This. All of these comments about “subsidizing the owner” are misplaced. However it is structured, you the customer will be paying the wages of the restaurant employees. Whether the bill is $40 and you are expected to “subsidize the owner” by tipping $10 or the bill is a flat $50, then the result is the same. The owner gets his money from customers. You are paying his bills no matter what.
I also agree that all prices should be bottom line out the door prices. Of course I need at least a carry on bag if I am flying and probably a suitcase. You would take a suitcase on a 3 hour road trip if you were staying overnight, so why not when I fly across the country? That sort of hiding the real price is infuriating, especially when it is more than the ticket itself. You charge me $59 (plus tax, plus security fee) to fly me from BWI to LAS, but it is another $70 for my suitcase to be stuffed in the cargo hold? That is simply intentional misrepresentation.
And don’t get me started on “resort fees.” In Las Vegas you end up paying well more that double the advertised rates after taxes, fees, and “resort fees.” I’m a good capitalist. I have no problem if the Wynn wants to charge $250/night. But don’t tell me it is a SUPER DEAL! $99/night!!! when it is not that at all.
Several have mentioned this, but IMHO it is a side issue. Whether the government should mandate that servers make $7.25/hr, $15/hr or $30/hr, that isn’t the question here. The question is the delivery mechanism.
Should whatever they are required to make be done through regular wage payment with transparent pricing or done under the current system where the customer is shown a falsely low price and expected through a sometimes confusing custom of then paying additional giving the server a mix of a fixed wage and a tipped wage?
Whether the wage is too low applies to servers and the guy at Autozone. I’ll leave the prior debate for another day and go with the getting rid of tipping.
Another reason I don’t like it is that it implies a social caste. These people here are my societal inferiors so I am tossing them a few crumbs to carry my piss bucket. No, treat them like people and pay them a wage like everyone else.
I think we need to distinguish purely voluntary tipping from tipping that, while not added automatically to the bill, is almost mandatory.
This doesn’t hold, in my limited experience. But if a U.S. tip is typically 14% to 20%, and the tip in a no-tipping country is typically 0% to 8%, the incentive to serve well is actually greater in the “no-tipping” country! (8% vs 6%) Especially since most U.S. consumers have a standard tip (e.g. 15% or 20%) which they give regardless of service.
No thread on tipping is complete without mention that Mr. Pink doesn’t tip. (99% of you have watched this scene 9 times already, but maybe one of you has missed this great scene from a great movie.)
Yes, if you have any belief in classical microeconomics the equilibrium return on the capital and labor restaurant owners put into their places is not going to be a function of whether there’s a tipping culture or not. Many people have instinctive distrust or rejection of classical economics, heavily emphasizing the relatively marginal cases where it doesn’t largely explain wages, prices, capital returns, but ignoring the vast majority of cases where it does.
IOW when speaking of whether ‘we’ should have tipping or not, do you assume equilibrium employee compensation, customer prices and returns on capital and (their own) labor for restaurant owners would be much different with or without it? If you do, or if you think ‘we’ can just raise employee compensation and nothing else happen, you’re probably mainly making a wrong assumption.
Tipping is mainly a social convention not a determinant of wages, prices and capital returns on businesses that use it as a compensation model. I don’t like tipping, frankly not mainly because I think it results in people being paid less*, but it can create socially uncomfortable situations for me that don’t anyone else any good**. But just saying ‘we’ are going to change a social convention is pointless, it doesn’t work that way. It’s not immutable, but it’s also not decided by some centralized ‘we’ on a voting basis.
*Like a lot of things it would result in some paid more and some paid less. Who thinks that service staff at famous high priced restaurants would ever get a salary equal to 20-25% (if you’re talking NY) of the exorbitant bills there like they do now? Those jobs are often handed down within families. Other tipped staff might end up making more.
**I just pick a %, 20 for restaurants, and give it unless something really unusual happens. I’ll look up what ‘you’re supposed to’ give in other traditional tipping situations and just do it, I resist tipping in previously non-tip situations. I just don’t feel like agonizing over it.
I think you are overstating the difficulties. If customers would prefer a system with no tipping, then some restaurants will offer it. They will put a sign up that says tipping is not necessary and that all gratuities are listed in the menu price. If that is something customers like, then more and more restaurants will do it so that the social custom changes.
And, yes, of course there will be some changes to the compensation system like in the end high restaurants you mentioned. I have always thought it is silly that if I have plans to meet my wife for dinner and it turns out that I am not that hungry and get a $13 salad, or alternatively, I decide to splurge and get a $50 dish that the server’s compensation increased simply because he or she carried a higher priced item from the kitchen to my table, or if we ordered a bottle of wine that night instead of iced tea (that the server would have to refill) that her compensation is much higher for carrying wine.
Of course, someone working in a high end fine dining restaurant is not swappable with a Denny’s waitress. That individual needs to have special training, have knowledge of the menu items, be able to recommend food and wine pairings, have a crisp and professional appearance, etc. so the salary for that person will definitely be more in line with those needs if the restaurant wants to stay in business.
But, I think that getting rid of tipping would reduce a lot of the inequality that comes with two waitresses, doing almost the identical job, getting varying degrees of compensation just because of the food offerings. Without tipping, the compensation would treat like things alike.
Perhaps restaurants could differentiate based on service levels which they have no incentive to do now when people largely just plunk down 15% to 20% unless the service was either horrific or out of this world.
The worst example is a buffet restaurant like Sizzler where you pay upfront and they ask you how much of a tip you would like to put on the card. First, it’s a buffet and I am serving myself. Sure they bring drinks, but since I’m already getting up, just put in a drink machine. Second, I don’t know what the service will be like but you already want me to tip. How does that incentivize good service?
At top end restaurants or in classy cocktail places, the servers can make a incredible amount on tips. So much so, that giving them full Minimum wage would cut their pay by about 90%.
No, we’re not proposing cutting their real wages by 90%. We’d ask that re-structured restaurant prices reflect the status quo to at least a greater degree than that. The objection is not realistic.
When I was a tipped employee, in fact I rather liked having money in my pocket at the end of my shift, and then every two weeks I also got a check. (A very small check.)
But, at the most high-end restaurant I ever worked at, tips were pooled. And we also had to tip out some people who got minimum wage, which was a different minimum wage than what we got. For example, the dishwashers and busboys. They only got a small portion of the pooled tips but it seemed to me, as people whose minimum wage was guaranteed, they shoudn’t have. Also in that restaurant the hostess made minimum wage and was also one of the people who got the divvied up tips at the end of the day. In my opinion we all should have been making more money.
I also don’t get the tip inflation. At one point the standard was 10%. Then it went up to 15%, which was a lot harder for people to calculate. Then 20%. WTF? The meals and drinks are also getting progressively more expensive. If we’re gonna do it, then go back to 10%; if we’re gonna make it a mandatory thing then figure it into the bill.
That’s just it though. People dining at high end restaurants expect a corresponding high level of knowledge and service. Such a restaurant could not meet that demand and hire quality people by paying minimum wage. Who would put up with snooty rich people all day snapping their fingers when you could work at Subway for less hassle?
According to the law, your minimum wage was “guaranteed” as well in the sense that if you don’t get enough in tips to cover the difference, the owner has to pay. I understand that some owners violate the law as well as some servers violate the law by not reporting all of their income.
In addition, for whatever purposes tips serve, they are for personal individual service. If I give a waitress a tip, it is bullshit that the kitchen porters and busboys share in that. They didn’t provide me personal service.
I think you’re greatly overlooking the power people feel when they withhold a tip because…slow service, forgot the bread, didn’t like the attitude, etc. Now there’s no way for them to express their righteous outrage and still feel they have the high ground. They won’t like not being able to penalize the bad server.
Plus people like fawning service, being doted on, flattered, rushed to if they spill a drink, someone to tell them, ‘let me see if I can …’. All of those things will disappear, as will the appearance code.
People don’t like to tip, but they’d freak if, they effects tipping have on service, disappeared suddenly, I think.
I’m glad now that I separated out the poll into people who have and haven’t working tipped positions.
The (currently) 7:1 spread among people who haven’t was pretty much what I was expecting. The 2:1 advantage among those that have gotten tips is a little surprising. While the sample size is admittedly small I’d be interested in a debate panel of the two sides.
Or at least a bullet point list of arguments and counters…
ETA:
Yet the countries where tipping isn’t ingrained in the culture haven’t fallen into chaos with rioting in the streets.
Where they haven’t had tipping they don’t really do always prompt, polite bordering on fawning, and a swift reaction to your every need. They aren’t missing something they’ve never had. Different thing entirely.
I think it would just remanifest, to be honest. Initially service standards would suffer, I’m making the same whether you get good, bad or indifferent service. In such a world, sparkling overly accommodating service will indeed shine.
And then, a very human thing will happen. They def think you’re worth more, and want to feel they’re encouraging that better level of service, so they’ll slide you a little cash on the side. You know you would!
Welcome to the real world. It’s the way it is BECAUSE of the nature of service AND the nature of people.
Nope. I’ve lived in both the States and in Australia, and I can tell you for certain that service is just as apt to be prompt and polite here as it is in the States. It’s true I’ve seen little of the fawning, obsequious behavior here, and frankly, I don’t miss it.
In other words, your premise that a tipping culture breeds better service is simply not true. It all depends on the worker, and the management.
Sure there is: write a review on social media. Or write directly to the restaurant owner, tell him what happened, and say you will post a review if it happens again.
Plus, I don’t agree with your premise here. As galen ubal notes, it isn’t an observed problem in some other countries. I don’t find it to be a problem at convenience stores, supermarkets, or other outlets where there isn’t tipping. Service there is pretty much like service at tip-appropriate places. (Usually pretty darn good.)
Also since most people pay with a credit card, including tips, what keeps the managers and owners from keeping the tips? Its an honor system that they will pay waiters the tips.
Restructure your prices so that we don’t have to tip for your employees to survive. Tipping is a pain on both sides, sez this former waitress. Just do away with the practice.
Even if tipping is kept, the minimum wage that employers must directly pay to tipped employees should be no less than 70-80% of the minimum for everybody else, not 29% like it is now.
It had been a constant 50% for a fairly long time. But when the minimum wage was increased from $4.25 to $4.75 and then $5.15/hour in 1996-97, the lawincluded language to fix the tipped wage at $2.13, where it remained when the minimum for everyone else was raised to $7.25 in the late 2000s. Clearly the restaurant industry had very effective lobbyists.