Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

When I was a 14 year old, my baseball team was at an out of town tournament, staying in a Holiday Inn (circa 1976), They had an all you can eat, Sunday brunch. Being the miscreants (but excellent ballplayers) that we were, we had engaged in a mega beer-a-thon the night before (long story on the accquisition part), and such, were hung over and hungry come brunch. The 16 of us were eating the buffet line, faster than they could bring it out, so fast, that we were jsut bypassing the chafing dishes and bringing the hotel pan right to our table. Finally, after a half hour, the manager came over and offered us this proposition...if youse (we were in Philly) leave now, we won't charge youse...see ya...but still hungry....peace

The fact of the matter is most people want to get off with as low a tariff as possible. We preach that as a society, except in those rarefied circumstances where overspending is a mark of status. On another blog last week, this same subject came up...and the funniest thing I read was, " Tipping is just ownership's way of paying a smaller wage", totally doing the Homer Simpson on the fact that if the owner had to pay the "tip" as wage that the final bill would be even higher (payroll taxes, etc)...if you can't afford to spend 25% more than the printed menu price (to cover tax and gratuity), go somewhere else where you can afford to be correct.