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Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

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Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#31

Post by wenc »

Smoosh wrote: post #18
tony101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think separately listing taxes has the benefit of transparency - you know how much the government is taking and can make more informed electoral decisions.

With a single Federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) as in Australia, you know it is 10%. All prices include the GST and are the price you will pay. There are no other sales taxes . Everyone knows what the government's cut is. Everyone knows how much they are actually paying. I can't see why anyone would want a more complicated system. Clarification: Many "essential" goods like simple foods are GST exempt. They will be…

Is it 10% in all states?

In Canada, the provincial sales tax differs in each province. The federal rate is 5%. Alberta has no sales tax, whereas Ontario charges 8% (post-harmonization it's a HST of 13%).

In the US, the sales tax differs not only by state, but by county and city.

The tax situation in Chicago is particularly bizarre.

The sales tax in Cook County, where the city of Chicago located, is 10.25%. The sales tax one county over (say Dupage County, 15-20 miles outside the city and still part of the greater Chicago metropolitan area) is 8%.

Restaurants in the City of Chicago (but not other parts of Cook County) charge 10.75% because there's a city-specific restaurant tax.

The different tax rates create strange arbitrage opportunities. If I buy an iPhone from an Apple Store a few miles outside Chicago, I get an automatic 2.25% discount.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#32

Post by tptacek »

Jedd wrote: post #23
tptacek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not in fact have to pay attention to how well the server performs. You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. You should look at tipping as a cost sharing measure, not an incentive system.

> You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. a) this sounds horrendous, and b) so there's zero pretence that tipping is somehow related to quality of experience? (I ask as a fairly well-travelled Australian, but who rarely sojourned into North America.)

Why is that horrendous? (I get "annoying"). It's the restaurant sharing the cost of labor with the diner, which you're doing one way or the other, but tips have less price stickiness than list prices.

There's certainly a "pretense" of tipping as an incentive, and you can treat it that way if you want to (to a point; you can't reasonably tip much below 15%). But you should ignore the pretense; it's not worth the psychic energy.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#33

Post by skj »

lostgame wrote: post #3

Good riddance. Tipping is racist/sexist, and is more often than not an excuse for the restaurants to use it for exploitation. I live in Toronto and everyone I know working in the food industry is happy to hear this.

Racist/sexist in that it allows racists and sexists to express their biases via poor tips? Or something else.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#34

Post by simonbarker87 »

tptacek wrote: post #26
simonbarker87 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m British. I’m sorry you feel this way. It’s the thing I hate the most about visiting the US. I’m going say this once and really big for you: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TIP IN THE UK. You can if you want but, having worked in the service sector, it is not expected, service staff won’t think worse of you and please don’t feel guilty. Unlike the US we have a vaguely liveable minimum wage that is nearly £10 per hour now and t…

£10/hr sounds significantly lower than what a US server would make in a $$ restaurant (based on industry norms for diner/day/server), let alone a $$$ or a $$$$. If they're relying on that little cash, I'm definitely tipping next time I'm in the UK.

A good salary in the UK is any over £40,000 and not all service workers are paid the minimum. Minimum wage in the UK works out At £15k-20k per year so yeah, not a good salary but a lot better than the $3 an hour I’ve heard US restaurant workers get per hour. If you have to rely on the enforced generosity of customers so your staff can afford to live you don’t have a viable business in my opinion, and that seems to be the model in the US.

If memory serves tipping used to be heavily frowned upon in the US until the Great Depression.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#35

Post by Pfhreak »

Several restaurants have gotten rid of tipping in Seattle, either through just eliminating it or through the "we charge a fixed additional fee that goes to staff". Either way, I'm a fan (though I prefer the former) if the business provides a living wage, benefits, etc.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#36

Post by Accacin »

tptacek wrote: post #26
simonbarker87 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m British. I’m sorry you feel this way. It’s the thing I hate the most about visiting the US. I’m going say this once and really big for you: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TIP IN THE UK. You can if you want but, having worked in the service sector, it is not expected, service staff won’t think worse of you and please don’t feel guilty. Unlike the US we have a vaguely liveable minimum wage that is nearly £10 per hour now and t…

£10/hr sounds significantly lower than what a US server would make in a $$ restaurant (based on industry norms for diner/day/server), let alone a $$$ or a $$$$. If they're relying on that little cash, I'm definitely tipping next time I'm in the UK.

From what I've read, that's not true at all. I'd imagine a whole lot of waiters and waitresses are earning a lot less than you imagine. £10/hour seems more reasonable, but our minimum wage keeps going up and includes holidays, etc. and we do not need to pay health insurance either.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#37

Post by swimfar »

wenc wrote: post #10

I hate the idea of tipping. I tip generously. Both of these statements are simultaneously true. The vast majority of the countries in the world (that I've visited) do not believe in percentage based tipping as we do in North America [1]. A tip either involves rounding up to the nearest unit of currency, or takes the form of a small service fee added to the bill. In North America, we've arrived at a situation where wa…

In addition, the amount a waiter is tipped is also often influenced by their race, sex, and physical appearance.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#38

Post by jszymborski »

Smoosh wrote: post #18
tony101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think separately listing taxes has the benefit of transparency - you know how much the government is taking and can make more informed electoral decisions.

With a single Federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) as in Australia, you know it is 10%. All prices include the GST and are the price you will pay. There are no other sales taxes . Everyone knows what the government's cut is. Everyone knows how much they are actually paying. I can't see why anyone would want a more complicated system. Clarification: Many "essential" goods like simple foods are GST exempt. They will be…

FWIW, Canadian taxes are similarly quite uniform within a province.

Canadians also have a Federal GST, and provinces add their own tax, which gets added together into one Harmonized Services Tax (HST) in all provinces but Quebec and British Columbia, which have their own rules (QC collects an additional Provincial Sales Tax (PST))

Of course, there are fun additional taxes as well like the Environmental Handling Fee (EHF) on electronics.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#39

Post by Pfhreak »

skj wrote: post #33
lostgame wrote: post #3

Good riddance. Tipping is racist/sexist, and is more often than not an excuse for the restaurants to use it for exploitation. I live in Toronto and everyone I know working in the food industry is happy to hear this.

Racist/sexist in that it allows racists and sexists to express their biases via poor tips? Or something else.

Are tips universally distributed? I would suspect that unconscious bias can impact tipping norms and result in certain classes of people getting smaller or larger tips. I don't have data to back up my hypothesis, however. Additionally, tips tend to go to front of house staff, where certain groups are more/less represented.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#40

Post by findyoucef »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15-20% has been the norm for my whole adult life, and the upper range (1) doesn't often materially change the price of a meal and (2) simplifies the math. Use whatever system you want, though; the point is: you are not actually on the hook to evaluate the server's performance. Think of it as tipping the institution of table service.

Oh interesting! My impression was that it was 10-15% about two decades ago and has now risen to 15-20% with most people I know tending closer to the 20% edge. Maybe it's simply that my social circles have become more generous tippers.

That's my impression as well.
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