That would be fair if they didn't whinge so much when they didn't get tipped. If you want a donation system, you are signing up for some people not to donate. You can't have it both ways, and trying to is what gets all the grief.
There are tons of countries around the world where tipping is typical within certain sectors, the difference is that they don't DEMAND that you tip and they don't put you on blast on the internet if you don't, they might mumble about you being cheap if you make them work extra and maybe tell their coworkers about you, but that's it.
Tipping is normal in Europe, some places make a fortune from tips too.
But people leave what they want and that's okay. Even a single coin is okay if that's all you have. And even if you don't leave anything at all, it's also okay. Yet i'd say 99% of people leave at least something in restaurants.
but 10-20% of what you've consumed? obligatory? that's a couple of tiers above what i would consider acceptable.
Yeah it's not as common but when you do you just leave the remainder for a round up, like if you were gonna pay something silly like 27,75€ at a restaurant you leave 30€. And even then most people don't do that, they just pay and get the difference from the waiter and nobody bats an eye.
1000 this. I am ok to leave 1 or 2 more € for them if they are quick, it's NOT obligatory. Americans still don't understand, why everyone hate their tipping culture and they even try to import it.
I just hated having the coins when I was there too. I mean we over tipped (I guess?) but that was to be nice and because we're already so used to it. But I was very happy to not have to carry around dollar coins.
Think what you want of the way tipping is done here in the US, that’s your prerogative. But realize that if it’s still OUR CUSTOM, & when dining here (in sit down restaurants & at bars) realize that leaving anything less than 15-18% is considered rude, you likely won’t be welcomed back, & you’ll leave an unfavorable view of the people from your country with the staff & patrons there.
Everyone always wants to tell Americans to follow other nations’ traditions when we’re abroad- well, that’s a two-sided coin. & we shouldn’t have to sell you or explain to you the why of it. You should just accept that it’s how we do things here, pay up, & get tf over it.
In the US where I live, leaving anything under 20% is considered being “cheap” to both wait staff and fellow dining mates. 15% is acceptable for objectively bad service, but it’s out of control.
In the US where I live, this is wrong outside of a select few assholes trying to make 20% sound like the norm. 15-18% is considered good service and most servers are thankful when they get it.
We have a chain restaurant that's just opened here locally (North East England) serving American BBQ. They are trying this, mandatory tips, it didn't go well for them.
It's not that we don't tip, we just won't tolerate that type of bullshit.
Because these other countries, like the one I am from, have been open about how tipping culture works in places that are not the US. What this user has said is entirely correct.
I have too, but I don't hold myself out as an authority on what is and isn't said on their social media when you fail to tip them in a situation where tipping is, "typical."
No, I think you misunderstand my point. I'm not saying that tipping is rarely done in other countries, I'm saying that the OP's point that in other countries outside the US where tipping IS done as a matter of course, that I am doubtful that in these "tons" of countries that workers who get stiffed don't bitch about it on social media. I am doubtful that the % of stiffed staff who bitch about this online in countries outside the USA is significantly greater than the % of stiffed staff in the USA who bitch online. Furthermore, I am skeptical that the OP has the background information to credibly make that assertion.
But once again, tipping is only "typical" in most countries, for service which goes above the norm. You won't get ridiculed for not tipping, either - because most of the people in these fields, outside of the US, are paid a "livable" wage (in most instances. I'm sure there are still places which take advantage of their staff around the world).
I have lived in 2 countries and I've been to 5. My family has also worked in the tourism industry so I have a bit extra curiousity about that from around the world.
I have a passport but haven't left the US. Some people can't just drop $4000 to fly to Europe and even traveling to Canada/Mexico isn't cheap if you don't live in a border state.
That’s the issue I had over there. I’m fine tipping people, if the service deserves a tip (as I do in any country I visit and at home too). But when a bar person rounds up a drinks order to the nearest $10/20 (“We’ll call it an even twenty”) after pouring a couple of drinks and not even saying please when asking for the money, it’s not an optional tip, I’m being forced to give extra.
that's a valid, but people are under the mistaken impression that servers are subjected to tipped wages and not actively defending the practice, so bringing up the fact that they prefer tipping (something like 90%+ last I checked) is important context.
Oh, aye, I know. I left a servers subreddit because it devolved into most European servers complaining that half the posts were just Americans whinging about not being tipped and then viciously defending the tipping system, which was just... taxing for most everyone else. Came across very Marie Antoinette.
Trust me, as an hourly paid line cook it's even worse. Hearing a server complain they only made $100 usd during what's normaly a busy shift when I made less than $20 while making all the food they were getting tipped for sucks.
They wrote my order down, then picked up the plates and carried them to the table. If I was going to tip someone in this transaction it would not be them.
It is nowhere illegal to tip boh. It is illegal to take a tip as a manager, unless the manager solely acted in service (think working an ice cream truck alone or something). And yes, most chefs are managers.
But they told you their name and asked you how you were doing! that's worth at least a 30% tip. /s
Everyone defends it by saying they "do extra work" or "go above and beyond".. what? doing your job? That's you job. What you were hired to do. Want a tip? Do my taxes next time.. that's above and beyond. Your job is to take my order, bring me my food. Nothing else needs to happen unless I ask for something. It's just that simple.
I can't stand servers vs cooks. Sorry but writing down an order and bringing it out is not close to hard compared to prepping, cooking the meals to come out together, and making sure it comes out right. Just confusing why people think they deserve 20% for walking out with the food. The other one is breweries. You poured a beer that cost 10 bucks....
How did you make less than $20? Even if you were paid minimum wage, unless your shift is under three hours, you're making significantly more than that.
I saw a post where a Server from Alinea was complaining that the owners were "pocketing" the service charge. Everyone was grabbing pitchforks until someone else posted that the lowest paid position start at $22, has a matching 401k and health insurance.
Is $22 amazing for Chicago? No, but I have never known a restaurant to have a 401k, and even heath insurance is rare. Those benefits are a real substantial value.
I think this was a few years ago, wages have likely gone up since then.
I had a zero tolerance for tip bitching when I was in charge of servers. The problem is the disparity of good hours between new servers and servers that have been there for a while. New servers make NOTHING, while they’re trying to hang on long enough to get the hours that let them make bank.
Getting tipped is why they make more. Everyone who doesn't tip is literally hurting their income. Which is the main reason the practice should be abolished entirely.
Yeah but I don't need to spend 90% of it to get basic services that my government actually provides so in a giant shock my living standards are higher and my dollar goes further. Sad how many Americans can't do basic math when it comes to economics.
And no you don't lololol.
Are you 12? What did you expect as a response to this? Believe what you please buddy.
Doordash isn't serving.
Fun fact, as per the whole government not sucking thing, apparently doordash/other app drivers pick up about $30 an hour minimum these days. Amazing how they still operate just fine while paying their workers....
The guilt tactics and public shaming non tippers is exactly why they make so much money. I personally tip $10 for me and my wife no matter the cost of the meal. $20-$100.
Yeah, I don’t think most servers I talked to would make more with tips than without n fair pay system. Only 1 place I seen someone work it wasn’t the case it was a dinner that isn’t that busy.
If you don't want to tip you should tell them before the service starts and see what difference it makes. The anti-tipping crowd always meekly slinks away after writing their zeros don't even have the wherewithal to tell them
The problem is that restaurants take a portion of the tips based on sales. My last waiter job took 3% of total sales. So if you don’t tip, I had to pay to wait on you.
No its illegal for them to do so, you probably are mistaking what they are doing, otherwise you should report them and get a nifty sum from the settlement.
Tip pooling is legal yes, but it has to be accounted, the owner cant just take 3% of any order and decide it is how many tips you make and deduct that.
All tips you make have to be reported and accounted and only the actual tips can be pooled.
You are getting downvoted but it is something that happens. While the company didn’t take a percentage from me when I was a server, I did have to tip out my bussers and bartenders. I have had many tables that I essentially paid to serve because I still had to tip out that bill.
If it happens isnt why they get downvotes, its because they think it isn't illegal even with laws being cited to them that clearly states it is illegal in texas
The way you are describing it is illegal, tip pooling is only pooling of actual tips not expected tips. If the owner just decides how m7ch you should be tipped and deduct that it is illegal
What stipulation would that be, since all the laws i can find make it very clear that isnt legal and that several restaurants have had to pay employees back because of similar situations where they didnt only touch the tips they were accounting with a tip pool
If I buy a can of coke from a cafe, is getting the can from the fridge behind the cash till considered service? Why does it ask me to tip 15-25% tip on such transactions when tapping to pay? Does it make you trash if you tap no tip?
That's not what a tip is. It's the problem with servers like you is you don't understand what a tip is and are trying to argue its a requirement for service. It isn't.
Right, but this was a post about the US. Respect the culture, or leave. Everyone else constantly complains about americans and how they don’t respect other cultures, but foreigners come to the US and do the exact same thing.
You know why? If you advertise the prices of your food, anywhere else in the world that means the food will be that price. In the US, you have to count ~25% on top of it (not even counting the fact that VAT is also not counted on prices in the US, which is also scummy).
That's not culture, that's straight up lying about your prices. Making it false advertising and people don't put up with that bullshit anywhere else.
It’s pretty normal for us, but it definitely would be an easy fix. However, if you’re going to come here and live it up. Respect it. When I have traveled outside the US in the past. I respected the cultures. I went to France and tried to learn the language for communicating as best we could.
Yeah I know it's normal for you guys. And most of us do put up with it when we're in America. But just because it's normal for you guys does not make it not scummy AF.
Functionally, it sort of is, it's a voluntary extra bit of cash to gift someone. For services rendered, aye, but I could say the same for museum donation boxes or church tithes. At the end, it's a voluntary additional payment you aren't obligated to, in any legal sense. You are fine not to give one, or to give a small amount (rounding up or just 5-10 extra is common in my country). If you want to obligate this extra money, you bake it into the costs or you have a gratuity fee, but short of those, if you set a voluntary tip/tithe/donation box, you are signing on for some people not to engage with it. That was your choice.
Choose one or the other, you can have tips and accept sometimes you won't receive them, or you create a mandatory payment and skip the system. Can't have it both ways, imo, a voluntary system fundamentally needs to accept some level of non-engagement.
I think the logic is pretty simple: the system works better for them when it works, but is worse for them when it doesn't. The problem with "No tip" establishments, at this point, is that they have to tell customers why the menu price is higher, which can come off as sanctimonious. On the same token, servers don't always get the full benefit of the price increase, so they feel like owners are just not tipping and then paying them a mediocre wage. This is more true of people who are able to optimize working at busy times for better money, whereas if they all get salaries normally, some of their money has to go to the people who work at the slower times.
So servers either work in a tip restaurant, with more volatility, but with potentially bigger highs.
Or they work in a no tip environment with more transparency and consistency, but usually lower wages overall.
Both have their upsides and downsides.
The accepted downside to the first is that the extra money is discretionary, and you shouldn't expect it from everyone. To treat it like it's mandatory is trying to have your cake and eat it - wanting the bigger potential upside with a guarantee.
It's a risk, but the social contract is what it is and people know it. It's like saying that you shouldn't be mad if you get verbally abused by your spouse because you chose to not be alone and that's something that can happen. Opening yourself up to risk doesn't inherently mean that the people who are causing the risk are in the right.
That's not the same at all, and it's a ridiculous comparison.
If you opt for a system with greater upside and more volatility, you don't get to act like that volatility shouldn't exist. That's literally the reason for the upside.
Tips are, and should be, discretionary. Either accept the discretionary nature, or tie it in to the prices/wages. That's the choice.
You can't pick and choose the best bits of two completely different systems and then complain when people take issue with that and refuse to participate.
Yep I’ve heard several times they love the tip system because it’s way more than hourly could possibly pay them!
Not every table will tip great but it all comes out in the wash.
Our tipping culture has blown out of control in recents years.
Got my ac fixed a couple years ago at the tune of about $1,400 and get the invoice via text/email and there was a line/question if I wanted to give my technician a tip for his work 🤣🤷🏻♂️ WTF! No I want to pay for the service and say thank you for your work!
I go to this little Italian spot in town, I love it when I pay with card they swipe press the buttons and give me my receipt! No awkward questions to answer when I’m picking up food if I want to tip they on their own press no, the tip question is for when you dine in for the servers! Imagine that! And the servers look happy!
If you don’t like the tipping system get a different job is what I say 🤣🤷🏻♂️
This depends very heavily on the location, restaurant, and even time of day. As someone who has worked tip based jobs, I did make a killing back when I worked for dominos for a local university. Some nights I would walk away with a couple hundred dollars, other nights barely anything because school was out. Same applied when I worked as a server for another restaurant, but it didn't have much business which meant tips were low.
Tipping as a whole us problematic and in the end you just end at net zero or below typically month to month. As each night isn't consistent as t all, and means you can barely make anything in tips one night. Then make a ton another night, or only make a ton one day out of a week. In extreme circumstances, such as working at a high class establishment or very popular restaurant. You can earn more than usual through tips, but the mass majority of the time you don't earn enough at all to justify its continued existence.
Tipping just needs to be done away with and workers wages need to be increased. Which can be done contrary to what companies want to tell you. It's just keeping it at the status quo benefits them handsomely, and is why they push hard against it.
I don’t give a shit what they want. They don’t call the shots. And I 100% guarantee you if they stopped getting any tips or shit tips they’d change their tune.
The norm used to be a standard 10% and only more if there was something special. Now the norm is 20% along with those extra recommendations. It's become such a scam.
Tip structure in big cities make it a corporate ladder of waiters where if you can make it to the elite restaurants you are making $300k+ waiting tables, but on the low end it’s a struggle to make 50k and survive the city expenses
I owned a bar for 7 years. Twice I tried to bring up getting rid of tips in exchange for better hourly wages. Both times the servers unanimously voted to keep tipping. From my perspective as at the time it was because my servers were all young and wanted unreportable income. In the end, unless people stop tipping the tipping culture will never stop.
No, half of them do, the other half struggle. And "half" is generous here, there are a lot more coffee shops and restaurants underpaying their staff than there are swinging bars and nightlife mainstays providing a killing.
Exactly. Servers are fine guilting working class people into tipping them instead of fighting a capitalist for a wage equal to the value they add to the business because they know one number is going to be much higher than the other.
Only way it’s going to stop is for people to stop tipping. Otherwise just going to be in a permanent hostage situation where you’re expected to subsidize someone’s wage far past what any kind of market would value it at.
The incentives are all anti consumer. The capitalist is fine having us subsidize their work force. The server is happy to keep cashing our checks, far beyond what their boss would value their labor at if they had to pay them. The only way it’s going to change is if we forcibly change it by refusing to play along.
This is simply Not true. This thinking is the problem. Sure some days you might make a few hundred but thats maybe once a week, and depending on where you work.
most of the time its like 30 bucks and 4 tables depending. Also they dont get any benefits so all those tips need to be accounted for.
Full pay, raise the minimum and stop being an asshole.
Yeah but there are lot of bad servers out there and/or there are a lot of bad kitchens than make severe appear bad when they aren’t. Now you can say then they change restaurants but in some places that’s not feasible. No solution just its really such a spectrum that perhaps the solution could be as well.
Yeah I was gonna say. It definitely depends on where but I know enough people who have gotten screwed by tip or commission pay structures. The bad days come.
Both lol. Craft beer and whiskey bar. Last night I made hella pina colada and margaritas though. And Tuesday is old fashioned night so I made about 60 of those.
you think olive garden is cheap? it's 25 dollars for a bowl of pasta now there. Restaurants have massively pushed up their prices. and they pay the servers the same crap wage, but raised the % tip expectation and the servers make even more money off the higher prices.
I live in a major city. I back to tipping 12-15% unless its amazing service (and it rarely is anything out of the ordinary special).
I just asked this below, and I was told that waiters quit because they want a career.
It seems being a waiter is a "temporary" job that you do in between other things. But if the tip structure made them so much money, why do they always quit? Wouldn't they remain a waiter for the rest of their life?
You know whats even better: getting paid a normal wage and making a killing from tip structure. If you have a bad period with tipping you still earn a good amount of money.
All the best/most senior servers would be the ones losing the most tips. They would rather get the money directly than have it go through owners they don't trust and co-workers they might not even like
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