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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.
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 $200 meal also has a larger support staff that must be given a percentage of the server’s tip
You’re not wrong, that’s the logic behind it. It’s not like you’re defending it so idk why you’re getting down voted! What you also didn’t mention is that at these restaurants is that it is a much more leisurely meal and experience, so there isn’t high table turnover which lessens the tips. I suspect they also have smaller sections.
I see it as a sneaky incentive from management for waiters to upsell you on more sides, drinks and desserts.
Since the more marked up extras a waiter/waitress can fool people into getting, the better tip they can hope to earn at the end because of the %-based expectation.
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Not every meal in a “$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.
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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.
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.
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.
You’re wrong. Is that clear enough?
Great argument.
Better than yours. The wordiness don’t make it true.
Dude, everyone understands the tipping system
This is not true. I’ve visited the USA multiple times and I’ve gotten tipping wrong every time.
the market isn’t gonna correct if it goes away because you’ll still be paying the exact same amount.
This is also not really true. You look at a menu in Australia and the price you see is the exact amount you pay. $20 lunch is $20 on the bill. No added tips or taxes or anything.
For the customer, this system is better.
Saying that same lunch in the USA would ‘have been $14 on the menu in the USA’ would not match my experience. In fact, prices for most things were in the same rough ballpark once the exchange rate was factored in.
Caveat: my last visit was 10 years ago. My experience may be out of date. 15% was considered a normal tip, then.
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The food is pumped with filler trash, so the quantity is definitely there, but the prices aren’t as cheap as you think, especially for what you’re getting.
Are you a foreign to the USA trucker who spent a good portion of the last 7 years south of the border? No? I am, and know exactly what I’m talking about, intimately familiar with farm/ranch end prices and also wholesale prices as I now own a restaurant. I’m the rare person who’s worked at every end of the food industry and the middle too, as well as being a frequent customer in 22 states and 8 provinces. and very familiar with currency conversions from all the commodity rates, shipping and ordering. Meanwhile you are some fucking guy saying “nuh uh” who likely needs to go to wikipedia to try describe current American farm subsidy policy.
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.
another difference, like it or not, is that tipping allows for discrimination.
Black service providers are tipped disproportionately less than white service providers.
Oh look, an Aussie that needs you know that. Yes yes, everything is better there, it has to be, why else would y’all spend so much time trying to convince everyone of it.
Tipping does still suck though, and the way it is in many states of the US, slow business literally means employees get paid less, which is pretty fucked.
Australia certainly isn’t perfect, and don’t let anyone tell you how great Medicare is here because it’s not what it uses to be and slowly but surely slipping into private health insurance hell due to its languishing, but heck, defensive much mate?
I am glad that I don’t have to deal with tipping. Tipping is trash and seemingly many Americans agree it’s trash.
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.
What advantage does this hold versus the company paying a living wage in the first place?
Fucking retarded
I’m against insults, but you made me laugh. 🙏🏻
I agree wholeheartedly! Let’s make tipping mandatory. In fact, let’s add it on to the price of your bill automatically. Better still, let’s just add it onto the menu price. Oh hey, we’ve come full circle.
No, it should be a direct payment to the staff.
Why? All that does is burden the employee by complicating reporting their income.
What difference is there to you, then, between “employer pays a reasonable living wage to their employees but raises the prices of the food a bit to accommodate” and “employer pays poverty wages, forcing the customers to pay their employees for them and forcing tax payers to pay up when people earning poverty wages inevitably rely on government programs to simply survive?” If tipping is mandatory, the only people that benefit is the employer since they can simply double dip - spend less money on payroll AND force the customer to make up for your lack of willingness to pay competitive wages. Yes, under current law, employers are supposed to make the difference if tips can’t cover at least minimum wage, but that’s not enforced nearly as much as it should be, which puts the onus on the workers being exploited in the first place, and even then minimum wage in this country is embarrassingly unfit for supporting anybody.
The more important question to ask is “why am I expected to pay an employee when the money I already give to a business should cover wages in the first place?”
I’m a tipped employee for my day job. I make a decent base pay, but the tips make up for that in spades during busy seasons. I’ve bought my current car with tip money. Despite this, I fully support getting rid of tips if it meant my livelihood wouldn’t be a gamble depending on factors outside my control, and especially if it meant fewer people had to rely on government assistance and could better provide a livelihood for themselves.
A business is free to offer mandatory tipping and they do have to make up the difference if its not the minimum wage. The minimum wage could be higher of course.
I just stopped going to places or using services that expect me to tip. I hate the idea of tipping.
Cook at home, we don’t want you there anyways.
**Gosh I didn’t realize Lemmy was so full of broke assholes hell bent on taking money out of service employees pockets. Very working class of you guys!
LMFAO. I love people like you… If you demand everyone stay home… You know what will happen? You won’t have customers in the restaurant. Which leads to less tables, which leads to less wait staff needed. You will simply lose your job. So not only do you not get tips… but you won’t even get your minimum wages.
Congrats you’re ruining it yourself!
Bro I work 50 hours a week. If my place closes, another one will open. I’ve worked at at least 15 different places since I’ve been 18. We hate you and resent you for walking in the door, regardless of tipping.
Literally, just stay home. If you can’t afford to tip, or don’t want to, just stay home.
We hate you and resent you for walking in the door, regardless of tipping.
This is the reason you’ve worked at 15 difference places. You’re shit at your job and keep getting fired. It’s not anyone’s fault except your own that you hate the world. You should hate your boss for paying you like shit… But instead you’re peddling the tip-mentality here so that your wages go up much higher than any reasonable job with your skillset should pay. But right! You hate “us”, the ones that keep your ass afloat and able to pay rent.
If my place closes
It’s not yours.
Literally, just stay home. If you can’t afford to tip, or don’t want to, just stay home.
Very classist thing to say, no? If someone is poor or simply down for the week and just needs to get some food, fuck them right? They’re not allowed to get food from “your” establishment cause they can’t afford your 50% tip ransom!
Bro I work 50 hours a week
Join the club. I done 168 hours per week… Where’s my tip for deploying to Afghanistan? Even separated from the military at this point there’s weeks I put in 60-80 hours at the expense of my family. I don’t demand a tip. Raw hours means nothing. Shit you’re reading my content. You can tip me at bc1qtg5zxzuact47zvsaguns97swn4w3u8qatchgzl for simply talking to me.
Thank you for your service.
Now could you please just tip your waitress for your chicken tendies next time you’re out? I mean it’s what, $6?
I’m sorry you’ve commented on my comment. I demand a tip. Otherwise I’ll spin up lemmy instances that will troll your account and downvote everything you post (spit in your food, make you wait for your food, serve your food cold, make whatever analogy you want here).
See how absurd this premise is? Get mad at your boss, not me. I didn’t hire you.
I’m not defending tipping. It’s unnecessary and overcomplicated. I’m defending the wait staff that didn’t make the rules but have to rely on them to live.
You can’t hate it all you want, but until we’re ready to actually change it at a core level, the bill the waitress hands you shouldn’t be where you try to make your point.
Bro at least send him like ten bucks or something. Buddy went to fucking Afghanistan. I bet you’ve gotten bigger tips for bringing some lukewarm plates of food you didn’t even make to a table 32ft away. And I’m sure you were appreciative of those customers and felt they were doing the right thing, correct?
So, here’s your chance, do the right thing! Send the $10 to the address they provided. If you do and they post confirmation, I’ll legit tip 100% on the next meal I go out for.
Hey at least it’s transparent since anyone can check the wallet address. So you don’t need to wait for me to post a confirmation (https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qtg5zxzuact47zvsaguns97swn4w3u8qatchgzl). More transparency than we’re getting in this discussion from “career wait staff” who likely get way more than minimum wages and still get tied up in knots that people don’t pay enough in tips (rather than demanding better pay from their bosses). I wonder if these people would be okay making their tips publicly known at the time that people leave the tip… eg, on the check it tells you how much tips your server collected for the night so far and on average for a given pay period). I mean, if it’s being left to me to pay someone’s wages, I should have a right to know how much they’ve collected right?
But seriously. I don’t need the money. I do well enough for myself and have no-one but myself to blame if I don’t take home enough money for my family in a given pay period. I generated the address to prove a silly point.
Here’s my for you tip: don’t behave towards food service workers in a way that will get your food spat in.
Or do, I’m not a cop.
Your employers sure love us though, since they invite us in with open arms every single time. And we always, always, pay them then the full price they asked for. We have a great relationship in which we both benefit. Their business adds value to the community and I want to support them, and so I do. And they thank me for it. And I get a delicious cheeseburger.
So no, I’m not staying home and you can’t do a fucking thing about it. If I happen to walk into your place of work, you will serve me with a smile on your face the entire time too. It’s pretty fucked up and I can’t understand why you do it to yourself. I did for a few years and am thankful everyday I left for greener pastures. You could too.
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To be fair to them, losing the $2 an hour of their actual base pay is hardly a threat. For them, the customers that don’t tip are nothing but extra work that they won’t get paid for. So yeah, they’d probably rather be unemployed than put up with a busy restaurant for next to no pay.
The tipping situation is busted and I would love to see a more normal compensation picture for the restaurant industry as literally every other industry. However as things are now, the restaurant workers are just downright boned if no tips, and they have essentially nothing to work for if there are no tips.
taking money out of service employees pockets
Doesn’t your employer pay your wage?
Alot of states in the US have like the opposite of pro rated minimum wage where they actually are paid less than minimum wage because they earn tips.
So like a waitress earns $2.75/hour as opposed to $10/hour because she might make that up in tips within the hour. That’s the thought anyways.
So what happens if they don’t make any tips? Surely they still need to make the legal minimum wage?
I look at it as Actual price = menu price + lowest suggested tip + $5 tip awkwardness penalty. So a place near me has a $12 lunch-size sub sandwich that’s really good. But they ask for a 15% tip. So rather than just never eat at my favorite sandwich spot, I regard it as a $18.80 lunch and only buy it on rare occasions or when my company is paying.
You tip a fastfood?
If I’m getting it to go, no tip. Or just the tip.
Same. I multiply any restaurant price by 4/3 to account for taxes, fees, and tips when determining if I want to go.
Taxes and fees should included in the price, in civilised countries anyway. That sounds like such a pain.
They are included in the price in civilized countries. It is only a very very limited number of places where you can’t hand a cashier $5 to pay for something literally labelled $5 and then walk out.
I think the guy you replied to is from the US.
Thanks for subsidizing my $12 sandwiches I guess lol. That sure helps me out! Don’t think it helps the servers much in the long run though.
Going anyway and just not tipping is also a completely acceptable and legally protected option. Sort of like saying ‘no thank you’ to the grocery store check out person asking for charity donations or if you would like to sign up for the store credit card.
Again, it’s optional. So people can also say ‘yes’ if they want and that’s cool too I guess. Although tipping is inherently harmful to the server’s baseline wage which is a bit problematic, if people want to tip they can and no one is stopping them. And I won’t give them shit about it unless they specifically inquire about it. Since the whole thing is ‘optional’ after all I let them make their own decisions and if tipping gives them a nice release of serotonin or dopamine or something that makes them feel better, who am I to take that from them.
Just don’t eat out if you don’t want to tip. Tipping culture is fucked but servers are just as victimized as customers.
No thank you.
Going anyway and just not tipping is also a completely acceptable and legally protected option.
It’s legal, but not tipping at a restaurant is cheap. It’s also legal for them to ban you from the restaurant, which will probably happen if you give them a diatribe against tipping.
not tipping at a restaurant is cheap
If you actually believe this then they’ve already got to you. This is Stockholm Syndrome, or the Sunk Cost Fallacy, or good old peer pressure.
While they could definitely ban me and I’d have no problem with that at all, they won’t… because the owners have no incentive to ban me. They make the exact same amount from me whether I tip or not.
I guess if someone went on a big rant that disturbed other customers and caused a loss of sales they may ban them. But otherwise, just quietly playing your bill and leaving, no…not getting banned lol.
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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.
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.
Tipping in general should be for a good service or out of convenience. It shouldn’t be expected
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This is the most made up nonsensical pretend number I’ve seen in a while. 35 cents per menu item? Where did you even get that haha wtf?
A tip is a bonus for exceptional service. Not something that you have to give. Why should i pay more than the menu lists if i don’t gain any benefit from that? I mean i regularly tip but i will definitely not tip like 20% unless the service was exceptional (i.e. delivering pizza while it’s ≥30°C outside)
Service has gotten worse at many places.The servers are still great, but quite a few places have adopted the model of having you scan a QR code, you order online, pay with your credit card plus tip, they have you pick it up at a window, you eat, and at the end you bus your own table. Then they have options like 18, 25 and 30% to guilt you into the middle one. It’s like, damn I haven’t even talked to anyone yet, you’re jumping to the end first
15% is standard, great even. It’s this one weird trick I do. See: how this works is I’m the one with the money which means I’m also the owner of the yardstick that measures average, good and great.
I’m baffled by comments like this. One ought to be empowered to decide if someone has met or exceeded your standards, and to what degree. Letting social pressure dictate that is nonsensical.
I thought 10% was standard.
It was, and I still tip 10% unless the service was truly exceptional.
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If you can’t afford to live on 2.35 an hour, don’t work for 2.35 an hour. Asshole.
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Hopefully your employer will introduce a new salary framework where you get paid what customers think you should be paid for your engineering services, or not. you seem to have good people skills so that shouldn’t be an issue.
So bribes then. You are happy bribing people.
I do too well, thanks, but that’s irrelevant. I don’t get what your point is. None of that is anything new. When I worked at a restaurant in the 90s servers made $2.17 an hour plus tips, and it was okay to do 15%. 10% was for below average service, but 20 was if you loved them. 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, always 15%. 25% was considered a really generous tip for great service. Now people expect to 25% though nothing has changed about the business or what waitstaff do.
Cost of living has risen far more than minimum wage, which doesn’t keep up with inflation, and business owners are shifting the burden to their customers in the form of tips rather than set menu prices that reflect real costs and pay servers the real wage value of their services. That trend started in the 80s but especially since the recession has become far more pronounced.
Yup. The effect for me has been that I simply go out much less often.
They went up because customers (on average) agreed to them and approved the higher suggested tip. It’s not anymore complex than that.
If every place that raised those default options instead received lower tips as a result, it would stop. It’s not rocket surgery.
So ya, why do you tip 25% now? Great question. That seems fucking crazy to me.
Because minimum wage for servers stayed dirt cheap while inflation skyrocketed, and now businesses are fighting to keep servers employed (but still aren’t willing to pay a living wage).
It’s all fueled by cyclical logic where the business refuses to accept that they’re immoral for requiring tipping. Might be legal- it’s still a concious failure of responsibility to short your staff and expect someone else to make up that difference.
I’ve always tipped 20% for good service and 15% for average or below. I usually don’t tip less that 15% unless it’s just abysmal or I’m picking up a to go order in which case I usually do 8-10%. Several of the restaurants around me have changed from 15% / 20% on the suggested tip to 20% / 25% and a few have even added 30%. And I’ve also noticed the suggested tips are calculated on the after tax amount, and some restaurants that charge a credit card processing fee calculate the suggested tip on that amount. I tip on pretax and pre-fee totals and cap at 20%. If it get worse, my eating at restaurants will start becoming less and less.
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.
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.
Can confirm.
Source: I make POS systems.
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.
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.
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.
One thing: We’re not on the verge of a recession. The right wing media needs to make things up to attack and that was one of them. I couldn’t believe all that talk, nothing happened, nothing was about to happen, but they fear mongered for months.
I personally 100% think we were on the brink of a recession and Biden dropping a trillion into the economy avoided it.
Biden should be talking up the soft landing every time he answers a question, imho. Uncle Joe saved us all a lot of pain with that.
It’s true, but it’s not a great talking point. Every time you say we’re in a good spot, you’re going to have voters who aren’t in a good spot. So then you have to couch it in talk about doing more.
You’re right in that it’s worthy of bragging about; it’s just a tricky subject.
Yeah, plus everyone knows that inflation is up under Biden, which still feels bad.
It’s been about a year and a half since we’ve been right on the brink of a recession.
Wait until next year when they win and put us on the gold standard plan 2025
