tips. Tips are there to recognise excellent service, nothing less.

Maybe it's just confusion that allows snotty waiters and gullible customers to forget this?  The trouble is that trying to confuse people is a common occurrence.  Take mathematics for instance, the source of much confusion, a lot of it deliberate.

Any reader of this column will know that we have no time for pyramid schemes and their close relatives, multi-level or network marketing schemes. These organisations rely completely on our mathematical ignorance and confusion. There's no point in revisiting the impossibility of recruiting the number of people beneath you that are needed to make money, I think we all know that.  What causes more confusion is the way these companies deliberately misuse statistics to con us.

Last week I was looking at Herbalife.  This 'multi-level marketing' company specialise in nutrition and skin-care products and their distributors can be very persuasive in trying first to get you to buy their products but also to get you to join their pyramid-shaped structure. I was accosted by one of them myself in a car park a few weeks ago. 

His opening remarks were remarkable.  He told me that life-expectancy in Botswana is declining, poor nutrition causes all disease and that even the healthiest of people require vitamin supplements. 

Of course this is all lies.  Utter lies. If you ignore the impact of HIV/AIDS we are all living longer than our parents and grandparents, nutrition is critical but it's not the only influence on health and the groups that need supplements are very few.

However the interesting thing I discovered is how much individual distributors or 'Leaders' actually make from Herbalife. In an official Herbalife document, hidden away on their web site, only discoverable if you know exactly what to look for, I found their 'Statement Of Average Gross Compensation Of U.S. Supervisors - 2009'.  It claims that the 'annual gross compensation paid by Herbalife to Active Leaders during 2009 averaged approximately $5,100.'

But that's simply playing with numbers.  That figure is quite high but only because there is a tiny minority of people, obviously the first people to join, at the top of the pyramid who make fortunes.  Half a percent of 'active leaders' made an average each of $449,261.  However, the vast majority, 87.3% of them to be precise had average 'earnings' of a miserable $478. In fact, if Herbalife's own figures are to be believed more than two-thirds of the entire pool of earnings is given to the top 2% of the 'Leaders'.  The vast majority at the bottom level get between them all a mere 8% of the pot.

But there's the other deception.  That figure refers to 'earnings' not profits.  That's not $478 the 'Leaders' could spend, it had to be spent on their phone bills, transport costs, internet access and the million and one other things that needed to run their ridiculous 'leadership'.

The solution is to be skeptical, particularly when you see numbers, even more so when those numbers refer to money.  Even more than that when that money is yours!

This week's stars* Tebogo and Patricia from Mascom for being wonderful.

* Lameck from Wimpy on the Western Bypass for great service.

* Stella and the team at Botsnet for recovering extremely well from a problem

If you have any consumer issues please get in touch.  Email us at watchdog@bes.bw, by post to P. Box 403026, Gaborone or by phone on 3904582 or fax on 3911763.  Read the Consumer Watchdog blog where you can comment, celebrate and complain at consumerwatchdogbw.blogspot.com.  Also join our Facebook group called 'Consumer Watchdog Botswana'.