The non tipping argument seems to constantly amount to, ‘I don’t care for it, everyone else should stop doing it so I don’t seem like/feel like/look like a cheap bastard when I don’t tip on principal!
No one is making you tip. If you truly feel so strongly then don’t tip and leave the rest of us to do what we wish. That’s clearly the most obvious solution, for everyone.
Ending tipping, and paying servers only minimum wage, would be a huge pay cut for them. Here’s a suggestion, don’t screw with someone else’s income to satisfy the fancy of a few. Who are absolutely, 100%, free to not tip, anytime they wish, but need all of us to stop so they feel okay with reducing the incomes of already low income workers.
I could be wrong but I know some people in the restaurant industry and they basically say you don’t get paid minimum wage if you aren’t able to make up the difference in tips. The dynamic apparently also results in this unwritten rule that if you can get out of bed you’re not calling in sick because the restaurant doesn’t want to have to actually pay people their full wage for their sick days.
A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage might not end my tipping, but it would certainly moderate it. Now, when I sit down at a restaurant and get good service, I’m tipping 20% or even a little more. Were they to get that wage, I would probably cut my tipping to 10%. If, on the other hand, I saw that restaurants were significantly increasing prices to cover the new wage requirements, I might even stop tipping all together.
Nobody plans for a career in waiting tables, delivering pizza, or driving a cab. Tipping is a nice way of helping someone get into show business or writing their first novel, or just feeding their kids. That’s why I’ve never been quite sure about tipping skilled/career service workers like hair cutters.
So your world would be identical to today but without the ability to earn more than the normal minimum wage, sounds terrible. How it works for my friends (and several are still bartenders) is if you don’t get you minimum of $25/8 hour shift the management pays you up to that amount in your next paycheck. But it is also a two strike rule and the second time you don’t earn the minimum you’re fired.
My solution solves the lying without hurting people like you propose to.
Every night at bars, restaurants, and strip clubs around the US they are called tips.
Replacing tipping with proper salaries would be much fairer to servers. Tipping is exceptionally unpredictable and even good servers can have a terrible night due to reliance on tips.
If they’re paid good wages, tipping will start to die off. Part of the reason people tip is because they know the server is so dependent on it. I tip quite generously in part because I’ve known so many people who were servers and know the wild and unfair ride it is. The process would take years, I’d imagine. Of course, I think $15/hour isn’t even all that high.
A bad night in tips is usually the result of a slow night for the restaurant. A restaurant can’t cover that difference by raising prices if no one is coming through the door. The current system spreads the pain with the staff that theoretically is doing less work on a slow night.
Employees should have predictable wages. Why should the restaurant spread the pain to them because it’s a bad night? Unless the servers are part owners in the restaurant, that strikes me as being unfair.
Sure, but I’d still tip. Probably not much for an ordinary meal, but I’d tip 5-10% over the bill for very good service. And I’d like to know some portion of the tips is going back to the kitchen, and the bus boys and dishwashers too. The prices will be much higher, so they’re gonna have to work for me to do more than just rounding up the bill.
But if you recognize that $15 minimum wage is still pretty low then you should understand the difficulty of this problem. The servers now would love to get paid more but that will result in a lot of restaurants going out of business and those servers going from low wages to no wages.
So step one, a decent minimum wage. $15 is at least a start. The restaurants will be raising prices to deal with that. That is those that can even survive this pandemic, and I can guarantee you they’ll need to raise prices higher to cope with the drop off in business when people see the higher prices. It easily turn out to be more than the 15-20% that was going into tips.
Then you’ll have to deal with a new social paradigm for tipping. Several people in this thread will clearly be thrilled if restaurants start a no tipping policy, but I still want to tip, and I don’t like being told not to. I thinks it’s Mothers in the Big Easy, a famous tourist spot and reasonable priced eatin’ spot for New Orleans traditional food, that states their no tipping policy. I can’t help, I just leave some money on the table and hope they have some kind of charity fund they’ll contribute it to, but when I have a good meal I want to show my appreciation.
But at this point you don’t have to tip if you don’t want to. I’ll still be getting the better table, the sushi chef is going to go all out on that work of art that I will end up eating, my servers will be pleasant and attentive and ask about my friends and family, but you’ll still get your meal for the listed price on the menu.
I didn’t say it was fair, but it is very common to base compensation on actual revenue. Just ask any Uber driver who gets paid absolutely nothing for his time, just his actual labor.
I think this is one of the things muddling the conversation. Servers need to be paid a livable wage just like everyone else. This is aside from the question of is tipping a system that allows servers to earn more money from doing good work while allowing patrons to show their appreciation for good work or unhappiness with poor service.
Currently, here in Colorado, tipped minimum wage is over $13/ hour. Based on the reactions of some in this thread you would think servers would see a decrease in tips and at least so far my bartender friends haven’t seen any difference. Most of them say they average $1,000 per week so they earn $25/ hour which is serving about a beer every 5 minutes.
Just for the record, I loved working on commission and I would’ve been really pissed off if my independent contractor working on commission job had been converted to that of salaried employee. If that had happened, I would’ve quit and found another job in commissioned sales.
It’s not good for everyone, but most sales professionals like the system. It’s not even that much more stressful than a salaried sales job, because you’ll still have goals you’re expected to meet and you’ll get fired if you consistently fail to meet them, but if you’re commissioned you can bust your ass and “earn” a bonus or a raise at any time.
Now their are outfits that abuse the idea of commissioned sales, MLM companies and companies that are just looking for no-cost salespeople and don’t care if 95% of their hires fail. But there are lots of good commissioned sales jobs( mostly NOT in retail) that make for well-paying careers with a flexibility you don’t get as an employee.
Abolish the separate minimum wage for tipped workers, make it the same as the statutory rate for non-tipped workers. Restaurants could display a sign saying “this establishment pays its staff the full statutory minimum wage regardless of tips.” Add a government seal of authenticity, make it a felony to falsify that sign. Then everybody understands the game, both patrons and servers.
Some people would probably still find it “socially unacceptable” not to tip. That can’t be legislated. But I’d feel comfortable telling those people to go pound sand if we all understand that servers take home at least a straight minimum wage regardless of tipping.
This would be an excellent start, because the lower minimum wage is explicitly a way for businesses to screw over their employees, pushing costs and risks onto them under the veneer of sometimes garnering a large payoff. (Which you may or may not keep depending on the business’s policies on tip sharing and such.)
However I’m not convinced that that would make the minimum expected tip for decent repeat service decrease any. If they’ve got everybody handing over an extra 20% over listed price, why should they accept anything less?
Servers have always had to accept whatever tips are given, so nothing would change.
If your comment was rather “why would servers agree to an assured wage instead of a tipped wage”, I agree, servers wouldn’t go along with it if they are accustomed to tips that exceed the full minimum wage.
I would question how many servers exist whose tips exceed the statutory minimum wage, but I don’t know. I do know many servers who hate shucking and jiving for tips, or living with the risk of not making a car payment because external factors kept the customers home for a week or two.