So why doesn’t the employer take responsibility for paying the employee directly instead of bothering the customer with a guilt trip at every opportunity?
While I appreciate that in high class restaurants some customers might like to play nuanced game of manners and contrived noblesse oblige in front of their companions who they would like to impress. The handling of the bill, the theatrical assessement of the quality of service and the decison on the appropriate tip. I guess that is part of the theatre of the restaurant experience.
Scaling that down to quite minor transactions with very little service involved is not really the same thing. There is not much of social buzz to had from tipping a pizza delivery guy because it is common practice in that business to underpay their staff. I want my pizza, I don’t want to worry about the social welfare of the guy delivering it.
Do you have to tip for everything small thing in the US? What are the rules?
Nonsense. Companies are owned and especially controlled by a nearly closed subculture; and the people who run them tend to hold both their employees and customers in at best contempt. It is a matter of “us” and “them”.
Really? I used to be employed. One day I decided to do the same basic job, but be self employed. It was difficult and scary at first, but I never had to ask for admittance to a subculture. I hold people like you in contempt, but that’s about it.
I’m getting to to the point where I going to start ignoring passive-aggressive and sarcastic questions regarding cultural traditions (or at least don’t bother answering them) unless the tradition is negative or destructive. Admitting the inability to willingly give a gratuity to a service worker and angsting over guilt when being expected to pony up a small percentage of the tab to a hard working delivery boy isn’t pithy, it’s pitiable.
I explained the simple math to you … you’re paying the same amount either way. If you have trouble getting your wallet out and giving up a few bucks to the server or delivery person, the local customs may be a little too demanding for you … maybe just pick up a frozen pizza at the store.
Oh my god yes. The fact that we have institutionalized a gratuity is so broken a system I have no idea how it’s tolerated. The idea that the minimum wage can be circumvented by the possibility of extra compensation seems so illegal to me. The fact that we consumers are being strongarmed into adding extra money so that menus can reflect a lower price is wrong. Flat out wrong.
Pizza Guy, here’s my beef with you. I always speak up to support tip earners. I wish greedy employers would pay more (but they’ll only pay what they think they have to) and I want to see a higher minimum wage … and a minimum wage that doesn’t include commandeering tips. OK? I tried to engage you with a couple of sincere ideas regarding your rant … you’re just not coming back to your own thread. It’s getting pretty frustrating sitting around arguing with “yet another urbane immigrant who left where-ever (UK?) to live here because here is preferable; now let’s complain about “here”, it should be more like where I left.”
I have a question for you, Pizza Guy: Are you suggesting a higher wage AND that tips be curtailed? That’s what it sounds like. You’d rather make more guaranteed, but the employer now advertises that tipping is neither required nor expected.
I see a problem with that. Business owners have it in their best interests to minimize expenditures and maximize profits. Right now,(for the sake of discussion) if the pizza is $10.00, and the average tip is $2.00 ( I can’t imagine any normal person tipping less than $5 per pizza, but that’s just me), then you’re at $12.00 per pizza. The only thing that could motivate the employer to pay you more than the extra $2 is the Government forcing him to pay a minimum wage that, in the end, gives you more than an extra $2 per delivery.
Are you thinking he should pay that minimum wage, plus a little more for car expenses, higher gas prices, etc? Well, he’s not. Sorry. Unless something convinces the employer that it’s going to cost more to get a pizza to the customer and make the sale, he’s not paying more.
A grass roots effort to raise the minimum wage may help you in the long run, but ranting against tipping won’t. There’s already a new generation of entitled middle-class brats who’d just as soon not tip you.
If you really hate tipping (???) then why don’t you approach your employer with this plan? Tell him to start an advertising campaign that announces: NO TIPPING EVER! From now on, you don’t tip our delivery people. That’s right, no more tipping! Feel like you’re back home where you left to come here … stop stressing over a paltry gratuity … be as miserly as you like! You just don’t have to tip our delivery people!!! (in small print: medium pizza now $13.00)
The extra dollar is to pay the printing and distribution for the new flyers. Radio ads will kick the price up to $14.00.
Convince the employer that cheap insecure bastards will flock to buy the new $14 pizza cause it’ll save them a tip. That’s the only way he’ll pay you more, unless the Government forces him.
There’s another way of looking at it: if the employer pays the minimum with the rest coming from tips then you get to decide how much the driver gets and you know the pizza company can’t stiff him/her. If you think the driver is underpaid then tip more–it’ll go directly into their pocket.
No the best way, if you don’t like tipping, is to not tip.
If enough people do it then the custom will grind to a halt and employers will be forced to re-jig their pricing to pay a living wage.
I’m on holiday in central Europe at the moment In a non-tipping culture and the service is excellent, carried out by people who do the job as a profession.
So, the “best” way for Pizza Guy to attain a living wage in the pizza delivery racket is to wait for the cultural norm of this country to eventually change to be more like Eastern Europe?
When Giuseppe, the pizza parlor owner raises his prices to pay Pizza Guy (because as you know, the consumer pays the wages, not the greedy boss), will his business flourish or will Pizza Guy be out of a job?
I have exactly zero interest in how a pizza delivery person gets paid. Tell me the price and I’ll decide to pay or not. After that, it is up to the business owner to sort out their internal affairs. I want it to be absolutely nothing to do with me.
I’m sorry, but why should I care about how much Pizza Guy makes? No one held a gun to your head and made him join the pizza delivery game. He didn’t put yourself through a grueling academic pizza program only to feel like he was lied to about the opportunities in the pizza delivery business. He didn’t pick the wrong time to enter the business because of some unforeseen pizza market crash.
I think it’s pretty common knowledge that pizza guys, as a profession, don’t make much money. And it’s not like the pizza industry’s target market of hungry college students is going to support a significant increase in labor costs.
So I guess my question is at what point is it Pizza Guy’s responsibility to say that this job isn’t meeting his financial needs and try to find one that does?
“I have exactly zero interest in how a pizza delivery person gets paid. Tell me the price and I’ll decide to pay or not. After that, it is up to the business owner to sort out their internal affairs. I want it to be absolutely nothing to do with me.”
I care about Pizza Guy. But, I’m disappointed he abandoned his own thread.
I already told you, the new price of the $10.00 pizza is $14.00. It would have been $12.00 if you gave Giuseppe $10 and Pizza Guy $2, but now that tipping has been abandoned, you can give Giuseppe $14. The good news is that, in an effort to be more like our Eastern European brethren, the pizza features sliced Gyulai kolbász and csipos. Mmmm.
OK, well when those new prices are posted on menus I can make a choice can’t I? It may be that certainty of cost for me and income for Pizza guy come at a higher overall price. I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing. Cheaper is not always better.
Not sure why you are fixated on Eastern Europe though. What have they to do with this discussion?
[QUOTE=DOL]
Employers electing to use the tip credit provision must be able to show that tipped employees receive at least the minimum wage when direct (or cash) wages and the tip credit amount are combined. If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct (or cash) wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the minimum hourly wage of $7.25 per hour, the employer must make up the difference.
[/quote]
What I gather from that (and someone else will likely correct me if I’m interpreting this wrongly) is that your employer cannot just pay you half the minimum wage and call it good. He’s still on the hook if you don’t get any tips. A 40 hour work week still requires a gross salary of at least 290 dollars. If you only made 20 bucks in tips that week, your employer is on the hook for the remaining 270 dollars.
I can foresee a problem here with cash tips. What’s to stop a dishonest tipped employee from saying he didn’t get any tips that week, even if he made out like a bandit? Or how does an honest employee prove that he didn’t make enough in tips to cover the minimum wage, and get his employer to cover the difference?