I think I may just have to let this go, I think we are suffering from speaking the same language. 
I’m still not getting this. if you work 5 hours @$10 hour you make $50, it doesn’t make any difference what was billed. You are paid by the hour whether anything goes thru the register or not.
It’s not accurate to talk in terms of 5 hours, unless you’re talking about someone who only worked 5 hours over the whole week. Tipped workers have to earn at least minimum wage x hours worked that week - so you aren’t entitled to that $5 for your Tuesday shift if you earned $30 per hour on your Friday and Saturday shifts.
Which is why restaurant owners rarely have to “give you the five bucks” - because who would keep a job as a server if they made so little in tips that they were below minimum for the whole week?
Sorry, the time period where the minimum wage thing matters was a detail I was fuzzy about.
And yeah, something really strange has to happen to wind up taking home less than minimum wage given the normal base plus tips. I think this only came up because my roommate who was waiting at the time had some really weird week and he was complaining because he probably wasn’t going to get paid enough. I don’t remember the details but I don’t think he worked very much that week and a big part of it was either working times where barely anyone came into the restaurant or he had to help out with something that wasn’t actually waiting tables. I don’t remember the exact particulars.
It’s weird, but a lot of people think if wages go up a dollar, every single thing you buy goes up a dollar to make up for it. Go to McDonalds, burger - up a dollar, fries - up a dollar, coke - up a dollar, apple pie - up a dollar. Now my dollar meal costs $5!!!
I think he means "you earned $45 in credit card tips that went through the system (plus whatever cash tips you got that your employer doesn’t know about) ", But it’s still not right, because the employer would have to pay a minimum of $2.13 in direct wages ( no matter how much is earned in tips) for a total of $10.65 in direct wages and as long as you got around $40 in tips, the employer wouldn’t have to make anything up.
You keep saying that. Do you realize that said people are not necessarily reliable sources?
Yes, that’s why I’m qualifying it with that.
I have a problem with tipping for several reasons:
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It is based on a class system where it seems as if you are throwing coins at the mere peasants who serve you. Professionals don’t get tipped. When I win a trial, the client doesn’t slide me a $100 and pat me on the back and tell me how good of a “service” I provided. It is inherent snobbery which by its very existence implies that you are superior on the social ladder.
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It encourages tax evasion.
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As others have mentioned, it puts me in the position of having to “judge” the quality of service of the waitstaff, and I, like most people, don’t want to be the asshole and give the server the benefit of the doubt because she may be suffering from personal problems, and will likely tip the same amount for poor service, which then destroys the purported benefit of the system.
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The percentage system makes no sense at all. If I am feeling good that evening and want to order an expensive steak versus I had a bad day and just want a hamburger, why the difference in money the server is getting based upon carrying a plate of food to my table? He or she is doing the same work carrying a filet steak or a club sandwich.
But, to the OP, I don’t see a way from ending it other than legal prohibition which seems unlikely in the extreme to ever happen.
Put me down as another hater of tipping. I do tip, but it makes me angry every single time. I compare it to a grocery store that used to exist here. They advertised pretty good prices, had the same prices on the shelf, but then big banners hanging from the ceiling “We only add 10% to these prices”. Same text on the ads. My response: Never shop there. They deservedly went out of business years ago.
But with restaurants I there is no escape. They are all running the same scam. I would gladly pay a listed 20% higher price and have the difference go to the staff (who should be paid a decent wage for their work). But I can’t. In my single days my solution was similar to the grocery store one: Never go out to eat. But ThisOneGal likes to go out from time to time so I grit my teeth and do it.
Another rage inducing factor is the inflation. When I was younger 10% was considered a normal tip. Now right here in this thread people say 15% is fine, other say 20%. Others seem to say if you don’t pay at least 35% you’re a cheap bastard who hates the working man. (Hey! My parents were married.)
As for ensuring good service, the only other country where I’ve spent significant time is Japan where as mentioned upthread tipping is unknown. If you left extra money on the table when leaving they’d chase you down in the street to give it back. Service is uniformly excellent. Average Japanese service is as good as the best American. Its a cultural thing.
So how to fix it? I don’t know. Certainly getting rid of a lower minimum wage for tipped workers would be a good start.
Really? You’ve never gotten a “tip” or thank-you gift? When my divorce was final I dropped off a bottle of good wine at my lawyers office. She texted me a thank you as she enjoyed the wine that evening.
All admit, I’m one of those people that do want to be doted on when I go to a restaurant. Maybe not obtrusively, but yeah. Unlike going to the grocery store (which is becoming increasingly automated), going out to eat is a luxury and I expect to be treated well. The experience is as much a part of it as the food. If I get bad service (which is extremely rare in my case, like years in between) not only will I give a poor tip (still, no less than 10%), but I’ll probably not eat at that establishment for a long time afterwards. I just don’t think you will get consistent, American-style service (which IS a thing), without tipping and instead having all the prices go up across the board.
That said, I always throw an extra few bucks on the table when going out with my dad. I don’t know if he’s stuck in a depression-era mindset, or just a cheapskate, but the dude throws down pathetic (10% MAX tips), and thinks he’s doing them some huge favor.
I would be happy not to pay a tip if I saw a similar sign as mentioned above explicitly instructing you not to, prominently displayed in the restaurant. But I’d also expect excellent service at that restaurant, in-line with everywhere else, or I wouldn’t be back. If all the restaurants out there want to collectively do that, fine by me.
I think you’re missing the point- the stated reason for a tip is to reward good service, with the amount of the tip varying with the quality of the service.
But some of us feel somewhat extorted, because we’ve seen behind the curtain and know that it’s not just a gratuity, but rather part of the wait person’s base compensation that isn’t actually being provided by their employer, because the overall expectation is that the customer will provide that.
Personally I can see two ways that it would be fair; first would be that we pay servers a reasonable wage, and tips return to being a personal reward for good service, that’s outside of the employer’s ken.
The second idea would be to possibly make servers some kind of independent workers, like strippers. That way, they’d keep all their tips, and it would be known up front that it’s their compensation, and there wouldn’t be that feeling of extortion that part of your tip is paying for something that the employer should be providing to their workers.
This, and much of this thread is full of misconceptions. There are a few servers in this country making good money off their tips but this is a rarity in that small percentage of high end restaurants. The rest barely get by. Do you think servers work 40 hours a week collecting tips the whole time? Servers are lucky to get in 2-3 productive hours a day. That’s the period of time when restaurants are full for lunch and dinner. Otherwise they usually have to still work 2-3 more hours with few or no customers during which time they are cleaning and prepping. And then there’s Monday and Tuesday where business may be close to non-existent, and then sometimes it rains or snows, or a war starts, or there is a pandemic which may close down and eventually put out of business the restaurant they work at. There are far more servers working in little mom and pop restaurants than at the high end, and those are the people barely getting by.
And this idea of rich restaurant owners ripping off their employees and the public is absurd. There is no better way to lose money than to own a restaurant. Few make any reasonable profit, most fail altogether in less than 3 years. Almost all of the horror stories you hear about management taking tips from servers and other violations of law come from chain restaurants, and are perpetrated by individual restaurant managers. You can complain about them all you like, but it isn’t the tipping system or the servers causing the problem there. And a large percentage of those chain restaurants aren’t profitable either, they aren’t taking anything from the servers, they’re just not making any money.
As far as just increasing the price of a burger from $10 to $12, you clearly know nothing about business. At least the tips go directly to the server. The increase in price has to be much higher for a number of reasons, mainly that restaurants are not going to further decrease their margin as a percentage over costs. They will need much bigger increases to cover the costs of all the time they have to pay decent wages to their employees, whether the restaurant is full or not, even if the customers all buy hamburgers instead of steaks.
One of the worst sentiments I see in this thread is the idea that people would not tip even knowing that this is a terrible system, they would rather take advantage of that terrible system and not pay a fair price for their meal, and then resent the idea that anyone thinks they are cheapskate for doing so.
That is bizarre. Is that really a place that existed? I don’t understand why that would be a thing because no one expects a percentage added onto grocery items, so saying they “only” add 10% doesn’t make sense.
If that’s true, and you honestly would have no objection to paying a flat increase of 20%, then I really just don’t understand the hatred of tipping. You’re paying the same price either way. It would make no difference to you.
It actually does. With tipping, you can effectively give yourself a 20% discount if you don’t like the service. And if you didn’t like the service, why would you ever go back? (People who are scared of embarrassment or the mythical spit in the food, must also be fickle enough to go back to a place with lousy service deserving of no tip.)
I spent 20 years in food service. Most of my peers were or are in food service. It is not something that any of us have seen happen. It is definitely more rumor and innuendo than fact.
If the servers are making as much as the cooks, do you think that it is fair to tip the servers?
Personally, I think that they should get rid of the rule that production staff cannot share in a tip pool.
My ideal run restaurant would be that everyone makes a competitive wage, and that anyone who feels as though the experience provided was more than they paid for would be free to reward those who made it possible.
Servers only account for at most a quarter of your experience, why do they get 100% of the reward or punishment for it?
That’s not entirely accurate. Actually, it’s entirely wrong.
They need to make at least MW per hour. Not averaged over the week, or even the day, but the hour. If they are on the clock when you open at 10AM, and they don’t have any tables until 11AM, then you have to pay them MW for that hour. If they only had one table, and got $4 from it, then you have to make up the pay difference.
It is true that many restaurants do not do this, but that is actually what the law says that they are supposed to do.
The point here is, if you have a bunch of cash tips that you forgot to declare, then your official hourly wage may be less than MW, when in actuality, it was significantly higher.
The majority of restaurants split tips among the servers so they do not hold back tips. If they get caught holding back tips by management they will get fired, and if they are caught by other servers they’ll end up fired and maybe more.
Well yes, but I’m responding to someone who said they would prefer to simply have all prices increased by 20% because they hate the concept of tipping so much. Seems weird to say he’d prefer to pay 20% more if he normally tips less than that.
Is this true? My daughter’s first waitressing job split tips among servers and so she quit the job after a week. She never ran into that again.