I’ve lived in a country where there is no tipping, and service was just as good, and in many cases better. So I don’t think this argument has any merit.
Sounds good to me.
I would prefer a place where you go in and buy a meal for $5. No BS, no change, no sales tax, no tip, just give them a bloody 5 spot (or a tenner, or whatever, I’m obviously not a high roller) and get a meal in return.
I usually just tip the change anyway. :-p
I take exception to this remark. While this is a wonderful thing to believe would happen, it just wouldn’t in real life.
Why? Because we’re talking about way more than just the 15%(assuming) that the tip covers.
The average restaurant worker makes around $3.00. Minimum wage $5.15 (assuming you are in a state that isn’t higher than the gov’t mandated min) Living wage, arguably, is between $7.50 and $8.00. And, with tips, most servers are in the 9 - 12 /hr range. So there is a minimum $6.00 gap to cover per hour to meet this wage or $36.00 a server per shift (assuming a six hour shift) If you have a restaurant with a small staff, say 4 or 5 servers, you have just added $180.00 in payroll and another 15% in associated benefits or $207.00.
Now, let’s say at this small restaurant, you have an average check of 10.00 and with the 5 servers, you do 100 covers a day. With tipping, you have $103.50 in S&W expense. When you outlaw tipping, you have 310.50 in S&W expense. You have tripled your payroll expense. How much will you have to increase your average check to cover this? 2.07 per cover. That would have to be passed directly on to the consumer to cover this expense.
We all understand marketing basics, right. Are you willing to pay 12.00 for a burger for lunch? When you have paid 10.00 your whole life? It’s a tough sell, especially in tight economic times. We have proven that even a penny makes a difference in marketing.
And, blowero Really, management is the only one who benefits from the current system, especially if they under-report tips. They can pay their employees a pittance, and then if they don’t make it up in tips, well “You just need to work harder.” They can deflect the responsibility to the employee.
Just FYI both management and employees can be fined huge amounts for under reporting tips. If the IRS catches you, penalties alone can put a restaurant out of business. So please don’t think that there are myriad of restaurants out there encouraging staff to under report tips. I’m sure it happens, but it is the exception and not the rule.
The master agrees with you.
pizzabrat said:
I knew you were going there, but I didn’t want to put words in your mouth. It is more of the “we’re all victims of institutional racism” bit that is popular among the victim class. I’d be interested in knowing,
a) How often you wait 10 minutes for a server
b) How often your tip relects this fact
c) How you know that in the 10 minute interim that they’re (They being the white racist restaurant cabal) actually in the kitchen hashing out who’s going to wait on you.
d) How often, when you’ve experienced poor serivice, where you know (not assume!) that it was due to racism.
e) How often you’ve taken the time to discuss this with either the server or manager.
I didn’t read the link but I’ve seen tons of them.Most of them it seems are anecdotal. I’ve yet to actually meet a person (or friend) who’s faced this problem with anything close to the level of pervasiveness that these silly links suggest. If you’re inclined to believe this stuff, one would be led to believe that the problem is pandemic.
And what’s your solution? Make all of us pay a standard fee, or in the alternative, higher prices for all services that traditionally are tipped. Will that improve service for black patrons? Will it make the racist waiters of America less racist?
And you know what my experience was? I was a waiter in Chicago’s gold coast, and years later a GM of a $5M restaurant. The waiters were almost all gay, very liberal and progressive. The population was heavily oriented towards artists, musicians and students. This was hardly an “Archie Bunker” crowd. And you know what? They generally didn’t want to wait on black patrons. They were good natured and cool about it, but to a person their experience was that black patrons did not tip well. But I never, not once, saw a waiter intentionally give a black patron poor service. (although I don’t doubt that it happens) (As a side note, I did have a waitress who gave some Korean tourists their tip back, and I fired her on the spot)
In my own experience, I never gave a black patron poor service and treated everyone the same. In my experience black patrons, in the aggregate, did not tip well, and in any case didn’t tip as well as white patrons, once again in the aggregate. If this is true, should the better tipping white patrons be subsidizing the poorer tipping black patrons?
(I recognize that that may be a bit touchy statement. So you all know my racist credentials, I am white, was married to a black woman, and have 3 inter-racial children. I also have more black friends than white friends)
That is pure rubbish.
Why are you worrying about the interests of the servers? There is no hue and cry from them. They know that there are good and bad tippers (both white and black, rich and poor) and they accept this as a fact of restaurant life. On the average they do allright and I would bet my last dollar that if put to a vote servers would overwhelming reject a non-tip environment.
I agree. You need no more social aptitude than to know that good service should warrant a 20% tip in most restaurants. The servers will love you for it, and believe you to be suffeciently hip.
blowero said:
I’m guessing you’ve never managed a service business. The most mercenary manager worth his weight in table salt recognizes that short staffing a service business intentionally drives revenue and profits directly down.
Customer counts, table turns, transaction counts, even average checks (due to lack od add on sales) all suffer dramatically due to understaffing. We’ve all seen servers running around doing their best, but the problem is sometimes to understaffing, but in many other cases poor planning or poor “floor management.” As a former restaurant manager (and regional manager) I often poor service that appears to be short staffing but with closer (experienced) observation it is simply poor coordination and poor floor management.
I don’t disagree with you. The OP though suggests that we should ablolish tipping for reasons that I don’t think warrant the change and makes a case that I don’t think would be supprted by either a) management (or the service industry), b) servers (the supposed benefecieries os such a scheme) or c) the majority of customers.
We 're being asked to fix something that just ain’t broke.
Dear Jane,
Aren’t we all agreed that the customer pays the whole cost whether it comes from tips or from meal price? If $12.00 is the true cost of the hamburger I’m paying it now.
And everyone keeps saying that we all know that the cost is going to be higher than the price listed on the menu.
So all of the arithmetic doesn’t mean a damned thing. The customer pays for everything including the owner’s profit, so it seems to me the true cost to the customer should be stated up front.
That’s all.
blowero said:
If put to a vote, I would guess that the overwhelming amount of servers would NOT want tipping to go away in favor of a higher salary. Ask some of them.
Maybe the problem isn’t racism but that most Americans were sleeping when “base 10” math was being discussed around 5th grade. If you can’t calculate that 20% of a $16 check is $3.20 within 10 or 15 seconds our problems are much greater than we all thought. I doubt that I’ve ever spent more than 30 seconds figuring a tip, even when dining with friends. Why is this so complicated?
I’d bet the ranch you’d lose that bet, unless the pay was $20 or more per hour in most urban areas. Even then there would be a significant percentage who would take the risk and make their own way. And most restaurants could never afford those wages without your beer costing you $8.00. To this day I still have friends in the restaurant business who can make $200 or more in a shift, and routinely make more than $100. As often as I’ve heard, “the bastard didn’t tip me”, I’ve heard, “I just got a $25 tip on a $85 check.”
Once again, false. Under reporting tips doesn’t help management. It lessens (fraudulently) the tax burden of the server. It also benefits the consumer who is paying less on the menu vs a strict payroll (no tipping) arrangement.
If restaurants were to pay servers somenthing along the lines of $8-9 per hour for servers (even $10-11) I would imagine that the “vast majority” would be opposed to it. I say this because most servers, in my experience, under report tip income and make more than $11, even before the benefits of under-reporting.
If all of their income was subject to withholding, they would require something greater than $15 in my estimation to acheive the same income. And, in high end restaurants that number easily doubles. If the waiters at the Berghoff were not tipped and paid $30/hr the cost of your steak would more than double.
First of all, I’ve served before, so I know what goes on back there. Second I never said the “white” racist staff - stop being so damned self-centered. Third, how can you say this:
And then admit this:
? All after insulting me by implying that I play victim as hobby, no less! You dissmised the idea that waiters hold prejudice against black patrons in one paragraph, and then admit that the prejudice is “pandemic”, even amongst your gay (as if that means anything. Around my parts gay means racist) liberal employees. I don’t see the point you were trying to make.
It’s easy for you to imagine that your service was consistent, but I’ll prudently doubt that you or your co-workers were able to flawlessly hide your sense of impending doom when waiting on black customers.
More importantly, since this is the case now, why should good black tippers be met with frightful waiters just because of other people who happen to share their skin color. And why should bad white tippers be met with excitement and relief and ride off of the good deeds of stangers who merely mirror their complexions.
I like the control. I like that I can make more for doing better because I’m better at serving tables than most of the servers out there. If I wanted a steady hourly rate I would work in an office. Instead because I am good at making people happy I can make my money working less than 30 hours a week.
Tipping means that the resturant pays each server less, not more. Since they pay us less there is less incentive for management to understaff the front of the house. There are times when management will try to cut payroll but generally they do it in the kitchen where the employees make a higher hourly rate.
There is little incentive to understaff a dining room and far more often the opposite occurs. Since we cost them so little some managers will keep too many servers on rather than risk being caught short. If you would check your watch whenever you see the servers rushing around I suspect that you will find that it is between noon and 2 in the afternoon or between 5:30PM and 8:30PM. These are the typical lunch and dinner rushes. Eliminating tipping won’t change when most people want to eat lunch and dinner.
And finally, I’m glad that the raindog challenged pizzabrat’s “industry-standard racial prejudice” comments. I am sensitive to racial discrimination in society but when I’m at work I’m there to make money. If you give me a choice between a black family and a white family I’m going to pick the white family to wait on every single time. That’s not racism, it’s economics. Blacks tend to tip less. Of course, I’ve never worked anywhere where the servers were allowed to pick their own tables. Management knows that left to our own devices we would cherry pick.
pizzabrat said:
What goes on back there? I have to admit that in the 12 years I did this for a living I never saw it. I did however hear waiters comment that black patrons, on average, tipped less than their white counterparts.
If that is/was their experience, I do not find it to be racist in any fashion. It’s simply their observation. (which was parallel to my observations)
If OTOH, they used that experience to treat a black patron poorly, that is racism plain and simple. (You can’t judge a patron as “poor tipping” before they’ve settled the bill, right? And making that assumption up-front based on skin color is indeed racism)
But publicity with the Denny’s incident aside, I don’t believe that this is as pervasive as you infer.
I didn’t say you said that. But you did say this, right?: "but having said that, I of course think that having your restaurant experiences marred by industry-standard racial prejudice is a bad thing that shouldn’t be." and this, “You’re black and you sit down at a restaurant. You wait ten minutes before seeing a server because the staff is in the back fighting over who’s going to be the loser to wait on you.”, right?
I simply don’t agree that the problem is as pervasive as you suggest, and even if it was, the proposed solution would simply act as a subsidy from formerly better tipping patrons (white or black) to formerly poorer tipping patrons.
In short, I don’t think the problem exists, and even if, the solution accomplishes nothing.
I never said:
a) That waiters held prejudice against black patrons. I simply stated that in their experience black patrons didn’t tip well. My black friends have said as much and griped about it! Further, I said that they would have preferred to not wait on black patrons, all things being equal. (for the stated reasons) But I also said that they were good natured about it, and I never saw tham give poor service to a black patron because they anticipated a poor tip.
b) I never admitted any pandemic prejudice towards black patrons. Please re-read my post.
What kind of restaurant did you work in? I must admit I never felt doom. (or euphoria when I got a great tip) It was all in a days work, and on average I made very good money, and really enjoyed myself.
Excellent point, despite the hyperbole. I’ve never met a “frightful” waiter, and while I don’t doubt that black patrons occasionally get poor service, the waiters I worked with took it all as part of the job and delivered the best service they could. (Even the liberal, gay racist waiters…) They knew that some black patrons were excellent tippers and that some white patron were poor tippers. And so, I never knew any of them to dispay "excitement and relief " when they were given a white patron.
Still, if a waiter delivers poor service due to prejudice, or a sense of anticipation that a black patron will tip poorly, it is wrong. It should be reflected in the tip, and the manager should be notified of your disatisfaction. If the manager doesn’t rectify the problem you should no longer patronize the establishment and tell your friends.
But eliminitating tips because of perceived racism accomplishes nothing.
and,
but,
Can you guys please map out the loopholes I’m supposed to jump through to get to where you are? From what you’re saying, it sounds like “industry-standard racial prejudice” is a perfectly apt charactarizion.
The same thing you keep saying goes on back there. But of course you can view somebody complaining about black tables as being “good natured and cool about it” - you’re not black, it doesn’t affect you! As self-centered as you’ve already proven yourself to be, I’m sure you would’nt be able to describe black co-workers who badmouthed white customers as being “good natured and cool about it”!
pizzabrat said:
I’ll try…
If many servers experience that, on average, black patron tend to tip less than their white counterparts, that is simply their life experience and observations. There is nothing sinister, or racist about it. It’s just what they observe.
OTOH, if those same servers take this limited empirical evidence to make the statement that all black patrons tip poorly, that is racist and can’t be supported.
Going even further, if a server takes his/her experiences and begins to treat all black patrons poorly in anticipation of a poor tip, or refuses to serve a black patron that is indeed racism.
But neither I or 2sense said anything of the sort. It’s one thing to acknolwedge that a white family is likely to tip better than a black family, (on average, and based on personal experience) and to prefer to wait on them. It’s another thing to demand to wait on only white patrons, or to to refuse to wait on black patrons.
You seem to be inferring that anyone who dares to relate personal experiences like this must be racist. That is a faulty assumption. I’ll let 2sense speak for him/her self, but I saw nothing inherently racist in that post.
I heard very little complaining. More importantly, I didn’t see it affect the level of service that was given. Tipping is a common, accepted practice in this country. There’s nothing racist in complaining when someone tips poorly. That statisically blacks were more likely to tip poorly was incidental to the servers. I never saw it affect their overall perspective on black people, or affect their relationships with them. It should be noted that the black servers had the same observations and occasional complaints. A poor tipper is a poor tipper, regardless of race.
In my experience, the only person it affected was the server!! The black patron in almost 100% of the time was oblivious to the the waiter’s disappointment for substandard compensation for the service rendered, and said nothing to the patron or displayed any negative attitude toward the patron. You keep speaking as if the patron is getting the raw deal. It’s the server who is getting screwed!
This is unwarranted.
After this,
I think it isnt.
And admitting that you and your peers would avoid waiting on blacks if it were up to you while trying to claim that racial prejudice amongst waiters isn’t a problem shows such an obvious and forced disconnect that it’s clear that debating the racial aspect is just plain pointless with you. I’ll just say, then, that I’ve been a patron and I’ve been a server, and in both situations, tipping was unpleasant. There have been enough people who agree with me here to show that it’s not just me. I suspect it’s the management is who is fond of tipping the most.
I’m guessing you’ve never eaten in an understaffed restaurant.
If only that were true. I know what a server running around frantically looks like, thank you very much.
Hmmm…according to your theory, that would never happen, because it would “drive revenue and profits directly down”. Therefore they never do it, right?
I’m guessing you’re a server. O.K., now I’ve heard one server say they like the control.
Even if that were true, and even though you don’t seem to think so, it’s still unfair. If the kitchen is understaffed, I’m still not getting my food as fast as I should, and the only way to register my displeasure is to withhold the server’s tip.
Well it doesn’t do a lot of good to have enough servers when people aren’t eating, does it? Of course they’re rushing around when it’s busy and not rushing around when it’s not busy. That’s beyond obvious. I didn’t say ALL restaurants are understaffed, and you very well may have worked at one that is not. But many are.
pizzabrat said:
Cool!
My sentiments exactly. The lurkers must determine for themselves if the aggregate experience and observation of servers is tantamount to racism. (as opposed to demonstrable behavior)
I don’t know who my ‘peers’ are, so I’m reticent to speak for them. But I never said I would avoid waiting on them. (I actually met my wife that way) Nonetheless, I simply said that many servers, all other things being equal, often would have preferred to wait on a white customer because their experiences suggested that, on average, they are better tippers. I never had a server refuse to wait on a black patron, or give poor service because they were black. If those observations, and the preferences that they inspired, (without any demonstrable negative behavior) make them racists, have at it.
I can’t understand why. Maybe you are a poor tipper. 
Maybe you were a poor server. (Just kidding) Who knows? It just doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
Management is indeed fond of the tipping arrangement for many reasons, none of which involve race. But so are servers, and I would imagine most customers.
This isn’t a moralistic point for me or anything, and it’s not like I wanna fight the power and stick it to those bastards in managment or those fat-cat over paid servers, or even those penny pinching money grubbing customers. It isn’t about communism or capitalism, left or right, Democrat or Rupublican, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out how the hell race became involved in this.
I’m just saying it is annoying.
And I assure you that base 10 mathematics are not the issue for me. I simply never quite know if I should tip 15% or 20%, or I am on a date and had bad service and I don’t know if I should go ahead and tip 15% even though I really want to tip 10%, or should I avoid going above 20%, what will people think, am I trying to hit on the waitress? And then going back trying to mentally review the service. Was she rude? Is he overworked? Is she pregnant? Is he struggling to make ends meet? Is he so god-damned attentive because of his meth habit? Am I enabling? Am I a good person? Am I going to hell? All of these little factors in life that I don’t want to consider when paying for a service. In fact, I know that Noodles and Company has quasi-full service without tipping (they have rather emphatic little placards), the service was perfectly fine, and I liked that.
Absolutely outstanding post and very, very funny. And, I agree with you 100%. The dilemna about tipping on a date is particularly apropos. I’ve had this same dilemna where I wanted to under-tip (for poor service) but didn’t want to seem like a cheapskate.
I’m cool with the tipping arrangement over-all, and I concede there are times when things get a little wierd. But I get my panties in a bind when it is suggested that we should ban tipping because of a industry wide roving band of liberal, gay racist waiters, and the evil management staff who are oblivious to the aforementioned waiters who have obvioulsy run amok.