The whole damn system exists to place the burden of a living wage on the customer while the company paying peanuts can claim no wrongdoing. And the really sad part is: it has worked.
Edit: and there are many, many businesses that wouldn't be in business if they actually had to pay competitive wages on their own. The invisible hand can fix nothing if tipping culture says to throw more and more arbitrary amounts of money at people to subsidize their wages yourself. At some point (I'd argue we're past it already), the band-aid needs to get ripped off. Only then will we see self-correction. The almost immediate loss of many businesses will likely trigger other actions. It's already a no-win scenario.
I don’t really get why the expected percentage went up. 15% was the standard for a LONG time. 20% meant you thought they were great. Now 15 is considered shitty, like an insult, and we’re supposed to do 18 or 25 or 30. Meanwhile prices also went up. Why am I supposed to tip 25% now? Service hasn’t changed.
Restaurants when they expect a 40% tip after you drive to the store for pickup
If you can't afford the bill then don't eat there. That sucks to hear I know. However the only way we're going to reign in costs is by sticking to what's affordable. If restaurants can't charge that price then food distributors have to lower prices too. We all benefit by sticking to affordability.
If you're worried about money you absolutely should open up the restaurant's menu on their website or before you order and figure out what you can afford with a 20% surcharge. That said tipping was created by the industry to externalize costs and it needs to go die in a fire.
How about increasing wages to promote more consumer spending? Henry Ford-- a literal Nazi-- of all people, knew this!
Getting real sick of the customer holding the weight of being the financial planner for a business and the owners getting by with no blame for wage stealing and shitty business practices in this circumstance.
Last night, my wife and I ordered Chinese for Valentine's Day. Cost $100. Tried to tip the delivery guy a $20, and he turned it down lol. He then gave my cat a temptations treat, out of a freshly opened bag he had in his pocket. Dude was amazing!
Tipping is more than just a custom; there really is a culture to it. If you're tipping only because you know the server makes less than minimum wage from the restaurant (or that greedy restaurant owners are completely to blame for this injustice), I think you may be misunderstanding an aspect of this culture.
Working in a restaurant is as hard a retail job as there is, and working as a server is often the hardest job in the restaurant. Being a truly good server requires a rare mix of people skills, math skills, memory, and a thick skin. So why do people choose to take the hardest job there is in the whole restaurant, when it pays less than all the other jobs?
Most servers end up getting paid better than the people doing other jobs in the restaurant. In most restaurants, servers make more than minimum wage. At the end of their shifts, most servers in turn tip-out the front-of-the-house employees, such as hosts and bussers, who often do only make minimum wage.
A truly excellent server may be the highest-paid employee for an entire shift -- that certainly includes the manager and anyone else on salary, and it may even include the owner, when you add in labor and upkeep costs.
In order to make all that money, however, this server has to work at all the times that everyone else is out having fun -- Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning. This server must put up with drunks, picky eaters and other narcissists, as well as seating errors and kitchen mistakes, all with a smile, for six or eight or ten hours straight. This server, who earns more than anyone else on the shift, is working harder than anyone else on the shift.
This is the other aspect that I wanted to address. Tipping culture is what gives that excellent server the opportunity to earn a better wage, more appropriate to the effort and expertise they devote to the job.
I'm sure this all sounds very capitalist, because it is. This may not be the most capitalism-friendly forum, I know, but I'm not trying to make any larger argument here.
I'm just saying that to me, it seems like this should be a "don't hate the players" (owners, managers, servers, rich/drunk people who like to leave big tips) "hate the game" (tipping culture). And even if you do hate tipping culture, it couldn't hurt to consider how it works for the people who don't hate it.
On the verge of a recession is gonna be new go to excuse.
“Sorry babe, can’t do a bday gift this year. Nothing has changed for me, but there may or may not be a recession lurking in the shadows”
Lmfao 🤣 Same face my chauffeur makes when he doesn’t get his Christmas bonus cause we’re on the verge of a recession
Tipping service workers is one of the very few times in our life when we can say "The people directly serving me deserve to get paid more, and while I can't raise their wage, I can at least make sure they're getting paid well while they serve me" and the fact that people are upset about that and actively refuse to tip is just crazy to me.
Like, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but tipping generously is one of the times when we can come pretty close! Maybe instead of having a $70 meal on the brink of a recession, have a $50 meal and tip up to the $70 that's in your budget?
I honestly don't know why people go to restaurants in the US. I don't want a guilt trip from the waiter with my expensive meal. Talk about a buzz kill.
Here in Brazil, tipping is not normal. Instead, restaurants and bars will add a 10% service cost to the bill. This 10% is then weekly divided between cooks, waiters, bartenders, etc, the proportion being decided by the restaurant.
That is of course not a law, but it is so common that restaurant workers already consider that when thinking how much they make. My sister worked as a bartender at a restaurant recently, and she would add R$300 (roughly $60, yes it's not much, but remember we're a middle income country) to her monthly paycheck from this.
If I should tip 25% for a $70 meal, the meal shouldn't be $70. It should be $88. If the waiters are shit that's fixed by me (and other people) never going to that place again, not by waving a bunch of money at their faces and telling them to dance.
I used to tip most of the times when I got to Spain but I was told so many time it's simply not something people do here that I mostly stopped. There no way tip when you're paying with a card and I carry less and less cash so without any pressure to tip I simply lost the habit.
No tiping means meals get more expensive. Easy as that. It is a bit strange to me that people going out to eat and drink, stick it to us waiters and barkeepers and cooks.
I worked at many small places where the owners where struggling to keep everything afloat.
I do also wish there was no need for tips, but truth is that would scare many guests away and would take time to adapt. Time in wich id be broke af.
I mean, they are paid significantly less than minimum wage. While it's not your responsibility to pay them fair wages, it's their bosses, they do rely on tips to survive if you can tip, you should, but you should also advocate for paying service industry workers fair wages.
Rude - Atleast they could have played them a nice piece on the world's tiniest violin!
When times are tough dont eat out if you cant tip (at least while your jurisdiction allows exploitation of tipped workers)
Yhea f off with that tiping culture .
I generally always tip what I feel is generous if I'm able to, because thankfully I just have the luxury of spare change to blow from being a little more frugile these days, watching my spending and all that jazz. But honestly, if I was smart, and truly frugile, I'd be saving that money by not tipping, but also by making a meal at home instead whenever it's an option. But I'm willing participating in the machinations of the local service economy whenever I order delivery, or go to a restaurant, or do many things that would involve tipping. That said, retail tipping feels kind of weird except for some specialty shops where it's totally unnecessary but something to consider when you get excellent service.
But fuck all the profiteers behind all the schemes in the service industry that exploit workers by forcing them to rely on tipping, it's actually fucking bullshit. Wait staff and delivery drivers can get paid as low as $4/hour once they've received some balance in tips, when they should probably be getting around $20/hour and up in most cases. It's actually third world level.
But nah fam what kind $70 meal we talking? If you paying $70 for a steak, a couple drinks and whatever else at an especially nice place, you bet your fucking ass you'll tip $17.50 if the food and service is worth it, because you're spending 1-2 hours at that nice restaurant and your service occupies an amount of man-hours that might otherwise not be well compensated. Actually, maybe 25%/$17.50 is a bit much, it really just depends on the meal and the place. I feel like I would do 15% if service was ok, 20% if good, 25% if great but again it's all about setting.
