Service industry employees have lowkey become the most entitled folks ever after COVID. “We were essential” the fuck you were. Every single god damn place has 18% as the MINIMUM tip. If I see that I legit don’t even tip, and then take my business elsewhere. Absolute height of disrespect.
Edit: Just had a hotel stay, my bed was turned over once. FOR SEVEN DAYS. Guess who didn’t get a single tip?
The worst is when NPCs call people NPCs.
Ahh yes, verge of a recession, but there’s enough money to patronize a sit down restaurant where it’s well known that the owner pays their staff starvation wages. Fuck your server!
if your job does not pay a livable wage without begging then maybe get another job
They (and many others) are getting paid below a living wage because that was the best job they could get. The wage problem isn’t our fellow workers failing to hustle harder, it’s systematic oppression of organized labor.
Something I don’t get, why is it percentage based? I mean, I get it from the waiters perspective. But as a customer? Whether my one plate of food is 20$ or 200$, he did the same thing. Scaling with more items of time spent would seem more appropriate.
If you’re getting the same level of service at a restaurant serving $200/plate meals as you are at TGI Fridays, either you’re being ripped off of your local Fridays has amazing servers.
Serving a $200 meal requires a lot of knowledge and physical skill that the server down at Chili’s probably doesn’t have. The kind of restaurant that sells a $200 meal also has a larger support staff that must be given a percentage of the server’s tip
You’re not wrong, that’s the logic behind it. It’s not like you’re defending it so idk why you’re getting down voted! What you also didn’t mention is that at these restaurants is that it is a much more leisurely meal and experience, so there isn’t high table turnover which lessens the tips. I suspect they also have smaller sections.
You’re the only one who gets it.
Everything is probably a la carte. You gotta know what is in every dish, what pairs with it from appetizers to sides to wine to dessert. You don’t walk out and ask “who had the cheeseburger?” because the expectation on the experience is higher. You’re controlling the timing at the table as well. When do you fire the main after they get the appetizer? Salad? Bread? Drinks? Which SIDE of the person do you give or remove plates? And yeah you gotta tip the bartender, the bussers, the expediters sometimes, and who knows who else.
It is still horseshit, but it’s not as easy as dropping a rib basket on the table.
Be mad about the tip line on the sandwich shop menu, be mad about 20% tip on the burger joint that has a modern industrial interior and a $22 burger, don’t be mad about paying out the Friday Saturday night white tablecloth servers with a tough fucking job of conducting your whole anniversary meal. You get to have a good experience once a year, they’ve got 15 other once a year meals to solve and it’s just a regular dinner shift.
I’d say you also shouldn’t be made at the server at the $22 burger place, because they’re also working hard and probably covering more tables. I used to get mad about tipping for counter service because I assumed that they were making standard minimum wage, but then I found out one of my favorite cafes was paying $5 an hour (a dollar less than tipped minimum in my state). Point is, don’t get mad at anyone but the National Restaurant Association, they’re fighting to make sure you’re subsidizing your servers wage.
What difference is there between serving a $200 meal and a $50 one?
I think you’re looking for the difference between fine dining and nouvelle cuisine / haute cuisine. Think of it like the difference between a nice steakhouse where the server essentially takes your order and gives you a plate, and one of those Instagram dinners where they serve your dessert in hollow chocolate balls and serving is a more involved and delicate process because of the nature of the food you’re serving
I have a place down the road that makes guacamole in a molcajete at the table.
That is way harder and more impressive than pouring a little hot chocolate.
If you can scam them into paying it then more power to you though.
Sounds like that server deserves a generous tip, I hope you take good care of them :)
Are number of items fixed in your question?
If so, little mechanically on the waiters part.
But, a more expensive meal comes with higher service standards. More attentive, but not intrusive. More knowledgeable about the menu. More readiness to make adjustments based on customer need.
So in that situation you are asking for a more experienced, or more skillfully employee, and that costs more.
I’d argue the skill difference matters much more in the kitchen, yet they only see a tiny percentage of the tips if they’re lucky
Ah see, to me their whole job is bringing me food, keeping my drink from being empty, and not being rude.
I don’t need all the pomp, I go to a restaurant for the food.
The funny part is you are effectively paying twice for that since the restaurant has increased the price of the food to account for all the pomp.
Well usually more people means a higher bill, more people is more work. Lots of places even just add gratuity to the bill once a group size is large enough.
But tipping is dumb, and working in the service industry sucks… I have no easy solutions.
I have no easy solutions.
There’s an easy one that could be legislated tomorrow by any states.
Raise minimum wages and enforce it throughout ALL workplaces, including wait staff. Nobody should be earning less than a living wage just because they’re restaraunt staff.
Politics is one of those things that’s easy when you say it, but much harder for you to do. But if that’s easy for you to do, then please do it, for all our sakes.
Nobody would work in a restaurant for minimum wage. Full stop. It’s a shit job.
That’s the secret nobody in the industry wants to tell you. They make way more than minimum wage on good nights. You could come away at $25-30/hr on a Friday night.
Which is what workers at McDonald’s in other countries make per hour, not including benefits. Oh, and the food is cheaper than in the states too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage
There are exactly 0 countries on this list that are above $18 per hour. You for some reason thing that wait staff is getting 25-30…
Luxemburg and Australia are among the highest on the list…
Luxemburg…https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/McDonald-s-Luxembourg-Salaries-EI_IE432.0,10_IL.11,21_IM1092.htm
Australia… https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/McDonald-s-Sydney-Salaries-EI_IE432.0,10_IL.11,17_IM962.htmYou’re wrong or lying. Either way… doesn’t help your case.
List is a bit outdated. Minimum wage in Germany is 12,41€ not 12€. Can’t say how outdated the other entries are though. But that list still doesn’t disprove the statement above. While it could be seen as unlikely there is no rule out there that fast food employees have to make minimum wage. I wouldn’t work at a fast food place for minimum wage. I make minimum wage delivering newspapers on 2 days. I would expect a fast food employee to make more. Haven’t seen a recruitment ad recently because I don’t often go to fast food places (countable on 1 hand for a year) but I’ve seen grocery store recruitment ads for cashiers recently and they get more than minimum wage. I mean of course they do, as if someone would want to work as a cashier for exactly minimum wage
Absolutely. it’s a bad precedent.
Minimum wage staff still get tips though. I still tip here now that it’s mandatory they get paid min wage. Overall, means that they make more than before they were earning min wage as well.
it’s a big win. They ge ta living wage doing their jobs and they get bonuses in tips on top of their living wage instead of relying upon it.
If you are are trying to find logic within tipping you might as well chase windmills. It’s dumb as bolts.
Chasing a windmill would be really easy tho.
Just don’t get chasing waterfalls though.
On the other hand rivers and lakes are so stupid.
Because it’s a con, and if it were a flat rate, people would see it for the con it is. By making it a percentage of sales, you can delude people in to believing they’re going to make more in tips than they would on an hourly rate.
Sometimes that’s true, for the vast majority of servers it isn’t.
I see it as a sneaky incentive from management for waiters to upsell you on more sides, drinks and desserts.
Since the more marked up extras a waiter/waitress can fool people into getting, the better tip they can hope to earn at the end because of the %-based expectation.
Except nobody rips after they feel fooled. Do you ever tip when they add gratuity, or when there is a delivery charge? Or an inflation charge? Or you were billed for 3 drinks for a 2 person table? Or when we forgot to deliver soda on delivery?
No. I didn’t think so.
It has to do with a $20/plate restaurant is going to have more tables per server and less actual service/attention per table. At a $100/plate place - it’s you, you’re the only table that’s server is in charge of. If he gets no tips from you then he basically goes unpaid.
Not every meal in a “$x/plate” restaurant is gonna cost the same though. It’s not hard to reach a disparity between the cheapest and most expensive reasonable meal (similar sizes) of around a factor of 2 at many restaurants.
Why is the server getting twice the tip if I order the most expensive plate and dessert vs cheapest plate and dessert?
$20 is like, one entree, maybe a beverage at a cheap restaurant. $200 is probably closer to 3 entrees, 2 or 3 cocktails and an app at a moderately priced restaurant. You’re crazy if you think the amount of work for those two orders (putting them into the bar/kitchen, making sure they come out correct, running them, all while juggling your other tables) is equal. I also want tipping culture to end, but the price tag scales pretty well with the amount of work being done.
Waffle House: feed a family of 4 for $20 Tip: $4 “Fancy” Restaurant: microwaved appetizer $20 Tip: $5
A percentage scales within an establishment, but not really across them.
I’d say that varies more regionally than anything else. I live in a major northeastern city, and you could barely feed 1 person for $20, even at cheap chain restaurants. Drive 2 hours away and things get a lot more affordable, not only for food prices but also rent. In that respect, 20% actually scales with cost of living as well.
That’s insane. It’s literally the job. Imagine applying this logic to any service industry job.
It exists in the service industry. Hence the term ‘White Glove’.
You can get a mover who will throw your shit into the truck from the stairs for 1/10 the price of the guy who individually wraps every single spoon you own.
It mostly bothers me when I just order 1 entree and a water. At one place that might cost $10, and at another place it might cost $30, and all the wait staff did was carry a plate from the kitchen to me in both cases.
It doesn’t seem fair that the wait staff at the more expensive place gets tipped more than the less expensive place just because of an arbitrary custom.
The extra cost of the expensive meal is mostly due to ingredients, the cooking process, the location, and maaay slightly more complicated table setting.
Yeah, I agree, but if you don’t like it, take it up with the National Restaurant Association. They spend millions every year lobbying against ending the tipped wage.
Each plate of food or drink is a transaction, each with expectations of quality, and expectations on the waiter to make it right.
Make what right? They’re just bringing it to my table. If the food or service sucks I’m also told that you should tip anyway, so it seems like tipping isn’t based on quality (and really, it isn’t).
Tipping service workers is one of the very few times in our life when we can say “The people directly serving me deserve to get paid more, and while I can’t raise their wage, I can at least make sure they’re getting paid well while they serve me” and the fact that people are upset about that and actively refuse to tip is just crazy to me.
Like, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but tipping generously is one of the times when we can come pretty close! Maybe instead of having a $70 meal on the brink of a recession, have a $50 meal and tip up to the $70 that’s in your budget?
Are you tipping 50%?
I aim for 25-30% tip when I get standard service and when there aren’t any comped apps/drinks/desserts. If the server is amazing or if they’re giving us free stuff, I give more. 50% is very rare for me to hit, but I did leave 50% at a family dinner a few weeks ago.
Why did you ask about 50% specifically?
Yeah, either that’s pretty dumb or you’re pretty wealthy.
A standard tip is 15%. Up to 20% is reasonable. Anything more is generosity, and should never be expected.
The thing about inflation is that 15% of a larger number is a larger number. Inflation is built in, and you don’t need to add it twice.
Not everybody can be remembered as the guy who gives good tips. That’s not how it works.
I make $1 above minimum wage in Los Angeles, so I’m wealthy in a global sense but poor in a local sense. I just live a frugal life with few expenses or vices beyond gaming and smoking, and that’s what enables me to tip generously and give to mutual aid groups. I probably eat out less often than the average American, and I don’t own a car, but I’m OK with losing those things. I am able and willing to make those sacrifices, so I do so. If you’re not able or not willing to make those sacrifices, that’s your choice, but don’t take the consequences of your choice out on the people who are on the bottom rung of society. That’s just gross.
Tipping 15% isn’t “taking your choice out” on anyone. 15% is a fine and normal tip.
Maybe it used to be decades ago when we first formed our opinions about this stuff, but times have changed since then. Rent has done nothing but go up, while the federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009 and the federal tipped minimum wage has been $2.13/hour since 1991. That 15% you gave in 2010 was used for cigarettes and drinks after work, maybe coffee the next morning, maybe putting a little bit into savings or paying for college. Today, that 15% is used for rent. Rent and gas. Rent and gas and maybe childcare. Tipping more than 15% is our way to actually tell someone that they deserve more than just the necessities–and I don’t mean telling them with words or with comments on Lemmy, I mean telling them with action.
I can’t bring my self to encourage people to work stupid fucking jobs that pay $2.13 or whatever. Have some fucking self respect.
Anything more is generosity,
Nah bro… It’s a lie. If you were to trust the % ratio of people in these threads that are leaving 30+% tips, then the wait staff would be rolling in dough. Especially with food prices going up like they have.
Your example is a $20 tip on a $50 bill.
$70 meal to $50 meal is a $20 difference and you said to use the difference.
I guess 40% is the actual number but it was close enough for a random internet discussion. Lol
A $50 meal has sales tax, as well. Tipping up to $70 means the server gets $15-16-- which is a 33% tip.
You are changing from a $70 meal and a $50 meal to a $50 meal rounding up to $70.
There is sales tax on the $70 meal at the same percentage.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying
You forgot that tax would be included at the same rate on a $70 meal as a $50.
You can’t use tax as an excuse on the 50 since the 70 would have it too.
This is ridiculous amount to tip. Good on you for being frivolous and not caring how much you spend, but understand that by your further escalation of tipping you are directly contributing to the businesses that are getting away with it.
Not 10 years ago, expected tipping was 10-15%. Now you’re throwing 25-30? Or 50? you realize how unstable, unrealistic and how bad a precedent that is setting?
It’s not a ridiculous amount to tip, but explaining why it’s reasonable requires an understanding of what commodity fetishism is. Are you already familiar with the term? If not, would you be willing to read a description of what it is if I typed one up for you?
No fucking way someone with an understanding of Marxist sociology supports tipping. Not a fucking chance. I’m so confused right now.
Socialist theory is great, but material conditions don’t care about our ideologies :) I use Marxism and socialism to help myself understand why I feel so alienated and to help fight those feelings, but I still understand that every worker in America lives as an exploited laborer under capitalism. I’m not wealthy or politically powerful or willing to use violence to enforce my views, so my praxis must be aimed at helping the little people until we have enough of a leftist coalition to take on the bigger issues.
Essentially, I’m not big enough to change the world for the better all on my own, but I can change the parts of it that I can reach out and touch with my hands, so why shouldn’t I?
You should, by not tipping, which will help create positive social change.
It just incentivizes being an asshole. Assholes give zero tips and get to keep more of their money, while normal people have to pay the empathy tax.
It’s sad how much flak you’re getting for this reasonable take. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford eating out a couple times a week, and I’m not scared of sharing a bit of my wealth with the neighborhood.
It’s the last bit. His first paragraph is a good outlook. Encouraging everyone to tip 25-50% is insane and stupid.
People tend to vote based on the worst part of a comment.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. When did I ever say 50%? Someone else botched their math and got to that number, and I even took the time to explain why their math was wrong. I have only told others to “tip generously”, to always include a tip in their budget while dining out, and in your specific case to tip more than 15%. Even in the offhand example I gave that you think is so insane and stupid, it only comes out to a 33% tip. The people who do the lion’s share of the actual labor deserve the lion’s share of the profits, and there’s nothing insane or stupid about that.
Right!? If you’re lucky enough to be financially secure right now, tipping can even be seen as a form of mutual aid!
And just think, they could all get paid properly if the restaurants just included those tips in the prices instead of playing this stupid fucking tipping game
Yes, that would be ideal. Since that’s not currently the case at all establishments, we can take other steps.
Yep! The people directly serving us deserve to get paid more, and while we can’t raise their wage, we can at least make sure they’re getting paid well while they serve us.
I’ve literally never seen a waiter get angry about not leaving a 25% tip. Can we please avoid manufactured outrage?
If I’m not longer working for a tip, and my wage is built in. Guess who no longer cares about you dining experience.
Look at this guy, paying $70 at a restaurant. How many are you buying for? 5?
If you can’t afford to tip after getting a big steak, you should probably get a smaller steak.
Tipping is more than just a custom; there really is a culture to it. If you’re tipping only because you know the server makes less than minimum wage from the restaurant (or that greedy restaurant owners are completely to blame for this injustice), I think you may be misunderstanding an aspect of this culture.
Working in a restaurant is as hard a retail job as there is, and working as a server is often the hardest job in the restaurant. Being a truly good server requires a rare mix of people skills, math skills, memory, and a thick skin. So why do people choose to take the hardest job there is in the whole restaurant, when it pays less than all the other jobs?
Most servers end up getting paid better than the people doing other jobs in the restaurant. In most restaurants, servers make more than minimum wage. At the end of their shifts, most servers in turn tip-out the front-of-the-house employees, such as hosts and bussers, who often do only make minimum wage.
A truly excellent server may be the highest-paid employee for an entire shift – that certainly includes the manager and anyone else on salary, and it may even include the owner, when you add in labor and upkeep costs.
In order to make all that money, however, this server has to work at all the times that everyone else is out having fun – Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning. This server must put up with drunks, picky eaters and other narcissists, as well as seating errors and kitchen mistakes, all with a smile, for six or eight or ten hours straight. This server, who earns more than anyone else on the shift, is working harder than anyone else on the shift.
This is the other aspect that I wanted to address. Tipping culture is what gives that excellent server the opportunity to earn a better wage, more appropriate to the effort and expertise they devote to the job.
I’m sure this all sounds very capitalist, because it is. This may not be the most capitalism-friendly forum, I know, but I’m not trying to make any larger argument here.
I’m just saying that to me, it seems like this should be a “don’t hate the players” (owners, managers, servers, rich/drunk people who like to leave big tips) “hate the game” (tipping culture). And even if you do hate tipping culture, it couldn’t hurt to consider how it works for the people who don’t hate it.
Listen, I hate the tipping culture here just as much as everybody else, but the fact is, if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to go out. Should employees get a decent wage without it, absolutely yes. But they don’t right now, and you not tipping isn’t going to change that.
The issue here isn’t tipping in general… It’s the audacity to try and increase percentages while prices are also going up for everything, including that same meal compared to a couple years ago.
Tipping in general is bullshit and we need to fix the root cause of employers not being required or willing to pay fair wages, across the entire economy, not just service industries.
I hear a lot of this rhetoric but it sounds like you’re just saying this is how it is and I’m going to accept it which I think is a cowards approach. If you want to make change then you have to do something about it by going to restaurants and not tipping you are sending a message. Does it hurt the server? Maybe, but in the end it’s not my responsibility to pay them and if more people stop tipping then maybe things will change. With that being said, I don’t go out to any places that expect me to tip because I know there are people like you that think I’m evil because I don’t want to give my hard-earned money away to someone else for doing their job.
Maybe I should’ve worded my original comment better, because I never said we should just accept it. I explicitly think we shouldn’t accept it by refusing to do business at places that push tipping instead of paying their staff proper wages.
Probably should’ve led with that.
My man, I have no idea why you got down voted. You’re 100% correct. Can’t afford to tip, can’t afford to eat out. Eating out is a luxury, not a necessity. Grocery stores have frozen food if you don’t want to cook.
Eating out is luxury and not necessity and that makes tiping a necessity?
No, but it makes tipping a necessity if you go out. My stance on this is that if you want to enact change, stop eating out. Continuing to eat out but then not tipping doesn’t do anything except shortchange the wait staff. The company still gets your money.
When you say that common indulgences are “luxuries” are not required, you’re promoting austerity. You’re asking people to forgo life’s pleasures for no real gain. That NEVER works. People won’t just stay at home eating simple food unless they will go broke otherwise. With a world of billionaires we can’t ask for austerity; it’s morally bankrupt.
I mean, that feels like common sense to me. I have less money than I had last year, so my girlfriend and I eat out less, I buy less video games, I buy more chicken and less beef, I buy less alcohol, etc. etc. It’s just a reality of inflation.
We avoided the recession, the result is inflation is destroying our wallets, so we have to spend less to still pay our bills.
We avoided the recession, the result is inflation
That’s more of a function of corporate greed than anything else. They’re all hiding behind each other while ripping you off, and getting away with it because it’s difficult to call out any one company when they’re all doing it.
What are you going to do about it, compete in the marketplace? The barriers to entry are high enough that that is extraordinarily difficult. And if you do manage it, why would you charge less than market rate? And you’re likely to just get bought out by a bigger competitor anyway, so grats on your cash out.
I mean, sure, we can say it’s corporate greed, but also we’ve put over a trillion dollars extra into the economy in a short span due to COVID and Build Back Better, while at the same time there were supply shortages for years, plus record low unemployment causing a raising of wages, all without the fed reacting quick enough by increasing interest rates sooner. We’ve got every textbook condition for an increase in inflation rates.
Don’t forget the PPP where Trump refused to sign it if it had proper oversight.
OP is right, and the users on Lemmy are salty. Waiters make $2.13 / hour they survive off tips. If you don’t tip, the system doesn’t change, you’re just an asshole
If nobody tips for their entire shift they will make $7.25-$15 an hour, not $2.13. That $5.12-$12.87 is just pocketed by the restaurant if they get tipped.
That’s not true. The minimum wage guarantee is by pay period, not by shift
Waiters make $2.13 / hour they survive off tips.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped No.
Listen dude, that’s average wage. If you got stiffed one night out of the week, you’re SOL that night and you made $2.13 / hour. If you make less than $7.25 hourly in a pay period then you’ll be brought up to minimum wage, but in any given night, servers only make $2.13 hourly without tips.
Waiters make the same minimum wage as everyone else near me…
They only make 2.13 an hour near YOU BECAUSE YOU KEEP TIPPING AND ALLOWING THE ABUSE FROM THE COMPANIES TO CONTINUE
This is fine in states where minimum wage is $15.
This is not fine in states that follow the federal minimum of $7.25.
FWIW this is completely location dependent. Where I am at in the USA waiters are paid $15 plus whatever tips.
If we continue to tip as a wage subsidy, where is the motivation to make companies actually pay their workers?
I agree with you, actually. If you don’t want to tip, fine, don’t tip. But don’t go to a restaurant and then not tip, either, because not only are you still giving the company money, you’re shortchanging the actual person you want to help.
We are not short changing anyone. A tip isn’t a guaranteed income from working.
Also, it’s halrious that you agreed with the previous person, then instantly renegged and said the opposite and went back to he same garbage you said before.
Tipping culture is wrong. Never tip, stop begging.
I think their point is being missed.
In the USA at least in restaurants most servers work for tips. That’s 99.99% of their pay.
They’re saying that unfortunately because of a tipping culture you’re taking part in exploiting the worker unless you tip.
Businesses now adding tipping to POS for other stuff is their attempt to shift responsibility for paying their worker into you.
I think the dude you’re replying to is mixing their messages some.
Thanks for the clarification. I sometimes get tunnel vision and forget people live in places with different laws and regulations. Yes, I’m specifically talking about US states where it’s legal to pay a waiter $2.13 an hour because tips make up the rest of federal minimum wage.
I’m not contradicting myself. All of my points can coexist.
- If you don’t want to tip, fine, stop tipping.
- If you go out to eat, tip your staff.
- If you want the tipping culture to change, stop going out.
You’re correct, a tip is not guaranteed income, that’s the entire problem. I don’t understand why what I’m saying is so hard to understand. The company will only make up for lost tips for a waiter for so long before they’re fired. Continuing to go out to eat and then not tipping changes nothing, it just makes the waitstaff’s lives harder.
If everyone today stopped tipping, do you think companies would suddenly begin to pay more? I’d wager that wage increases start with the waiting staff, and ends there. Why are you pushing the responsibility onto the customer?
I’m not pushing the responsibility anywhere. If anything, I think it’s the government’s responsibility to take the tipping loophole out of minimum wage laws.
If everyone today stopped tipping, do you think companies would suddenly begin to pay more?
They won’t… And this is the point… Whether customers tip or don’t doesn’t matter. If we all collectively stopped tipping wait staff would still be the ones hit. It takes the wait staff collectively quitting/protesting to cause restaurants to change their ways… Or management of those restaurants. The consumer in this case means nothing.
The hostility is entirely unnecessary. If you eat out and don’t tip, the only person you’re hurting is the person you claim to want to help. If you can’t tip, eat at home. If you can, then do so while still fighting for better workers rights. It’s really not a difficult concept to grasp.
But this is specific to sit down restaurants. Do I tip when all I receive is counter service? Or take out?
If you’re picking it up yourself, I think tipping is unnecessary. If it’s being delivered, I always make a point to save enough for a tip.
If we don’t tip, where is the motivation to make companies actually pay their workers?
Employees who won’t be able to make a living will go elsewhere. it’s not easy and instant, but eventually if a restaraunt can’t staff itself, it will collapse.
We should absolutely not be subsidizing restaraunt owners who are only keeping a float by paying low wages. if they can’t afford to properly pay their staff, they don’t deserve to operate.
Employees who won’t be able to make a living will go elsewhere. it’s not easy and instant, but eventually if a restaraunt can’t staff itself, it will collapse.
Then why not skip the step of customers choosing to tip at all? Why wouldn’t wait staff just protest/quit to get better wages? Wait staff collective bargaining is > than consumers collective bargaining simply because it’s a smaller population that’s easier to get together under a shared premise. The reality is that nearly every waiter/waitress I’ve talked to about it PREFER the current tip structure. They make more money.
Years ago when I first started out working, I also preferred it. I could walk home with a pocket full of cash well above minimum wage if the night was good.
you are proposing that if we all stop tipping, companies will be motivated to pay their workers; you are correct, this is what would happen if we all stopped tipping at the same time.
this process is known as collective action. it is incredibly important to remember that collective action only works when it actually happens. in other words, your individual action of not tipping your waiter is ONLY beneficial to your waiter if you can make sure one else tips either.
do you have this power? (i think you don’t; if you do i beg of you to exercise it lol.)
now consider who actually holds the power here. at any point, your restaurant’s owner could institute a no-tip policy, thereby ensuring that no one has to tip, ever. several restaurants already have done this, and it works. now, you might (correctly) note that this may gives an unfair advantage to other competing restaurants who do not implement no-tip policy. this is where local and regional policy can come in to help coordinate transitioning to a more helpful model of compensating employees.
so there’s kind of this imbalance, where yeah technically it’s possible for us as eaters of food to “fix” the tipping problem, but its way way easier for the people in charge (whether that’s government or owners) to fix it, because they have the power of coordination on their side.
tldr, tip your waiters and advocate for anti-tipping policies if you want to maximize long term benefits for everyone.
benefits for everyone.
No, not benefits for everyone. Servers will never get a wage that’s equivalent to the tips they get now. Never.
Go survey servers on the subject and see what they think.
I’m not necessarily against no tipping areas, but I’m not going to act like it benefits the workers. It’s more of a crab bucket mentality where we bring the better paying low-skill job in line with all the rest.
It works pretty well in developed countries
Lol, I see what you did there!
Visiting Japan was incredible, every price was transparent and you paid exactly what the menu said. Wish we could get that going here.
And you can find really cheap delicious food in Japan.
I got chased down the street on my first day by someone I tipped. I didn’t know it was actually taboo. Apparently tipping is an insult. The staff chased me down on the street to return it to me.
It’s not about “not tipping”, it’s 15% vs 25% and unreasonable expectations.
Ah, that makes sense, thanks.
It’s true. The consumer is always who pays.
Tipping culture is basically a way for employers to allow customers to decide to undercut the employees and it’s remarkably inappropriate.
I’m a world without tipping, the wait staff will make normal wages, the food prices will go up. If you cannot afford that, you will eat at home.
If you can’t afford to live working for tips, you shouldn’t work at a job that’s dependent on tips.
“You should just make more money!”
“You should just work somewhere that doesn’t depend on handouts from customers for your wages!”
“If you don’t like it here then leave!”
This, but unironically.
Here in Brazil, tipping is not normal. Instead, restaurants and bars will add a 10% service cost to the bill. This 10% is then weekly divided between cooks, waiters, bartenders, etc, the proportion being decided by the restaurant.
That is of course not a low, but it is so common that restaurant workers already consider that when thinking how much they make. My sister worked as a bartender at a restaurant recently, and she would add R$300 (roughly $60, yes it’s not much, but remember we’re a middle income country) to her monthly paycheck from this.
It does annoy me slightly when POS systems have placeholder tip amounts but they’re like 18%, 20%, and 25%. Sorry, but I just do the standard 15% in most cases so now I gotta calculate it out in my head.
I’m gonna go with the standard 0% or round up the number if i feel like it.
Right? Like why is people’s STANDARD giving money away.
Because that’s how our service industry is built.
Tipping isn’t mandatory. But the issue is if a lot of people stop tipping all at once, servers will quit those locations. Then those locations will almost certainly go out of business because they can’t afford to pay a living wage because the US’s commercial real estate is insanely expensive. Current restaurant models essentially are built on this dynamic and to change it would require a lot of moving pieces to change. But for those pieces to change, a LOT of businesses will need to go out of business all at once to tank the real estate market.
And you may think: if they can’t afford to pay a living wage, they should go out of business. That’s a reasonable stance but it ignores the result: megacorps will buy up real estate and only huge chain restaurants will likely survive these kinds of busts. All your local favorite places will go under and be replaced by Fridays or Applebees because their thousands of locations can close 25% to focus on profitability.
I’ve been asked for tips when having carryout. And also getting a scoop of ice cream. Tipping is a relic of racist practices when southern people didn’t want to pay emancipated black workers a wage. It only still exists because restaurant owners lobby congress to keep it a thing. Stop bribing congress and pay your employees you fucks.
I’ve been asked for tips when having carryout.
You’re just complaining now. That has not been customary and it annoys me too. Don’t tip if service wasn’t rendered.
Tipping is a relic of racist practices when southern people didn’t want to pay emancipated black workers a wage.
Sad fact but entirely irrelevant to the issue today.
It only still exists because restaurant owners lobby congress to keep it a thing. Stop bribing congress and pay your employees you fucks.
In two sentences you have identified why you can’t just stop tipping AND how to fix it: legislation.
If you stop tipping but still go out, you are essentially doing what racists in the past did by not paying people you would appear to not like. You not tipping is classist bigotry.
Fight for server’s rights in a way that actually makes a difference: contact your congress people and elect people who care about this issue. Not tipping is just hurting people at the lowest rungs of society while still taking their labor. Gross.
Fight for server’s rights
Yeah, this isn’t what you’d be doing. Survey servers and ask if they’d rather get tips or $15/hour and see what kind of responses you get.
Normally, you’re paying a tip on service. So, the waiter hovering over your table and collecting your order / refilling your drink / dusting off the table between courses is part of the dining experience. Its fee for service.
But yeah, now the credit card reader asks if you want to pay a tip to the fucking vending machine. Its asinine.
Price of the product and service is the list price. Tipping is extra
List price virtually never includes service fees and taxes, at least in the States. I swear, its like some of you people have never eaten out before.
I’ve been eating in restaurants from street food to nice ones on multiple countries, and continents. Service fee (and taxes too BTW) are always included in the list price. That’s the default
What kind of shithole country you’re living in?
There’s a self service store in the Newark airport that sells overpriced snacks for travelers stuck without any other options. It asks you for a tip while you check yourself out. As if paying $6 for a cup of juice wasn’t bad enough already.
I just had a POS machine recommend 20%, 25%, or 30% for percentages. It seems like it’s increasing
I just keep reading this as Piece of Shit machine, and I don’t think I’m too off the mark here.
If you ever had to use one, you’d be right on the money.
Yes, very. The software on those things is terrible.
The standard tip at a POS is 0. Generally the same for carry out.
If you’re not getting personal service by a human, you don’t need to tip.
They do it because they can get away with it and it makes money off of suckers.
I had one do that (well, even higher, 25, 30, 35, Other) for a retailer recently. Like, it took them under 10 seconds to ring me up and they should automatically get 25%? I chose zero.
For POS they’d be much more likely to get a tip from me if the options were $0.50, $1.00, or $1.50.
You chose wisely
If my tip is to be decided before I see my order in front of me, 5% tops if at all.
Fun fact. When I was a kid, the “standard” was 10%. So food prices have shot up faster than inflation, but you’re still tipping 50% more than what the norm was when tipping was already well established.m, even if you ignore the expensive food you’re tipping for.
As a non-native speaker, I assume POS != Peace of shit?
POS in normal talk means piece of shit. POS in business talk means point of sale.
Point of Sale.
Point of Sale.
But you’re correct in that most of these Point of Sale systems are also Pieces of Shit.
Can confirm.
Source: I make POS systems.
Often it means that but in this case it means “Point Of Sale”
I mean, they are paid significantly less than minimum wage. While it’s not your responsibility to pay them fair wages, it’s their bosses, they do rely on tips to survive if you can tip, you should, but you should also advocate for paying service industry workers fair wages.
