Interesting article on U.S. Tipping

[Centrals]

Never saw service charge in the menu.

Yes, all of the restaurant

Yes. LOL I guess you haven’t been in Phuket recently.

See my receipt, below. They put a line to add for tips too. I left it blank.

View attachment 707027

Never ever need to use credit card to pay for food in SE Asia.
Your 7% service charge is to cover the commission paid to the bank.
CASH is king.

 

[Centrals]

Maybe you are narc’d after that many dives. They need you to buy them a night out they probably can’t afford it guiding you for two weeks.

Do you really believe what he has written?

 

[Dan]

Never ever need to use credit card to pay for food in SE Asia.
Your 7% service charge is to cover the commission paid to the bank.
CASH is king.

7% service charge is on the bill before paying with cash or credit card. I have paid either with cash or credit card. It’s on the bill regardless paying with cash or credit card. Like I said, you just haven’t been around here lately to know what’s going on around here.

I just don’t want to hassle with carrying change in my pocket that have gone through so many different hands. Trying to minimize cross contamination during this pandemic.

 

[Blackcrusader]

As an American who lives in Japan, I feel really weird diving in Okinawa, which has a mixture of Americans and Japanese. Ultimately I feel like if I’m paying nearly 200 dollars for 3 dives in a day, probably that cost includes all the costs and don’t tip on top. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, I usually tip but probably closer to 5% of the total trip bill. On my first trip I tried to give a 10% tip and was nearly killed by my Thai partner. She said, if you tip that much, the DMs will be making more than a physician.

Plenty of divers who just dive together in Okinawa on shore dives without paying $200. Your $200 a day are boat dives yes?

 

[Blackcrusader]

7% service charge is on the bill before paying with cash or credit card. I have paid either with cash or credit card. It’s on the bill regardless paying with cash or credit card. Like I said, you just haven’t been around here lately to know what’s going on around here.

I just don’t want to hassle with carrying change in my pocket that have gone through so many different hands. Trying to minimize cross contamination during this pandemic.

Yup some restaurants and bars in Taiwan will add a service charge of 10% on their bills. They are losing business now as people can sit at a 7/11 and drink beers there now for a fifth of the price. 7/11 no service charges.

 

[drk5036]

Plenty of divers who just dive together in Okinawa on shore dives without paying $200. Your $200 a day are boat dives yes?

yup.

Shore diving in Okinawa is awesome, but there's only a few places I would feel comfortable going without someone who has been there before because the currents can be tricky and strong. But diving off Sunabe has a bunch of locations and is easy to read the currents. 5 bucks for a tank is certainly a good way to get dive time in.

 

[Centrals]

7% service charge is on the bill before paying with cash or credit card. I have paid either with cash or credit card. It’s on the bill regardless paying with cash or credit card. Like I said, you just haven’t been around here lately to know what’s going on around here.

I just don’t want to hassle with carrying change in my pocket that have gone through so many different hands. Trying to minimize cross contamination during this pandemic.

Never had to pay any service charge for food in all the restaurants in Thailand that I had been. And I had been to quite a few from far north to deep south.
There are many restaurants in Phuket that has no service charge to pay.
Afraid to catch anything! Are you sure all the employers and their close associate/family in all the places that you had been are fully vaccinated?

 

[Centrals]

Up-dated last yr.

Restaurants beware! Govt takes stock of complaints related to service charge levied by pubs, hotels

The Ministry in a statement on Tuesday said all such complaints have been taken up with the respective business outlets for appropriate redressal.

www.timesnownews.com

 

[Lorenzoid]

At the end of the day if tipping in a culture where it doesn’t happen is insulting, not tipping in cultures that do is stealing.

I agree.

For those who aren't familiar with this, in the US our tax authority, the IRS, classifies certain employees as "tipped employees," which allows the employer to pay them as little as a special "tipped minimum wage" that is lower than the regular minimum wage. As I see it, under the US system there is a sort of tacit agreement among employers, employees, and yes, we the customers, that the employer pays part of what the employee is worth and customers pay the rest in "tips." In effect, we the customers are expected to make up that portion of tipped employees' fair compensation that is not paid by the employer. Not tipping in the US is, in effect, taking away from the employee what we the customers are expected to pay as our fair share.

The "tipped employee" rationale is only one of several rationales or theories that explain the practice of tipping, and others have been mentioned in this thread. This particular rationale does not translate well outside the US, where many customers assume (not always correctly) that the people providing them services are paid, and at more or less market wage rates. It seems that in some cases they are paid well and in other cases they are not paid at all. In some places that have adopted the practice of tipping, employees are already fully paid by the employer--presumedly the market wage that prevents the employee from seeking a higher paying job--and a tip is pure windfall for them. We can research what the local practice is where we are, but in the end it's still much of a guessing game as to what to do to be fair to all.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

If you understand cultures are different you know that in some the DM is not being paid, their salary is tips. If you allow them to run your dive and not tip, that is taking money out of their pocket.

Who held a gun to their head and made them take a job with no pay or salary, only tips?
Sounds like total exploitation to me, and it’s somehow the customers fault?