Well, I’m only upset about it when I think about it.
And I’m okay with them being in it for the money - that’s the only reason I go to work myself. However this model where every customer is implicitly considered to be hiring the server as a short-term direct-paid contract worker with no contract is bullshit. In a non-corrupt world, the restaurant would pay the employees enough for them to feel fully paid on that alone, and tips should be reserved for exceptional service or not happen at all.
Then understand that you’re paying ~80% of what you would have to pay to actually pay a living wage to the waitstaff and admit that you just don’t want to pay full price.
In a reality where servers make a decent minimum wage and that’s rolled into your upfront price instead of just being expected, I would agree with your position.
I suggest you try another part of the world, where tipping your server isn’t part of the social contract. In spite of Translucent Daydream’s repeated protestations, servers and cooks messing with your food is vanishingly rare.
Shayna, they bought their appetizers, they knew what they were getting into.
No. I want to be honestly told what something costs. I want there to be no ambiguity about what I’m expected to pay to avoid the establishment and its employees feeling that I’ve cheated them. And I want that amount to be stated in advance so that I don’t have to employ special knowledge and mental math to guess what that amount will be.
I go to restaurants both cheap and expensive. I’m entirely willing to pay “a living wage to the waitstaff” - remember, I do pay tips. I just don’t like being fucked with because the restaurant sees only benefits in lying and obscuring things and shoving part of the payment process away from themselves.
I am not going to travel to a different country to buy dinner. And yes, I was aware that there are other countries without a deranged and broken tipping culture, but America believes in employing the form of american exceptionalism that fucks over everybody that’s not a politician or a corporation.
Lol what? No dude - we’ve all been there, and we all do what we gotta do to make ends meet.
It’s a tongue-in-cheek remark based on an impressively long list you made of co-workers doing some pretty jaw-dropping things, not to mention disgusting, things. Really not meant to be taken that seriously.
Make up your mind.
I live in the exotic foreign country of Washington State, where the state minimum wage of $13.50 applies to everyone. There does not exist a second, lower rate for tipped employees. It’s higher in some places, like Seattle.
Tipping is the same as in the rest of the country, as far as I can tell, 15-20%. Restaurants with devices that ‘suggest’ tips use the same software here as in states with tiny tipped minimum wages.
Hard Rock, for one. Though maybe they do actually take both the special card and cash.
In China, they generally see tipping as insulting, although there are a couple of exceptions - namely ones that deal more with Americans (greeeaaaat…). My family had a private tour guide in Beijing for the days we were there, and we were able to ask him if/when tipping might be expected. The only real instance was our rickshaw rides - our guide did ask us to tip the cyclists at the end, and honestly, after hauling our big American asses all over Beijing, we were more than happy to do it. My folks also tipped our guide himself.
There was one instance where we would have wanted to tip, but couldn’t (this was when we didn’t have a guide with us). We ordered almost everything family-style, pointing out things on the menu that looked good and sharing everything. One item we got were green beans that were a little spicy. They weren’t super spicy - we all agreed we liked them. But out of everything we got, we were too full to finish the beans, and couldn’t eat many of them without something else to help with the heat.
Now, try explaining all that to a man when we don’t speak any Chinese.
He tried asking us questions about it, but at the end brought out a receipt and showed us he took the beans off. We tried so hard to tell him, no, everything was delicious and we were happy to pay for them, but he didn’t understand. If that happened here, we would have tipped generously, but the last thing we wanted was to risk insulting the poor guy. We were determined to be a shining example of American tourists, lol.
Again, I have been to the Hard Rock casinos in Tampa, Hollywood (FL), and Las Vegas (now closed). They didn’t have such a system.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the Rewards card one can use to earn points based on how much you gamble?
Stay with me for a moment.
Currently a restaurant tells me that food costs X. However I know that the entire institution is a cesspool of deception and extortion, and that as a result of that (and of prior experience), it will actually cost me Y to eat there. I’m not happy about the deception and extortion, of course, because it’s evil.
I go there anyway and pay Y.
Point 2 alone is sufficient to show that if the restaurants charged Y for their food with no tips or hidden fees, then I would be willing to pay Y. Because I currently am willing to pay Y. So you didn’t catch me in any sort of gotcha.
Of course, there is something worth discussing here - as I implied, there are several cases where I have the option to leave a tip and usually don’t. The most illustrative example is pizza places.
I order my pizzas online and go and pick them up myself. They cook them and carry them as far as the counter. That’s it. So I dutifully write a zero into the tip spot on the payment slip and go on my way.
Why do I pick them up? Because dominos charges a delivery fee AND expects you to tip your drivers, since the “delivery fee” is explicitly stated as not paying for the delivery. The combination of fee and tip pushes the price higher than I’m willing to pay, so I don’t.
Honestly, most restaurants could probably get more out of me if they wrote the price straight up; I tend to write in 17% tips, but if they raised the price of a burger by 20% I’d probably still buy it. I’m not short of money. I just don’t like obfuscation, lies, threats, and thefts.
Of course a tip is a wage. You are paying them money in exchange for a service, no different than the plumber. It’s certainly not a gift.
It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to say that a tip is not a wage. Even if it is money for “personal service above and beyond the standard” then that is no different than paying a higher wage to a good plumber.
But it is not even that. It is money expected for average or even below average service, and if some in this thread are to be believed, for the worst of the worst service.
Further, just because in this crazy tipping model, you pay part of the wage and the employer pays another part, it doesn’t make it less of a wage. It’s just an accounting trick. The customer indirectly pays every person’s wage.
What wild assertion?
What do you think the words “wild assertion” means?
Several posters have confirmed that this practice is occurring in their area.
I’m glad you shared your perspective because it is pretty eye-opening to me. My wife worked in a hotel restaurant up until 3 years ago and she said she only had to tip out 4% to the back of house - so it’s interesting to hear that the standard in some places is much higher. That being said, we live in Canada, so that’s probably a pretty big difference right there.
Interestingly, from my wife’s perspective, being a server here is way more lucrative than she thinks it should be, as she said the full-time servers could be grossing $70k/yr after wages + tips (nearly double our provincial median individual income of ~$36k/yr). No doubt they bust their ass to earn that, but lots of people bust their ass on all sorts of jobs for far less pay. People here still feel obligated to tip 15%+ even though we have a $15/hr minimum wage - which as far as I can tell is just cultural carry-over from the US.
Incidentally, what are people’s opinions on how much is a reasonable tip for areas with $7.25/hr minimum wage, vs. $15/hr minimum wage, vs. $2.13/hr? Do people who travel a lot look up what the minimum wage laws are for their state/city that they are visiting and adjust tipping accordingly?
There’s definitely one thing that I never really liked about the concept of percentage-based tipping - why does ordering a more expensive dish or drink mean that I should be tipping more? Does the server somehow work harder to serve a $40 steak and $14 glass of wine than a $15 burger and 3 glass of pop? I usually tip a higher % when my bill is a lower amount but not sure how common that is.
Vacationing in St Martin/Sint Maarten, tipping could be complicated. I have no idea what their minimum wage is, or even if they have one. It’s not unusual to find the tip (15%) included on the Dutch side but that has changed over time. I’ve had servers run after me to return cash I’d left, then had to explain I thought they deserved more than 15%.
Since we visit the island for a couple weeks every year, tipping does tend to “carry over” year to year. Bartenders remember us and treat us a bit better. If I’m drinking a mixed drink and the tender is making one for another customer, she might pour what’s left in the shaker directly into my glass.
Tipping at the grocery store is another issue there. Kids (boys 8-12) bag groceries and take them to your car, but they are not employees of the store (a sign written in sharpie explains that). I tip them well and they really appreciate it. They know/recognize locals and never bag their stuff, since they wouldn’t tip. If I notice a vacationer buying groceries and no bag boy helping, I know the person doesn’t tip. One time my bag boy noticed my beer case was wet on the bottom and discovered a broken bottle. Without me asking, he ran and got me a replacement case. The first time we went to Mullet Bay Beach was on a bag boy’s recommendation, and ever since its been a favorite.
I live in the DC area like you.
Try ordering from Grubhub and see what their default tip is for delivery (on top of the delivery fee and on top of the mark up they charge off the regular menu prices).
I ordered about $100 worth of chinese food the other day and everything on the grubhub version of the menu was $1-$3 more expensive than their regular menu prices and they defaulted to a 20% tip. but at least delivery was “free”
You know how some restaurants now do tip calculations for you at the bottom of your check so you know what to tip? An Italian restaurant I went to recently had calculated out 20% 25% and 30%.
I went to pick up an order at a chicken place and as I was checking how much I wanted to tip by the terminal.
I am surprised that McDonald’s doesn’t ask for tips yet.
Ah so it’s because the minimum wage hasn’t been keeping up and the restaurants want to keep the menu prices low so they build their wage increases into the tip?
OK then why are delivery and pick up orders suddenly starting to see 20% tip expectations?
I agree. At a family restaurant, I generally tip 15-20%, but the minimum tip is always at least $5 plus $1 per drink refill.
Other countries have similar wage issues where they try to have the pay of the staff correlate somehow with the gross income of the restaurant and in those instances these countries charge what is called a service charge. It’s mandatory and it is clearly stated up front. I’d rather see this.
I consider the tip part of the expense of going out to eat - if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out. If you think of it as a kind of charity, you’ve missed the point. You’re paying for a service… it only seems voluntary.
But I agree that it’s a cultural scam where restaurant owners rely on shaming non-tippers into paying their staff. Paying people $2.14 an hour just because you can get away with it? Fuck you. It’s part of why I rarely eat out (the biggest reason is that I trust very few people to handle my food). I have serious antipathy toward the restaurant business.
I actually think the pandemic is bringing into line how much people should eat out. I know the service industry is a huge part of America’s economy, and that is frankly shameful.