Tip culture is terrible and works against service staff. Trying to change it by not tipping just fucks over the service staff a second time.
If you want to change tip culture, patronize restaurants that advertise a living wage and that tipping is not necessary.
I agree, and I tip for exactly that reason. But I think the actual way to fix this is legislation, not just voting with your wallet. Just remove the food worker exemption from minimum wage laws (and bump those up to a living wage).
I’m sure the short answer is: Because that’s what we historically evolved to have.
But there are arguably some advantages to our tipping culture if everyone plays by its rules.
With the parenthetical note being a key part of the proposal, I agree.
That isn’t true. If the tips don’t make up the difference, the employer is required, by law, to pay the federal or state minimum wage, whichever is higher.
Apparently, it doesn’t always/usually work against service staff. In every conversation I have been in regarding this issue, service staff say they will earn less if food is priced accordingly , they are paid more in direct wages and tips are not necessary - even as they complain about non-tippers. In my city, minimum wage is $15/hr. Employers must pay food service workers a minimum of $10/hr in direct wages and can take a tip credit for the remaining $5 per hour. There is no way the average server here earns less than $5 an hour in tips at a restaurant with table service , so I can totally understand why they would be opposed to changing the tipping culture. But it’s not only restaurant owners and customers who prefer the tipping culture.
The situation is definitely different in cities with a living wage.
I completely agree with your point about following social norms, even if you think they are dumb, or otherwise stating your intention beforehand.
But I don’t think this is really controversial. The issue seems to be with cases where there is disagreement about social norms. You said that you think there’s an obligation to state upfront that you don’t tip for takeout. Really? Are you suggesting that in normal non-COVID times it’s standard practice to tip for takeout food? Surely a tip is not expected for a takeout pizza?
And part of the problem is that “norms” are being undermined not so much by the consumer, but by businesses trying to expand the 15%-20% tipping convention for genuine table service to other situations. Almost every place I go for coffee now tries to normalize tipping the barista substantially when you buy a takeout coffee at the counter.
I can see why owners and waitstaff might prefer the tipping culture. I’ve never heard from customers who think it’s a good idea. (and I’m a very generous tipper).
Only to a point- because, believe me, if I tip someone less than 20% , I’ll be lucky if they only call me cheap.
I generally disagree with this sentiment. Tipping allows me to give money directly to the people who need it and (usually) bypass The Man. At lower-priced restaurants I tip more than 20% (sometimes a lot more) and expensive ones less.
I understand the point that it would be nice if everybody got a living wage but there are some (for now) practical issues with that, the biggest one being that prices might go up too much and restaurants go out of business (or have fewer waitstaff).
Some day tipping may go away but I don’t think it can yet.
I think it generally should be standard to tip for takeout, based on information like this:
He disagrees with the Emily Post Institute in this regard. When there’s disagreement between the gentry and the worker, I tend to trust the worker’s expertise :).
Because you aren’t one of them - and neither am I . But there’s a certain type of customer that likes the power involved in tipping and lowering the tip ( and therefore the server’s income) for any perceived deficiency in the service, however slight, like waiting a minute for a drink refill.
I’ve read what you wrote, and what I wrote, a couple of times, and I’m not seeing where you’re disagreeing with me. Is it that you don’t think tipping culture is terrible and works against service staff? If so, separate your approaches to tipping from the culture’s approaches in general. It sounds like you’re handling it reasonably; but servers report that a shitload of people don’t.
His argument that “there’s labor involved” is stupid. The vast majority of work where there’s labor involved does not involve tipping. It’s a question of what the social norms are.
It’s nonsense anyway. A server packing up takeout food takes a few minutes, whereas actually serving a meal requires a server’s attentive presence for far longer. And restaurant food is sold at a huge markup to cost, in large part because people are going to sit down for several hours in a nice environment, and that creates overhead. It seems to me that if a restaurant owner can sell the same food for that marked-up price to a takeout customer, he will generally be delighted to do so - and the business owner should be responsible for paying staff to pack up food. Just as happens at every dedicated takeout place like McDonalds.
In any event, clearly there is no established social norm for this, as you say yourself. So I’m not going to change my own practise in this regard. If a restaurant wants to charge 20% above their menu prices for takeout, they can tell me upfront.
I don’t have any problem with working on a way to remove tipping but I disagree with the antipathy over it. Of course, there are always people who are asses. That includes bosses. I know that when I give a tip there’s little chance for the boss to do anything to reduce it. I.e. I don’t think it’s terrible.
I think that depends on the type of takeout - sure, it might be more work to pack an Applebee’s order to go than it is to serve it on a plate. But when I get takeout, it’s almost always from a place where you order and pay at the counter whether you are taking it out or taking it to the table, and tips are not customary in that sort of setup. ( Not just McDonald’s and Panera type places, but pizzerias, barbecue restaurants and the type of Chinese/Mexican/ Thai restaurants that have maybe three tables where you can take you food packaged in take-out containers and sit down.)
I tip at all restaurants (other than fast food places) these days. Times are difficult for the servers these days and the little extra helps.
But I think that’s wrong. Restaurants that are mostly sit-down places charge much higher prices for their food, precisely because of the much larger overhead involved in a sit-down restaurant, because of the fact that you can only serve a limited number of people if they all need seats. If you are willing to buy their food at that marked-up base price and not occupy a table, that’s a great deal for the business owner. If you’re willing to pay the same base price as someone occupying a table for 2 hours, it makes no sense that the “norm” should also be that you’re also paying a 20% “service” markup for service that you don’t use, and that you don’t conventionally pay at a dedicated takeout place where the base price is also much lower.
And again, the issue is not staff should be paid at all for packing up food. It’s a question of whether that labor cost should be assumed to be included in the price.
I’m skeptical that it takes significantly more work to box something than to plate it with any regularity. Maybe for select meals or at select restaurants but, this weekend, I got a restaurant-style meal as take-out and it was essentially just plated in a cardboard box. It was good and I had no issue with it but they had done nothing special in its preparation to be taken out of the restaurant. In my experience, most places just put your food in a black box with a clear lid and call it good. At most, your ketchup or salad dressing is in a little cup but that’s hardly labor intensive. I don’t think most people consider the tip at a restaurant for just plating the food anyway but for the entire dining-in experience and even if putting my food in a box is nominally harder than putting it on a plate, I don’t at all believe it’s harder than putting it on a plate and coming around a couple times and refilling my drink and responding to any issues, etc.
I suspect that Mr. Dublanica may have waited at a different style of restaurant than the ones I’m getting my takeout from and his experience doesn’t really apply to my purchases.