Some of us check it very closely, as if we are expecting to find some hidden plot against our wallets. Others simply toss a credit card into the folder without a glance at the total, assuming no nefarious intent on the part of servers. Most of us fall somewhere in between. We scan the bill expecting an approximate range but don’t review the culinary choices and associated expense of our guests. Easy when the receipt is only for a drink or two, it becomes predictably more difficult with a multicourse meal for multiple diners. We average the sum divided by those gathered and, if close, offer payment.
Sticker shock is precipitated by our own advancing years. How can a cup of coffee be $6 when we remember a time when it was a buck? Or in the short term, we might recoil at the rapid increases delivered by inflation. That $6 hot beverage was $5 last week. Still, we keep up nominally with the general price of things. Even so, there are new obstacles to confront. When it was once anticipated to provide 10 percent for expected service and more only for exemplary, it is now routine for the bidding to begin at 20 percent. Self-help kiosks nudge us to give, one can only assume, to the unseen folks in the back who are making the drink. Now, we include automatic “donations” to causes selected by them. We can opt-out but must demand to be and then wait until the check can be recreated, being wrongly shamed along the way. Hotels bundle “amenity fees” whether we benefit or not. Quietly added without notice or option, many restaurants in our nation’s capital are including an “administrative fee” of 5 percent to offset the cost of recent increases there of wage laws.
