10% Service Charge, Where Does It Go?

[meadish_sweetball]

It depends. There is no clear pattern, each individual establishment can do whatever they like - and they do.

I have several friends who work in the hotel and restaurant business in Chiang Mai.

If you are unsure - ask.

[bourbonstbkk]

Bourbon Street in Washington Square, Bangkok has a plus, plus system. Ten percent service tax plus VAT. Since I no longer go in there to eat I have no idea where the money goes.

Bourbon St goes into Doug's pocket not to the staff.I don't go there anymore.

You can ask any of the staff at Bourbon St. and they will tell you they get all of the service charge. They even keep track of it. It is paid to the staff on the 8th and 23rd of every month.

Ask Jim or Nang who has worked there for 16 and 15 years.

It is not the owner's money and I have no intention of keeping it. I resent oopapasan implying I keep it.

I hope this sets the record straight.

[Khun Yak]

You can ask any of the staff at Bourbon St. and they will tell you they get all of the service charge. They even keep track of it. It is paid to the staff on the 8th and 23rd of every month.

Ask Jim or Nang who has worked there for 16 and 15 years.

It is not the owner's money and I have no intention of keeping it. I resent oopapasan implying I keep it.

I hope this sets the record straight.

why so excited? Feeling offended or guilty?

BTW having worked in a five star hotel in BKK myself i'd like to share my experience. The 5 star hotels in BKK are well known amoung their respective staff how much Service Charge each and every hotel is paying and staff is even moving to another hotel because they might pay a higher SC (1000+ THB more). Although I have no clue whether it is 100% related to the actual revenue done in the previous month, you can see a seasonal difference - an increase in a busy month.

Just to name an example: A receptionist in a Bangkok 5-star hotel got a basic salary of about 7500 THB per month. This is increased by payments of service charge of 7000 - 15000 THB extra per month depending on the hotel and the made revenue. Eligible is every staffmember earning less than 100000 THB/month, which excludes the high management staff (more than reasonable) and excluded me as well (fixed salary far below 100000 - unreasonable ).

Whenever Farangs approched me asking about the "tiping policies & habbits", I told them that it is rather unusual, but that noone would be feeling offended if they receive some tip for outstanding service and they would appreciate. Hence some of the luggage boys might have done quite some money on top of their monthly service charge...

Being in SG in the same business now, I have to say that over here this bloody service charge is added as well, but is not distributed to the staff on a monthly basis. If at all, through an annual bonus, but this bonus never ever equals 10% of the revenue made. And the staff is not earning a fortune as well.

Nevertheless in my opinion a lot of service staff are worth a tip for their outstanding performance !

KEEP ON TIPING (personally)

Cheers

KY

Edited June 6, 2006 by Khun Yak

[Ulysses G.]

Bourbon Street in Washington Square, Bangkok has a plus, plus system. Ten percent service tax plus VAT. Since I no longer go in there to eat I have no idea where the money goes.

Bourbon St goes into Doug's pocket not to the staff.I don't go there anymore.

You can ask any of the staff at Bourbon St. and they will tell you they get all of the service charge. They even keep track of it. It is paid to the staff on the 8th and 23rd of every month.

Ask Jim or Nang who has worked there for 16 and 15 years.

It is not the owner's money and I have no intention of keeping it. I resent oopapasan implying I keep it.

I hope this sets the record straight.

I hate to say this, and it has been a while since I've been there, but I believe that the waiter at Bourbon Street told me that the staff DIDN'T get the service charge.

It is quite common for staff anywhere to do that in order to get a bigger tip, so it's really hard to know whether to tip on top of the service charge, or not.

A real drag.

[oopapasan]

Bourbon Street in Washington Square, Bangkok has a plus, plus system. Ten percent service tax plus VAT. Since I no longer go in there to eat I have no idea where the money goes.

Bourbon St goes into Doug's pocket not to the staff.I don't go there anymore.

You can ask any of the staff at Bourbon St. and they will tell you they get all of the service charge. They even keep track of it. It is paid to the staff on the 8th and 23rd of every month.

Ask Jim or Nang who has worked there for 16 and 15 years.

It is not the owner's money and I have no intention of keeping it. I resent oopapasan implying I keep it.

I hope this sets the record straight.

Doug you were caught taking money out of the tip jar

[kayo]

i haven´t read what others have replied here, so forgive me is there is a repetitivenes.

reeptientinvene.

I´ve worked the service biz, on and off, sicne I was eight years old. Nearly twenty years.

In about as many countries.

GENERALLY speaking, the ten percent does NOT go to the staff.

GENERALLY speaking, the credit card surcharges do NOT go to the staff.

GENERALLY speaking, tips put on a credit card do NOT go to the staff.

GENERALLY speaking, give tips, cash in hand. And don´t even trust the staff to share.

I´m in the fortunate situation of being able to dictate.

Where I am, the service charge ontop of the bill, for credit cards, I use to pay the greedy CC companies.

Tips on CC´s go to the staff, evenly split between kitchen/waiting staff, using sales data to ratio out the food as opposed to beverage. (we sell more beverage than food)

Tips cash in hand, I demand that they are shared between the staff. I catch anyone pocketing a tip, they get sacked. Sharing only works if everybody is doing it.

Other than that, I don´t touch the tip jar. That´s between them.

The boys and girls working for me are very slowly, and very surely, learning, that maybe one day they are worse off and another is better off, ut it works both ways, and they are starting to look beyond only today.

A while back we had a staff member, that the others came to me and said they could not include him in the sharing cos they didn´t trust him. I was disappointed cos he was a good worker, but indeed, as I started to pay attention, I saw he was very focused on how much he would bring home TODAY, and not in general. So I told the otheres to get to that table faster than him. keeping all the business between the other workers, and our boy was going home with nothing every day. And so time passed, and he left of his own accord. Rather than silently start to share, he got annoyed and complained that he wasn´t geting to any tables in time. He left shortly. We pay better than any other place in town.

Anyway, these are general distinctions, but that´s been my experience, in private, public, big worldwide brand famous, and private hole in the wall run by a drunk, type establishments.

Edited June 10, 2006 by kayo

[oopapasan]

i haven´t read what others have replied here, so forgive me is there is a repetitivenes.

reeptientinvene.

I´ve worked the service biz, on and off, sicne I was eight years old. Nearly twenty years.

In about as many countries.

GENERALLY speaking, the ten percent does NOT go to the staff.

GENERALLY speaking, the credit card surcharges do NOT go to the staff.

GENERALLY speaking, tips put on a credit card do NOT go to the staff.

GENERALLY speaking, give tips, cash in hand. And don´t even trust the staff to share.

I´m in the fortunate situation of being able to dictate.

Where I am, the service charge ontop of the bill, for credit cards, I use to pay the greedy CC companies.

Tips on CC´s go to the staff, evenly split between kitchen/waiting staff, using sales data to ratio out the food as opposed to beverage. (we sell more beverage than food)

GoodTips cash in hand, I demand that they are shared between the staff. I catch anyone pocketing a tip, they get sacked. Sharing only works if everybody is doing it.

Other than that, I don´t touch the tip jar. That´s between them.

The boys and girls working for me are very slowly, and very surely, learning, that maybe one day they are worse off and another is better off, ut it works both ways, and they are starting to look beyond only today.

A while back we had a staff member, that the others came to me and said they could not include him in the sharing cos they didn´t trust him. I was disappointed cos he was a good worker, but indeed, as I started to pay attention, I saw he was very focused on how much he would bring home TODAY, and not in general. So I told the otheres to get to that table faster than him. keeping all the business between the other workers, and our boy was going home with nothing every day. And so time passed, and he left of his own accord. Rather than silently start to share, he got annoyed and complained that he wasn´t geting to any tables in time. He left shortly. We pay better than any other place in town.

Anyway, these are general distinctions, but that´s been my experience, in private, public, big worldwide brand famous, and private hole in the wall run by a drunk, type establishments.

Good post