That’s assuming that customers are really too dumb to figure out that tip is part of the cost of getting a plate of chicken and so are somehow fooled by one tipping scheme or another.
More likely is just that there are other reasons why American plates of chicken cost more (for which there could be lots and lots of reasons: i.e. land costs more, workers demand more take home pay, our chicken market is less subsidized, etc.)
For your doctor, presumably your “tip” is return business. You come back, your doctor sees you again, you give him his fee again.
A server has no such benefit from your return business outside of patronizing their employer’s establishment. Therefore, you leave the gratuity while you were there the first time.
As for why we don’t “tip everybody” I think it hinges on the ability of the person in question to go above and beyond their job description to make you a satisfied customer.
I personally don’t tip when I go to Starbucks. I order a coffee. Their job is to make coffee. If that’s it, that’s the end of transaction. If, however, I order a “non-fat, skinny, double shot, double flavor (sugar free), heated to exactly 193 degrees, latte, split into two cups” I’m sure going to leave a tip. My special requests are not on the menu. They are going above and beyond “making coffee” just for me.
The thing you have to remember is that tipping is a cultural phenomenon that has been evolving over decades. It isn’t a brand new idea someone trotted out and introduced to the industry. We tip waiters and hairdressers instead of cashiers and doctors not out of some well considered strategy to manage those industries, but because that’s how society evolved. The lower minimum wage, for instance, is a reaction to widespread tipping, not the underlying reason for tipping.
I also don’t agree it has anything to do with bossing people around. I would submit that non-tipped retail workers get just as much crap from bad customers as waiters. The only difference is the customer has a recourse if they get substandard service, something other than complaining to the manager.
I prefer the Dutch " tipping optional" to the US-tipping system.
I’ve noticed a fundamental difference between US culture and Dutch culture. In the Dutch nanny-state, it is impossible too stray too far from the middle. Our tax-system, and the prevailing Dutch negative/jealous/smallminded attitude to every Dutch person who is too rich, or too succesfull, makes money simply less a matter of life and death. If you have extra money, you have nicer things, more living space, more freedom, and more possibilities; but you aren’t respected more. And if you don’t make any money at all, well our baseline standard of living on wellfare is doable too. The Dutch attitude towards money reflects that. Money is important, but not* that* important.
In contrast, in the USA, money means security and respect for yourself and your family. You can never have too much money, because you might just as easily lose it all again if fortune takes a twist. Money signifies respect; that’s why the tipping debates get so emotional.
From what I gather, Americans in Holland are a bit bewildered by the service of waiters in Dutch restaurants. The level of the tip doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. The waiter will serve you as well as he feels like, which depends more on his own idea of how his professional atttude should be, his mood, and how well he likes you. So, sometimes the service will be horrible, sometimes it will be perfect, and the expected tip has nothing to do with it. In the Netherlands tipping is fully optional. Staff (mostly young people doing it temporarily) is paid minimum wages per hour, and tips go in the tip-jar to be shared with the cooks and other staff.
How do you figure restaurants in Canada are less tip dependent? I’ve never heard of a place in Canada where the tip standard wasn’t 15% for decent service, and higher if it’s really good.
Someone with more experience than I have should be along shortly to explain the nightly closing out procedure at many restaurants, but suffice to say that the tip left on the table does not go solely to the waiter/waitress. It is shared with other staff.
Sure, but a lot of waitststaff make a damn good living off of tips. Like I said, I would bet that a waiter at Houlihans or Fridays could conceivably be drawing 50k per year. At least here in New York where they are packed all the time.
Conceivably, sure. It’s funny, though, how waiting tables remains largely the province of students, unskilled workers, and people without educations - in other words, folks who don’t have good-paying alternatives.
Define “a lot”
Define “a damn good living”
It’s just like the myth of the panhandler who secretly lives in the Hamptons, a myth. As mentioned in a previous post, some high-end places can have a career waiter who earns 50k but it is such a rarity that it hardly warrents a statistical blip.
Also, few restaurants offer the waitstaff 40 hours per week, medical, dental and a 401k. The turnover for waiting table jobs is quite brisk. If it was a 50k/year job you’d have a lot more waiters driving BMW’s and owning homes.
Tips help, they can push you up to the $10-15/hour sometimes, but don’t fool yourself, as soon as they can a waiter will get a better job, I know I did.
I don’t think the US tipping system is optimum. Better base wages & optional small tips might work better. But, here & now, I manage to eat out in non-poisoned environments. (No, I won’t link to a certain Pit thread.)
In the USA today, outside the fast-food environment, tipping is not optional. Crappy service isn’t always the waiter’s fault. Problems in the kitchen? Too few on hand for that shift? If things are really bad, I just cross that place off my list. (Houston has lots of restaurants.)
Much of my misspent youth involved serving food & drink. (No, these were NOT those high-paying jobs.) But the experience made me appreciate service people.
Are you sure about this? It may be provided for in legislation, but I very much doubt that all waiters are actually receiving the minimum wage.
I don’t see how that substantially matters. Restaurants with good service can expect more return business, and the waiters DO benefit from that. Oftentimes people DON’T see the same doctor over and over: when was the last time you got the same doc at the ER?
Why is that less true with doctors or any profession? I’m a heck of a lot more worried about a doctor giving me his A game than I am someone slinging plates of cheeseburgers (particularly when most of the things I fret about with food aren’t really in the hands of the waiter anyway).
Depends on where you are.
Depends again, on where you are. In New York there are people who are professional waiters, oftentimes restaurants require “New York” experience, which would seem to imply that there is something special about the restaurant culture here in the big city. I know plenty of waiters etc… who made pretty good money. Here a normal restaurant is probably considered fancy elsewhere, considering on average you’re spending about 30 per person for a dinner out, more if you buy drinks. Finding Good waitstaff is difficult because it's a competitive market so there is incentive to keep them happy. I'm sure a number of waiters do own their homes. As far as driving BMWs, I don't know many people who drive cars that cost 1.5 times their yearly salaries. My Uncle was going to practically GIVE me a BMW, but I couldn't take it because the insurance was 6000 a year. A 2 bedroom apartment here goes for $ 2000-5000 a month in downtown Manhattan.
Again, it depends on where you are. Yes there is a low end of expectancy, and talking about what someone makes at a diner isn’t really indicative of the whole spectrum. I am talking about the high-end of the spectrum, not just short order places. High volume, high cost meals bring a lot of tips. I imagine that there are probably similar cultures in places like San Francisco. If I wanted to hop on the train to New Jersey I could eat at a four star restaurant for the same price as a mid-range trendy dinner place in the City, and I would be willing to bet they live on less tips. Of course their costs are probably significantly lower too.
I mean in the sense that there isn’t the $3 per hour min wage for servers. It’s my understanding that’s it’s slightly lower than the regular minimum wage, but not so drastically. They’re still not paid well, but they’re not so dependent on tips to bring them up to that level.
Nope. Waiters make at least minimum wage here (more if you go to nicer places, though in Calgary they probably make more than minimum currently) as with any job. I worked as a waiter a few years back and I got exactly minimum wage and dick all for tips because I worked afternoon/evening shift which for downtown Edmonton is very slow (plus a high number of vouchers due to agreements with people and NO ONE who had a voucher tipped).
How much is the waiter tipping out from that? That can take a pretty hefty chunk out of one’s earnings.
Tipping out refers to paying the bus boys and hostesses and such right? I accounted for that by not factoring in thousand dollar bottles of wine.
OK - I don’t think you will find many people tipping $200 on a $1,000 bottle of wine, which is why percentage tips at top of the range steakhouses are, I would imagine, significantly lower than in a beer & shots bar.
Again, New York is not the entire world.
Again, even in NYC, really good restaurants with professional waitstaff are not the norm. I’m sure the guy who served me every time I went to Wolfgang’s is making good bread, but most places in NYC are small, or are chain restaurants like TGIF’s.
$30 a head isn’t really “fancy.” I don’t know if you’ve been outside NYC, but I’ve bene in it, and most places there are pretty much the same as you’ll find anywhere else. Sure, the best of the best and the specialty stuff in NYC is unlike anything else in the world - I’ve eaten steaks in New York so good, it made me drool while I was chewing them. But we’re not talking about that one small little example. I’m sure doormen at exclusive Manhattan condo buildings do extremely well too, but if someone came into a thread about how security guards are paid shit, babbling about what doormen make at posh joints on the Upper West Side, would you consider that relevant, or a pointless outlier?
Waitstaff generally make shit. That’s why so many of them are unskilled and uneducated.
RickJay Waitstaff get paid in relation to the job they are doing. Someone slinging eggs and home fries is gonna get paid like they are slinging eggs and home fries. Someone serving Hanger Steak with a Bordelaise sauce is going to get paid like they are serving Hanger Steak with a Bordelaise sauce. My point was that it goes the full range, and while most waitstaff are being paid shit, I don’t think that it’s because of the custom of tipping. I used my counter example because it only takes one to falsify a hypothesis. My example points out that some people are making loot because of the very same custom (no pun intended). I am sure there are people in Salt Lake City, Albuquerque or Lincoln City Nebraska (all cities I’ve been to) who are making a very decent living wage as waitstaff, while at the same time just down the street there are people who can barely scrape by.
villa They probably aren’t paying full tip on a bottle of wine, and I doubt many of the waitstaff are making more than $ 100k, but the point is that one CAN make a very good living due to tipping. Around these parts people tip their hairdressers and their massage therapists as well. I personally like the notion of paying what you think a service is worth. If what people think that service is worth is not worth providing the service for then don’t do that job. I have never been a waiter because I probably couldn’t hack it in that job.