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No tipping means better business

tastefulventures.com

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Re: No tipping means better business

#541

Post by padobson »

stephenboyd wrote: post #193
padobson wrote: post #159

Tipping is essential. It's the most common generosity exercise in everyday life. It gives us a chance to flex a muscle we don't flex often enough. We should be doing it more, not less. We should tip the cashier at the grocery store and our mechanics and our mail carriers and the referees at high school sporting events. Paypal tip jars and Humble Bundle's Pay What You Want model are two examples of tipping on the web…

Don't forget your software development consultant. I wouldn't mind an extra 20% :) I'm not convinced of your point, but I wonder how far you could take it. Do you tip your kid's teacher, your professor, a librarian, your doctor, your doctor's assistant? What if the referee is actually wealthy and does it for the love of the game? You'd have to make explicit judgements about every job's place in the socioeconomic hier…

I think everyone is overthinking my comment, which I was surprised to find was the most controversial thing I posted here in weeks. I like your take, because it questions where the line should be, and my answer is, how generous do you want to be?

I'm not saying people should tip because they get good service, or because the service provider is poor or because they want to encourage specific results, either in the present or in the future. I'm saying people should tip, full stop.

I am also in no way suggesting that people should be forced, coerced, or otherwise compelled to tip. That's definitely not generosity.

Generosity is good. Sometimes goodness can be goodness regardless of the result. I could care less if it makes a waiter work harder or makes them entitled. That's an entirely different and mostly unrelated problem to getting people to be more generous.

Re: No tipping means better business

#542

Post by emodendroket »

randomdata wrote: post #540
emodendroket wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd argue that we should talk about the world we actually live in and not one where people have homes without stoves and with silicon fabrication devices.

Well, that's certainly an interesting topic of its own, but I don't see how it applies to the context of this discussion.

Because arguments like the square footage of your stove as a percentage of your rent assume, unrealistically, that you have to opt in to having a stove instead of it being a standard part of dwellings.

Re: No tipping means better business

#543

Post by nommm-nommm »

coldtea wrote: post #456
Trundle wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely cultural as the other guy said. When I visit the US I imagine I get much the same experience as you but instead of "friendly" and "alert" my description would be more "intrusive" and "transparently faking a level of happiness I only experience very infrequently and never while at work."

> but instead of "friendly" and "alert" my description would be more "intrusive" and "transparently faking a level of happiness I only experience very infrequently and never while at work." I don't require genuine friendliness from waiters. Feigned friendliness and politeness will do just fine, since the purpose is to just get better service, not to make friends with the people at the restaurant. So, the problem is w…

Consensus says its not a problem. Europeans (as a group) don't consider that a "bug," its a "feature." Hence the cultural part. Going out to eat is seen as a time to relax and spend time with the company you choose to go out with rather than to be hustled by a stranger.

If you are looking for "better service" in Europe it seems you are looking in the wrong places. May I suggest a strip club instead?

Re: No tipping means better business

#544

Post by nommm-nommm »

GrinningFool wrote: post #531
X86BSD wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping is supposed to be for exceptional service. For example, if the wait person takes your order and brings your food and nothing more I wouldn't tip. If they do the above and keep your water glass filled constantly without need to ask, if your meal, drink orders and dessert come out promptly and correctly, if they ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times, etc I would tip. Getting good serv…

> if your meal, drink orders and dessert come out promptly and correctly, if they ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times, etc I would tip. And yet fully half of those things are beyond the control of the person you're tipping for it.

I'd say closer to 75-100%.

If manager or owner hoses the servers and doesn't staff appropriately then they aren't going to be able to "ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times" and it wouldn't be their fault. Nobody can do the impossible. It's like personally blaming the cashier when the line is long.

I'd also start it earlier with training. If someone isn't trained for the job they are doing and never get any feedback from management, is it really their fault if they do it wrong? (I say this as someone who worked somewhere where training was more or less "yeah, go figure it out" so I have a lot of empathy)

I wrote on HN a while ago about my experience waiting (at least) a half hour to pick up a site-to-store order at Walmart when there was literary no customers. I never personally blamed the staff for it though because I could see the dysfunction in the system they were given to work with (and I could see the physical discomfort the staff was in dealing with it).

Re: No tipping means better business

#545

Post by nommm-nommm »

ydt wrote: post #455
bkor wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still doesn't explain why it should be a percentage other than that everyone assumes a percentage.

You're right. I didn't say it did. I was just trying to give some insight into how it works for people that have maybe never worked for tips. I am of two minds about tipping. As a customer it would be nice if these jobs provided a decent base pay + benefits and everything was just priced into the meal. On the other hand I would have hated this when I worked for tips, as I hustled and provided good service which allow…

>hustled

This word is telling. If I go out to dinner I'd really prefer to not be hustled.

hus·tle ˈhəsəl/ verb

    1.
    force (someone) to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction.
    2.
    North Americaninformal
    obtain by forceful action or persuasion.
    3.
    North Americaninformal
    engage in prostitution.

Re: No tipping means better business

#546

Post by cr0sh »

Draiken wrote: post #525
cr0sh wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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?

It probably has something to do with history or tradition - around the tipping model in the US.

Basically it was the case (and still is generally) that if you did your job exceptionally well, and made the customer feel genuinely that you did an exceptional job at handling their needs and wants, they would tip you - and in many cases, the tip would be very favorable.

This worked great if you were the one getting the tip directly; if you were so lucky and so skilled, you could easily make much more than what you would have gotten as a "fair wage" (indeed - for example for bartending you can make a lot of money as I understand it).

This doesn't work well, though, in cases where you have to do tip sharing - because then you, as an exceptional service provider, are now potentially supplementing others who give average or even sub-par performance (though it can be favorable if everyone was doing exceptionally well - but this is rarely the case).

It also doesn't work well if you have customers not upholding their end - ie, tipping appropriately for the level and value of the service they receive.

I personally adhere to a tip rate of 20% for standard service; if you do better, you get more, if you do worse, you get less (but I tend not to go below 10% - unless you really deserve it). However, I'm increasingly seeing myself as being an outlier; many people either tip poorly, or not at all.

Re: No tipping means better business

#547

Post by isostatic »

crdoconnor wrote: post #136
isostatic wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite luncheon place in Singapore has iPads at every table. So much more relaxed then a waiter.

Which place is that? I remember when Ichiban switched to iPads and optimistically fired about 30% of their wait staff, presumably after drinking the kool aid. The service was horrendous until they hired them back.

It's in our office block (aperia, well north of the cdb). Not sure what it's called, but makes lunch a breeze and means I'll usually go there rather than grabbing a sandwich from Spinellis coffee shop

Re: No tipping means better business

#548

Post by kasey_junk »

mcv wrote: post #537
kasey_junk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The labor laws in the USA are extremely bizarre. Wait staff have a different, much lower, minimum wage than other workers. The restaurant is required to pay them the regular minimum wage if their tips do not make up the difference, and this is a source of many labor complaints. For most wait staff this is not an issue. Their tips put them well above minimum wage status, but that is one of the big drivers of the tippi…

How can laws on tipping have an impact on restaurants' ability to keep kitchen staff? They can still choose to pay them more, can't they?

Because 20-25% of the bill goes to one section of the workforce & customer appetites for the higher bills above those rates that would be required to pay better wages don't exist.

Re: No tipping means better business

#549

Post by anamoulous »

nolite wrote: post #530
anamoulous wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

That's not the point I was making. The point I was making was if you are so offended by the idea of tipping imagine that:

* If we didn't tip, these experiences cost 20% more. (We can't know whether that's the right number or not, but I think it's a good place to start)

* Now just apply 20% to your check and go on about your day.

This is legitimate advice for a person baffled by tipping -- just pay 20% more and move on. If we lived in a world where that waiter got paid a meaningful wage, that's what you'd be paying.

Re: No tipping means better business

#550

Post by mSparks »

dang wrote: post #384
emp_zealoth wrote: post #228

Or, you know, finally unfuck your riddiculous system where paid vacations is a luxury, minimum wage is pathetic and health insurance is not the standard...

> finally unfuck your riddiculous system Would you please stop posting rage rhetoric to HN? We've asked you this before, but you're still doing it a lot. Fulmination lowers the quality of discussion, even when you're not attacking anyone personally. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13263073 and marked it off-topic.

would you please take your life somewhere else.
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