Dude, really, the customers ALWAYS foot the bill, where else do you expect the money to come from? The corporate money tree?
Every cent that goes into the waiter’s pocket comes from you, the customer. Whether it passes through the restaurant’s books first is irrelevant. Actually, running it through the restaurant opens up the possibility that the waiter won’t get the money you designated for them, the owner could skim some of the money off the top.
Because they make tips. And you know what, I’m betting that even if they did make minimum wage, we’d still be expected to tip them 15%.
If you pay by card there is another line that comes up underneath the sub-total where you can write in your tip, then add it together for the real total. That gets charged to your card. Although, you can also leave cash on the table, which is a better option since it doesn’t get run through the restaurant first.
No one instructs you to tip, it’s just expected. And if you don’t tip, you get called a cheap bastard behind your back. If you make a regular appearance and never tip, then you’ll get really crappy service.
There’s a restaurant in Chicago, Charlie Trotter’s, that apparently pays a regular wage to its waitstaff. It’s a very upscale restaurant, so it’s not an inexpensive dining experience regardless. Tips that are left are supposed to be pooled among the waitstaff, I believe, though I thought I read an article in the paper recently saying that there had been a disagreement over whether it was paid out properly.
Probably one of the worst places to waitress are the restaurants that emphasize their buffet. From my experience working at one in high school, lots of people who just eat off the buffet don’t tip the waitress, or don’t tip well even though she’s been checking in on them, taking away their dirty plates, refilling drinks, etc. - everything a waitress would normally do except for carry out their entrees. So they make the crummy waitstaff pay rate and get lousy tips too.
Mr. Pink?
50%???
Are you kidding me? Do people really tip their hair-dresser this much?
When i arrived in the US a few years ago, i asked how much one should tip a hairdresser, and was told 15-20%. I’m a guy, and the place where i get my hair cut charges $23 for a regular guy’s cut, and $19 if you’re a student (like i am). My usual tip is $5-6 for the hairdresser, and a couple of bucks for the person who washes my hair. That works out at about 21-24% for the hairdresser (based on a $23 charge–i don’t tip less just because i get charged less), and about 9% for the hair washer.
I’ve been going to the same place for two years now, and my hairdresser always seems happy to see me, always gives me a good cut, and always seems happy with the tip i give him. I have concluded from this that my tips have been fair. Am i wrong?
From my experience, I’d say your friends is fairly exceptional. Stuff like that does happen, but those kinds of places don’t keep servers very long.
Oh – and if your roommate worked, say, a 5-hour shift @ 2.13/hr base, and walked out with only $7, then her employer is legally oblligated to make up the difference between her wage + tips/hour and $5.15/hr. If her employer didn’t make up this difference, your roommate could have had her employer’s rear end.
Excellent point; this is something that many people don’t seem to realize. The same laws that allow servers to be paid less than the minimum wage also require the employer to make up the difference whenever an employee’s tips do not bring his or her income up to the minimum wage level.
As Barbara Ehrenreich noted in Nickel and Dimed, many servers don’t know this either, and many employers conveniently “forget” to adhere to this aspect of the wage laws, or even to inform their employees that it exists.
Here’s an article in today’s Ann Landers that addresses the issue (shoot me now for involking the name of Landers/Abby):
Ann Landers
(I’d cut & paste it but then the board might owe a licensing fee or something)
It was merely a suggestion. If I was being mean, I would have said, “Hey stoopid, read a friggin’ book or sumpin.” 
My daughter worked in a bar for some time. Tips were essential for her to survive. She had to ‘tip out’ to busboys, etc., so her ‘take’ was considerably less than might be imagined.
Current laws allow restaurants to pay less than minimum wage because of tipping. There is a codicil to that, and I’m struggling to remember what it is, but it basically says that if the tips don’t bring the wage up to the minimum wage, the business has to kick in the difference. But I may be in error on that.
pizzabrat: The referenced book is written by an investigative journalist who decided to live the life and then write about it. The book has its shortcomings, but gives a pretty graphic picture of an entire subculture that is trying to survive on poverty-level income, while at the mercy of corporate indifference.
[Mr. Pink doesn’t believe in tipping waitresses automatically]
Mr. Blue: Our girl was nice.
Mr. Pink: She was okay, but she wasn’t anything special.
Mr. Blue: What’s something special? Take you out back and suck your dick?
Nice Guy Eddie: I’d go over twelve percent for that.
Mr. Pink: I’ve been here a long fucking time and she’s only refilled my coffee three times. I think she should be able to refill my coffee at least six times.
Nice Guy Eddie: Excuse me, Mr. Pink, but I think the last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee.
Mr. Pink: I’m very sorry the government taxes their tips, that’s fucked up. That ain’t my fault. It would seem to me that waitresses are one of the many groups the government fucks in the ass on a regular basis. Look, if you ask me to sign something that says the government shouldn’t do that, I’ll sign it, put it to a vote, I’ll vote for it, but what I won’t do is play ball. And as for this non-college bullshit I got two words for that: learn to fuckin’ type, ‘cause if you’re expecting me to help out with the rent you’re in for a big fuckin’ surprise.
Mr. White: You have no idea what you’re talking about. These people bust their asses off every day for us. These tips are what keeps them alive!
Mr. Pink: Ah, fuck all that.
Joe: Cough up a buck you cheap bastard.
People need to tip…
when a resturaunt opens… there are so many expenses…
Food, Rent, cooks, Busboys/girls… waiters and waitresses…
The place would not be able to survive if They had to pay everyone a decent salary…
enjoy your $15 steak… because it wouldhave to be $50 for the place to break even if paying all employees $10-$15 an hour…
Interesting argument.
Perhaps you’d care to explain how restaurants survive in places like Australia and parts of Europe, where waiters do not rely on tips and are paid respectable hourly rates? Having lived in Sydney, Australia for most of my life, i can also tell you that restaurant food is not noticeably more expensive there than it is in the United States.
As Cheesesteak correctly points out, the customer is going to foot the bill either way. It’s just a matter of whether the extra money is left in the form of a gratuity, or is incorporated into the price of the food. Having worked as a waiter in both tipping and non-tipping countries, i can attest that there are benefits and drawbacks to each system.
In a place where tips are expected, a waiter can often make considerably more than he or she would under a no-tip, decent-wage system. When i worked as a waiter in Canada, i often made excellent money, and Revenue Canada is rather less vigilant about taxing tips than America’s IRS, so much of this income was tax-free. The downside, of course, is that no matter how good a server you are, there will always be times when you get stiffed, either by assholes or by foreigners who haven’t bothered to learn the customs. Also, if the food is crappy or the owner doesn’t advertise enough, or whatever, then very few people come in the door, and there are very few tips to be made. So the servers end up losing money due to circumstances beyond their control. And believe me, there are many places where the chef’s don’t seem to give a shit if a burnt steak means that the waiter misses out on a tip.
Obviously, when it comes to places where tipping is not expected, the inverse in generally true. There is little opportunity for a server to have a “huge” night, because even when it’s busy there is little or no extra to be made in the form of tips. Also, all of the server’s income is declared to the government, so there’s no way to avoid tax (not that i think this is necessarily a bad thing). But, if the owner doesn’t get his act together and find a way to get customers, then he ends up forking over relatively high wages to a bunch of waiters who have nothing to do. This gives owners even more incentive to fill their places up. Of course, if some owners see a quiet night ahead, they often send home some of the staff. But when i was working in Australia, the law said that once you were at work the employer had to pay you for four hours, no matter what (i think it might have been reduced to 3 now).
Personally, while i liked working for tips because i often made very good money, i am more philosophically inclined towards a system that requires the owner to pay the wages of the employees, and does not leave it up to the whim of individual customers. Some argue that the absence of tipping leaves the server no incentive to provide good service. Well, having seen numerous people fired from jobs in Sydney restaurants for not being up to scratch, i can testify that this is bullshit. The owner has every reason to want the best serving staff possible, because bad service costs the establishment money. A server who wants to keep the job will do the job properly.
Finally, if you haven’t been to Sydney, i can assure you that it has a thriving restaurant industry, from cheap-and-cheerful through to ultra-chic, ultra-expensive establishments. Same goes for places like Melbourne, and most of Europe. You are right that a restaurant has many expenses; but whatever the country, the customer is the one who pays those expenses in the end. The only difference is the method by which the money is extracted.
A lot of the responses here are puzzling. As RealTronic and some others have mentioned, there are plenty of places in the world where tipping is either optional or not countenanced at all. None of these that I’ve experienced feature homeless and starving waitpersons or execrable service. So the notion that tipping is essential to keep your waiter alive and halfway attentive looks like hoqwash.
Perhaps for the sake of argument we should stipulate that wait staff receives fair compensation for time & effort expended, and debate whether this compensation should come from the employer (using money paid by customers) as in most businesses, or part of it should come directly from the customer.
If a waitress spends, say, a hour waiting on me and my wife and receives $10 for this, I can’t see that it makes much difference to her if she got $2.13 from her employer and $7.87 from me, or all $10 from her employer. Similarly, it doesn’t make much difference to me whether I paid $7.87 to her and 42.13 to her employer, or simply $50 to her employer. Nor do I think there’s much difference to the employer in the two ways of arranging this.
Japan is a great place to visit, and the restaurants are no small part of this. The food is uniformly of high quality. If you want to get fancy, the sky is the limit on what you can spend. If you want to eat in small “neighborhood” restaurants, it’s surprisingly cheap. Presentation is beautiful. Service is excellent. And here’s an amazing thing: when they say that a dish is 1000 yen, that’s what you pay for it. What a concept – you pay the listed price.
Here in the U.S., when you ask “How much is a cheesburger?” the answer always amounts to something like “Well, 79% of the price is $5.95” – tax and tip are required, but not listed. I see no advantage to this.
I think Americans kind of like the open ended pay that mhendo mentioned. You have the ability to really increase your earnings by being very good at your craft. I’ve not been a server, but a friend of mine earned a boat load being a waiter because he was very good at it. He took pride knowing that his skill was rewarded in his pocketbook.
Look at Nocturne’s roomie, and how upset she was that tips got pooled before distribution. She still got rewarded for her effort, just not as much. In the straight salary method, she wouldn’t get rewarded (monetarily) at all for her effort. The way things are today in the US, we couldn’t go back to salary, it would be disaster.
I’m more concerned that you’re getting a $19 haircut. That’s pretty darn expensive. I just go with the $12 one that my local shop gives. And I always tip $2.