There’s a little flaw in this argument. The minimum wage is the law. Everyone, by law, is required to be paid at least the minimum wage. There is an exception in those places where tipping is well-established that allows employers to pay less than minimum wage. In those places where the employees aren’t paid minimum wage, the balance between their hourly wage and what they actually earn is paid by the customers in the form of tips. If the total hourly wage plus tips comes out to less than the minimum wage, the employer is, by law, required to make up the difference.
But since so many people think they are saving below-minimum wage workers from utter and complete poverty with your tips, those workers often earn much more than minimum wage. I am experienced enough to know that sometimes those below-minimum wage + tip earnings blow the above-minimum wage earnings out of the water.
Why anyone is so eager to directly pay someone else’s wages, essentially letting the employer off the hook, is beyond me.
Yes, I read your post about how critical your job at a sandwich counter is (yes, Subway is a sandwich counter). I criticized your sense of entitlement and my views haven’t changed. Get over yourself.
I completely agree that the whole culture of tipping is a little fucked up, but unless we’re all going to act like Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs, it’s the system we have to deal with. I also seriously doubt that anyone really thinks their tips are “saving” people from utter poverty. The system may be fucked up, but I think it’s common knowledge how it works. No one really believes the servers in a four star restauraunt are a step away from homelessness.
im on the bot of people who dont avoid tip jars, i think thats kind of ridiculous, especially since, if the service is good at a counter place, i like to leave at least the change in the tip jar…
slight hijack, but if every one thought like Mr. Pink about tipping, then restaurant prices would be higher, because managers would just have to pay waitresses more.
also, i dont think a tip jar is necessary in retail establishments, although i have recieved tips before, in my experience in retail jobs ive always made at least a few dollars more than minimum wage or was commishioned(sp?).
I get regular ol’ drip coffee at Starbucks, and I still drop a buck or two in the tip jar; I used to work at a coffee shop (for about three weeks) and I hated it so much that I drop a buck now out of sympathy.
I never understood why people who work at Starbucks don’t go into some other tipped industry; I bartend now, and I can assure you I’d never do it for $6 an hour. The least I can do is tip 'em; they told me they use the money for the After Work Party–aka beer money–and that’s a great cause.
The funny thing is, since I go to the same couple of Starbucks, I get free coffee, free pastries, etc., from time to time, and they start pouring my coffee when they see me coming, regardless of the line. Since my main bitch with Starbucks has always been the lack of a Just Freakin’ Coffee Line, it works out well. (Plus it pisses off other people in the line ahead of me, and for some reason I find this amusing.)
FYI, Cinnamon Girl, while it’s true that employers are required by law to supplement wages when they don’t meet minimum wage requirements, I’ve never worked at a single restaurant/bar that did. When I was working my way up the food chain at a bar, I worked a lot of day shifts at “the crappy bar,” and I was paid $3.50 an hour. A lot of times I’d make two/three bucks the whole shift.
I was never once compensated for getting paid an illegal wage, and I didn’t want to quit b/c I knew that if I stuck it out, I’d get better shifts behind the main bar.
Eventually I did, so for me it was exchanging short-term money for long-term money, but that doesn’t mean I think any better of my employer for getting away with it, or that it doesn’t go on everywhere else, too.
Hon - I think yer just a tad self-involved here. You would probably care a lot less about what people think of you if you realized how seldom they think of you.
I really don’t have a problem with tip jars at a place like Subway, where the “counter help” is custom making my sandwich for me. That person is giving me personalized service. Ditto for Starbucks. If the barista is personally making me a capuccino or lovingly preparing my tensor fasciae latte, they are giving me personal service, so they deserve a tip. I actually squawked a bit when I went to a Border’s Cafe for lunch and not only was there no tip jar, but a sign that said “no tipping”. I felt insulted. This nice person personally toasted my bagel an put cream cheese on it for me, and I wanted to tip him, and a sign posted by his Evil Corporate Overlord said I wasn’t allowed to. I thought about slipping him a buck anyway, but in the volatile employment climate here in Vegas, I was afraid of what might happen to the guy if just the wrong person saw me do it.
I have, on a couple of occasions, seen tip jars at fast food joints like McDonald’s or Burger King. I never put money in them. I find the idea that someone who did nothing more than take my money and hand me an assembly-line made burger deserves a tip to be offensive.
I think the reasoning behind that is to prevent retribution for non-tippers and favoritism for good tippers. To corporate, every customer is important. Besides do people working in these types of establishments really need another thing that might piss them off? No tipping, no hard feelings on either side. Sucks they had to put that in writing though, makes it seem that much more cruel.
Part of my point was that I have no sense of entitlement to tips. I don’t care whether someone tips me or not, and I said so in my post. It’s insulting to my customers for you to imply that you are smarter than them.
Service like that, Lola is why I’m glad there are tip cups in takeout places, and why I don’t hesitate to drop in a buck or so when the counter people do an excellent job.
One busy Saturday, Mrs. U and I were at our favorite Chinese place. There was a line waiting to get in. The waiter brought the check and the fortune cookies, placing a cookie deliberately in front of me. The fortune was handwritten, and said We Need Table. You Go Now. I looked up and the staff were all peeking at us from behind a partition at the back of the restaurant, giggling.
Nah, I don’t avoid the places. The coffee / bubble tea is usually expensive enough, although if I order a bunch of things to go with it, I will probably tip a little… depending on how much money I have at the time.
Yes, but you know - as insulting as that might have been, I cannot help but think of the oddness and surreality of it outweighing any indignation I might have. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. It’s like something out of a movie.
I don’t mind tip jars, except the one time at a Starbucks in ATL when with absolutely no warning and with absolutely no provocation in body, mind, or spirit on my behalf - the cashier snatched up the tip can, thrust it in my face and shook it hard, rattling the change in it, about an inch from my nose, and said “SEE THIS?!?! CAN YOU SEE THIS WITH THOSE GLASSES YOU WEAR?”
I looked at her, didn’t say a word, and left. So did about half of the line behind me, without making their order. To the catcalls of “That’s right! That’s right!” from the cashier.
To this day, I still don’t understand. She agreed with my leaving? My non-tipping? What precisely was “right”? Another circumstance that was so surreal it just couldn’t make me angry. It was just…odd.
How appalling. As a Starbucks employee, I am ashamed. I only hope that you don’t equate that behavior with Starbucks in general, because I would have fired that girl on the spot if I were a manager that witnessed that. I doubt the corporate office would take kindly to that behavior, either. That is just not acceptable in any way shape or form.
You should be able to go into any Starbucks and get a comment card to bring this to the attention of corporate. Hopefully, you know the location and a close approximation of when it happened. If nothing else, the manager of that store (and his/her boss) will be aware of the problem and takes steps to prevent it from happening in the future. Also, I’m pretty sure that corporate will send you a an apology and a coupon for a free drink for your efforts.
I’m sorry you had that experience. Hope your next one is better.
Come on. Come on. It’s funny! It would’ve been funnier if the thing was printed out properly. In fact all fortune cookies should say things like that. If you felt pressure to leave, then that’s different.
I don’t think tipping is as prevalent over here. I mean, we tip, but we don’t get into a whole George Costanza thing about it. Unless there’s a tip jar in a cafe I’ll usually forget. Sometimes I leave something under the plate. But I like tipping, it makes me feel all philanthropic and righteous. Here, my good man… have 20p. Buy yourself half a tube of Polos.
The only people I regularly feel obliged to tip are taxi drivers, who, to be fair, already have reasonably good jobs. Trouble is I’m always giving them large notes, so I feel like a schmuck if I sit waiting for them to count out £3.73 change. This is a psychological pressure I can’t really wriggle out of, so I don’t take cabs any more, even if I have the money. It’s also entirely in my own head.
I don’t hold it against Starbucks. I still enjoy Starbucks, although my diet prevents the Evil Frappuchino from visiting me that often. As I said, it was too odd to actually make me angry.
I think it has something to do with the Atlanta Airport culture. The fast-food employees at every place seem to have an open contempt for the customers - especially at Concourse E. That Burger King in the International area there is like paying a visit to the Goddamn Soup Nazi. In fact, it’s the only place in any airport where I’ve heard the employees openly use a racial slur against the customers (they called the group of us a bunch of “dumb crackers” because we didn’t immediately step forward in line the picosecond that someone moved to the left to get their onion rings or some shit).
But IIRC it’s the only place to get a cheap, large Diet Coke whilst waiting 3 hours to head to Europe.
We weren’t insulted at all. We’d been regulars there for years, and we thought it just as funny as they did.
The restaurant closed years ago, and we still miss it. My daughter, who was just a toddler at the time, always had the same thing, her favorites: scallion pancakes and wonton soup. The waiter would see us walking up to the door, and by the time we were in the restaurant they had a high chair set up for the kid, with a scallion pancake and a bowl of wonton soup waiting on the tray for her.
Your mom was probably too shocked to do much else! I probably would be!
And heck, that skycap was probably the same guy that loaded my sister’s gajillion pieces of luggage onto a cart the last time I took her (and her twin toddlers) to the airport.
As the guy hefted her five bags onto the cart, I whispered, “Do you have cash?” in her ear.
“What for?” she asked.
“To tip him,” I replied.
She said she didn’t have any cash.
“NONE?” I asked (I’m a big believer in having some cash on you when you travel).
“No,” she replied.
So I gave her a $5 and a $1, hoisted my niece onto my hip, and walked into the airport ahead of her.
Several minutes later, once she had the twins all settled down with munchies to wait for the plane, she mentioned that she’d really like something to eat, too. I offered to run and grab her a danish . . . .
. . . and as I started to walk away, she called out, “Wait!” and I turned around to see her waving a $5 bill at me.
Which means she either lied to me about not having any cash at the skycap stand, or she stiffed the HELL outta that guy.
