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Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

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Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#131

Post by rustcleaner »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #104
Gud wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have even more radical idea: Use the agreed upon price set in the menu.

restaurants have tried this, all the servers quit. It is the servers who are forcing tips on us because they make way more money than they would on wages.

I would explicitly patronize a cafe with a counter I had to walk up to if it had a sign up explaining that they banned tips and offered 30-50% over min-wage but nobody applies. I would chalk it up to entitled service workers who really should be converting material taken out of the ground into something useful instead of waiting tables.

We won't see any real increases to our standards of living in the US again until we bring electric prices down and we start converting more things in the ground into things which make our lives even easier. Climate Change™ has been a wonderous success in slowing down Western inertia, though don't mistake my sentiment as faith in the current administration (lol).

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#132

Post by janalsncm »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #113
tptacek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servers at a lot of restaurants don't expect to make minimum wage, so don't let "the owners will have have to true comp up to minimum wage" function as an excuse not to tip. If you don't want to tip, don't dine at full-service restaurants in America.

> If you don't want to tip, don't dine at full-service restaurants in America. Whenever I dine at such a place, I give a 100% tip because it’s easier math and it incentivizes me not to patronize such businesses. (I only go with friends and I never make the suggestion.) Just saying that because I disagree with this perspective; do go to these restaurants and don’t tip if that is your choice. Tipping used to be a gratu…

There is a restaurant I ate at recently that applied an automatic 20% gratuity to the bill instead of requiring a tip, which I liked because it didn’t require math on my part.

It’s not quite “the price you see is the price you pay” but it’s progress.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#133

Post by rustcleaner »

tptacek wrote: post #125

HN threads on tipping turn me into the Joker. This stuff is so hard for me to read. Yes, you can trace tipping back to demeaning pre-enlightenment service worker dynamics. But you can do that with almost anything. Talk to a socialist Google worker about the morality of their $350k comp package. As I have learned the hard way trying to convince a local polity that zoning is fundamentally racist (it is), to confront a…

Tie pay to performance then. As for Fridays, start a baserate bidding market for your workers and the lowest asks win the given shift. If pay for the shift scales with number of plates served (without tips) AND Fridays pay more because the lowest ask on Fridays is typically higher than on other days, then it should not be much different than now except your customers don't feel mugged. Just ban customer tipping!

Probably best to tie this all together in a "Lowest listed price is final price" law that includes a hotline for customers to report businesses/staff who retaliate over no tipping. Mainly it's so the agency can send secret shoppers of their own to test for social retaliations/pressure.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#134

Post by tptacek »

rustcleaner wrote: post #133
tptacek wrote: post #125

HN threads on tipping turn me into the Joker. This stuff is so hard for me to read. Yes, you can trace tipping back to demeaning pre-enlightenment service worker dynamics. But you can do that with almost anything. Talk to a socialist Google worker about the morality of their $350k comp package. As I have learned the hard way trying to convince a local polity that zoning is fundamentally racist (it is), to confront a…

Tie pay to performance then. As for Fridays, start a baserate bidding market for your workers and the lowest asks win the given shift. If pay for the shift scales with number of plates served (without tips) AND Fridays pay more because the lowest ask on Fridays is typically higher than on other days, then it should not be much different than now except your customers don't feel mugged. Just ban customer tipping! Prob…

You could devise some contraption ("baserate bidding market") that is +/- 5% more {fair, transparent, predictable} than tipping, in the same way that you could improve or degrade sales compensation by eliminating commissions, yes.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#135

Post by thfuran »

janalsncm wrote: post #128
thfuran wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage theft is rampant. Something like $10-20 billion a year in the US.

I totally believe it, which is why my main gripe with the article is that it spends so much time talking about why tipping culture is disrespectful that it essentially glasses over the wage theft it enables. It also muddies the waters around tipped minimum wage and minimum wage in unhelpful ways. You can see many people in this thread are confused about it. A more helpful thesis would be tipping leads to wage theft w…

It's also bad because the list price should be the actual price. It only seems normal because all the stores in the US also don't list tax in the price.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#136

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

janalsncm wrote: post #132
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't want to tip, don't dine at full-service restaurants in America. Whenever I dine at such a place, I give a 100% tip because it’s easier math and it incentivizes me not to patronize such businesses. (I only go with friends and I never make the suggestion.) Just saying that because I disagree with this perspective; do go to these restaurants and don’t tip if that is your choice. Tipping used to be a gratu…

There is a restaurant I ate at recently that applied an automatic 20% gratuity to the bill instead of requiring a tip, which I liked because it didn’t require math on my part. It’s not quite “the price you see is the price you pay” but it’s progress.

Agreed. I’ve experienced similar things with large groups at some restaurants and it was welcome if for no reason other than it being an improvement. I’d only caveat that they should to be upfront about it to avoid accidental double tips.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#137

Post by amrocha »

n4r9 wrote: post #119
amrocha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restaurant workers already get a fair wage. At minimum they make minimum wage. If you don’t think the minimum wage is fair then fight to raise it. Otherwise you’re gonna have to start tipping at a lot more places than just restaurants.

There are many states where the minimum wage for restaurant workers is $2.13: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

If workers make less than minimum wage from tips, then the employer needs to make up that difference.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#138

Post by amrocha »

rocqua wrote: post #124
amrocha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody gets paid less than minimum wage. The employer needs to make up that difference if tips don’t cover it.

And all employees know of those rights, and all employers freely give them? Personally, I don't believe that at all. I do conceed that, if this were the case, things would be fine.

I think employees know about it, but don’t say anything because it marks you as a low performer, and it’s very easy to fire low performers.

At the same time, employees know that tips are incredibly lucrative for them, and would rather have a sub minimum wage day every once in a while for the on average above minimum wage pay. There’s a reason servers don’t want to get rid of tips.

That being said, none of this is my problem as a customer. If you choose not to pursue your rights that’s on you at the end of the day. I’m not going to feel bad that your scheme to have me subsidize your wages failed.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#139

Post by amrocha »

janalsncm wrote: post #127
amrocha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody gets paid less than minimum wage. The employer needs to make up that difference if tips don’t cover it.

I think they are saying that employers are breaking the law.

Ok, so bring it up with the NLRB.

Re: Tipping: How Gratuity Replaced Fair Wages in U.S. Restaurants

#140

Post by mbirth »

throwup238 wrote: post #32
janalsncm wrote: post #18

I hate tipping. The last think I want to do after eating is math. And don’t get me started on the inefficient payment ritual we have to endure: flag down the waiter for the check, wait for the check, wait for them to take your cc, wait for them to ring it up and bring it back, then do some math. Unnecessary. That said, minimum wage is minimum wage. If an employee doesn’t make that up in tips, the law is that the rest…

> And don’t get me started on the inefficient payment ritual we have to endure: flag down the waiter for the check, wait for the check, wait for them to take your cc, wait for them to ring it up and bring it back, then do some math. Unnecessary. Most of the sit down restaurants I frequent now use mobile pay terminals so at least that bit is less awkward. They leave the terminal at the table and leave, so you can pay…

Pizza Express here in the UK has the best model IMHO. While ordering works as usual and you still have the option of paying the traditional way, you can also use their app. Select the restaurant, type in your table number and you’ll see what you had ordered and can pay for it. It even has options to split the bill.

No need to flag down a waiter, tell them you want to pay, yes, by card, and then watch him getting flagged down by 5 other guests until he makes it back to you with the card reader 10 minutes later.

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