When the waiter doesn't give exact change

I tend to write about weighty things. Life also has little details.

I still pay for some restaurant meals with cash, especially if it's a lunch where the total bill is under $20. Waiters have been making occasional mistakes for as long as there have been waiters, yet today I write about something else.

It may have been ten years ago that I first ran into the idea of waiters deliberately not giving you exact change. The first problem is psychological. When people my age were young, a quarter was a valuable coin -- because of inflation but also because children are much poorer than adults. It is no longer of much importance to you if you're being a rational economic actor, but it still has that trace in my feelings. So if their change is off by even a quarter, it is already changing the rules of the game. They're forcing you into the realm of approximations where you're supposed to think that maybe a quarter doesn't matter. I've never known a waiter at a Chinese restaurant to do this, and it's one nice feature of Chinese restaurants (a tiny one, to be sure).

Say the bill is $10.25 and you give them a twenty. If they bring you a five and ten ones, I find it mildly annoying for the reasons above but not too bad. I figure they are being generous and offering me a free quarter. I proceed to leave a cash tip. I can verify it's correct because I see two ones there and know it is 20% of my ten-dollar tab.

What I really dislike is when they only bring you a five and four ones. You've been shorted by seventy-five cents. Who has pocketed that seventy-five cents? I assume it is the waiter, not the restaurant, though it's not entirely clear. Next, they are assuming you are going to leave a tip -- which goes against the social form of a tip as a voluntary payment. But what's more, they are making you do extra math. If I want to leave a 20% tip I should now put down one dollar bill and a quarter. Now when I look at the cash on the table as against my ten-dollar tab, it looks like a very poor tip. But if a quarter isn't important, then I could just leave a dollar. Yet I'm also aware that that is a tip under 20%, so there's some temptation to leave an extra dollar to be sure it's enough.

As long as we as a society are still using coins, we should use them right, partly to be in harmony with our past.

I am happy with retail stores that have a dish of pennies, because you can grab one to cover your purchase of $10.01, and it's also a place to put the few pennies you might get in change. Even when I was young, pennies were not very important. But the vital thing is that it is voluntary. I can if I choose fish in my pocket for that extra penny I owe, and I can pocket the pennies I get from change. I think of penny dishes as an arrangement you see in places on the lower end of the economic spectrum. Maybe there's some stigma attached to it, but I don't think there should be.

I am sympathetic to restaurants adding 18% or 20% to the bill for parties of five or more. When it's no one person's job to make sure everything adds up to include a decent tip, I presume the total is often short, which is why they adopt these policies. In that case there is real money at stake.

In fact, when I order a lunch special that costs $10 and ask for water as my beverage (because in fact water is the beverage I want most), I will typically leave a tip of 30% or even 40%. They've done as much work as they would for a more expensive meal. But that is my choice, and that makes all the difference.