well yeah, that’s why donations don’t work either, somehow. consider:
if you’re the person always donating to charity, and nobody else does, you’re essentially providing the community service that should be provided by the community taxes. instead, you pay it all yourself. that’s why taxes have to be enforced by the community: the first one to donate suffers a disadvantage, but if a general rule says everybody must pay taxes/donate at the same time, nobody loses.
This comment section is all people missing the point.
The point of the post is that a particular job will generally stabilize at a particular pay. If it’s a tipped position, then the employer will pay less, so that the overall income is roughly at that stable income for that position, including the overall average tip.
So people who tip less than the average are free riding off of the people who tip more than average, where that worker will make an average tip overall, which comes more from the generous tippers than the stingy tippers. Thus, it effectively transfers money from generous tippers to stingy tippers, on net, in the long run.
The merits of this system, whether servers deserve to be paid more, whether we should push for reforms so that this isn’t the system, is besides the point. The post is making an observation of how things actually are, not advocating for how things should be.
No worker should depend on tips. Problem solved
And yet, people do.
Should we just ignore the dynamics of that system, and pretend it doesn’t exist? Or can we make observations about that system, and analyze its effects?
We should change it
change is meaningless without prior analysis.
Tip your waitstaff. Don’t be a pos.
Tipping is one of the only reasons to carry cash
I like to pay by card and hand the waiter a bill or two so they aren’t giving half of their tip to management
It goes both ways. We do want families and kids to come in and eat. Some people don’t tip well because they don’t have the means and that’s okay! It’s socialized service. You can look at it like you’re supporting the people who are working and those who want their kids to have experiences they otherwise couldn’t. Just like the guy who orders 3 cocktails subsidies the water and sandwhich guy. Or the 4 kids meals and fries guy. You can look at it a lot of ways.
Tipping is basically donating money to the waiting staff (in a broader sense, to the management of the restaurant).
I think there are more people in need of donations than the ones who move your food 10 steps.
I would 10000% pick my own food and cary it to the table, as I often do in many “”“lower class”“” restaurants (diners?)
That, or add a flat service charge, add it to the check and pay fucking taxes (this is directed to the management).
I don’t tip. But I don’t live in the US.
The major problem is the ethics of tipping. In the U.S. tipping puts (all if not most) jobs into a category which employers now pay a sub-minimum wage. Legally the employer isn’t responsible for a federal minimum wage anymore because it is assumed tips will cover the rest of it. In actuality with taxes, many people don’t get a paycheck because of how little they earn. It just went to taxes.
EDIT: Imagine working full time (40 hours) and getting a piece of paper that says “THIS IS NOT A CHECK” telling you how little you earned.
No your tips become profit for the greedy assholes who own the restaurant, you aren’t compensating for non tippers, you are compensating for greedy cunts not paying people a living wage and the fact that most Americans can’t understand this and are agreeing with the post calling people who don’t tip as rude is why tipping is never gonna leave this fucked up country
Not tipping is rude. You are not facilitating change by not tipping, because the burden of your choice is felt almost entirely by the worker you stiffed. The employer is not motivated to pay their employee more from reduced tips because they aren’t really worse off for it. Sure, maybe their employee eventually quits if they aren’t making enough, but tip industries typically have high turnover anyway, so the worker is already considered replaceable. The worker suffers from missing an expected part of their income, but they also lack the ability to make things better for themselves. So it’s just piling onto their bad situation.
If you want to get rid of tip culture, stop patronizing places that rely on tips to give their employees a living wage. That’s how capitalism works, businesses make changes in their power when something affects their bottom line. So you have to protest in a way that actually hurts the person with the power to change something, not someone caught in the crossfire. And of course, try to support reform that guarantees a living wage regardless of tips.
In Europe tipping is optional and the expectations are lower because the base wage is the full minimum, or higher.
In North America tipping has become a necessity because there is a lower minimum wage for waitstaff, which is a stupid arrangement that allows management/ownership to keep wages low and also now claim a portion of tips, for some reason.
Anyone who thinks that is a good system and that the problem is “cheapskates”, not the deeply flawed system for paying waitstaff, is not thinking things through
It works both ways. If noone tips then noone will work at restaurants where their wage consists solely of tipping. That is also how capitalism works.
Capitalism works by putting poor people is actual crossfire and then incentivise giant hulking demonic entities to engulf the planet. Sterile headless doom machines that employ sociopathic human turncoats and force them to labor or lobby in the name of profit, the final score of which global rabiate construct was the best at the game of purging tellus. You conflate the two
This is how a greedy person thinks. It’s morbid, but fascinating.
I am not in a financial race against the people who do not tip. And if this guy thinks I am then he failed to factor in that people pleasers probably go a lot further socially in life and thus are likely to make more money. Maybe I tip not because I want to please, but because I have more expendable income than the average self-limiting greedy asshole.
I don’t think the richest people are the ones who want to please people the most, I think the less they want to please people, the richer they get. Then they run society with their wealth and the people pleasers are at their mercy
The richest people, yes certainly. But they didn’t get rich merely by not tipping, and the moron who wrote the tweet is certainly not that level of wealthy. I’m just talking about 99% of people, the working class.
I’m Canadian. Servers now make minimum wage. I have stopped tipping. It doesn’t make any sense that a server who is making above minimum wage has to rely on customers paying a gratuity. Where were my tips when I was a lifeguard? Or a tour guide? I didn’t get a bonus for doing a good job landscaping. I’m not angry at the servers. I’m upset at the ones who blame customers for the shady business that they help keep open.
Minimum wage isn’t a lot of money, especially of you’re living in a city like Toronto. There’s an expectation for a server that they’re getting a tip, so when you don’t do that you’re inherently guaranteed to give them a negative feeling emotion.
That’s true. On the other hand, if a server accepts my tip which helps their employer to keep underpaying them that gives me a negative feeling emotion.
So it depends on who you want to have the negative impact, yourself or the person you chose to serve you that day
Then you should focus on contacting your representatives urging them to increase the minimum wage, not perpetuate an unfair system that forces workers to depend on the generosity of random customers. I’ve worked on minimum wage restaurant gigs, your tips don’t get shared with the back of l the house staff who are busting their ass in the hot kitchen making the food you eat, while pretty stack racks all the tips taking plates from point A to B
Rude people don’t tip? No no friend, it’s your economic system that is fucked
Both can be true
Yes, at this point it’s rude people that don’t tip.
It’s like people moving next to an airport, then complaining about planes. If you don’t want to tip, don’t go to a full service restaurant.
That being said, every single order at the counter POS terminal that asks for tips can fuck right off.
It’s like people moving next to an airport, then complaining about planes.
I believe this analogy works in the opposite way?
Moving next to an airport is like starting a job at a restaurant that doesn’t pay minimum (or living) wage.
In either case, you know ahead of time that it’ll be annoying to live/work in those situations because planes are loud and not all people tip to make up the poor wage level.
And then to solve these problems, instead of requiring that planes be quieter or that people always tip, perhaps re-zone the areas surrounding the airport so people can’t move there, and sign into law minimum wage that scales with cost of living so people don’t have to need tips.
It’s rude that the insane hyper capitalist dictatorship forces this, but you attack your own class, exactly like the oligarchs want. They want free mercenaries to sow hate and dispute in their own class so they can win the class war. In the end when all humans die it will be because nobody attacked the oligarchy while they set up the feral slaying machine corps that will salienate the planet.
So let me understand: the owners are the ones that don’t pay a living wage to their staff, preying on the good will of the customers to cover for them so they can double dip (both by not having to pay the wages, and not having to pay taxes on the wages they don’t pay), and the rude ones are the customers?
The tipping system sucks, but short of passing some laws mandating a livable wage WITHOUT tips, going out now and not tipping for a full service dining experience is absolutely a bad move.
Basically you’re advocating for customers to screw over the wait staff since, as you clearly point out, the owners aren’t on the hook for the tip income.
They are advocating for not supporting a broken system so it can be replaced with a better one.
How long do you think that wait staff will stay in the restaurants where their wage consists of tipping which doesn’t exist?
The tipping system is fucked, but that doesn’t at all change the fact that it’s baked into the system. EVERYONE (in that moment) expects you to to tip; so if you don’t, you’re effectively stealing from the server.
If you don’t want to tip, your only options are to either not eat out at restaurants, or to find restaurants that have “Hospitality Included” service (a trend which I’m thankful to see growing – albeit slowly).
If you don’t want to tip, your only options are to either not eat out at restaurants
I would gladly take this option, but sometimes other people want to for some reason. I would rather just go for drinks at a pub.
What if everyone didn’t expect you to tip? You vehemently defending the tipping system is part of why EVERYONE expects you to tip.
That kind of aggressive apatheism is what makes the system continue.
Okay, then at the very least when you walk in you should declare your intention to not tip. Still shitty towards the server that gets stuck with you, but now it causes conflict amongst the staff and brings the issue to a head.
We should end tipping culture. Wages should never be optional, and anyone working full time should be paid by their employer a living wage as described by FDR when the minimum wage was created.
Until we end tipping culture, tip your servers. You’re not some edgy social justice warrior by quoting Mr. Pink and acting like keeping your two dollars is somehow helping. You’re just an asshole.
Calling it culture sounds a bit weird to me it’s an exploitative loophole that’s illegal in cultured places.
That’s fair. We should call it regulation and labor laws. Minimum wage laws specifically enshrine tipping as a foundation of server wages, and closing that loophole is a necessary first step.
The single best thing people can do to end tipping culture is to just stop tipping.
Vote for social safety nets or make donations to care for those who will be harmed by this.
But right now it’s people like you that are perpetuating tipping culture.
And yes, I am an asshole - but it’s not solely because of my stance on tipping.
Lol, I’m sure your reasoning is really going to make a difference to the person depending on tips to make rent. And I’m sure the owner is just going to feel terrible that his server didn’t get compensated.
Maybe you should just avoid giving your business to restaurants that exploit the tip based system? You aren’t ending tipping culture by not tipping, you’re just taking advantage of workers just as much as the owners.
If a person doesn’t tip, their server doesn’t get tipped.
If that same person avoids giving business to restaurants that exploit the tip based system, the same server still doesn’t get tipped.
You’re not ending tipping culture by tipping, either. Just saying.
the same server still doesn’t get tipped.
They may have more time or availability for someone who does tip, plus they aren’t wasting their labour on someone.
You’re not ending tipping culture by tipping, either. Just saying.
Yeah, but I never claimed I was attempting to end tipping culture by wasting people’s time and effort.
Again, why not just support businesses that don’t rely on tipping to pay their staff?
Bullshit, and that’s a dangerously naive perspective. If everyone stopped tipping tomorrow, the only people that would be hurting are the people who serve.
All labor regulations exist because there will always be someone desperate enough to do anything for a paycheck. Child laborers. Prostututes. Dallas Cowboys. People will do anything for money, and the only way to prevent exploitation is with regulation. The “free market” will turn your bones into paste before it provides a living wage to laborers.
Capitalism is an unbalanced power dynamic that relies on an excess of desperation. If people didn’t need to sell their time, they’d never sell it for less than it is worth to employers. So if everyone agreed to just stop tipping, service would get much worse, and servers would be working for $2.10 an hour plus kitchen scraps.
At least we agree on uour last point.
If everyone stopped tipping tomorrow, the only people that would be hurting are the people who serve.
Who would then not want to work in those places that depends entirely of tipping. And then it hurts the owners of those places.
How are you unable to realise this? It is all connected.
That’s literally the rest of the comment. Did you just stop reading there?
That’s not. How. Tipped. Wages. Work.
Why do people insist that you get paid 2.10/hr? That’s 2.10/hr + Tips IF AND ONLY IF that wage equals more than minimum wage. That’s how it’s always been.
If minimum wage is 7.25 (in a lot of states, it still is), then they are paid 7.25x40 OR 2.10x40+tips, whichever of those two numbers is higher. They CANNOT LEGALLY PAY YOU less than minimum wage.
So when people say “If you stopped tipping today, all that would be hurt is the tipped workers” I’m less inclined to believe them if they also parrot absolutely false information without a second thought.
But I do agree with you, tipped wage jobs suck, and the tips seem to be the only benefit. So, let’s ensure they get a proper wage from their employer, stop tipping, and if service sucks until things are figured out, I guess I’m eating at home or eating shitty-service burgers because I’d rather the system get un-fucked than continue to engage in that system.
You’ve never worked a tipped job, have you? Estimate the percentage of employers who pay minimum wage if tips are too low. Throw out any number.
“You’ve never worked a tipped job have you?”
Proceeds to describe an illegal situation
Wow, you’ve never worked a job before, huh?
The whole point of that scene was that even a room of psychotic killers was disgusted by the idea of not tipping.
It’s amazing how many people saw it and said, “You know, the crazy-eyed murderer makes a good point.”
Until we end tipping culture, tip your servers.
If everyone continues to tip by default, then I believe this will delay or prevent an end to the culture. If servers don’t have an issue with tipping (because everyone does so), then there is less reason to support change.
If one person doesn’t tip:
You’re just an asshole.
If a large majority doesn’t tip:
Maybe there is a problem with tipping by default?
That’s not how anything works. If you want change, you need to vote for it. You’re not going to change the entire economic structure of the whole restaurant industry by being a selfish asshole. You’re just punishing the people who handle your food and making life harder for everyone.
It definitely does not work in an environment where lazy aggressive apatheists will support a system they don’t like by claiming it can’t be changed.
First day on Earth? Welcome. Mind the dog shit, some people don’t pick up after themselves.
Who do I vote for specifically to end tipping culture?
I don’t know where you live, but start local. And in the meantime, stop going to restaurants.
Exactly! Don’t stiff the worker, stiff the business
If the large majority doesn’t tip, wait staff will become homeless. That’s the only “message” you’re sending. Restaurant owners won’t care in the slightest.
Don’t patronize organizations that don’t pay their employees. This is the message, you’re claiming you want to send. You have to take money away from the people who set the policy, not the worker who has to live under the policy. Find restaurants that refuse tips and spend your money there. (Or just don’t go out.)
Until we end tipping, tip your servers.
…not the worker who has to live under the policy.
They don’t have to work there.
They do, their alternatives are being homeless, or working at another company that’s very likely managed the exact same way.
The lack of a social safety net or sufficient welfare, empowers exploitative labour conditions.
I was once poor and facing homelessness and I intentionally avoided tipped positions and only applied for jobs where I was paid more than $2.10/hr. I got one of those jobs.
I’m not insinuating that everyone can do this, but I think most people can, considering the vast majority of mininum-wage jobs are not tipped-wage jobs. I don’t think most people feel forced to take a tipped-wage job.
They do, their alternatives are…
So they don’t.
Removed by mod
Are you advocating for no more servers? Or are you suggesting that only the desperate should do the job? Or is your point that someone who chooses to be victimized by society should simply accept their rung on the ladder?
Restaurants are the backstop for a lot of people that have nowhere else to work. They aren’t worried about a spotty background check, they won’t run a drug screening, they just care that you show up on time.
Well in Australia we don’t have tipping.
You sure you don’t use some other word? You guys have one of the best accents out there but can be tough to understand.
I’d find it almost funny, how much capitalism as a system seems to favor those who are most capable and willing to detach morality from their actions for capital gain, if it weren’t so sad.
There are good criticisms of other economic systems that have been tried, but capitalism really seems designed to transfer the most power and resources to the greediest and least ethical.
No but you don’t understand.
Capitalism works because it pits everyone against each other and so even though every single person is greedy and unethical, they begrudgingly improve society overall because of reasons.
All we have to do is make sure we teach every child that all humans are fundamentally greedy and evil and the only ethical response is to out-greedy and out-evil them.
And then we’ll have a prosperous society!
- Adam Smith basically
Insert Winston Churchill quote here.
The only way you can help increase the wages is to not tip, all it does is subsidize the owners
Unfortunately as this very thread shows, a lot of Americans are mindbogglingly not in agreement about that. Which explains a lot about the current predicament of the country.
In the US, servers and restaurant staff tip like 100% of the time they go out because they know how important it is with our current pay laws, and they know that the waiter expecting that tip isn’t the one making the laws or who deserves to be punished for them. So that tip is almost always going to someone else who also tips.
Btw, don’t bother arguing with me that tipping is wrong so we shouldn’t do it. I agree that it’s wrong, but abstaining punishes the wrong people (servers, not owners or policymakers). So instead of writing a comment, write a letter to you local govt to eliminate sub-minimum wages for tipped workers, and keep tipping poor waiters and drivers til they change something.
All the things I’ve read say that a majority of tipped workers (as well as the general population) prefer the current tips system. Maybe it’s not true, but looking at the comments here it seems accurate.
They don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them, literally. Its an expected response. Those that don’t depend on tipping or who can look at a bigger picture are able to be less biased in most cases.
Let’s be clear, paying someone 2$ an hour is never okay, tipping or not.
Former tipped employee here. This is probably correct, but I don’t care. The majority is often wrong. They can be educated. Change is scary, and the people who benefit from the status quo demonize changes that will give them less power.
I would probably have made less money if paid a salary, but it would be worth it to not have to balance priorities between getting a good tip and following restaurant policies.
I work at the most expensive restaurant in my town, FOH workers are paid $2.13 (regardless of tips) and servers have to tip out 30% to assistants and bar. If everybody stopped tipping one day then some of them will literally not even have the money to buy gas to go home.
Yes, and then the restaurant would close because noone can work there. They might have to consider paying a decent wage.
Y’all act like there aren’t restaurants that already pay a standard wage. Stop supporting your oppressors, its a shitty look.
An expensive restaurant pays $2/hr and we think people tipping/not tipping is the problem?!
Usually if you make under the federal minimum wage they’ll bump you up to minimum wage for the shift. I know my restaurant does. But yeah thats still nothing
Our job does not apparently, asked my sous chef about it when I learned and he doesn’t understand if it’s legal or what
Its illegal, they legally need to compensate you the difference if your tipped wages is under the federal minimum wage.
Cool, now the underpaid staff has to find counsel to go sue their employer. Guess it worked out in the end.
I adjusted my tip to 10%. Yep they don’t pay tax, so I adjusted accordingly
