Waiters/Waitresses rounding the bill up if you pay cash?

[Tom King]

A builder friend of mine was building a house for a client in Raleigh who told him not to put an oven in the kitchen.  He was talked out of that very bad idea, and the house was built with a normal kitchen.

A few years later, he was by there in preparations for building an addition on that house.  The client carried him in the kitchen and showed him that the oven still had all the cardboard packing in it.

[Southside]

I had a customer approach me one time at a farmers market and ask me how to cook hamburger, not how to cook it better, how to cook it. She had never cooked meat. Give her credit, she was trying to learn new things, but that shocked me.

[thecfarm]

$60 for four people is kinda high.
But the way things are......
Eggs was $6-7 a dozen.
I see they are down to just about $2 now.
Just like Dunkin Donuts, $5-6 for each person.

[sawguy21]

We pay $15 for a burger and fries at the fast food joint, a family of four can't eat anywhere for less than 60 dollars. I have a good lunch with soup or salad, a hot entree and dessert at the legion once a week for ten bucks. I can't make it at home for that!

[SwampDonkey]

New hotel restaurant charges $20 for a hamburger. I can get a better one next door at the French Fry Hut, local Angus beef, for $4.75, fries $4.50. :D A man sized Angus burger is $8.50. Cash only. ;)

https://www.zmenu.com/french-fry-hut-florenceville-bristol-online-menu

I see they are missing an old fashioned flavour ice cream on that menu, vanilla grapenut. ;D

Still like home made burger and home made cut fries for maybe $3.50 - Local beef is $5.00-5.50/lb around here. Potatoes are practically free 9 months of the year. One large potato might be 25 cents. ;D

[SawyerTed]

A builder friend of mine was building a house for a client in Raleigh who told him not to put an oven in the kitchen.  He was talked out of that very bad idea, and the house was built with a normal kitchen.

A few years later, he was by there in preparations for building an addition on that house.  The client carried him in the kitchen and showed him that the oven still had all the cardboard packing in it.

I had a coworker who lived in their new house 5 years before they found out their oven was never plugged in!  They wanted to warm a pizza from the local pizzeria.  
The electrician plugged it in and charged the regular service call amount.  

[HP]

I was in Aldis a few years ago and I saw this "lady" with a cart piled high with all prepared "food".  On top of it all was a can of coffee.  My wife wouldn't let me ask her if she realized she had to boil water for that.

[Sedgehammer]

There's part of the problem, if we won't pay much and they have to pay help, it's got to come out of something. I prefer to eat good food at home. That said I know plenty of people that think of the kitchen as the room with the refrigerator. They eat sysco food all the time.

It's rarely, if ever restaurant food is better than home cooked, even high priced ones. We've gone out to for our anniversary @ some high dollar places a few times. Steaks over $100. They were decent, but nothing like the price indicated

[Old Greenhorn]

Yes, its true YMMV for sure. But sometimes you get lucky. I used to spend a week in Chicago every other year for the big machine tool show. I would try to get a good steak every night. One time a dealer we did more business with than I would like insisted on taking our crew out for dinner. Holy cow that place was expensive. I had an $80. steak. that was just for the steak. A baked potatoes and another 10 bucks and I forget what a salad or vegetable added on. I was nuts and the steak was barely average, over cooked. I know they dropped over a grand on that dinner.
 But there was a pub I liked going to, wish I could remember the name. I block west of Michigan ave. and under the EL. MAN! they had great steaks, melted in your mouth and reasonably priced. One of those pubs that had been in business for over 100 years and all the celebs went to back in the day. Never had a bad meal there and always better than we could make at home. 
 One year my niece was managing a very upscale restaurant in Chicago and I asked the guys I was with to join me for dinner there. It had been on some list of the top 10 restaurants in the US. It was called the 'Purple Pig' and everything was pig or pork dishes. I told the guys that if they didn't like the food, just be polite and I would take them anywhere they wanted to go for dinner afterwards. We got there and there was a line down the block and around the corner. I texted my niece just to let her know we had showed up and would look for her when we got inside. She came out, found us and led us right in to a table.  A waitress came by in a minute and gave us menus and it was all WEIRD stuff I could not figure out. Neither could the other guys. We looked at each other trying to figure out how to proceed. Fried pigs ear was about the only thing I remember on the menu that I could understand. My niece came back by and snatched up all the menus saying "you don't need those. I'll send you some stuff over to try." OK, we were a bit relieved, but then realized we would have to eat, or at least 'try' this 'stuff'. Platters started showing up. We had no idea what it was, but we tried it all and it was GOOD! More platters came, we ate those too, no idea what it was but again it was good. I recognized the pig's ear when they came and they were great! Platters kept coming and we kept eating, There were a few things that didn't appeal to all 3 of us, but for the most part, really good stuff and I have no idea what I ate. I was getting concerned about the bill a little bit. I only had the menu for a couple of minutes, but had time to get some average prices in my head and I counted the platters and figured I was I was either going to have a lot of 'splaining to do to my boss or kick in 1 or 200 bucks toward this meal. No matter, it's family, right? This was a big job move for my niece and I was proud of her.
 So eventually the waitress drops off the check and before my eyes can focus on it my niece snatches it out of my fingers and looks it over and says "this isn't right, I'll be right back". Sure enough, she comes back with a new check and the total in 80 bucks. Well I know that's not right, but I am not going to argue. So I paid the bill and left a big cash tip, at least I think it was big.
 We walked out of the restaurant and I turned to my guys and thanked them for coming and along and reminded them I made a promise and was willing to keep it if they wanted to go get something else to eat. They looked at each other, then looked at me and we all knew we had eaten so much we could barely move. They were satisfied. ;D :D We decided to walk the 30 blocks back to our hotel instead of taking a cab, we needed the walk. To this day, none of us have any idea what we ate, except for those pigs ears.  I also don't think they rounded up the tab.

[21incher]

When I was working in Zurich for JDSU 3 of us decided to ask the hotel manager we were staying in for the best steakhouse around and had him call a cab to take us there. Well it was a couple hills over high up a mountain with a wonderful view. We were dropped off at the door and went in. Well it was very nice but no one in the place spoke any English and we did not know how to speak German. What a time trying to order from a German menu with no pictures.  We wound up just pointing to menu items to order and the only easy part was ordering beer. Well about 1/2 hour later they started bringing out dinner. First thing brought  out were 3 about 1 ft square x 5 inch thick rocks that must have been 500 degrees f. They were followed by 3 beautiful giant raw steaks along with some cooked veggies. The waitress  saw we were puzzled and showed us how to slice off chunks of the steaks and sear them on the hot rocks. Well they were the best steaks ever and everyone  in the place got a kick out of watching us develop techniques to cook them. We gave the waitress a giant tip just using the company credit card and then tried  to get someone to call a cab that never happened.  So here we are in suits and dress shoes walking 10 miles down a hill back towards the lights in Zurich on dark back roads at midnight.  I got the worst blisters on my feet but we finally made it back to the rail station and took a train back to the hotel. I will say that was the best steak I ever had and after that we had the hotel manager write a note in German asking to call a cab and take us back to the hotel address should it happen again. Turned out we left the waitress a out $100 tip  ;D  

[gspren]

@Old Greenhorn ,back in the late 90s early 2000s I also went to the International Machine Tool Show in Chicago every other year. The Govt per diem for meals was about 40-50 dollars a day and that was for 3 meals, couldn't really do it without dipping into your own wallet. I went to a fancy steak house with a salesman that I had puchased a half million dollar machine from and he wanted to pay my bill but as a Govt employee I could lose my job if discovered. If my failing memory is correct that meal was about $85. and I paid my own although I told him he could leave the tip since he kept insisting on paying my bill.

[Old Greenhorn]

Most of the places I worked in my life has those per diem requirements and were all cheap. In the early 80's I worked as an application engineer and part of the job was setting up and doing the tool shows around the country. The outfit I worked for I think had an $8.00 limit on breakfast and something like $40.00 for the day. It wasn't too terrible in a city like Charlotte, but in LA I could barely get through lunch on that. Every trip cost me between $100 and $250 out of pocket as the average trip length was 5 days. I also worked 16 hour days traveling, setting up, and working the shows with a lot of missed meals because there was only me covering the booth. When we did Boston, I was up and out of the motel at 8am on the last day of the show. Worked the show all day, until 5pm, then packed up the booth and machines, loaded the truck, and drive back to LI, arriving at 2am. I had to be back in the shop at 7am the next morning to unload the truck, set the machines up and do a demo for a potential client that the boss had set up during the show. No overtime or extra pay for any of it.
 Fast forward to 2006 or so and I landed the job I always wanted with a good boss, decent insurance, fair pay and a company credit card for travel. It was a whole different world. Understand and follow the expense account rules and you never have a problem. Violate the rules and you can find another job. I worked hard for that outfit too but was treated much better, until my boss passed away and my new boss was a tool that ruined my last years in that workforce. But that's another story.
 Doing the Chicago show was some of the hardest and most demanding work I did and it was exhausting. The folks back at the shop thought it was all parties, until I would bring one or two along each trip and they couldn't keep up with the actual work. Getting a good meal at the end of a long day was important.

[Hilltop366]

It probably still would not cover your cost difference but I believe that the meal cost/reimbursement for travelling for work is suppose to cover the difference between eating at home/packing a lunch and dining at a restaurant when away from home anything above this would be considered income (edit) ("taxable benefit" would be more accurate) and is suppose to be claimed and taxed as so. The same would be true for private use of a company vehicle like a car salesman taking home a dealer car for private use when not at work.

This is for Canada and the rules change and have some if/and/and buts to consider as well.