The practice of putting a mandatory tip on the bill for a large party has been fairly standard for as long as I’ve been going to restaurants. But bumping this mandatory “gratuity” up to eighteen percent, as was done here and as I experienced myself a couple days ago, is ridiculous — I give servers a fifteen percent tip for good service (which, in my opinion, I should be able to expect from any business without the extra bribe), and the server in our case didn’t earn more than ten percent. And to add insult to injury, the credit card receipt included a line for an “additional tip.”

(I briefly considered putting a negative number there, but instead just put a very large zero. If I’d been on my game, I would have written “don’t eat lead” instead.)