you eat dinner at a restaurant and pay by credit card. they swipe your card, and then give you the receipt. underneath the price are two lines, one for you to fill in the tip and another line for the total.
if you add wrong, what gets charged on the card?
for example, if the bill is $45.43, you write $9.57 for the tip, but give $54.00 as the total, what will you actually pay? does the "tip" line control? or does the "total"? does the restaurant just favor whichever one is higher? is there an actual rule, or do restaurants just do whatever they want (assuming they notice the mistake at all)?
i've been wondering about this for a while. i'm considering doing an experiment--deliberately making small mathematical errors on my bill and then waiting to see what appears on the statement. but if anyone knows the answer and can save me the trouble of experimenting with the livelihood of our nation's waitstaff, let me know in the comments.
