Look at this comment to votes ratio. About 400 votes total and 170 comments! That is an awesome, active community!
Why not pay hospitality workers a halfway decent wage, and leave tipping for exemplary service? That’s how it works in the rest of the developed world.
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 law, 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.
Look at Mr. Fatcat over here eating out while we’re on the verge of a recession.
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.
How about increasing wages to promote more consumer spending? Henry Ford-- a literal Nazi-- of all people, knew this!
On the verge of a recession is gonna be new go to excuse.
“Sorry babe, can’t do a bday gift this year. Nothing has changed for me, but there may or may not be a recession lurking in the shadows”
Getting real sick of the customer holding the weight of being the financial planner for a business and the owners getting by with no blame for wage stealing and shitty business practices in this circumstance.
Rude - Atleast they could have played them a nice piece on the world’s tiniest violin!
No tiping means meals get more expensive. Easy as that. It is a bit strange to me that people going out to eat and drink, stick it to us waiters and barkeepers and cooks.
I worked at many small places where the owners where struggling to keep everything afloat.
I do also wish there was no need for tips, but truth is that would scare many guests away and would take time to adapt. Time in wich id be broke af.
The prices would be the same. They just wouldnt be hidden anymore
No tiping means meals get more expensive.
Do they really get more expensive, or do you just pay the “more expensive” meal price with what would be an expected tip anyway? And no matter what, prices are gonna go up anyway, so we might not even notice those increases.
Are you trolling?
Do I have a perfect idea for you, for a restaurant - you can order anything you like and the bill is always going to be $1.00. But at the end the restaurant chooses the tip amount.
WOW that’s crazy, just 1 buck 😲. And the customers will always be happy because the meals are not expensive.
This is the truth. If you want the industry to change, don’t go to restaurants who do the tipping model. If you go to these places and don’t tip in some misguided attempt to change things, guess what. The owner just felt zero difference. They got paid 100% what they were expecting. It’s the waitstaff who just felt it. So why would the restaurant owner, the guy with the power to change things and not notable for giving a shit about their staff, care about your protest at all? Assuming they notice which they aren’t going to.
The only way to actually mount financial pressure on these places is to not go to them.
Of course, I assume most people who claim to be not tipping as some form of protest against the system just want to take advantage of the lower prices allowable by the lowered wage that waitstaff receive while claiming to be doing it for some higher purpose.
[edit] And the controversial nature of this blatant reality proves my point. People understand the nature of the system and want to abuse a service worker to their benefit while claiming to be doing so from some sort of moral high ground. You’re lying. To yourself, to the rest of us, you are full of shit. If you actually believed in changing the system you would do as I say and not participate in businesses that use it.
Nah, I hate tipping because of the fact that it is on a percentage.
I just order to go, food quality is a little lower than straight from the kitchen, the company is better though
No tiping means meals get more expensive.
Which is fine as long as it works out to be what it would have been with a standard tip. That’s how it should be.
These are reasons why the economy, politicians, and your employer are failing you. Be upset with the people who create and maintain the system, not other people like you who are just trying to escape their own shitty work situations with a beer and a cheeseburger. It shouldn’t be their job to pay you directly. People in other industries don’t accept a pay structure like that and you shouldn’t either.
If tipping went away the food shouldn’t be more expensive to the consumer, the restaurant owner should take a pay cut and pay their employees better. Why does everyone always assume that if minimum wage went up or if tipping went away that the customer would absorb the cost?
Why does everyone always assume that if minimum wage went up or if tipping went away that the customer would absorb the cost?
There’s no technical reason for why, just based on current evidence where 100% of the time producers shove any increase in cost to consumers.
You’re correct that there’s nothing technically preventing producers from eating the increase, it’s just that they’ve never done so, at least in the US.
Only real example where that has happen was with Nintendo and the WiiU. I’m sure there’s more but the fact I’m drawing blank past that but could name you over a thousand times when the cost was shoved off to consumers kind of is my point in a nutshell.
So that said, that’s why a lot of people just assume increase in cost of production equals increase in cost to consumers.
You’re right but I guess my point is that we’re already talking about a hypothetical situation so ideally if we’re adjusting wages and tipping culture, then the responsibility would be put on the employer.
I guess my point is that we’re already talking about a hypothetical situation
Oh okay, fair enough. Yeah ideally that’s the direction it preferably should go in.
Currently servers are currently paid minimum $2.13/hour. If they don’t make enough after tips to equal minimum wage over a pay period ($7.25/hour), then the restaurant is required to pay them up to that minimum wage.
Labor costs for servers, bartenders, and others caught in this legal loophole would have to increase by 7-fold to get up to $15/hour. Many restaurants and bars wouldn’t be able to afford that large of an increase without raising prices, given that many have a profit margin between 3-6% per several sources.
There have been some restaurants that have raised wages closer to $15/hour with varying success, but that hasn’t caught on widely yet.
Currently servers are currently paid minimum $2.13/hour.
No they are not.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
More than half of states have well above those values. And states with higher populations(NY, CA, etc…) tend to have higher values on the DOL chart. The vast majority of servers are NOT paid 2.13/hr from their employer.
I currently live in AZ, where it’s 11.35 pre-tip and 14.35 post-tip. Nobody here needs tips to make minimum wage… A table of 4 that’s in the restaurant and takes 20 minutes of a server’s time can pay literally 1 dollar in tips and the wait staff will be making $15/hr. Wait staff here STILL complain about tips, and there’s STILL pin pads demanding 30%.
23 states with wage at $3/hour or under, 26 states under $4/hour, 29 states under $5/hour, and 38 states with untipped wage less than federal minimum wage ($7.25).
It seems that more than half of the states make up to ~$1.50 more than federal minimum of $2.13 and the vast majority still make less than federal minimum wage. I’m glad that there are 10 states in which servers can make double digit wages before tips, but there are by no means the majority.
The point remains that the majority of servers survive on tips because they are paid so little.
No. And you’re being completely disingenuous. Combined wages+tips is the actual minimum wage not the untipped column as employers are required to pay the difference if tips don’t make it to the actual minimum wage.
That’s exactly what I said before.
I also said that servers earn $2.13/hour at a minimum, as your link shows. I then acknowledged your point that the majority of servers don’t earn $2.13 from their restaurant and adjusted my statement according to the data that you linked.
I don’t understand where the disconnect is for you. Servers, except in very rare pay period make enough earnings/hour to prevent the restaurant to need to pay them more. Thus, servers in the vast majority of states earn less than federal minimum wage and mamy less than $5/hour from their restaurant. Please note that the customer is not part of the restaurant.
So my original point still stands. If restaurants were required to pay $15/hour, restaurants would have to increase their pay up to 7 times the current wage. This increase in labor cost would necessitate a menu price increase given the low profit margin that restaurants run at. Sure they have some money set aside for the rare pay period in which a server makes less than minimum wage after tips, but it wouldn’t be enough to cover such an increase for every server during every shift.
Well then if a business can’t operate without underpaying their employees or passing the financial burden to the customer then maybe their business doesn’t deserve to stay open.
That’s not really relevant. My reply was in response to statement that food shouldn’t be more expensive to the consumer with tipping removed. Obviously the revenue for the servers to be paid has to come from somewhere, so it’s either coming from the price of food or tips. If we get rid of tipping, the restaurant will have to raise prices to cover that cost.
Huge chains could more easily pay a better wage than family-owned restaurants.
what’s the difference then? At the end of the day the guests scared away are the ones who wouldn’t have left a tip in the first place.
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?
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!
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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Last night, my wife and I ordered Chinese for Valentine’s Day. Cost $100. Tried to tip the delivery guy a $20, and he turned it down lol. He then gave my cat a temptations treat, out of a freshly opened bag he had in his pocket. Dude was amazing!
I’ve literally never seen a waiter get angry about not leaving a 25% tip. Can we please avoid manufactured outrage?
If you can’t afford to tip after getting a big steak, you should probably get a smaller steak.
I don’t really get why the expected percentage went up. 15% was the standard for a LONG time. 20% meant you thought they were great. Now 15 is considered shitty, like an insult, and we’re supposed to do 18 or 25 or 30. Meanwhile prices also went up. Why am I supposed to tip 25% now? Service hasn’t changed.
