Another Tipping Thread

But remember that that is averaged across the week, or possibly the pay period. So while a person may make minimum wage on average, there might be many days when they make less than minimum wage. So when you see a server running several tables, it may appear that their tips must be well in excess of minimum wage, but you don’t see the down time when they are losing money by being at work.

Yes, that’s averaged over the pay period, but so what? It doesn’t change the fact that if a server ends up paying to work the employer is in violation of FLSA, and possibly state laws as well.

It matters because a lot of people don’t know that. They think servers have to make minimum wage each hour, not averaged out.

I wonder where the breaking point is down the road - say, 40 percent being the “default minimum tip” - where customers will throw up their hands and say “Enough is enough, we’re done with this BS.”

Except, as you see from the responses, it has. Type in “what is the standard tip” in Google and see what answer you get.

I’ve never seen anyone make that claim. What I see is people claiming (or at least implying) that restaurants only pay $2.13 per hour period and if they don’t get enough tips they make less than minimum wage. Or as in this thread that if they don’t get enough tips they’ll actually pay to work. And that my be true in some cases. I’ve seen how some unscrupulous restaurant owners can take advantage of young people by underpaying them or even having them work off the clock for tips only, as we found out a local Sonic franchisee was doing (he lost his franchise not long after we heard what he was doing) in a small town we used to live in. But when that happens, it’s not the fault or responsibility of the customers. That’s all on the employer.

Many many moons ago we stopped in a classy winery for dinner. We were seated just before a party of 25 arrived. Waiters tended them and ignored us except to refill our water once. The bill with tax was for a nickle under an even multiple of $20. We left those twenties and nothing else. Tip: five cents, and well deserved.

A couple days ago we went for lunch at the county’s finest brewpub which previously combined excellent service with yummy food built from fresh local.ingredients. Alas, our waitress was mostly absent this time. We left an even 15% tip even though paltry service because we’ll want to return.

I’ve left a 25% tip for a $20 haircut. I don’t know how a food server could deserve that much.

I don’t know if this was a function of the sales tax or just an easy way to figure the tip. But I remember a lot of people doing 3 times the sales tax (which was 5%) when I was a kid. I don’t live in that state anymore, but I know the sales tax was raised to at least 6-7% and I wonder if people still do the same thing.

For me, and others in the restaurant industry, 20% was already the norm back in the '90s. 15% was like the “minimum acceptable” tip for people who understood how the system worked and chose to participate in the whole going out to eat and being served social economic deal. For a lot of people 15% was like if the service wasn’t great but since you chose to go out to eat and participate in that pricing scheme, you were going to leave the minimum. If you really wanted to comment on how terrible the service was (and it not being the fault of the kitchen or owners or something but due to bad service) you might leave 10%, maybe. If it was really good service, you wouldn’t want to just leave 15% since that would indicate it was adequate/fine. An attentive server who filled drinks fast and did everything well and maybe provided some sort of extra friendly conversation or help (good with recommendations including other places to go and things to do, etc), might get the 20-25%.

People who actually worked for tips would tip the most. I rarely went out to eat with anyone (I cooked and mostly dated and socialized with tipped employees) who tipped less than 25-33% or at least a pure dollar minimum (like if your bill was $60, you were going to tip at least a $20 or maybe even leave $100 total, regardless of the percentage). Personally, I got out a lot by myself and I have a pure dollar minimum. Like if I go out and take up a table and have someone serving me and I get a check for $8 or something, I’m not leaving a dollar and some change. If I wanted to do that I would get carryout or go to any number of fast food or fast casual places without table service. It’s just part of the deal. That said, if someone else left a buck and some change that would be more than acceptable, I just have a different thing.

Also, the minimum wage for tipped employees in a lot of places has not increased with the minimum wage increase, even at the 50% rate. What I mean is when minimum wage was $4.25, minimum wage for servers was $2.13. I’m pretty sure it is still $2.13 or maybe $2.38 (50% of minimum wage when it was increased to $4.75 around 20 years ago) in some places. Technically, employees have to be guaranteed minimum wage including tips and the employer has to make it up but either that doesn’t happen or it’s never really an issue.

We all know it’s illegal, but it happens everywhere. You turn in one place and you are black balled from working anywhere else.

In the real world, it works how it works.

If someone’s tipping decisions are based entirely on the waitstaff’s performance, then you have a point. However, many people, me included when I’m in the US or other tipping countries, base their tipping decision on their overall restaurant experience. It’s probably not your server’s fault if the meal you order is slow to come out. It might be because the guy manning the dishwasher was out back sneaking a smoke when he should have been cleaning the knives. If there’s going to be a reward system, which is what tipping is meant to be, then the entire delivery chain needs to benefit from that system and not just the person interacting with the customer.

That makes little sense to me. Tipping is usually understood to be for “service”, the specific element of the experience that is controlled to a dominant extent (notwithstanding things out of their control) by customer-facing staff. If you’re concerned with the “overall restaurant experience”, well the business as a whole - including management, accountants, cleaning staff - is responsible for that. If you want to tip for that, it sounds like you’re essentially in favor of abolishing tipping as we currently understand it; that all staff should all be paid a normal wage like any other business, and that if you add a “tip” you want that to go the business. Perhaps with a profit-sharing arrangement among all employees.

Nobody ever quite claims that servers must make at least minimum wage for each hour- but it’s not uncommon for people to use a single customer or hour or shift to argue that servers sometimes lose money or make less than minimum. For example, " if a customer only tips 5%, I’m losing money because I have to tip out 10%" or " I only got $30 in tips for an 8 hour shift on Tuesday, so was paid less than minimum wage for that shift" and ignoring the other customers/hours/shifts where the tips were 20% . And those people never address the question I always have - if it’s actually costing you 5% out of your pocket for the whole pay period or you’re making less than minimum wage over a pay period, why are you still a server rather than getting a higher-paying job at Target?

Oh boy. Man let me tell you what it is like to be poor. You will always take the waiting job (usually in addition to that sweet Target job) because you get to walk away from that 10 hour shift with 60 bucks in your hand. That 60 bucks gets you food and gas in your car so you can get back and forth to work or get the last part of your rent paid. If you rely on Target alone, you have to wait for two weeks to get that 80 bucks you made that shift.

I usually walked away with 60-80 bucks a night when I was waiting tables, and that is what I lived on. Sometimes I worked 10-14 hours a day, but I worked what we called seven-sevens, or 7 days week for 7 weeks straight. You never never took a day off if you could help it.

I understand that just fine- but if you are walking away with 60 bucks for a 10 hour shift you’re earning $6 an hour in tips plus the $2.13 in direct wages which brings you over minimum. $80 for a 14 hour shift also brings you over Federal minimum wage. That’s not the question that isn’t addressed - which is an explanation of why you would keep the job if you made less than minimum for the entire pay-period or if you walked away from a week or two of shifts with not only no cash, but actually had to put cash out every night (you got 10% in tips each shift but had to tip out 14%). And the answer is of course, that while an individual customer may tip you less than you have to tip-out ( you tip out 14% and they leave a 10% tip) or tips for an individual shift may not bring you up to minimum wage (you got only $30 in tips for a 10 hour shift on Tuesday night) other customers and shifts over the course of the pay period make up for it. And it’s therefore misleading to talk about the customer who tips only 10% and say “servers are paying part of your bill if you tip less than X%” without mentioning those who tip 20% but I see people do it all the time.

Many decisions are made with imperfect knowledge, and also on an emotional basis. If your order is slow, you’re probably being told that the kitchen is busy rather than that your order was mishandled. You’re probably not getting better service from the attractive charismatic waitperson than from the average looking, slightly dull waitperson. But if you raise or lower the amount you tip based one the level of service you’ve received, unless you have some sort of expertise in restaurant service, you’re tipping based on perception. That perception is going to be based on your overall restaurant experience, and not some impartial evaluation of the waitstaff. I think it would be stupid to evaluate the waitstaff based on the cleanliness of the restroom. I’ve also been around people who complained about a restaurant because they felt the restaurant was unhygienic, based on the condition of the restrooms. In a country with a tipping culture, do you think a typical diner will tip generously in a restaurant they believe to be unhygienic, even if they’ve objectively received good service?

  1. Right, they’ve increased somewhat faster.
    https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm

Set the things to compare as ‘all items’ and ‘food away from home’. ‘Food away from home’ has gone up cumulatively around 20% points more than ‘all items’ in the last 20 yrs, if you expand the table and calculate from the monthly numbers.

  1. I’m not saying what causes what besides pointing out lack of logic in the post I answered which said not raising the federal minimum wage explained it, ‘does that answer your [the OP] question?’ that poster wrote. In a word, no. :slight_smile: For the reasons I pointed out, to reiterate:
    -tips increase mainly with restaurant bills at a give tip % so a stationary nominal minimum wage just becomes less relevant as restaurant bills increase.
    -the federal minimum wage applies to relatively little of the US by population, and specifically not places like NY area. And I believe if you scientifically polled you’d probably find subjective impression of customary tip % having increased is more true of places like NY (somebody else in the thread said yes also for Chicago) than hinterland type places.

And you are saying something different than the post I answered,
“the custom changed because people thought 15% was no longer enough”
Well obviously at some level people are paying more than 15% because they think 15% isn’t enough (though importantly including that they’ll be negatively viewed by people whose opinions they care about who think it’s not enough). That’s not exactly a profound analysis IMHO.

Also, how hard it is ‘to live on 15%’ depends again what the restaurant bill is. Consider it cross sectionally now rather than other time. There are always some restaurants in a given area a lot more expensive than others. That doesn’t make it proportionally more expensive for the tip paid employees at the expensive places to live in the area.

Social conventions don’t have to make sense. I think if one keeps that foremost in mind they are probably more likely to come up with a sensible answer to OP’s question. Which again typical of social conventions is not likely to be a single simple answer unless a tautological one like ‘people decided to pay more’.

I can’t speak to the other issues, I tip fairly generously, when appropriate, because I can afford to.

On the other hand, when I go to a restaurant to order food to take away, and I pay up front (the norm, in my experience) I tip 10% or slightly more, for a couple of reasons: the kitchen staff work just as hard for my order as for any other order; the front person works slightly harder (bringing my order out to me in the waiting area) than they would for an eat-in customer; and most important, these people know in advance that I have done so, which may give me a slight edge towards quality of food and service. It may do nothing, but I was going to do it anyway.

Gratuity customs worldwide vary by time, place, and context. Tipping is unnecessary where employees are paid a living wage. Otherwise, exploit them workers! In some places (including Tr@mp resorts) a service charge which the staff never receives is added to bills. If staff are paid minimum wage, that’s just management stealing tips.

What you don’t have control over is if you get tables or not. The fact that I didn’t owe (most days) working is because I only worked for places that didn’t limit the tops (tables) I had. There were days I paid to go to work. Usually I got stuck on some large ass party that I was the only waiter that covered them (think of a 15 top graduation dinner for example.) Those people would tend to order alcohol from the bar in addition to the food they ordered, and since it was such a large party I wouldn’t be given any other tops. If that party tipped me 10-12 percent (which the table thought was fine since it seemed like such a large number), yeah, I ended up paying to wait on that table. There were several days I paid to go to work being a server. When you go each and every day to work though without fail, you will be able to shake them if you are working at the right place.

And you don’t get those 2.13 an hour checks, they come back as “VOID”. The check you are paid is less than what the federal withholding is, because the employer still reports that they bring you to minimum wage even though they don’t. Most servers end up with a tax bill, even if their tips aren’t reported, because SS with holding and all of that isn’t satisfied on the 2.13 an hour, even if they report your hours properly. Most restaurants my family and friends worked at don’t report that you work more than 20 hours a week because they don’t want to report the over time.

Most restaurants I worked at you didn’t even “clock in” they just ignored the paycheck part of it all together. I don’t think the last high end steak house I was a waiter at even had my social security number to report anything in the first place. I didn’t work there too long, it was “mobby.”

I was never stupid enough to try to wait tables at a corporate joint though, those waiters are the ones that really get screwed. They end up with 2 or thee table sections and that flip twice is all they get for the night. If half of their customers tip 10%, they don’t make anything for the night.

I used to work at least half of the dining room. I had seniority over most of the waitstaff usually in places that I worked, so I never got stuck with a bunch of “for-meians” (“For me, water please.”) When you got a “for-meian” you got a 10 percent or less tip. I never worked Sunday because of the church crowd, they tip 10 or less as well. Now the new waiters that worked with me without seniority? They usually had at least one night a week when they broke even or owed a little. When I was the head waiter that had to check them out I would try to keep an eye on who was behind and try to throw them a good table so they could break even, but that wasn’t my job it was something I did because I was significantly older than some of these newbies and I didn’t want them screwed.

I know its a hard concept, but try to remember that restaurants don’t do the books right, they don’t pay their employees (front of house or back) and they don’t follow the law. When you go out to eat, assume that the restaurant is owned by the mob or something, and your waiter’s tip between 0 and 10% evaporates, so they are only working with at least 10% and over.

I don’t fault anyone for not knowing how this really works if they never worked for a restaurant paying their bills and feeding a family off if it. Did you ever wonder why people that work for tips, tip so freaking hard? They know what the deal is. Consider them the experts and follow their lead.
Side note, did an informal poll with the people that have worked the restaurant slog around here, which includes my wife. About 40% of the non corporate type places were mob run according to the employees.

So as someone who has never waited tables, I am appalled by all of this.

Why wouldn’t it just be better to pay servers as you would for any other job? Leaving your salary up to the discretion of the general public so that you boss can safely cook the books seems like a terrible, terrible idea. Why does the government, for instance, allow this? It beggars belief that tips are getting reported and taxed accurately by servers and restaurant owners.