Americans be like; “If you can’t afford to pay 69% tip then don’t go out eating at all”
If you’re going to say “69%” , you need to call it eating out, not out eating.
It’s only eating out if it’s 69%, otherwise it’s just sparkling oral.
While getting fucked! What a meal!
Also, complaining that things will cost too much if waiters eek by on more than minimum wage.
The cost is literally the same… Restaurants would just be upfront about it then.
That would be upsetting to the business owners, though. You know - the Job Creators.
If I’m directly responsible for their salary, then they’re working for me. I created that job.
You assume the restaurant’s prices are connected to wages in any meaningful way. We’re paying the wages. That’s all food cost and profit.
Eek! They eke out a living on so little!
I gotta say, complaining about being on the verge of a recession while going out for a $70 meal really puts my poverty into perspective.
If all I had to do was 69 my waiter, I’d be eating out a lot more
Something I don’t get, why is it percentage based? I mean, I get it from the waiters perspective. But as a customer? Whether my one plate of food is 20$ or 200$, he did the same thing. Scaling with more items or time spent would seem more appropriate.
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Chasing a windmill would be really easy tho.
Just don’t get chasing waterfalls though.
On the other hand rivers and lakes are so stupid.
Well usually more people means a higher bill, more people is more work. Lots of places even just add gratuity to the bill once a group size is large enough.
But tipping is dumb, and working in the service industry sucks… I have no easy solutions.
I have no easy solutions.
There’s an easy one that could be legislated tomorrow by any states.
Raise minimum wages and enforce it throughout ALL workplaces, including wait staff. Nobody should be earning less than a living wage just because they’re restaraunt staff.
Nobody would work in a restaurant for minimum wage. Full stop. It’s a shit job.
That’s the secret nobody in the industry wants to tell you. They make way more than minimum wage on good nights. You could come away at $25-30/hr on a Friday night.
Absolutely. it’s a bad precedent.
Minimum wage staff still get tips though. I still tip here now that it’s mandatory they get paid min wage. Overall, means that they make more than before they were earning min wage as well.
it’s a big win. They ge ta living wage doing their jobs and they get bonuses in tips on top of their living wage instead of relying upon it.
Which is what workers at McDonald’s in other countries make per hour, not including benefits. Oh, and the food is cheaper than in the states too.
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List is a bit outdated. Minimum wage in Germany is 12,41€ not 12€. Can’t say how outdated the other entries are though. But that list still doesn’t disprove the statement above. While it could be seen as unlikely there is no rule out there that fast food employees have to make minimum wage. I wouldn’t work at a fast food place for minimum wage. I make minimum wage delivering newspapers on 2 days. I would expect a fast food employee to make more. Haven’t seen a recruitment ad recently because I don’t often go to fast food places (countable on 1 hand for a year) but I’ve seen grocery store recruitment ads for cashiers recently and they get more than minimum wage. I mean of course they do, as if someone would want to work as a cashier for exactly minimum wage
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Politics is one of those things that’s easy when you say it, but much harder for you to do. But if that’s easy for you to do, then please do it, for all our sakes.
Seattle’s minimum wage is $16.28, but most restaurants seem to pay a fair bit more than that. Tipping is still rampant and has not been reduced. I don’t think this solution would work
I think the $20 vs $200 was a per person price. Like, if I order the steak for $50 and you order a grilled cheese sandwich for $8, we both got the same amount and quality of service, why do we tip differently?
Serving a $200 meal requires a lot of knowledge and physical skill that the server down at Chili’s probably doesn’t have. The kind of restaurant that sells a $200 meal also has a larger support staff that must be given a percentage of the server’s tip
You’re not wrong, that’s the logic behind it. It’s not like you’re defending it so idk why you’re getting down voted! What you also didn’t mention is that at these restaurants is that it is a much more leisurely meal and experience, so there isn’t high table turnover which lessens the tips. I suspect they also have smaller sections.
You’re the only one who gets it.
Everything is probably a la carte. You gotta know what is in every dish, what pairs with it from appetizers to sides to wine to dessert. You don’t walk out and ask “who had the cheeseburger?” because the expectation on the experience is higher. You’re controlling the timing at the table as well. When do you fire the main after they get the appetizer? Salad? Bread? Drinks? Which SIDE of the person do you give or remove plates? And yeah you gotta tip the bartender, the bussers, the expediters sometimes, and who knows who else.
It is still horseshit, but it’s not as easy as dropping a rib basket on the table.
Be mad about the tip line on the sandwich shop menu, be mad about 20% tip on the burger joint that has a modern industrial interior and a $22 burger, don’t be mad about paying out the Friday Saturday night white tablecloth servers with a tough fucking job of conducting your whole anniversary meal. You get to have a good experience once a year, they’ve got 15 other once a year meals to solve and it’s just a regular dinner shift.
I’d say you also shouldn’t be made at the server at the $22 burger place, because they’re also working hard and probably covering more tables. I used to get mad about tipping for counter service because I assumed that they were making standard minimum wage, but then I found out one of my favorite cafes was paying $5 an hour (a dollar less than tipped minimum in my state). Point is, don’t get mad at anyone but the National Restaurant Association, they’re fighting to make sure you’re subsidizing your servers wage.
What difference is there between serving a $200 meal and a $50 one?
Are number of items fixed in your question?
If so, little mechanically on the waiters part.
But, a more expensive meal comes with higher service standards. More attentive, but not intrusive. More knowledgeable about the menu. More readiness to make adjustments based on customer need.
So in that situation you are asking for a more experienced, or more skillfully employee, and that costs more.
Ah see, to me their whole job is bringing me food, keeping my drink from being empty, and not being rude.
I don’t need all the pomp, I go to a restaurant for the food.
The funny part is you are effectively paying twice for that since the restaurant has increased the price of the food to account for all the pomp.
I’d argue the skill difference matters much more in the kitchen, yet they only see a tiny percentage of the tips if they’re lucky
I think you’re looking for the difference between fine dining and nouvelle cuisine / haute cuisine. Think of it like the difference between a nice steakhouse where the server essentially takes your order and gives you a plate, and one of those Instagram dinners where they serve your dessert in hollow chocolate balls and serving is a more involved and delicate process because of the nature of the food you’re serving
I have a place down the road that makes guacamole in a molcajete at the table.
That is way harder and more impressive than pouring a little hot chocolate.
If you can scam them into paying it then more power to you though.
Sounds like that server deserves a generous tip, I hope you take good care of them :)
pretension
I see it as a sneaky incentive from management for waiters to upsell you on more sides, drinks and desserts.
Since the more marked up extras a waiter/waitress can fool people into getting, the better tip they can hope to earn at the end because of the %-based expectation.
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Not every meal in a “$x/plate” restaurant is gonna cost the same though. It’s not hard to reach a disparity between the cheapest and most expensive reasonable meal (similar sizes) of around a factor of 2 at many restaurants.
Why is the server getting twice the tip if I order the most expensive plate and dessert vs cheapest plate and dessert?
Because it’s a con, and if it were a flat rate, people would see it for the con it is. By making it a percentage of sales, you can delude people in to believing they’re going to make more in tips than they would on an hourly rate.
Sometimes that’s true, for the vast majority of servers it isn’t.
If you’re getting the same level of service at a restaurant serving $200/plate meals as you are at TGI Fridays, either you’re being ripped off of your local Fridays has amazing servers.
$20 is like, one entree, maybe a beverage at a cheap restaurant. $200 is probably closer to 3 entrees, 2 or 3 cocktails and an app at a moderately priced restaurant. You’re crazy if you think the amount of work for those two orders (putting them into the bar/kitchen, making sure they come out correct, running them, all while juggling your other tables) is equal. I also want tipping culture to end, but the price tag scales pretty well with the amount of work being done.
That’s insane. It’s literally the job. Imagine applying this logic to any service industry job.
Yeah, I know. As is said, I want tipping culture to end. We’ve created a system where the customer pays for servers salary by the job instead of the restaurant paying by the hour. I’m saying that running a $200 order is more work than running a $20 order, just like bagging $200 worth of groceries is more work than bagging $20 worth of groceries. A percentage tip does roughly reflect the amount of work being done, but acknowledging that isn’t an endorsement of tipping culture.
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It mostly bothers me when I just order 1 entree and a water. At one place that might cost $10, and at another place it might cost $30, and all the wait staff did was carry a plate from the kitchen to me in both cases.
It doesn’t seem fair that the wait staff at the more expensive place gets tipped more than the less expensive place just because of an arbitrary custom.
The extra cost of the expensive meal is mostly due to ingredients, the cooking process, the location, and maaay slightly more complicated table setting.
Yeah, I agree, but if you don’t like it, take it up with the National Restaurant Association. They spend millions every year lobbying against ending the tipped wage.
Waffle House: feed a family of 4 for $20 Tip: $4 “Fancy” Restaurant: microwaved appetizer $20 Tip: $5
A percentage scales within an establishment, but not really across them.
I’d say that varies more regionally than anything else. I live in a major northeastern city, and you could barely feed 1 person for $20, even at cheap chain restaurants. Drive 2 hours away and things get a lot more affordable, not only for food prices but also rent. In that respect, 20% actually scales with cost of living as well.
Each plate of food or drink is a transaction, each with expectations of quality, and expectations on the waiter to make it right.
Make what right? They’re just bringing it to my table. If the food or service sucks I’m also told that you should tip anyway, so it seems like tipping isn’t based on quality (and really, it isn’t).
Keep this garbage out of europe please. i see it popping up. I will absolutely refuse to tip a single goddamn soul at this point going forward.
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.
It’s on the customer either way
Yes, but one way is on the company first and one isn’t. Would prices go up if these places were paying living wages? Most likely. Many businesses would be insolvent because their business model was simply never designed to pay a living wage to employees. Others could remain solvent, but probably not if they continue to take so much off the top at higher positions.
And that’s exactly it: the market never self-corrects if we throw arbitrary money in excess of listed prices to solve was is ultimately an issue of business solvency and ethics. There is no economic theory that would support such an idea in any industry, but here we are.
The sheer number of businesses out of the space might even drive down rents. That’s the kind of thing I mean by “other actions”. But things cannot continue as they are.
None of this is even to mention the sheer number of people in the service industry who are also on government assistance programs. They have to be – none of the blame is on them. But my tax dollars go to that, plus I am expected to pay extra to subsidize their wages with tips. I effectively subsidize them twice while someone reaps the rewards on their yacht. All I’m saying is the yacht people should be taking the risks first. That’s part of being a business owner.
Dude, everyone understands the tipping system, the market isn’t gonna correct if it goes away because you’ll still be paying the exact same amount.
I’m not sure what isn’t getting across here.
Customers subsidize wages with tipping. The amount is ultimately arbitrary and allows business owners to avoid costs.
The actual cost of the wages is not arbitrary and should be put up by the business first.
The difference is that on slow nights, staff get paid less, which is fucked up.
The business needs to wear the cost, because they reap the rewards, which is the narrative capitalism supposedly is about.
Tipping sucks, I’m glad we don’t have it in Australia.
Tipping is good bc you van pay the employee directly. What needs to change is that tips need to be mandatory and when tips fall short of a living wage the business must pay pay to make up.
“On the verge” of a recession? What the fuck planet are you living on?
“No need to worry, citizen! We have once again successfully avoided a recession by changing how a recession is defined!”
How can it be a recession when the .01% is richer than ever before?
Pretty much.
Well, are we in a recession? Because it does not seem like it for many people, not just 1%.
What do you mean? Corporate profits are higher than they’ve ever been!
/s in case that wasn’t obvious
Planet earth’s been on the verge of a recession since 4bya. Various economists have been able to predict a recession every year since the term was invented. Stay safe
Michael Burry has successfully predicted 92 of the last 3 recessions.
I like how i said the same thing but got downvoted lol. What is the matter with this place?
“Other struggling people are not the enemy”.
Op is jeff bezos alt account.
I just stopped going to places or using services that expect me to tip. I hate the idea of tipping.
I remember when I realized tipping is insane (like 15 years ago at a bar). One of my friends was talking the waitress up and she was complaining about another table and the tip she expected. Some quick math worked out to she expected 40%.
Keep in mind by doing that she probably raised her tip from your friend by at least 10%. I wouldn’t assume there wasn’t some strategy in that conversation.
What was the total? That could be completely reasonable, if I order coffee and a piece of pie 40% is only a couple of bucks
I’ve literally never seen a waiter get angry about not leaving a 25% tip. Can we please avoid manufactured outrage?
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.
Every time we go to Toronto we go to the same restaurant because they don’t accept tips, they just pay their staff really well. Fantastic restaurant and I love supporting them.
Actually pay restaurant workers a decent wage goddammit!
It does annoy me slightly when POS systems have placeholder tip amounts but they’re like 18%, 20%, and 25%. Sorry, but I just do the standard 15% in most cases so now I gotta calculate it out in my head.
I’m gonna go with the standard 0% or round up the number if i feel like it.
Right? Like why is people’s STANDARD giving money away.
Normally, you’re paying a tip on service. So, the waiter hovering over your table and collecting your order / refilling your drink / dusting off the table between courses is part of the dining experience. Its fee for service.
But yeah, now the credit card reader asks if you want to pay a tip to the fucking vending machine. Its asinine.
There’s a self service store in the Newark airport that sells overpriced snacks for travelers stuck without any other options. It asks you for a tip while you check yourself out. As if paying $6 for a cup of juice wasn’t bad enough already.
Price of the product and service is the list price. Tipping is extra
List price virtually never includes service fees and taxes, at least in the States. I swear, its like some of you people have never eaten out before.
I’ve been eating in restaurants from street food to nice ones on multiple countries, and continents. Service fee (and taxes too BTW) are always included in the list price. That’s the default
What kind of shithole country you’re living in?
Edit: since servers in USA are paid hourly (even if shitty), the service fee must be in the list price. it’s just the fact that the servers are not paid enough, and the customers are being blackmailed to pay extra off the books
Because that’s how our service industry is built.
Tipping isn’t mandatory. But the issue is if a lot of people stop tipping all at once, servers will quit those locations. Then those locations will almost certainly go out of business because they can’t afford to pay a living wage because the US’s commercial real estate is insanely expensive. Current restaurant models essentially are built on this dynamic and to change it would require a lot of moving pieces to change. But for those pieces to change, a LOT of businesses will need to go out of business all at once to tank the real estate market.
And you may think: if they can’t afford to pay a living wage, they should go out of business. That’s a reasonable stance but it ignores the result: megacorps will buy up real estate and only huge chain restaurants will likely survive these kinds of busts. All your local favorite places will go under and be replaced by Fridays or Applebees because their thousands of locations can close 25% to focus on profitability.
I’ve been asked for tips when having carryout. And also getting a scoop of ice cream. Tipping is a relic of racist practices when southern people didn’t want to pay emancipated black workers a wage. It only still exists because restaurant owners lobby congress to keep it a thing. Stop bribing congress and pay your employees you fucks.
I’ve been asked for tips when having carryout.
You’re just complaining now. That has not been customary and it annoys me too. Don’t tip if service wasn’t rendered.
Tipping is a relic of racist practices when southern people didn’t want to pay emancipated black workers a wage.
Sad fact but entirely irrelevant to the issue today.
It only still exists because restaurant owners lobby congress to keep it a thing. Stop bribing congress and pay your employees you fucks.
In two sentences you have identified why you can’t just stop tipping AND how to fix it: legislation.
If you stop tipping but still go out, you are essentially doing what racists in the past did by not paying people you would appear to not like. You not tipping is classist bigotry.
Fight for server’s rights in a way that actually makes a difference: contact your congress people and elect people who care about this issue. Not tipping is just hurting people at the lowest rungs of society while still taking their labor. Gross.
Fight for server’s rights
Yeah, this isn’t what you’d be doing. Survey servers and ask if they’d rather get tips or $15/hour and see what kind of responses you get.
I just had a POS machine recommend 20%, 25%, or 30% for percentages. It seems like it’s increasing
I had one do that (well, even higher, 25, 30, 35, Other) for a retailer recently. Like, it took them under 10 seconds to ring me up and they should automatically get 25%? I chose zero.
You chose wisely
For POS they’d be much more likely to get a tip from me if the options were $0.50, $1.00, or $1.50.
The standard tip at a POS is 0. Generally the same for carry out.
If you’re not getting personal service by a human, you don’t need to tip.
They do it because they can get away with it and it makes money off of suckers.
I just keep reading this as Piece of Shit machine, and I don’t think I’m too off the mark here.
If you ever had to use one, you’d be right on the money.
Yes, very. The software on those things is terrible.
As a non-native speaker, I assume POS != Peace of shit?
Point of Sale.
But you’re correct in that most of these Point of Sale systems are also Pieces of Shit.
POS in normal talk means piece of shit. POS in business talk means point of sale.
Often it means that but in this case it means “Point Of Sale”
Point of Sale.
Point of Service (?) aka the machine that handles the transaction
If my tip is to be decided before I see my order in front of me, 5% tops if at all.
Fun fact. When I was a kid, the “standard” was 10%. So food prices have shot up faster than inflation, but you’re still tipping 50% more than what the norm was when tipping was already well established.m, even if you ignore the expensive food you’re tipping for.
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.
I don’t eat out at resturants ever - and guess what! When that happens, they bitch and moan about my not supporting local businesses, and steal millions in PPP loans!
You’ll hate to hear this, but restaurants struggling to fill positions and having to offer more benefits and pay to attract wait staff is the only way to end tipping culture. Tipping will never end itself.
We can also straight up ban it. But yeah I know businesses aren’t just going to willingly stop it.
I think the point isn’t about the bill but the expectation of massive tips. It’s too out of control to me, I used to tip 20% everywhere. Now I’ve gone back to 15% for regular service, and 20% if it’s really exceptional.
20% minimum unless the service is horrible. It’s not your fault the servers are paid BELOW minimum wage because the employer expects you to tip. But it nonetheless is the expectation and is the right thing to do. If you can’t afford to tip correctly you can’t afford to eat out.
To be clear, i think we should get rid of tipping economy, but while it is the norm, you absolutely have to tip.
At what point did this minimum change from 10 to 15 to 18 and now 20? Restaurants increase the cost of food items and your tip is a proportion of that. Why would the cost of food increase AND the proportion of tip also increase? That’s double dipping and yeah, people should be pissed about it
Because in many restaurants tipping is covering more employees over the same period. Also, COL went up faster than meal price inflation.
What does covering more employees over the same period mean? I don’t follow. Also, you’re assuming that customers’ salaries increased with COL and inflation. They haven’t. These policies just squeeze value out of customers. Of course they’re offended
So tips used to just go to the worker who got them. But now they go to nearly everyone at the restaurant. Your server has to tip out quite a few other people.
And yeah we know the rising prices are squeezing value of customers, but those prices are largely disconnected from the staff’s wages. Which is why the percentage has to go up.
No, rising prices of menu items increases tips as a proportion. If menu prices stayed the same and you want larger tip %, then sure. But not both. That’s just greedy
Is this not even worse double-dipping? Why would a server who makes $3/hr be expected to tip out the rest of the restaurant? That’s the point of being able to pay them $3/hr no?
Wages being disconnected from company earnings is an even bigger reason for us to insist the percentage NOT go up…
Sure, but on the flip side, I’m paying for the service already. It’s not on us to subsidize the cost.
TIpping was meant and should only be done as a reward for job well done. Not a defacto standard expectation just because you did your job.
That’s what your pay is.
NOW, go fight for better wages. Unionize, promote higher minimum wages, be the change you want to see. But sitting here and bitching out customers because they don’t tip is a you problem.
It was popularized during world war 2 as an economic and pro business measure. That’s why we have the modern system.
“20% minimum” is excessive, I say this as someone with years of serving experience.
15% for competent but unremarkable service
20% for remarkably good service, more for truly excellent service
10% for remarkably bad service, less for truly horrible service
I question when your “years of serving experience” was rendered.
Tip is a extra for exceptional service, paid voluntarily on top of the base cost of the service.
Some states honor the state minimum wage which is higher than federal and the tips really are just extra. Just so you know, whatever it’s worth to you.
It’s not your fault the servers are paid BELOW minimum wage because the employer expects you to tip.
That’s not the case in canada (obligatory excluding Québec) yet we still have the same tipping expectation.
Yet one of the other awful cultural things getting exported from south of the border
The states’ #1 export
In many places including Washington state servers are actually paid minimum wage of a bit over $16 an hour. We also have pervasive tip requests. I have gone to a restaurant where ordering and drinks was self serve, the employee makes you a hot sandwich which you take to go and the robot which takes your order requests a default 20% tip.
If that’s a tablet that comes with the software pre-installed they ask for tips by default because it makes more money for the software company.
It’s highly unlikely that a POS terminal software directs tip money directly to the software company. Hopefully tips are shared by staff. Pessemistically they could be stolen by the company. In either case it doesn’t match the normal expectation of tipped service.
Those terminals take a percentage of everything that goes through them.
They don’t collect tips for the terminal holder
The entitlement from servers is horrendous.
10-15% and if you don’t like it you can have zero.
Worth mentioning there is a big diff between USA and Canada. US is fucked and I have no comments about tipping there.
I only disagree with the “unless” clause. If they’re underpaid and the restaurant is doing it because they won’t be at fault then you should tip that much anyway.
At the least they will get more money and remember you as a temporary savior for better service next time. The unless clause basically just tells me “dance for your meal, peasant”
I’ve never had anyone say anything about a 15-20% tip.
