Ask a Bartender: Can You Skip the Tip Line But Still Add Gratuity?

To tip or not to tip is never the question. (Always tip.) But after a three-Martini lunch or a wine tasting dinner, calculating the tip and the exact total can feel tedious or overwhelming. Instead, it might be tempting to just add the total amount on the bottom of the receipt, skipping the tip line altogether.

So, is it feasible to add a gratuity without penning any amount on a receipt’s tip line at all? That’s a question that was spurred on by a recent Threads post, where a user claimed his “restaurant worker friends” said customers can just write “MATH” on the tip line and the total where indicated.

It seems like a pretty viable hack: Just write the grand total, tip included, to avoid doing the pesky math. With a topic as contentious as tipping, the post understandably gained some traction, with patrons and industry folk alike chiming in with their thoughts on the workaround. “The only thing that matters is the total line,” one user commented. Others noted that it’s not as straightforward.

To see how those behind the stick actually feel about guests skipping the tip line, VinePair tapped bartenders Ashtyn “Ash” Harris and Shammai Mading to find out. While it may be an easy fix for customers, it turns out what guests write or don’t write on a receipt is much trickier than it may seem.

Harris, pedigreed bartender at the well-reviewed Press Club in Washington, D.C., says the hack is technically sound. “If the guest just wants to put the total, they can do that and not stress about the math part for the tip,” she says. “It would make their lives easier.” But mental math is grounds for frequent error, so Harris prefers referencing both the tip and total line to make sure guests never feel swindled. Double-checking both requires the guest writing the tip and total on the physical check.

“Technically, the total is all that matters,” she says. “However, given the fact that customers are getting intoxicated, their math can be off, so I like to cross reference between tip and total.”

Handheld point-of-sale (POS) systems are one way to alleviate any mental math and confusion about what a grand total should be. In recent years, these mobile machines have become popular at many bars, prompting guests to select a tip percentage and doing the math for them.

“The bars I work at have handheld POS systems, so we don’t have to enter the tip amount because guests do that themselves by clicking a percentage amount,” says Mading, who splits her time between nouveau pub Banshee and Mexican-American cocktail bar Superbueno in Manhattan’s East Village.

That said, when Mading needs to print out a receipt, she likes when guests write the tip amount onto the check. “I need the added tip amount to enter into the POS,” she says. “The total doesn’t matter too much except to confirm that what someone wrote for the tip is correct.”

Mathematical errors may cause bartenders to compromise their own earnings to ensure a guest doesn’t feel scammed by a higher-than-expected total. For example, if a guest receives a bill for $50, and the guest adds a $10 tip but writes the total as $62, Harris will sacrifice those $2.

“We often close out checks at the end of the night when the guests are already gone,” she says. “I usually do what I imagine the guests intended, even if that means that I make a little less. I would hate for a guest to check their bank account the next day, lose their trust, and not come back. It’s a big integrity thing for me.”

Ultimately, it would be best for a guest to thoroughly write out both the tip and total line to avoid any confusion — and, ideally, with the correct math. The more information a guest can provide to the bartender handling the POS system, the better.

“I like full transparency,” Harris says. “The worst is when the guest feels like they can’t trust you or the establishment.”

The article Ask a Bartender: Can You Skip the Tip Line But Still Add Gratuity? appeared first on VinePair.