How To Tip In Vancouver Nightclubs

By Matt Coolen

Canadian's are notorious for being bad tippers. Shame on you for ruining the name of the people that know what we're doing.

I am a fairly generous tipper, but I still believe that tipping is partly a privilege for the person on the receiving end, but don't penalize them based on stupid issues you had, or something that was their fault.

If you are at a restaurant and your food came out and didn't taste to your standards, don't blame your waitress, if she handled the situation right and took care of you when you addressed the problem with her, but if you sat there grumbling over your dinner to your group and didn't say anything, then she didn't have the chance to correct the problem, and you didn't give her the chance to do her job, so you shouldn't hold that against her - tip her accordingly you cheap bastard!

Say for instance you are at the bar, and for some ridiculous reason you didn't get a table and the crowd at the bar is insane, once you get a bartenders attention and order your round, give him his proper tip, then slip him another $20 bill, this can go a long way with getting a lot better service when waiting in a huge line for a drink and save a lot of general frustration.

Tips For Tips

Two types of tipping come into play with bottle service, one is your waitress, another is your host.

The "service fee" which is billed at 18% per bottle bought is the tip for your personal waitress, so technically she is taken care of, throw her an extra $50 - $100 and that can all the sudden turn a waitress that is running around between 10 tables all the sudden VERY attentive, now your ice is always full, your drinks are always poured and your mixers and glasses are steadily re-stocked.

As for your host anywhere from $100 - $1000 depending on his or her services. $100 if they booked you a table and walked your group in and that's it. But you may want to look at a lot more if your host arranged your limo, your dinner reservations, got you your table, and then discreetly booked you a hotel room for you and one (or two) of the girls he introduced you to this evening.

Don't under estimate the power that comes with tipping your host, if you had your host running around like crazy with big demands and didn't tip properly, expect to get his voicemail from now on, and I wouldn't sit by the phone waiting for him to call you back.

If you don't have a host or guestlist and need to tip a bouncer to skip the line or get in, you are usually looking at $20 - $30 per person. Be discreet when doing this or else they may not let you in at all. Also a lot of clubs are putting an end to this so don't be surprised if they stick you even further back in the line when you ask.

Overall - being cheap gets you nowhere in night life, after all you are out to have a good time, so budget ahead of time for the tip and you'll be fine.