The only way its going to at least slightly go away is if wait staff organize, unionize, and demand higher wages. Consumers won’t end it. Employers won’t end it. Government won’t end it. The workers have to demand better working conditions. It’s their burden, just like it’s the burden of the coal miner, the auto worker, the electrician, etc. Tipping culture will change when workers decide they are tired of it being as shitty as it is.
Many of them think they make more money via tips than they would ever make from their employers. Regardless of whether they are right, I don’t see this happening in the places where workers make more tips until this bias can be overcome.
Nothing is stopping from from still receiving tips. The should just should not be demanded, and workers should still have a safety baseline. There’s no point in banning tipping itself.
Plus those statistics for tips received are very skewed by the young and conventionally attractive women/girls demographic. Older women, men of all ages, conventionally unattractive people, the disabled, and so on, make significantly less in tips then young and attractive women.
Plus servers in cheaper locations like diners already make much much less then servers in bars or fine dining.
If you don’t remove tips from the wages, the business owners will always use this income against the workers. I don’t have a problem with people continuing to receive tips, but will that be a factor that holds back progress when its used ad leverage?
As for the tip stats, I’m very hesitant to generalize tipped income. I’ve worked a variety of tipped jobs and what you said has held true to an extent in some of those jobs, while many others were more dependent on the volume of orders or your ability to connect with the customer long-term. In the later of those jobs, it was the older women who tended to make the most and the men typically did as well as the young women.
I think it’s industry and situation specific outside of the dine-in restaurants. Being conventionally attractive certainly doesn’t hurt in any of those situations though.
I see what you mean with that first paragraph. In an ideal world that wouldn’t be the case and tips would be of a customer’s own volition and separate entirely from any pay. But all things considered you’re probably right that restaurant tyrants would try to hold this over workers and customers.
Thank you for your insight into the industry though!
Cook and eat at home. There is no way to change a systemic issue by punishing the victims of the systemic issue. People should either remove themselves from the situation or participate in the norm for the sake of the worker. Not tipping them is only helping your idealism, not the worker getting stiffed.
There’s not much you can do as a consumer to fight tipping culture. If you don’t tip, you’re an asshole. If you do tip, you’re participating in the system.
I would start by recognizing that calling it “tipping culture” is inaccurate. It’s not a cultural issue, it’s a structural one. Tipping is part of the wage structure for tipped workers. To change it, the structure needs to be different, which means that establishments need to get rid of tipping. Some places do that, either by raising prices and wages so that it evens out, or by having a mandatory gratuity. I’ve seen some social enterprises frame the mandatory gratuity as a revenue share with employees, so the price is X and some percentage of that goes directly to the employees, which seems like a better way of thinking about tipping.
Ultimately, there are structural incentives for some businesses, consumers, and employees to maintain the current tipping status quo, and those incentives would need to be addressed in order to change the culture.
Well put. Federal wage for tipped employees is $2.13 per hour. This definitely is a structural issue that can’t be changed by individual action.
The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $7.25 for a 40 hour week pay period to guarantee a baseline. If a person earns more then that baseline, then any additional hours will be paid at $2.13 on top of any more tips earned.
Still scummy, but 90% of waiters would be straight dead at this point if that $7.25 protection didn’t exist.
Fight to raise minimum wage and for a good local Food and Beveridge Service Union. Some tend to exist but mostly work in hotels and things con acted to prior unions and not restaurants. If I’m getting a living wage, sick time, paid vacations and benefits then I wouldn’t need tips to keep food in the fridge and the lights on. No one who works for tips wants to do so either, it’s degrading to servers to have to kiss ass to not essentially get a pay dock, and it’s unreliable cause if it’s a slow period not only are your hours getting cut most likely, you’re also taking a pay cut cause there’s less tips in those hours as well. This also means that any day you aren’t absolutely busting your ass, you’re making less money. It’s only good for the business owner cause they can pass labor costs directly to the customers and create a toxic relationship between servers and customers that pass the buck to people who came to buy food when an employee gets less money than they earned.
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Ban it
I don’t know what to do about like, fast food restaurants and shit. Like I got a steak and shake at the airport and it prompted me for a tip. Or worse at like a convenience store where the minimum tip is a buck and I bought a $3 drink
Like I don’t mind spreading it around when I can but mfers need to pay people
The idea of tipping for fast food, airport food, or at the convenience store is completely ridiculous. At that point you Burgers may as well be tipping the ambulance driver and EMTs when you’re bleeding out on the way to the hospital, or tipping people when they hold the door for you or make space on the sidewalk.
It’s totally absurd. And yet when you go to pay with card there it is, an unskippable tip prompt.
The answer might be to just switch back to cash.
Harass the owners of businesses that aren’t paying staff appropriately until they raise wages, maybe.
Should I tip for pick up orders?
My thought is no. I can understand being expected to tip when dining at a restaurant and having a waiter or waitress deliver to you your meal, or when it’s delivered to your address. It doesn’t make sense, to me, at least, to tip when picking up your orders.
The kitchen often gets a very small percentage of the tips, one place I worked it was an even split which while absolutely fair did mean wait staff were getting lower tips there than elsewhere, where I am now we get a percentage of the sales tipped out to the back of house and front of house gets the tip tips. Honestly a pretty solid way to run things. No one is gonna hold it against you if you don’t, where dine in we will and we’ll remember it if you come back, takeout is more of a gray area since you’re taking up less time and effort, so I’d go with tip but tip less than you would dining in
I suggest that you avoid establishments where tipping is the normalcy, and to learn how to cook. This is the unfortunate reality of living in this piece of shit country.
don’t tip and refuse to elaborate
Then cook at home. If you’re a known non tipper I will ruin your food
Having been friends with waitstaff, they would always tell me how non-tippers would always have their food suspiciously left out under the heat lamp a little to long before one of them would take it to the table. Or how those tables always got the oldest vegetables and the worst cuts of meat on hand. Or how they would be painfully slow refilling any drinks.
It’s weird how that only happened to those tables.
If wait staff has anything negative at all to say about a table, they’re getting worse food. These are my friends and you don’t get yo treat them badly and expect a nice meal from me.
I’m guessing you’re a line cook? You guys are the backbone of the entire operation and the gods of the restaurant. If there’s anyone you don’t want to piss off in a restaurant, it is the line cooks.
I can also take your word for that, having personally seen line cooks beat a customer to a pulp because they sucker punched a waitress half their size.
If you’re a customer and someone from the kitchen has stopped making food and left the kitchen to address you as a problem, you are in an incredibly unsafe position. I’ve had to ask people to leave at a couple gigs when they’ve been outright abusive and they leave in a hurry. Part of the trick there is to have a rolling pin or something else with you. Don’t bring a knife, thats going way too hard and isn’t safe to cross the restaurant with, but the kitchen is full of things that are also fantastic weapons and it’s full of dudes who work a very physical job, are pretty pissed off usually anyway and have a pretty high percentage of employees who have been to prison and wouldn’t mind going back compared to most workplaces. Someone striking a server is for sure a beat down offense
It’s a shitty catch 22, where all you’re doing is screwing over a random working class person.
What you are describing is a hostage situation and we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
That is the most comically bizarre way I have ever seen someone describe the problem of tipping.
A hostage situation? Who is forcing you to go to a restaurant? I don’t remember Marx or Lenin ever writing about how having a waiter serve you is a human right.
If you don’t want to tip, and want to “fight back”, then don’t go to restaurants; it’s that simple. Going to a place where you want and know a working class person has to serve you, and then stiffing them because they’re a “terrorist” holding you “hostage”, just makes you sound entitled and full of yourself.
Yes, the practice of tipping is disgusting. So is screwing over a working class person who you forced to serve you by willingly going to a restaurant. Imagine knowing about a broken system, and instead of not patronizing places that demand tipping, you still go there and take out your “righteous cause” on a random person busting their ass to serve you so they won’t starve. But you’re perfectly fine with them serving you, just the paying them part.
You’re missing the point, in this analogy the worker is the hostage and the boss is the terrorist. Also i was being facetious.
Sorry, I’ve just had plenty of friends get stiffed by “leftists” and chuds who claimed they were fighting back against the evil practice of tipping. People just trying to pay for housing while attending college and barely eating anything.
But I also didn’t really miss the point. If the worker is a hostage and the boss is the terrorist; then why are you patronizing the terrorist by eating at their restaurant? While simultaneously stiffing a working class person.
Also your comment was in response to me saying that it’s a Catch22 if you don’t tip but still eat at a restaurants, as that only harms a working class person.
I’ve just had plenty of friends get stiffed
The word “stiffed” says it all, though. It’s not “stiffed” when tipping is a bribe, not an entitlement, to begin with. The workers are getting stiffed by their boss, not the customers. It’s a particularly American mannerism and social divide-and-conquer mechanism to react to getting stiffed by ones’ employer, by trying to extort the customer instead rather than deal with the problem itself.
People just trying to pay for housing while attending college and barely eating anything.
And doesn’t this also go for most other people, as well? Most people in the US for instance can’t swallow a 500$ emergency expense, and are loaded to the gills with debt, among other things. Why should they have to bother with your country’s especially deranged form of bribery to top it all off?
Then why are you eating at a restaurant?
Don’t like it? Want to fight back? Don’t go?
If you go and stiff. You’re an entititled prick. That simple.
Your American brainworms are showing. Much of the world doesn’t tip and is better off for it. In no sensible worldview is a gratuity, basically a bribe, something “owed” to the server (not to mention the fact that servers aren’t the only ones involved in the product).
There’s something owed to the server- a living wage, but that’s between the staff and employer. Customers have nothing to do with it, and there is no ethical consumption to begin with (not to say that there cannot be “more ethical” forms of consumption- but let’s not kid ourselves, tipping does not factor whatsoever into that equation). A product has a price, and that’s how it works- anything more is a bribe, not an entitlement. Do you “owe a tip” to every other underpaid worker you pass by or of whom you occupy a moment’s worth of their time? The notion of “screwing over” someone by not coughing up the customary bribe is completely and utterly laughable. American culture being a- perhaps irrecoverable- dumpster fire doesn’t change anything in that sense.
I find contentious threads like this fascinating, for one thing you can really see who here is American and who isn’t based on their deeply culturally ingrained views on this issue.
Oh damn dude, giga-brain take here!
No, this is not it and anyone who thinks this deserves the wall
I hope this a bit you’re doing because this ABSOLUTELY ain’t it.
The only thing you’re doing by not tipping is hurting that employee. Your ‘statement’ will not somehow trickle up to the capitalist who will have a change of heart and pay his workers more.
If you live in a place where minimum wage is low (i.e. anywhere in the US) you are obligated to tip. If you don’t, you are not a leftist
If enough consumers did this, pay wouldn’t be enough, and hospitality employees would have to leave for other industries, unless employers raised wage offers.
There should be no moral obligation to tip.
Then you’re an entitled prick who wants to be served by a working class person but not pay.
You’re right that there should be no moral obligation, but that doesn’t mean that a non tipper is still a selfish dick.
I find tipping culture really hard to understand. And to defend.
It gives a leverage, better treatment, and attention to whoever got the most money to spare. It’s basically legalised corruption.
I find it really strange that tipping is defended in this forum.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t tip, considering material reality. I’m saying that tipping culture should not be defended, and discussing the political implications of tipping/not tipping.
If consumers (as a class, not wealthy consumers) all boycott (idealistic, I know) tipping altogether, all at once, it creates the pressure to look into legislation, because being a waiter living off tips becomes unbearable. That’s for the businesses to fix, probably following market rules (that are still a useful tool of analysis, in some contexts). Less supply of cheap labour increases price of said labour. There’s a shitty transition phase, but it improves conditions for the working class on the longer run.
Personally, I refuse to be served by a worker working on tips, just like I refuse to be served by an enslaved person. I obviously don’t eat out too often, and tipping is not a requirement here.
No one is defending tipping in this forum.
We all want tipping banned, and we want to boycott restaurants that pay their waitstaff this way.
However, in the current system, if you go out and eat at a restaurant something that is a luxury, then refuse to pay, all you are doing is being a dick too and hurting a random proletariat worker. As that tip is the only means through which they can survive.
It is vile. No one is defending this. It is just extremely entitled to believe that you have the right to demand to be served by a working class person, and then stiff them on their means of survival because of some backwards morality.
A moral person would not go to a restaurant at all. That’s how you put pressure on the system. If you go to a restaurant and pay, the owner gets paid anyways and has no incentive to change anything. All you accomplish is being a dick to a random prole.
You essentially touch on that with your last few sentences. We are all arguing it is normal and moral to refuse to be served by a tip worker.
However others in the thread are claiming that it is fine to go to a restaurant and be served. They just won’t tip the person after they made them serve them. Which is disgusting.
I can generally agree with you. I think we’re looking at it from distinct angles.
If it’s clear who’s responsible for paying the serving person, I’m OK with it. When it’s all just implied costume, there’s too much room for scamming, intimidation, and exercise of monetary power.
it creates the pressure to look into legislation
Please explain to me what you mean by this and who exactly exerts this ‘pressure’?
Less supply of cheap labour increases price of said labour
And how is this done exactly? How does ending tipping lead to a decreased supply of ‘cheal labour’. Perhaps it’s due to people who were already on the margins of society going down to $2.13/hour (the US minimum wage for any server) and losing their house then dropping out of the labor pool altogether. That would certainly reduce the supply of ‘cheap labour’ eh? Fucking idiot
There’s a shitty transition phase
Please explain. What are the material realities of this ‘uncomfy’ transition phase
and tipping is not a requirement here
And why is that exactly? Because folks are paid a living wage to begin with?
Listen, if you’re going to flippantly say we need to end tipping you really need to fucking face up to what that actually means and not just ‘hand waive’ peoples lives away as mere market externalities
Please explain to me what you mean by this and who exactly exerts this ‘pressure’?
When all tipping is cut, any and all jobs that pay above $2.13 become immediately better option for all previous tip workers.
And how is this done exactly?
Without tipping, it is illegal to employ workers below minimum wage. The problem is that the law allows it, and everyone complies.
What if one of the interested parties organised to cut short that supply of money? Any attempt to point blame at customers is just capitalists avoiding their responsibility, as usual.
Customers and employees are not enemies. With tipping, you empower rich customers, and cut access to less wealthy people to a pleasing experience with their friends and family.
Please explain. What are the material realities of this ‘uncomfy’ transition phase
Can we really predict all details of the future?
The immediate effect should be that a huge amount of people would have to look for new jobs, if restaurant bourgeoisie won’t raise wages.
Restaurant bourgeoisie is also likely to increase prices in their establishments.
And why is that exactly? Because folks are paid a living wage to begin with?
Yes. Barely, but yet.
I’m not hand waving anything. If the US had a strong proletariat government, this could be supported by state incentives. It wouldn’t even be a issue in the first place.
Without that state incentive, how could things start moving? I’d go for seeding class consciousness between tip workers and customers. Most customers are also working class.
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They actually do. Hard to enforce, but they have the obligation to not poison your food on purpose.
Isn’t that a good way to start getting spit and snot on your food though?
Well by the time you have paid ideally you will have already eaten your food
I guess this only works if you never plan to go back to the same place.
For the most part no one is gonna spit in your food or anything that gross, what will happen is your food will be made really bad on purpose. Your salad will be mostly romain cores, your food will be just a little burnt and over seasoned, just enough here and there to make the whole thing kinda suck.
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If you’re expected to tip and you don’t tip you’re a bad person.
Yes, that is the problem here. People shouldn’t be relying on tips to make a liveable wage.
I never tip and instead leave a PSL business card with the sentence “Upset about not being paid enough by your boss? Organize towards socialism!”
I’m not in PSL lmao
This is like the “leftist” equivalent of the Christian and Muslim people that just leave fake money with scripture inside of them.
I know you’re joking, but that would be the fastest way to create an army of working class people who hate socialism lmao
At least I hope you’re joking
As a solution why dont you tip, and put the psl card in there too?
That would work and definitely be better then nothing, but I still feel like tipping is gross and I really don’t want to support it. I’d rather just not eat out at that point and help the waitstaff unionize.
Of course. But if you have to tip I see that as the best thing you can do.
Absolutely!
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