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No tipping means better business

tastefulventures.com

521–530 of 550 posts

Re: No tipping means better business

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but you've got people behind you in line who can see what you are doing, and you don't want them judging you! What if you we with a date, or a friend, or your boss or coworkers? They can see the screen and you want signal you are a good person to these people.

A good person, by the standards of tipping culture, tips appropriately after service; tipping before service destroys the link between service and tip that is the fundamental conceit of the tipping culture. Visibly tipping before service is not signalling that you are a good person.

That is precisely the thing. The link between service and tip was the "fundamental conceit of tipping culture". But no longer. You simply tip for certain kinds of jobs (e.g., coffeeshop baristas) and not others (McDonald's cashiers). It is pointless to try to make sense out of it; it makes no sense.

Re: No tipping means better business

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of "making up the difference" comes up in every convo on tipping. The counter point is usually that it doesn't happen. (Debate ensues...) But even if it happened FOR SURE EVERY TIME. What an inefficient system! Rather than just paying the minimum wage up front, with predictable, projectable costs, businesses spend person hours on calculating tips, hours worked, per employee, etc. And then have to pay (poten…

you can still try to earn a tip if you want to. But now it's more like a bonus, gravy Isn't that where we started? I don't think that's stable. If some people get tips, the next tier of goodish servers is going to think they deserve tips, until you end up where we are now.

You can start there and stay there. This does not escalate like you assume. The rest of the world works just fine with this system.

I suspect that the escalation in the US has something to do with employers getting greedy and trying to reduce wages to factor in tips. I don't have any evidence to back this up.

Re: No tipping means better business

#523
post #58

As a person who was born and living in a country which has no tipping culture. The tipping sucks. I should have been fully informed how much should I have to pay before I purchase something or some service. Any extra demand from agreed amount should be illegal. I also don't want to waste my precious time on paying the tip for calculating tax. The worker's salary is a employer's responsibility. If the the worker becom…

Went to an Indian restaurant in NY, the waiter was awful not just bad but an asshole, we left without tipping and the manager ran after us telling us we had to tip or he would call the cops.

How about you pay your damn employee or fire him for being incompetent?

Re: No tipping means better business

#524
post #58

As a person who was born and living in a country which has no tipping culture. The tipping sucks. I should have been fully informed how much should I have to pay before I purchase something or some service. Any extra demand from agreed amount should be illegal. I also don't want to waste my precious time on paying the tip for calculating tax. The worker's salary is a employer's responsibility. If the the worker becom…

Tipping itself should not be illegal, it is mine evaluation and almost personal relationships with service guy/girl. If you're okay with standard cold service, just do not tip.

It also should not be mandatory, that's right.

Re: No tipping means better business

#525
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wholeheartedly agree. I feel like these numbers were just made up. Who decided 10% is good? or 20%? Why is it a percentage? This whole system is absurd to me. If we follow the same logic then why don't programmers get "tips" when they do a nice commit message? or deliver on time? why are servers so different? Just saying it out loud makes me giggle because of how silly it sounds.

> This whole system is absurd to me. If we follow the same logic then why don't programmers get "tips" when they do a nice commit message? or deliver on time? why are servers so different? Because they are making below minimum wage (something like $2.00 and change per hour, iirc) - and tips are to cover the rest. So maybe, if you were in the same situation as a software developer, you would want a good tip for good s…

And that's exactly my point.

Why do they make less than the minimum wage? Why do laws allow it? Why are they treated as a "special case" instead of just having a set wage like all the other professions?

I never meant to say we (software developers) need tips or anything like that, it was just a hyperbole to show how ignorant this "special" system is.

Re: No tipping means better business

#526
post #514
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/income-and-investments/bonus... 1. The Percentage Method The IRS specifies a flat “supplemental rate” of 25%, meaning that any supplemental wages (including bonuses) should be taxed in that amount. This works for bonuses up to 1 million. > I can think of many people Yes, there are plenty of idiots even in finance.

This only affects the withholding of bonuses (the amount the IRS has you pre-pay as an estimate of taxes.) It does not affect the actual income tax on bonuses. (It's mostly a disadvantage. I get about 60-70% of my income in bonus and stock which is treated the same; it just means that, if I don't plan ahead for it, I end up with a surprise tax bill on April 15th. I do plan ahead, but the whole process is obnoxious.)

I find large interest free loans useful.

Re: No tipping means better business

#527
post #449
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats is also wrong. repeat visits is what you do for good to exceptional service/product at a good price. tipping culture is just the lazy way for restaurants owners to deal with high attrition rates and lack of training and decent wages.

I don't think so. At least for me, I tip because I've worked in a kitchen. I've worked with waitstaff. I know how hard that job can be. If you are happy, and do a good job with me I would feel guilty not paying you a tip because your normal wage is shit and it's almost impossible to live on. So if I can tip you $15 bucks raising your hourly to at least $22/hr or so I feel good for helping that person being able to li…

So if they earned a decent wage to begin with, that would be better, right?

Re: No tipping means better business

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...Have you never cooked a meal for yourself or something? No? I try to cook most of my meals. In fact, I prefer it over eating out. I'm not convinced it is fiscally optimal though, but I'm okay with paying the premium for my preference. > which are amortized over time Like I pointed out in my other comment, simply having a small kitchen in San Francisco will cost you $2 per meal (assuming you eat three meals per d…

My point is that if you compare like meals with like meals home cooking is going to be far cheaper just about every time. If you compare cooking a steak to eating eggs and potatoes at a diner maybe not. Restaurants sell just about everything at at least 4 times the cost of the ingredients. The energy and so on aren't exactly free but they're not running a charity either.

And further, it's not like there are all these no-kitchen apartments for rent so you almost certainly have a stove anyway. Your average refrigerator apparently costs you less than $12 a month in CA (http://homeguides.sfgate.com/calculate-cost-run-refrigerator...) so it's a pittance too.

Re: No tipping means better business

#529
post #526
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only affects the withholding of bonuses (the amount the IRS has you pre-pay as an estimate of taxes.) It does not affect the actual income tax on bonuses. (It's mostly a disadvantage. I get about 60-70% of my income in bonus and stock which is treated the same; it just means that, if I don't plan ahead for it, I end up with a surprise tax bill on April 15th. I do plan ahead, but the whole process is obnoxious.)

I find large interest free loans useful.

You will have to pay penalties if you underpaid over the course of the year. This makes it not interest free.

Re: No tipping means better business

#530
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things you describe, fall under what I consider "their job"

So assume that if they (and the back of the house, in the event of tip pooling) were paid a meaningful base wage it would have cost 20% more for the experience of dining at the restaurant. Do a calculation and add that to the check, because that's what you would be paying if we didn't have tip culture.

I don't live in a tip culture (not in America), and things seem to move along just fine. There's no shortage of people eating out in restaurants, nor a shortage of wait-staff working there..
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