Collective action problems are very hard to solve, and culture is very hard to change.
One interesting thing to me about tipping is how the “standard” tip percentage has slowly increased over time. I’m almost 40, and as a child/young person, I remember learning from my parents that the standard was 15%, and that many in their parents’ generation tipped 10%. It’s now 20%. One possible explanation for this is that this is a sort of adjustment for Baumol’s cost disease. If that’s correct, then will 30 or 40% be standard in another 50 years? I wonder how high it will go, and whether an increased standard tipping percentage makes it more or less likely that the tipping culture will persist.
Pre-Covid I tended to tip little or nothing for takeout. I now tip 20% (a change many have made) because times are tough, and I wonder if that change will persist too?
remove the exemption for staff who you expect to get tipped
tips which are still collected are divided up among the restaurant staff as they are currently.
Without people reminding us that if we don’t tip food servers won’t make minimum wage I think tips will quickly fade away - and if people still choose to tip, that’s a voluntary decision they make, rather than being forced to tip or cost their server money that they were assumed to receive when their wage was set.
Altho much of that is true, the point is, you are not penalizing the system by being a cheapskate , you are penalizing your server, who is often paid less than minimum wage because tips are assumed.
I don’t think that your proposed policies actually change much with respect to tipping. Tipping culture predated minimum wage laws, so it’s not clear to me that removing special legal lower wages for tipped employees would make the culture go away. It existed just fine before the legal structure you’re focusing on, and it also exists just fine in places where the minimum wage is irrelevant.
It’s certainly possible that people would, en masse, change their tipping behavior because they no longer think that they have to tip because the law has changed, but I am very doubtful that that would happen.
For more proof that minimum wage laws aren’t a driver of tipping behavior, if you go to a fine dining establishment, you are still expected to tip. But the workers at those restaurants generally make more than the minimum wage and (in higher cost of living areas) likely make more in base pay than whatever we’re likely to raise the minimum wage to. If we tipped due to minimum wage laws, then we wouldn’t tip at very high end restaurants.
The combination of employers paying lower than market rates to tipped employees based on an expectation that they will make enough due to tips is very stable. There’s social pressure on customers to tip and economic pressure on employers to continue.
There’s also a complicated cultural way in which tipping is handled among restaurant staff. There’s often a pecking order where some are rewarded with better-tipping shifts/tables and a complicated tip sharing process between front of house and back of house staff. The minimum wage is a very blunt instrument, and I’d be extremely surprised if it would resolve these complicated arrangements that have grown up around tipping culture.
As long as people enable the system, the system will continue. Every time you tip you are endorsing a system that allows companies to avoid guaranteeing a minimum wage.
And I’m not a cheapskate, I just prefer to frequent places where tipping is not required. If more restaurants paid a guaranteed wage and simply included a set service charge in my bill then they’d get more of my business.
So I don’t look upon it as “penalising” anyone. I just prefer to spend my money in businesses with more ethical practices.
Some Seattle restaurants have adopted “service charge included in price” menus. Closer to my home, though, it would be impossible to eat a place that doesn’t utilize the traditional tipping model. While I agree it’s a strange way to run a business, it’s not a big enough deal to me to cause me to stop eating out. (once I am able to return to restaurants, of course) It’s been this way my whole life, and I have a long list of other things that bother me more.
IMO most of the adoption in the US of “service charge included in price” is in areas with lots of tourists from countries where tipping is unheard of.
Another common thing here in South FLorida is the “automatic gratuity” or “autograt”. The menu prices don’t include a service charge, but the bill as rendered totals up all the food, adds whatever percentage of sales tax as a line item below that, then adds another 15 or more commonly 18% as another line item labeled “service charge”, then present the total at the bottom. With yet another line below that for you to add your tip to get to the final total.
You can, if you know how the game is played, add to or subtract from the built-in tip to get the final total. But the unwary often throw a 15 or 20% tip on top of the 15 or 18% already added to the bill. Oops.
And before anyone asks: no, I don’t know for certain that the autograt amounts actually go directly to the workers beyond their hourly wages. Versus just being put into the manager / owners pocket.
That is not why people tip in a restaurant, and if someone requires those conditions before they will tip, then they are a cheapskate. People tip because it’s customary. That’s it. It’s part of the package. We’re stuck with it. You might tip a little extra for special service, but if you are not tipping a bare minimum of 15% to get reasonable service at a sit-down restaurant, you can’t afford to eat out. I tip a minimum of 20%. If service was really, really awful, I will talk to the manager, not stiff the server. But I’ve had to do that just a handful of times in 40 years. Normally a smart server or manager will comp you something if something is off about the service or food before you get to the point of becoming really irked.
My mom waitressed back in the 1960s. She said it was hard work but she loved doing it. Dad was still the breadwinner but we weren’t the Rockefellers by any stretch—the waitressing job helped, though if she’d had to pay child care it might have been a wash. I remember once on a family vacation we ate somewhere and the service was bad. She left a penny. "I don’t want them to think I forgot to tip—I remembered, but that service, ugh! she said.
When I was in high school a friend of mine bussed tables at a restaurant. He was peeved because he was certain the waitresses weren’t putting all the tips in the kitty they had…I gatherred that restaurant spread the wealth. My WAG is that if the busboy cleared the table quickly (but thoroughly) and that made it faster for customers, overall satisfaction was partly due to the busboy etc. Plus maybe it was “pay your dues and we’ll let you wait tables” or something. It’s a team effort—likewise I feel bad for waitstaff who have to apologize for something the chef did wrong etc. I doubt that strategy would fly at Hooters, however.
I think employers use that to blame the victim. “If you’re not getting good tips, you must not be a good waiter/waitress, so that puts your job at risk.” I knew a couple of young ladies in college who waitressed at Bennigans and they told us if anybody did the “Dine and Dash” (eat, leave without paying) it was assumed that the waitress would be on the hook for the tab.
True. Once Mrs. L and I took the grandsons for lunch. We ordered…they got theirs right away. I got mine an hour later. Not sure how to calculate that tip…I left it to Mrs. L to decide.
If we agreed tomorrow to just raise all salaries by ten, moving the decimal one space, I would expect rent to move one space and food to move one space, etc.
You’re calling my mother, a former waitress as mentioned above, a cheapskate? You became the spokesperson for the masses when? Everybody holds your opinion?
That would be "Talk to the manager, see what happened and quite likely no tip at all. " Now, if the waiter explained or if it was the kitchens fault, then a modest tip, and the waiter could have come back and said “Sorry sir, your dinner will be delayed due to…”
Why should it be your job as a consumer to make sure your server can pay rent? Shouldn’t that be their employer’s responsibility? Just like how I don’t like the fact that Walmart pays their employees starvation wages and relies on us taxpayers to make up the rest.
Why do you want average Americans to subsidize the wealthiest among us and handle a portion of their payroll expense, above and beyond the agreed upon price of what you bought?
Now, does that mean you should avoid tipping as a protest? No, because the restaurant owner doesn’t care if their worker makes rent or not. So you’re hurting the wrong people.
But pretending that the current state of affairs is healthy or fair is ridiculous, and snapping at people who try to find a way to move away from the status quo without hurting workers is misguided and counterproductive.
I tend to tip generously because I’m fortunate enough that the couple extra bucks doesn’t make that much difference to me - but it very well might to someone who’s struggling to make ends meet, especially in these times. As others have pointed out, waiters make next to nothing. And let’s face it, if you’re driving for Doordash, you can probably use every penny. I appreciate the people who do these jobs for me.
You don’t tip at bars??? I’m guessing you’re not a regular anywhere, or the bartenders wouldn’t give you the time of day.
If you refuse to tip where tipping is customary, then yes, you are.
Some restaurants have tried that. They’ve mostly failed. Tipping is so ingrained that people feel guilty for not tipping; some of the wait staff feel resentful if they don’t get tipped; the kitchen staff feel resentful because they didn’t get a raise; and many patrons feel resentful for having to pay higher list prices and STILL “have to” tip (see point 1).
I’ve repeatedly gotten into arguments with my mother over this. I’m firmly on the side that you should tip for takeout at a sit-down restaurant; she’s not, which is odd because she’s been a waitress and otherwise drilled “If you can’t afford to leave a decent tip you can’t afford to dine out!” into my head. The only time I refuse to tip is when the server is actively rude, hostile, or does something totally out of line (like using slurs, or treating an elderly loved one as a non-entity) and that’s only happened a few times. Otherwise even when I’ve had meals competed I still tipped (even if I have to flag down a manager to get a total and explain what I’m doing).
I am shocked that anyone with server experience would leave a penny as a tip. The waiters and waitresses I have known are also some of the most generous tippers. Your mother did not tip a penny because she was too cheap to tip, it was because she wanted to insult the server in the most degrading way possible. The poor server had no idea what was wrong other than the customer was mean. The right thing to do would have been to tell the manager what the problem was (which I have done when I got poor service).
Tipping is customary–it’s a social contract, and it’s part of the cost of a meal. I am not speaking for anyone, I am describing how it works.
A tip is not for service that goes above and beyond, it’s for decent service that checks all the basic boxes. I didn’t say everyone holds my opinion, but if anyone thinks that service must be top-notch to deserve any tip at all then my opinion is that they are a cheapskate and shouldn’t be dining out. If you ask for an opinion, expect to get one.