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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

#91

Post by nasmorn »

scarface_74 wrote: post #71
shermantanktop wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And European tourists are notorious for not tipping, because they have not taken the time to understand our bizarre customs which we don’t even like. Combine that with the fact that tourists everywhere are more difficult and time-consuming to deal with and it’s a recipe for resentment. Just last week I saw a group of Spanish visitors to NYC create a confusing maelstrom of orders at a coffee shop and then override the…

I frequent a bar in a tourist area with many international tourists. They finally just by default added an 18% service charge and a line for an additional tip. The servers and bartenders are always very explicit about the tip being included. This feels much more fair to me.

That is simply a markup and should be reflected in the price. Euro style tipping is annoying enough but percentages in the US are huge. It is really not an afterthought to the whole transaction. Imagine you bought a car and the dealers profit would be totally optional for you to decide. The situation is frankly ludicrous

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

#92

Post by testing22321 »

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…

Tipping is a disgusting practice of making others into servants.

It goes like this:

I have lots of money, you do not. if you wait on me hand and foot in just the right way and if I like it just right I might give you some money. Or not. But you have to dance to find out.

Utterly disgusting, and of course it is normal in a country with severe income disparity - people who have so much money they can waive it around to get people to dance for them while the people dancing don’t even have healthcare, maternity leave or other basic human rights.

The fact some establishments require female servers with certain physical attributes to dress in extremely skimpy clothing just reinforces this. It’s utterly vile.

(Some people will point out this is just like work and pay on general, but there are laws in place forcing the employer to pay a certain amount for a given amount of work. Not so with tipping)

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

#93

Post by joshstrange »

I hate tipping. Especially the practice of tipping _before_ service is rendered.

I hate even more that “taking a stand” against tipping doesn’t solve anything and just hurts the people I’d like to be helping.

I work for a POS company, I hate tipping screens, but there is no way to not offer that feature.

I run my own food festival payments company, I was forced to add tips for Bar payments but managed to hold firm on not adding tipping to the food vendors (even though they complain constantly about it, the entitlement is insane “how am I going to get people to work without tips?”, uh, pay them more?).

My sister owns a bakery, they added tipping because they couldn’t entice people to come work for them even at $15-16/hr unless they also could make tips. This front of house we are talking about, not the people actually making the products (though tips are pooled for back of house), they are talking items out of a case and putting them in a box to hand to customer. Why that deserves a tip I’ll never know, especially since most can’t be bothered to do anything to increase sales and thus their tip.

For the _first_ time in my life I clawed back a tip from a delivery app about a week ago. I’ve had many bad deliveries and bad shoppers but turns out my line in the sand was: 7hr late delivery and the meat and cheese was 70F when it arrived. I hate that _this_ is the only thing that’s caused me to remove a tip. Maybe I should be quicker to clear the tip when the delivery person messes up (happens often).

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

#94

Post by conductr »

amrocha wrote: post #40
rocqua wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for some people the current situation works great. But for plenty of others, the current situation sees them being exploited and payed less than minimum wage. It isnt a rare few either. I'm not okay with a situation where a large group is being exploited below the poverty line, just because it works out better for another large group.

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

Agree. I think this is nearly an imaginary problem. Although plenty of crappy restaurant owners and the economics of the industry make scamming employees an occasional occurrence. Thankfully all those employees usually have the ability to pick up a new job anytime anywhere. So, it’s not like we have a perpetually entrapped underclass of people getting paid peanuts and being exploited

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

#95

Post by TipsForCanoes »

mjevans wrote: post #8

1) I want all restaurant workers to just get a fair proper wage... 2) So that tipping is no longer subsidizing the restaurant owners. 3) Also, FFS, when demand is inelastic, the only way to lower prices is MORE SUPPLY (where it's needed). Build the housing, do not stop, just keep going until after we all die.

I think this could be solved with two small legal changes.

1. Abolish lower minimum wages for so called "tipped" workers and raise it to a fair value.

2. Make it illegal for any business to solicit tips.

If a customer wishes to tip then they certainly can but no business should be allowed to pressure you (and just asking is pressure) into paying more than the price they are listing for an item.

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

#96

Post by joshstrange »

torlok wrote: post #87
ramesh31 wrote: post #25

Ask any server if they want to get rid of tips, even given an hourly wage that would be comparable, and the vast majority will say no. Those regulars who come in and slip you a $50 bill every now and then blows any kind of "fair wage" a restaraunt could pay you out of the water. It's like working on comission. Americans are rich (comparatively, globally). For all of our gripes we still have the highest disposable inc…

How many servers do you know to make such a bold assumption? I can't imagine somebody rational picking a roulette wheel over a "comparable" steady income. IMHO "if you can't tip, don't go" ends in a loss of customers, and unemployment.

Not OP but I work in food festival payments and my suggestion that they raise their alcohol prices by a dollar or two and pay that to the bartenders instead of tips was shot down immediately and it was explained that they could not hire bartenders without tips.

I can’t speak to if that’s true but what I can tell you is that on credit card transactions they saw a 7.6% tipping rate. The drinks at this festival ranged from $8-15/ea so depending on the price, a $1-2 increase that was shared with the bartenders would net them _more_.

One missing data point here is cash, cash payments accounted for half of the credit card payments and I don’t track cash tips (it would be worthless to try). Maybe people are dropping $20/$50/$100 bills in regularly that blow out my calculations.

All that said, I assume the truth is somewhere closer to this being a collective action problem. Individual server might think that they can beat the curve (perhaps correctly, my numbers are averaged) which causes them to advocate for tips instead of more consistent wages.

Either way, it's a sad state of affairs further complicated by bringing drugs (alcohol) into the mix. I'm sure tips flow more freely when people are cognitively impaired, which is a gross thing to prey on IMHO. Also add in the "I'll make this a heavy pour if you tip me more" (aka stealing).

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

#97

Post by throw310822 »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #84
throw310822 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, tipping on top of sales tax never made sense That's a bit funny. Why doesn't it make sense? There is no meaningful relationship between the amount you spend, fixed brackets like 15%, 20%, 30% etc, and the job the waiter did bringing you the food. It's all made up and unnecessary. You can be expected to pay it before taxes, after taxes, 0%, 80%, only for desserts, only on your birthday... It's completely…

Tipping is for service. It’s a charge and like all charges, it’s levied on the subtotal. If I calculated tip after tax, I’m paying a portion of my tips to the state, and they are already getting their share via sales tax.

Hm. Tipping is not a charge, is a gratuity- which means that its amount and even whether you give it or not is up to you. You can decide to tip 20% before taxes or 16% after taxes- it's exactly the same. It all depends how much you want to risk being seen as stingy by the waiter in front of you.

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

#98

Post by scarface_74 »

nasmorn wrote: post #91
scarface_74 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frequent a bar in a tourist area with many international tourists. They finally just by default added an 18% service charge and a line for an additional tip. The servers and bartenders are always very explicit about the tip being included. This feels much more fair to me.

That is simply a markup and should be reflected in the price. Euro style tipping is annoying enough but percentages in the US are huge. It is really not an afterthought to the whole transaction. Imagine you bought a car and the dealers profit would be totally optional for you to decide. The situation is frankly ludicrous

If they say up front on every menu that the tip is included and the servers/bartenders are up front and you can actually remove it (I guess you can put less on the bottom line), what’s the issue?

Taxes also aren’t included in the menu price.

I can’t imagine any of the servers who don’t like the status quo or that would come out better even if they made $20 an hour.

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

#99

Post by TipsForCanoes »

joshstrange wrote: post #96
torlok wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many servers do you know to make such a bold assumption? I can't imagine somebody rational picking a roulette wheel over a "comparable" steady income. IMHO "if you can't tip, don't go" ends in a loss of customers, and unemployment.

Not OP but I work in food festival payments and my suggestion that they raise their alcohol prices by a dollar or two and pay that to the bartenders instead of tips was shot down immediately and it was explained that they could not hire bartenders without tips. I can’t speak to if that’s true but what I can tell you is that on credit card transactions they saw a 7.6% tipping rate. The drinks at this festival ranged f…

I know a few people who work in food service and make close to 6 figures with tipping. Without tipping they'd be at or close to minimum wage. Of course they are in favor of tipping.

One friend shared with me in detail how she plans and practices every customer interaction to maximize tipping. The more I learn about this the more the restaurant industry feels like a scam to me.

For example, if someone orders a mixed vodka drink, she will ask "do you want that with Absolut or Stoli?" two of the higher priced vodkas they offer. She won't even mention that you can also choose the well vodka for much less.

She also told me of another trick she often uses, especially with large parties on busy nights. When she first goes to the table she will ask "has anyone been by yet? No? Oh this isn't my section but I'll be happy to take care of you since you've been waiting..." Only it really is her section. According to her this always results in higher tips because it gives the impression that she is going out of her way.

My reaction to this and the escalating tip expectation has been to pretty much stop going out to restaurants. Instead, I've learned to cook and host dinner parties. I enjoy it so much more (and I refuse any attempt to tip me ;)

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

#100

Post by hiq »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #90
sans_souse wrote: post #57

Always tip for quality service, and tip with cash, directly. This way you know it is going to the person who rendered the service (and the person who likely needs it, as opposed to the owner of the business)

I don't understand why I should have to be judging just the "service" which is usually just taking the order and delivering the food. I find other aspects of restaurants to be more important such as the food quality, the comfort of the furniture and often the noise level (I don't want to have to be shouting to get heard above loud background music and everyone else having to shout). If there's any logic behind it, wh…

> If there's any logic behind it, why don't people tip their post delivery people for their service?

Well this does happen actually, I don't know how prevalent this is and whether this is getting more widespread, but given the current trends I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes fully normalized eventually.

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