ali g reference, but thx.

my local place gives me the check in chinese so i dont even know what the hell they are charging me for.

We used to have a chinese take-out style restaurant near where i live (out of business now) that used to tilt me big time every time I went there. They never ever rang up an Order. And of course they always always added the meal tax to the bill.

Every time I got home I told my wife I was going to drop a dime to the DOR but never could get myself to do actually do it.

I never thought about them pocketing the tax charge, but you're right, that does make it feel like more of a rip.

From what I'm hearing this "stinginess" is not something other people run into.

Perhaps it is me that is stingy, and I am projecting my stinginess unto the restaurant.

How would you "feel" about this:

Incident #1: I am driving to my friend's house late at night to play in a small poker game. There is a Chinese restaurant that serves Dim Sum from 10:00pm to 2:00am. I decide to stop and pick up some for my friends. I am a regular customer here.

When inquire, the manager says, "No carry out Dim Sum. Dine-in only." I act very disappointed. She allows me to order spring rolls and potstickers off of the normal menu. Finally, feeling bad for me, a waitress rolls a Dim Sum cart with four leftover Dim Sums. She says, "Pick from these." I tell her, "Give me all four." I leave, happy with the place, yet confused why Dim Sum is not take-out. It is the perfect take-out food.

Incident #2: I eat a meal and am waiting for the waitress to take my check. Finally I go to pay at the register. I tell the manager the $3 change is for the waitress tip. She puts it in the register drawer. I say, "This is for the waitress." She says, "I know okay bye bye." I leave, wondering if the waitress got my tip.

Incident #3: I ask what is in a certain dish. The waitress says "Mixed vegetables, baby corn, pea pod, bok choy, and tofu." I order it. The menu says $7.95. When the bill comes, I am charged $10.95. I ask the waitress about the mistake. She says "This is because you got bok choy." I protest, arguing that she said nothing about the extra charge. She tells me to take it up with the manager. The manager quips about bok choy being expensive. She finally says, "The waitress will pay the $3.00 out of her tips. She pay for you. She pay for the mistake. Chinese vegetables expensive." WTF? I leave disgusted. I am disgusted because this was clearly some kind of cheap ploy or game. I dont know if they were free-rolling for the $3.00 or if it was a way of trying to insinuate something. Finally being completely fed-up I take out $3.00 in singles and throw them on the floor and walk out the door.

What do you think of these incidents? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

I guess I'll be eating Vietnamese.

-KF

Vietnamese is at least as good anyway.

FWIW, I'm behind you on all three of the incidents listed above. And I doubt very much the waitress got the tip. Old-world cultures are routinely hyper-exploitive of their workers. From personal experience dealing with some of them in management capacity, it's really hard to keep them from trying to screw their employees to the wall (in ever sense, including THAT one).

This thread has reminded me of college. We would order the same thing almost weekly from the local chinese place. The bill was never the same twice. We ended up giving the driver the same amount every time, so it made no difference to us.
We just called it the special chinese food tax.

i reckon its cos ur a gway lull. im chinese btw

and u sound stingy

I ate at one of the three restaurants yesterday with two of my friends.

The one fellow and I ordered the same dish, Tofu and Seafood hotpot, priced $11.95. The waitress made an error and brought us Tofu, meat, and seafood hotpot, priced at $10.95.

I brought up the error and said we would accept the dish, only we wanted her to take a dollar off the bill for the inconvenience.

The waitress, without argument, gave us each $1.00 off.

Conclusion: Haggling with Chinese restaurant staff about food prices is commonplace; make sure to haggle in your favor once in while.

-KF

This sounds not so much like haggling as getting charged the right price in the first place.

My take. I'm going to pare these down a bit, so the post isn't too long

It always seems to me like a bad idea when you are running a business to turn customers away. Honestly, I don't even know what dim sum is, but if it's portable and they have containers that it can be transported in, it's pretty ridiculous for them to not let you have it take-out.


This seems sketchy as all hell, and I can't help but feel bad about the waitress who is now missing her $3. I love the "I know okay bye bye" line, I can completely see the matron of my local Chinese restaurant saying something exactly like that. You tried to do the right thing, and they most likely screwed over someone because of it.


To co-opt a poker term, this is clearly an angle shoot on their part. I can definitely see getting upset about this, as it's an unfair business practice and is probably at best border-line legal. I don't think throwing three singles on the floor was the right course of action, however, but we all do things when we get angry.

Does this happen everywhere you go? Many places in California charge a "convenience fee" for using debit or credit. Once that happens, I never ever return.

This thread is funny; the first laugh was about the $4 "high-end" chinese. Even here, the so-called $1 chinese (advertised in the window) costs $1.50 per item. Meh, get what you pay for.

They are high-end. The dim-sum is only offered at these places. Dim sum dishes are small, and priced between $3-5. Their entrees are $12.00-$30.00

But I totally discovered the secret: you just have to haggle back. It works incredibly!

Lol... Before I know it, I will be eating Kung Pao Poodle.

-KF