At least five states are considering requiring full minimum wages for tip earners this year
More states are considering requiring full minimum wages for tip earners this year
Please! For the love of God! Get rid of tipping!
I hate tipping! As the consumer I should not be responsible for proving a living wage for someone else's employees!
as a European I have to say both the Tipping culture and the not showing the full price in stores with VAT included is just mindblowing.
It's literally a culture of hiding true costs, weird af.
Hotels too. The advertised price is never accurate because their stupid resort fees.
It’s literally a culture of hiding true costs, weird af.
Makes me happy though in this day and age that people are waking up to this fact, and are starting to push back on it.
In the past corporations/governments thought people were a lot more unaware, than they are today.
It's a culture of trying to get away with whatever makes the most profits. We also have that, but there are some reasonable laws working against that. One of my favourites is the duty to display per kg or per litre price. Before that, shops made the package sizes deliberately confusing.
Have lived in both eu and us.
Agree, but the challenge on tax is that it's not harmonized across municipalities. This means that stores that are across the street from each other may have identical prices/profit margin and a different net price to the consumer. This would lead to consumer preferences biased by physical location and have lots of other weird side effects. You can see this in areas that border state lines when the tax is appreciably different.
Step one is a harmonized tax rate, but that's easier said than done.
It's really not that weird at all. It's a simple consequence of the EU having better consumer protection laws. Unfortunately the far right in the US is a lot stronger than in most of Europe and has been since the post-war era.
We also, in the US, have an old and antiquated system that was deliberately designed to be difficult to change because the founders had to convince the slave-owning class that abolition couldn't be forced on them if they agreed to join the newly-formed union. How did they do that? You guessed it! By making the Constitution almost impossible to change, which is one reason why it required the bloodiest war in our history to end slavery.
Again, there's nothing especially "weird" about it. As is true of a lot of contemporary reality, it's largely a consequence of history.
Interestingly, tipping culture is also at least tangentially a product of slavery as well, but that's a bit more complicated so I'll save it for another comment.
And if you're starting to suspect that a ton of what ails the US can be traced directly back to slavery, here's a hint; you may be on to something!
That said, it was the European colonial powers who brought slavery to North America in the first place, which kind of brings us full circle.
You dont have to tip bro its okay
It's not okay. I can hear some of my customers' anxiety when they struggle to tip me. Some people lord it over me like I should revere them for their blessing. There is an unnecessary layer of stress to the customer service routine for everyone involved except the owner who benefits from this system. Not to mention some businesses pool their tips and share it with everyone, sometimes redirecting these funds into unscrupulous items like snacks without consent. >:(
Tips don't motivate me to provide great customer service to my customers. Tips serve to maintain cheap labor, but more important to me is how they erect social barriers. I can't blame someone for wanting or being motivated by tips when they're stuck near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. I'm there too so I understand, but there's just no reason for tips when we can get/provide great service without adding layers of paranoia; When we can provide a satisfying quality of life for everyone in the process with a not-so-simple wage increase (and God forbid, better budgeting and management from business owners).
They also in general make my job harder, especially when an old person who's basically blind can't find any of the buttons or follow simple directions (PRESS 3 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MARIANNE)
No. I actually kinda do. Like if I'm out with friends I literally get judged if I tip poorly let alone if I don't tip at all which is social suicide.
And if I have a coupon for a meal, say 50% or something like that I still have to tip on the original amount before the discount was applied.
Moreover, and most importantly in some restaurants tipping is the only source of income the server gets. Regardless of how I feel about it I am still responsible for this person's wage.
I hate tipping culture.
It's not socially acceptable to not tip servers in a full service restaurant in the USA. It's becoming a required social norm to tip fast casual.
The pandemic really changed the tipping norms in the USA.
I was going to say this but fear of mass downvotes kept me quiet. Glad I'm not the only one. I've worked for tips but I'd rather just work for a reasonable wage instead, remove the guesswork and chances for abuse.
One way or another, you're paying those employees wage. One of them doesn't get taxed or advertised is all.
Yes and no. All tips are supposed to be reported to the IRS. Whether they are or not is not really relevant. What really matters is that the customers aren’t forced to do an owners job. If an owner needs their customers to prop up their employees then the owners shouldn’t be in business.
I used to make $2.35/h when I was in the service industry. Without my customers I would’ve been fucked. What’s worse is on a slow night, I really did get fucked.
As a german the whole tip system in the US is both redicilous and hilarious to me.
We have tipping here, too (we literally call it "drinking money"). With the difference, that it's pretty much voluntary and if you don't have much money (e.g. as a student) noone will expect you to tip.
Having tips be part of the actual wage totally defeats the point of them...
Are you a true American if you don't shaft your employees for every penny that you can though?
This is actually a great reason for ending tipping. I used to feel like I was on the server’s side, slipping them cash the business couldn’t steal, but I never use cash anymore so have no idea who it’s going to. Also, businesses are getting more sleazy with required “tips” and fees, and it’s all one giant tax fraud no matter which way you put it.
Actual prices on the menu are better for the customer, actual pay is better for the server, accounting for everything is better for the business and accurate reporting is better for all of us who depend on services paid for by taxes
Bro just said he was German
Are you a true American if you don’t shaft your employees for every penny that you can though?
No, but a true Capitalist, yes.
(Sad of me to write that, as there used to be a time where companies made good products and accepted reasonable profit margins, going for the win-win scenarios. Today's Capitalism seems all about the win-lose scenarios.)
That's how it started here too.
https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants-civil-war/
After the Constitution was amended in the wake of the Civil War, slavery was ended as an institution but those who were freed from bondage were still limited in their choices. Many who did not end up sharecropping worked in menial positions, such as servants, waiters, barbers and railroad porters. These were pretty much the only occupations available to them. For restaurant workers and railroad porters, there was a catch: many employers would not actually pay these workers, under the condition that guests would offer a small tip instead.
“These industries demanded the right to basically continue slavery with a $0 wage and tip,” Jayaraman says.
I was so confused the first time I went to Germany. I asked someone there about tipping and they said, “you can, but you don’t have to.”
That didn’t really clarify it enough for me so I just tipped like I do in the US. Didn’t want anyone thinking I was a jerk.
As an American and former tipped employee, living in a country without tips is so much better. However, there are some groups trying to make tips happen here in Japan. If you get good service, tell the manager or corporate. If you're a regular, give them an actual small gift (this happens anyway because people exchange gifts when they go on vacation and such). If it's a bar employee, buy them a drink. I like this much better.
"Ballot measures pending in Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Massachusetts, and a bill being reintroduced in Connecticut". There.
MVP
So that should cover everyone in this day and age since everyone asks for a tip now /s
IT’S ABOUT TIME.
That's great, but minimum wage needs a huge overhaul.
20 bucks minimum wage
How is it a minimum wage if you dont have to pay it in full?
There's a loop hole where companies don't have to pay minimum wage if tips amount to the minimum wage that would have been earned by the employee.
It's a shitty way for companies to not pay their employees and expect customers to pay them.
While I abhor the whole concept of tipping, the thing that really grinds my gears is that we are expected to pay a percentage of the bill for service. If I order a basic cheese pizza or a 16 ounce tomahawk steak with a big chunk of foie gras and all the trimmings the server does not have to do much extra work for the latter. But if I have to tip $5 on a $20 pizza, why the fuck do I have to tip $100 for almost the same amount of service for the steak? Sure it weighs more and you might need to make an extra trip to serve the trimmings, but WTF, the server is not providing any more value by serving an expensive dish.
If I order an expensive bottle of wine it takes no extra effort to serve, why should I pay a shit ton more service charge?
USA, get your shit together, this is so not right. Land of the free? My arse.
Because restaurants decided to enforce tipping by percentage after world war 2 in order to keep payroll down. They lobbied for laws around it and ran advertisements to the public. Corporate governance is a huge problem in the US and tipping is just one facet.
Thanks for the background.
It's also bullshit that tipped workers rarely pay taxes on the vast majority of their earnings. We're subsiding their wages, access to infrastructure, and social services.
Lmao this has got to be the most misplaced anger ever. You're mad at people that don't even make minimum wage aren't paying taxes on the maybe $35k a year? How about the billionaires that basically don't pay taxes? Maybe we should deal with that first.
It's been a long time since ither of you've been a server, huh? They're doing better than that unless they are part-time.
Your point stands, that taxing billionairs is good, but a full-time server is probably doing 50k+ in all but the lowest cost of living areas. Because a tipped employee earns a % of goods sold, they are hurt less by inflation. The rising prices people pay result in higher tips. But since most places aren't cash, only the vast majority of their tips are via card and thus recorded and reported.
TLDR, they aren't as bad off as people think, and they are mostly taxed correctly.
I feel like this was true when cash was more widely used, however, anytime recently I’ve been out it’s always a tip on the card (which they can’t “hide” from the govt).
They have to report their cash earnings for taxes... Maybe some don't but most businesses will at least require it.
I never worked at a place that made the servers produce all of their cash tips for accounting purposes. I only knew one server who was claiming everything all the time and it was because she was trying to get a home loan and minimum wage wasn't going to cut it (most people seemed to claim enough to make just over minimum wage so that they didn't have to have their paycheck adjusted later).
Reminder that a "living wage", and what most servers make, is at least 3x minimum wage, so tipping is still going to be required.
Why? I hope this is just the first step toward the end of tipping culture. Why should servers be held out as a special category deserving higher pay? They deserve a decent wage at least minimum, just like everyone else. If businesses need to pay them more to attract employees, then that’s the free market at work. That’s more predictable, transparent, honest toward all of the business, the employee, and the customer
Servers shouldn't be special, obviously. The obligatory tipping system we have is an complete dumpster fire. But this is taking employees who currently make $30/hr in tips and changing their minimum wage from $2/hr to $7/hr. It's not going to change anything. How could it? Would you give up a $30/hr job to take a $7/hr job on principle? Unless you're independently wealthy, you couldn't even if you wanted to.
Yup, servers often times make much more than other "minimum wage" jobs.
While I do tip. It does suck that eating out pretty much requires a donation because we all agree that food workers don't make enough to live on. And I live in a State where they get full minimum. Just give the workers food and boarding and we can call it a deal, oh wait..... Let's not.
Non-american here. While I tipped last time I visited, I don't think I will do it next time I visit. It will just legitimize a system, that has to go away. Due to the way tipping and minimum wage work together, I essentially just tip the owner of the restaurant (at least to a large degree). As a customer, I have no reason to pay more than the price that is asked for
You're going to get banned from a bunch of restaurants then. Anywhere worth eating enforces tipping. Some of them have it already included in the bill.
I understand your frustration but that's going to add far more stress to your trip, will result in servers being underpaid, and could result in the police being called if you refuse to pay a tip that's already included on the bill.
Since Lemmy is trying to be better than Reddit, can we agree that titles should be like '5 US states...'? Not every person that reads news here lives in the United States 🕊️
In this thread: hot takes from people who have never worked in a restaurant
Most of us against tipping have absolutely worked in restaurants, which is exactly why we are against it. The only people in favour of tipping (which also have reasoning that makes any sense) are those who don't tip and end up being subsidized by everyone else.
You either worked at a shitty place or you were bad at your job.
I used to walk with $2-300 a night a decade ago. That industry allowed me to pursue other things and I have fond memories of it. It just brings your body down and the hours absolutely suck so as to be unsustainable.
I think people who make tips like them because they get a bunch of money randomly on nights they work. But the problem with it is that it's random. If they are required to pay you more money then your pay check will just always have a bunch of money in it so that's better. People can still tip if they feel you did a good job. You shouldn't be dependent on that to live. You should be guaranteed a living wage for showing up and doing your job.
Hot takes coming from all over the world with sane labor law and sane culture 🤷
Yeah. I'm sure everything about your country is perfect
The state of Texas is committed to ending slavery in the coming decade. As a first step they are proposing that minimum wage should cover an entire cardboard box living quarters. And we're not talking shoebox size Amazon hand me downs that still have the return address tag! They will remove the tag and provide enough duct tape to seal that portion of the box. Under article 17 of the 2024 end of slavery pact, they propose that men and women under the age of 27 shall not be responsible for sealing and or weather proofing their cardboard boxes. Older people are not covered yet, but may be covered as soon as two or three more migrant babies are sold back to their respective Mexican families. Indeed, Texas is making strides to accommodate the world's demands for fair treatment of human rights and the people who should have them.
Ah, how modern commercialism loves to forget that the minimum wage was intended to be a shameful thing...
edit: a shameful thing for employers to stoop to, ffs 🤦🏽♂️
Confidently incorrect
yay another failed campaign promise by biden that he has left to be a state's rights issue and not all in the US will benefit
Abso-fucking-lutely, but good luck getting all the self-deceiving conservatives, I mean "centrists", to admit it.
Almost half of US states still have a $7 minimum wage.
In a year or two nearly half will have criminalized abortion.
These headlines are not positive. They're indicative that the Do-Nothing Democrats have shirked their duty whenever we give them control of the Federal Government.
A) When have Democrats been able to pass legislation on their own?
B) What extreme-right concessions do you want them to make to get enough votes for mildly left policy to pass today? Jail all trans to get a federal minimum wage bump? Is that worth it?
A) When have Democrats been able to pass legislation on their own?
--When they controlled two branches of government.
B) What extreme-right concessions do you want them to make to get enough votes for mildly left policy to pass today? Jail all trans to get a federal minimum wage bump? Is that worth it?
--lol
I love that your counter to this is: They're just oh so powerless, when they controlled two branches of government twice in the last sixteen years AND had a supermajority for a portion of that time. They had all the power they needed. They were just more concerned with adding to their own pocketbooks than doing right by their constituents.
And, it should be noted that thanks to you and yours swallowing Democrats' excuses, we're getting a far-right country anyway, or do you think the outright criminalization of abortion is going to stop with Idaho?
I wish NC was one of them
I hope this becomes a more popular idea, I fucking hate tipping so much that I stopped going to restaurants.
Would fucking love it if we just got rid of tipping all together. Employers -not customers- should be responsible for providing employees good pay.
Factor the difference into up front price of the food/service and be done with it.
But it should be a hard opt-in, no "decline tip" bullshit, social engineering is still at issue
Definitely. In my country, tipping aren't expected but it's a pleasant thing to receive in service industry, in US of A, tipping is expected and people will vehemently defend the status quo.
Unless "we" change it via legislation, that's never going to happen. Let's explore how it would play out as an individual restaurant initiative:
Restaurant raises staff wages, raises prices to cover the increase. Even if you disclose it on the menu, customers don't care: they see prices 20% higher, they choose to eat somewhere with cheaper menu prices. This is frequently what happens when restaurants try to do that.
If the restaurant increases server wages less than what they would make in tips, the servers will leave for another restaurant. The benefit of tips is that the harder you work, and more tables you take, the more money you make. Good servers can make $50+ an hour if they hustle.
Source: 8 years experience in the industry.
I shouldn’t be paying my server’s wage; the restaurant should.
Name one other job (that isn’t in the food service industry) where the buyers subsidize the worker’s salary voluntarily.
Thing is, no one would accept to pay what's written on the menu if they charged enough to cover what people pay in tip, it's all psychological manipulation.
Prices would need to increase by about 20% and you wouldn't have a choice to pay it anymore, contrary to tips. Or you accept that servers now only make minimum wage.
That’s interesting.
InIt works all across the world exactly how you say it wouldn’t work.That's the thing though, they already charge enough to cover what people pay in tip but guess what? That doesn't make them enough money. Next time they raise prices. They won't take responsibility for it, they'll blame it on the economy, but never the owners and shareholders that are making more profit than ever.
The only people who have the power to eliminate tipping are the customers. Even if employers randomly started paying servers $50 an hour, people could still tip...and many probably would to get that feeling of moral superiority. And that is sort of irrelevant anyway because how the fuck are the customers supposed to know the servers wage anyway? I literally have no idea what my server (or hostess or line cook or after hours cleaning crew staff) makes at the last place I ate at. Do you?
It's really not complicated. If customers stopped tipping, and servers can't support themselves and therefore they are forced to quit and move towards literally any other industry with a higher/stable wage. Then employers either go out of business altogether or, more realistically, raise wages to replace those workers who quit since the employer would like to keep making money instead of not making money. And thus, menu prices go up to account for the lack of tipping.
No one has ever been able to provide me a scenario where tipping ends without servers quitting due to inadequate/unstable income. But I'm certainly open to suggestions!