LMAO great post
LMAO great post
Yep. I can't stop you from stiffing a waiter, to be sure. It was just my suggestion that you don't protest in a way that hurts other people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Okay so in that case, how is that motivating anyone to tip servers if it turns out servers want to exploit the kitchen staff and back of the house and we still have all the problems we do? Sounds like it's the servers saying fuck you, got mine to everyone else working there.
Nah, people who "protest" by stiffing wait staff can fuck themselves to death. They also go on my ignore list, just like you.You should probably read my edit.
Also yeah, sorry (not sorry) but you and a lot of people in this thread ARE the problem. The incessant circlejerking and automatic dismissal of anyone raising counterpoints to tipping, including pointing out better systems (at least, imo) that combat a lot of problems in the restaurant industry.
I mean really, in order to participate apparently I need to meet y'alls ethical tipping standard lol. You want receipts to see how much I tip before I'm allowed to have an opinion? What if y'all realized I tip by taking the entire amount post tax, moving the decimal point, doubling, and rounding up by a few dollars to make my whole bill even, usually ending in 0? That good enough for you? Can I have an opinion now because I usually end up tipping 30% or more, regardless of if my bill is $8 or $800?
Like seriously, people here need to get over themselves and realize SOME people that don't tip are trying to enact change the way they think is best. Maybe we should consider those viewpoints instead of bukkaking ourselves over supporting a discriminatory, unfair, fuck you got mine system?
Like seriously, people here need to get over themselves and realize SOME people that don't tip are trying to enact change the way they think is best. Maybe we should consider those viewpoints instead of bukkaking ourselves over supporting a discriminatory, unfair, fuck you got mine system?
I don't care what people are changing it to, 15% was expected before and 15% is what I'm tipping. Changing that makes zero sense and I'm not going to contribute to people creeping up those percentages all the way to 50% or something stupid 20 years from now.Listen if you are in a cheaper area by all means tip 15. If that's the standard culture there then fine. But in major metro areas, for normal service, 20 is expected.
The server knows that his performance can dictate his tip. If the server is fucking up, if he writes down your order wrong, if he forgets to bring you something, if he leave you empty or forgets to check on you. By all means deduct some money. Just don't punish them for things that aren't their fault like the food tasting bad or being late or something. Get the manager involved at that point, they will usually hook you up.
I'd say 10% is about as low as ill go for shitty service. I can even allow no tip at all if the person was just outright rude or an asshole to you.
As for the money issue.... I am not saying poor people don't deserve to eat out. I am pretty goddamn poor for my area and I still eat out from time to time. But I tip 20%. What I am saying is this...
If you are going to eat out, make sure you can afford the tip on what you are planning to order. Choose a restaurant where you can afford what you want to eat/drink and still tip.
If you are going to eat out, and purposely choose a restaurant with higher priced food because you have chosen to not tip or tip less to make up the cost... that is a dick move.
Is that really so hard?
Additional considerations- tipping encourages bigoted behavior and discrimination. A server that is motivated by tips will cater and treat the people they think will tip the best, better. Moving to a fixed price system guarantees, at least, that everyone is assumed to pay and there's no justification to treat people differently.
I think most people don't realize that the point of working for tips isn't to make minimum wage, it's to make more, because minimum wage is like $15k a year and nobody can live on that. Anybody advocating for min wage and no tips for the service industry is basically saying they think all these people making $25k should only be making $15-18k and paying more taxes.Why is it always ignored that if a tipped employee doesn't meet normal minimum wage after counting tips that the employer has to make it up?
You should probably read my edit.
Also yeah, sorry (not sorry) but you and a lot of people in this thread ARE the problem. The incessant circlejerking and automatic dismissal of anyone raising counterpoints to tipping, including pointing out better systems (at least, imo) that combat a lot of problems in the restaurant industry.
I mean really, in order to participate apparently I need to meet y'alls ethical tipping standard lol. You want receipts to see how much I tip before I'm allowed to have an opinion? What if y'all realized I tip by taking the entire amount post tax, moving the decimal point, doubling, and rounding up by a few dollars to make my whole bill even, usually ending in 0? That good enough for you? Can I have an opinion now because I usually end up tipping 30% or more, regardless of if my bill is $8 or $800?
Like seriously, people here need to get over themselves and realize SOME people that don't tip are trying to enact change the way they think is best. Maybe we should consider those viewpoints instead of bukkaking ourselves over supporting a discriminatory, unfair, fuck you got mine system?
I don't believe servers actively want to exploit the kitchen staff. It's just that the way this system works benefits them so they're careful in how they rock the boat (demanding higher minimum tip, point out how difficult it is to deal w/ diners and their "water requests", complain on people that don't tip enough). They never really take their ire out on the actual system itself or the restaurant owners who at the end of the day benefit the most because at the end of the day being a server as labor intensive as the job is does equate to a solid service wage commensurate to job prerequisites.
I also don't think most people tip based on actual quality of service since that's incredibly subjective....most people tip d/t social obligation/custom.
If that's the case, how do they do it in other countries? Like, loads of places where servers do make livable wages.
I am always baffled by these threads never sieze to amaze me how backwards American and there shitty tip practice, sometimes makes me question how us in the rest of the world are functioning.
I think most people don't realize that the point of working for tips isn't to make minimum wage, it's to make more, because minimum wage is like $15k a year and nobody can live on that. Anybody advocating for min wage and no tips for the service industry is basically saying they think all these people making $25k should only be making $15-18k and paying more taxes.
This. I'm not tipping based on some ridiculous flat amount, and I shouldn't be expected to do so just to fill in someone else's pay gaps. I've worked food enough to know that tipping is a goddamned scam we just live with like idiots. Most other countries worth a shit don't
Some do. Some are not allowed. I know a lot of corps that pay their base employees min wage also forbid them from accepting tips.Like the other poster said, though, if you live in a state where servers are paid minimum wage and you don't believe that's enough to live on, why not tip every single person that makes around minimum wage, including fast food, the cashiers at stores, etc.? Because it's customary, that's the only reason.
With that said, fuck all this shit. Automate everything. Give me touch screens at all tables and let me go pickup all my own food from a counter and bring it back to the table. I will never agree with this idea that "being a server is a difficult job" nonsense. It is tiring? Sure. Is it frustrating dealing with annoying people? Sure. Is carrying plates to and from tables difficult? No it's not.
then again, you have like places like California which banned tips and gives fixed livable wages...
I don't think I understand the reasoning behind the "tip 20% or don't go out to eat" crowd. What do you think will happen if everyone who doesn't want to tip 20% decides not to go out to eat? It's not like those tables are all going to fill up suddenly with people who want to tip 20%.
Also that article that says "tip more, it'll keep your food prices low!" How tf is it keeping food prices low if it's just going into the tip instead?
I think having to deal with an endless parade of people, some of them easy, some of them assholes, and to be expected to treat all of them with a smile, keep track of their orders, top off their drinks, etc, with your wages on the line qualifies as difficult, yes. It's mentally demanding. And being on your feet for hours at a time is physically demanding.
I'd far rather sit at a desk and fiddle with a command line.
Jobs are usually considered difficult when they're tiring and frustrating. That's like saying, I can swing a hammer, construction isn't hard.With that said, fuck all this shit. Automate everything. Give me touch screens at all tables and let me go pickup all my own food from a counter and bring it back to the table. I will never agree with this idea that "being a server is a difficult job" nonsense. It is tiring? Sure. Is it frustrating dealing with annoying people? Sure. Is carrying plates to and from tables difficult? No it's not.
So would I, and I have a desk job, but what I'm saying is that the moment to moment action of actually performing a service job is not difficult.
Is carrying a plate more difficult than knowing what to do with that command line?
I think having to deal with an endless parade of people, some of them easy, some of them assholes, and to be expected to treat all of them with a smile, keep track of their orders, top off their drinks, etc, with your wages on the line qualifies as difficult, yes. It's mentally demanding. And being on your feet for hours at a time is physically demanding.
I'd far rather sit at a desk and fiddle with a command line.
Sure but the pre requisites and actual value of the job are different.
Sure, but the answer is not to take money away from other lower class workers so everyone is even, that's ridiculous. All wages need to go up.Like the other poster said, though, if you live in a state where servers are paid minimum wage and you don't believe that's enough to live on, why not tip every single person that makes around minimum wage, including fast food, the cashiers at stores, etc.? Because it's customary, that's the only reason.
I feel like you're abstracting the entire job down to the simplest task. It's like saying 'Is carrying a plate more difficult than typing on a keyboard?'
Jobs are usually considered difficult when they're tiring and frustrating. That's like saying, I can swing a hammer, construction isn't hard.
To the second point, if restaurants increase wages, their costs have gone up and they need to roll that into costs. It also takes more money to pay a wage than to let a employee supplement their salary with tips. So if a restaurant raises wages by 20%, you'll see a 25% increase in prices at least.
I don't think that's true, unless the waitstaff wages are by far the main expense of the restaurant. If a restaurant raises wages by 20% for sure it will cost them more than that but I don't think that translates to 25% increase in prices.
Having said that, is there something unique to America that makes it difficult to run a restaurant with these kinds of higher costs? Is food much more expensive in places where tipping is not allowed? I honestly don't know.
Whoops, meant to say that tips in California is purely as a thank you for quality service, and not something that the employer can deduct from your minimum wage.
Still kind of skeptical of the restaurant business surviving though, livable wage or no. Everything has gotten more expensive. Food prices, real estate, and even manpower. You'd think that there were more productivity gains in the restaurant business as well, but I don't see it. In the fastfood business you at least have a streamlined process with a whole bunch of automation robots and ordering machines.
Soon in the near future, only the rich will eat at restaurants. Everybody else will be eating at fastfood (Mcdonalds), fast-casual (Chop't), grocerants (Wegmans), food trucks (take your pick), or ghost-kitchens (a very profitable business for GrubHub in NYC).
Every single one of these non-restaurant food places are muscling out restaurants out of their territory, because they have much higher margins than a restaurant does. Most restaurants have 0-5% margins, All those other non-restaurant types have 10-35% margins. Pretty hard to compete against that.
It's not raising wages by 20% though, they'd have to raise tipped wages like 400% to bring them up to what people average hourly with tips.I don't think that's true, unless the waitstaff wages are by far the main expense of the restaurant. If a restaurant raises wages by 20% for sure it will cost them more than that but I don't think that translates to 25% increase in prices.
Having said that, is there something unique to America that makes it difficult to run a restaurant with these kinds of higher costs? Is food much more expensive in places where tipping is not allowed? I honestly don't know.
I don't think that's unfair, but I personally don't define difficulty in that way.
For me it's about the skill set required to perform the job. Yeah both service and construction jobs are tiring and physically far more taxing than sitting at a desk mashing away at a keyboard, but I still don't consider them difficult in the same way.
For the record I don't consider service and construction jobs to be equivalent in any way. Using tools in a proficient manner requires real skill.
A task being difficult, by definition, simply means it requires a deal of effort or skill. One can argue that service is not a skilled job, and, except at the highest levels, that's probably true, but to say that it isn't difficult is reductive, as to excel as a server clearly requires a lot of effort.
And what bearing does that have on its difficulty? A thing can be physically and mentally exhausting without requiring a degree.
Everyone should work in a brunch restaurant that has lines before they say serving isn't hard/difficult/taxing, imho. xD
A task being difficult, by definition, simply means it requires a deal of effort or skill. One can argue that service is not a skilled job, and, except at the highest levels, that's probably true, but to say that it isn't difficult is reductive, as to excel as a server clearly requires a lot of effort.
Why? Because you say so!