Server takes customer’s order. Then she immediately knows what he’ll tip based on her profiling system: ‘We really should end tipping completely’

When you sit down at a restaurant table, you generally expect your server to greet you with a smile and a cheerful demeanor. What you don’t know is that, apparently, some of them may be profiling you into a “tipper” category as soon as you walk in.

In a TikTok video posted by server and content creator Ace (@dear.ace), which got over 184,400 views, she explains the different tipping patterns she says she’s noticed among customers based on things like age and gender, and more.

Which Customers Does the Server Think Tip More?

“I’m about to [expletive] a lot of people off,” Ace begins. “Let’s talk about how I profile tables on how much they’re gonna tip.”

First up, she says, are “brunch ladies.”

“Every single time a group of women who are coming in for brunch sit down, my hopes immediately plummet through the floor,” she says.

According to Ace, she rarely gets a big tip from this group.

“I don’t know why this is, but I almost never get a 20% tip from brunch women,” she says. “And usually they’re some of the more difficult tables.”

On the other side, she says, are businessmen meeting for lunch.

“Guys who are meeting up for a business meeting or who are working in the same business doing, like, a kickback lunch,” she says. “Almost always I get a 40% tip.”

Teenagers on prom night, according to Ace, are unpredictable.

“Teenagers on prom night are about a fifty-fifty shot of you getting anywhere near a good tip,” she says, explaining that many of them may not fully understand tipping yet.

“I didn’t always understand it, so, like, I’m not judging,” she adds.

Older customers, in her experience, “almost never tip above 10%.”

She also addresses international diners.

“If you are dining out in the United States, whether you believe in the tipping system or not, it is still expected that you tip if you receive the service that is up to standard,” she says.

As for college students, Ace says women usually leave decent tips.

“I say they average in the 15% neighbourhood,” she says.

College men are a different story.

“College boys on the other hand, almost never get tipped from them at all,” she says.

Ace clarified that she wasn’t speaking about every single customer.

“This is clearly not everybody,” she concludes.

Commenters Turned on Tipping Culture

The comments section of this type of video commonly involves people who express disdain for the tipping system entirely. That was no different here.

“Every time I see a tiktok about tipping it makes me want to tip less,” one user wrote. “Tipping is not mandatory.”

“I tip very well, but tipping culture has gotten out of control,” another said. “It should be up to the restaurants to pay more for the staff’s higher wages and not up to the customers.”

Another commenter argued that while the system may be flawed, customers still need to tip under the current model.

“No one is entitled to the labor of others for free,” they wrote. “A tip is not a favor or optional, it is the cost of the service. If you receive service, you have to pay for it. The system sucks and is exploitative, but until it changes you have to pay for the service separately from the food.”

Why Do U.S. Servers Care So Much About Tips?

In the U.S., tips aren’t just a reward for exceptional service. Instead, they’re a crucial part of a server’s total income. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a tipped worker’s direct wage can be as little as $2.13 an hour, with tips expected to make up the difference until their total pay reaches the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

While tipping your server is part of dining culture, frustration with frequent tipping prompts across different industries has started to affect servers, too.

There are threads such as r/Tipping and r/EndTipping with hundreds of thousands of members, some of whom say they never tip at restaurants. Others understand that it’s the responsibility of the employer and are frustrated with the system overall, but also recognize that if customers don’t tip, it’s usually the server who suffers the consequences.

@dear.ace Keyboard warriors at your ready #serverlife #customerserviceproblems #fyp #serviceindustry ♬ original sound – ᴀᴄᴇ

The Mary Sue has reached out to Ace via TikTok messages for comment.

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