Oh, hey RT

ayeforscotland

Right Americans, I need an explanation. What on Earth are these kids doing wrong? Surely this is normal?

maximumsunshine

You're meant to open a tab. The bartender keeps your card, and everything you order gets added to your tab. Then, before you leave, your tab is closed, your card is charged for everything at once, and you get your card back.

ayeforscotland

That seems like a useful way for bars to take advantage of folk who are absolutely plastered.

It just seems much easier to tap your card on a machine than wait for some big tally at the end of the night.

gardensandghosts

What machine? The bartender/waitress usually has to go to a POS machine and close out manually. Plus how are they supposed to tally tips properly? Stiffing the waitstaff and causing more work is rude!

ayeforscotland

The card reader, and yeah go to the POS machine, enter the drinks and make them tap a card? Doesn’t seem totally outlandish.

People can pay with cash tips or they take a percentage of the transaction?

Or even better bars can pay their staff properly?

I’m not against tipping but it shouldn’t make up the majority of someone’s wages.

ilikesallydonovan

Hang on, in the US you hand your card over??? That seems like a recipe for fraud. Like, if my card was copied and used for a fraudulent transaction then my bank wouldn't compensate me if I had handed my card over to a stranger to hold on to.

magess

It is. The US credit industry just expects a certain level of fraud. Sometimes they will reimburse you, sometimes not. The banks built a leaky bucket and adjust their profit projections accordingly.

jv

The way the US banking system has evolved in a totally different way than most of the rest of the world (cheques instead of money wires, credit cards instead of debit cards, all the different technology things) is a unsolved mystery to me. I've tried to find out an explanation googling around a bunch of times and no one seems to even talk about it.

madridthekidd

I’ve left my card at the bar before and gone back to get it the next day and still no fraud. 🤷🏻‍♀️

jv

wait wait

It's not like that in any way. Service workers are as honest as everyone else, and by default I consider the average USian a couple of points above of your average spaniard (or any of our southern european siblings, you know what I'm talking about, portu-italo-greek-balkan-turks) in any honesty scale.

But it's... odd. As someone else says in the notes, it's like handling the waiter your wallet full of cash so they can take it away and take whatever money they need from there. Or telling me that in your town people don't use keys on their house front doors and all it's fine. I'm sure it's ok, but when you come from a place where you lock your door every night before going to sleep, it feels crazy.

Like, some years ago there were some cases here where people installed card readers over the actual card slot of ATMs, with a small camera pointing to the numeric keyboard, so they could clone your card. Banks are always reminding you to not let anyone see your PIN number, and, generally speaking, be ultra careful with your cards.

So handling them to someone you don't know so they take it away from you to pay without you really being in front of them and manually confirming with your secret passcode ... it's pretty mindblowing

passiveagreeable

The first time my dad was presented with a card reader at the table in Europe, he was a bit aghast. He didn’t like the idea that they could see him confirming everything and easily watch whether he tips or not. He has since gotten used to it the more my parents visited me, but it’s just a difference of understanding.

For us, it’s normal to hand off your card because unless you are actually involved in the fraud or were immensely irresponsible, you won’t be liable for the charges. And having not handed off my card for a long time, thinking about it now even makes me a bit nervous. But obviously, there is nothing a person can do about it unless you demand to follow the waitstaff to their computer and watch everything happen. It is slowly, slowly changing, but I emphasize: slow.

There is a certain level of trust you have to have in your server, and they also know that if there is theft of someone’s card or card info, they may be investigated first. But I don’t think at all it’s unreasonable to not want to hand you card to anyone you don’t know, service employee or not, because as soon as it leaves your sight, really your hand even, there’s a potential for trouble. But it’s just another weird thing about the US, and I’m sorry that there isn’t a universal standard of how these things work. Both for myself and everyone else.

jv

ok, I'm going to take us in a little detour, but what you posted has reminded me of something on my own work-life.

Some years ago, I was working for a certain US company (ahem) that offered premium plans on a product. You could only pay on a year-by-year basis, and me and a bunch of other folks around the world considered this crazypants.

In the discussion about why we should have also monthly plans (which are less profitable for the company for both higher payment fees and early cancellation), our main argument was "but why anyone would pay FOR A YEAR of a product they haven't used before?", and the response from some USamerican colleagues was "well, if they don't like it, they can cancel it within the first month and we refund them the entire fee".

And that. There. That was the point of breakage. USamericans trusted, quite blindly, that a company would return you the entire fee, as they said, if you cancelled the plan during the first month. The rest of us? not in a million years would trust a company to do that, even if they advertise it, even if they give it to me signed on a contract, even if they are obliged by law.

I don't know why, I don't know how it happened, but it looks like USamericans' level of trust (that a company or a person would do "the right thing") is waaaaaaay above the rest of the world. Hence "giving the card to someone to hold it for you" doesn't sound crazy to people from the US, while sounding absolutely nuts to most of everyone else.

hellothanksjellyfish

There is definitely a large amount of "companies will Make It Right if anything happens" in the average American consumer attitude

Something that I haven't seen touched on in the notes (apologies if it has already) is how fucking stressful bartending is in the US (idk about other countries). I was raised in Italy and it's normal for food service to have ridiculously slow response times. Not so in the States. People expect as close to instant service as possible, and they expect the server/bartender to be friendly about it. Don't smile at the patrons? Might affect your tips.

Minimum wage for tipped workers [in most of the US] is $2.13/hour. That's €1,90. Creating a tab is an efficiency thing that plays into the American cultural thing of "I will respect service workers by not wasting their time or getting in their way" aka making their already super stressful job more stressful or reducing their income

If you aren't comfortable leaving your card, no problem! Bring cash. But don't waste bartenders' time.