Joe’s Crab Shack Tried Getting Rid of Tips – It Didn’t Last Long
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Ugh, people are idiots! Paying an employee an actual wage will guarantee them income in a way that tipping does not. If an employee is hired at a particular hourly wage, we have labor laws to ensure they are receiving their pay. In contrast, tipping provides no guarantees and actually enables the abuses these same people fear. For example, legally a restaurant has to make a waiter whole if their tips+ low hourly wage does not get to actual minimum wage. Despite this requirement, many restaurants violate it BC tipping as the default puts the burden on the waiter to bother their boss when they didn't make enough.
Imagine instead if when you checked out at Target, you paid the cashier directly because you didn't trust target to pay them?! The idea seems ludicrous but apply it to tipping industries and it somehow is normal.
The real culprit is people feel comfortable with what they know and fear change.
As you say, I don't understand why people think that tipping actually helps w/ service. OTOH the masses still drag out that incorrect tale of To Insure Prompt Service
It was just proof for me that tips didn't have anything to do with good service, not in the long-run or the short-run.
Of course, I tip still, because it's part of their wages and they deserve it. But I don't for a moment think that it actually teaches them to serve people better.
Meaning, no tip restaurants usually have higher prices, but customers do not trust that the higher prices went to the staff. Management needs to make some statement of wages (high wages) to prove that the tips are sufficient.
IMO distrust of management's greed is the real culprit
Wage theft is a thing tho.
1. The people who demand the most service ("This is too cold, take it back", "Bring me a different fork, this one has a spot on it", etc) tip significantly below average, and sometimes not at all. This pattern is present just about everywhere- I see it in IT all the time.
2. Groups, especially business meetings, are the highest tippers. Serving a table of 8 isn't significantly harder than serving a table of 2, yet groups usually still tip based on percentage.
3. People who use coupons are universally small tippers. I also suspect that folks with coupons are not likely to be return customers.
The variation in sentiment might have to do with that my restaurant didn't have runners, and it was an Indian restaurant. We did food delivery ourselves, and customers needed at least two things to come for dinner (an entrée, and naan), making it stressful because once a table got to 6+ people, you had to run two massive trays of food from the kitchen to the floor, as quickly as possible.
Although you do seem to be phrasing it in a money vs effort angle than just the money.
Even if it doesn't happen a lot, the effect on the waiter who makes 5% off the group of 25 they've been serving all night can be considerable.
I found the series of articles, "Observations From A Tipless Restaurant" was a really interesting analysis.
http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...
That's a very interesting take.
Good article, thanks for sharing!
> Our sense was that our weak team members looked at their tips — which of course were close to normal since most people don’t adjust their tips much for bad service — and concluded that, in spite of what we were suggesting, they were already doing sufficiently good work. If I’m good enough to make my tips, it’s obvious that I don’t need to improve.
Which from the business perspective, is a real problem.
Or to break it down without the assumption of motivation
> Because tipping correlates weakly to service quality, and because individual tips are always subject to interpretation, tipping removes the incentive for poor performing servers to improve.
EDIT: or read part 5 if you want some explanation behind the leap in intention. It helps to read the complete articles! :)
Some say restaurants can't survive with more costs. Baloney. If you can't pay a decent wage you don't deserve to exist.
The only people that care about prices going up are the no tippers because the tippers are subsidizing salaries. The tippers wouldn't notice prices going up much if any.
And that might be why the non-tipping restaurants noticed a drop in revenue. If you look at the menus side-by-side, especially if you are familiar with the place and what things cost there, the non-tipping one will appear to be much more expensive.
I certainly want to see the practice end--I'm constantly reminded by Larry David's awkward tipping interactions in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Ending tipping will require a lot of mindshare among restaurants for it to work. For the most part, these restaurants are special snowflakes, and I don't think the practice will become mainstream anytime soon.
Anything else just seems too close to the definition of graft or bribery for me to feel comfortable.
If tipping is acceptable at all, it won't stay reserved for only truly excellent service. It'll become expected for good service, then adequate service, then any service at all.
"They wanted to inspire good service with their tips". It's nice that they want something. I want a pony. Neither of these things happen.
Friends of mine who have been wait staff have unanimously concluded that tips appear random to them. There's no pattern of behavior they can interpret from patrons or which patrons want, other than simple competence.
If someone does poorly, I give them a baseline tip. Probably 10%, but still 15% if I'm in a good mood anyhow.
If they do well, they'll get 20%, up to 30% for really, really good service.
But the guy next to me might go from 0% to 10% for awful to great service.
There's just no way to know what a tip means.
Neither of these things happen.
You are saying tips aren't based on quality of the service?
Can you provide a citation? Because all data points to tipping in no way being connected to the service you provide.
The best way to receive a tip (based on research)? Be female. Be blonde. Have large breasts.
So lets dispense with this nonsense that tipping incentivizes service workers. Its a thinly veiled, widespread (successful) attempt at wage theft.
http://www.tippingresearch.com/most_recent_tipping_papers.ht...
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-tipping-be-banned-a-n...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/abolish-tipping_n_5...
Have you ever eaten out in your life? How many times have you left a 20 percent tip for a waiter who forgot to put in your order, brought the wrong food, was mean to you, etc.
Always. If I have an issue with the service, I take it up with management.
I don't short change someone's wages because of a perceived or actual deficiency. What am I? Some sort of monster? Just because the rest of society is cheap and short changes service workers because they can get away with it (until labor law gets fixed), that does not make it right.
And if you say, "I can't afford to tip 20 percent all the time", well then my friend, you can't afford to be eating out. Why do you think its more costly to eat out in Europe than the US? Because staff are paid a living wage there.
The point of tipping is to prevent the employer from having to pay a fair wage. Someone who works in such industries depend on tips for their livelihoods. Not performing at 100% resulting in a significant drop in earnings isn't really fair.
Given the typical audience on here, a reasonable comparison would be for employers to be docking wages based on time spent not working. Given how many of us visit this site at work, that could be a substantial drop in wages.
Then again, you might be making so much money that it doesn't impact you. Servers aren't. They might just be having a bad day. Their mistakes on serving you will have less of an impact on your life than your not tipping them.
Most of them are human beings trying to survive. Most of them are not making enough to do more than that.
So, I've tipped 20 percent to mediocre waitstaff plenty.
I also have this bleeding heart issue where I feel like maybe I was there on their bad day and I tip well because I've had those days :)
These are all descriptions of under adequate service and this server should be reprimanded, potentially fired if this keeps up.
Examples of under adequacy removed; You and the parent seem to have similar outlooks. As soon as a server meets the bar for adequate service, the customer is obliged to tip 10-20% based entirely on what they can sustainibly afford.
Rarely does one go higher than 20%, for the truly grand experience.
So when he says that this doesn't happen it's a claim that is well supported by research.
Here is a piece from a server arguing for this steady rise. I don't agree, but there it is. http://dpo.st/1Tb3rlN
It's also hard to change a system that people are used to.
His first complaint with this particular approach has been that when he's gotten a good tip as a server, he has to share it (i.e. the customer gave "him" a large tip because of "his" service). The other is that when he's been a good cook or good cleaner, but there's a bad server, he's penalized because the server is given bad tips.
Ironically, we've never directly discussed whether he would prefer tips or a more traditional wage. Based on the conversations we have had, he would definitely like the ability to earn more while working in the industry (he loves cooking and he loves serving). He's hit pay ceilings in multiple restaurants, which has been a huge problem. It's such a big problem that he's transitioning to work in nurseries, because he can make more money with much less effort, and he hopes to save enough to open his own farm-to-table restaurant with some friends.
Culture is path-dependent.
The existence of such a class of (low end) restaurants without tipping proves that it is possible to get rid of tipping altogether at low-end restaurants. Which is exactly what I said.
> it doesn't say anything about the ease or difficulty of getting rid of it where it has been a convention.
This is besides the point. I didn't say anything about the ease or difficulty of getting rid of tipping.
No, it proves that there is a class of low-end restaurants (and "fast food" is not coextensive with "low end" restaurants, its a subset of them) where there is no tipping to get rid of, not that it is possible to get rid of tipping in any of the places where it exists.
I think "one does not tip at a fast food restaurant" is a culturally-accepted rule that trumps "one tips one's server at a restaurant".
I suspect that, as well as the bills being smaller, the average tip percentage is smaller than at full-service restaurants.
In the former category people are primarily doing carryout from places built around carryout in that there aren't servers waiting tables and bagging up orders. In the latter category people tend to more frequently do carryout from actual restaurants and in those cases they really are interacting with an otherwise typical server.
I realize it's completely arbitrary, but so is tipping culture in general.
To be honest, unless I'm leaving cash, I have my doubts about whether the tip actually makes it to the server.
I would be shocked to hear of any restaurants that do that. A warning sign would be the owner running the register.
And for one data point: the restaurant I worked at would convert all tips on credit cards to cash that the servers could take home that day at end of business.
It's not just a tax matter; if the audit uncovers fraud, they refer the case to the DOL and the DOJ.
"Pay staff a living wage and abolish tips" is a great idea, but it doesn't work well in practice.
Cue the liberals with their new line: "Pay the staff a living wage in addition to tips!"
No to UPS driver. Tattoo? No idea but probably given that I tip my barber.
You are, however, expected to tip your doctor before getting surgery.
Unless what you're saying is, "It won't work here because we'd prefer underpaying food staff because we can get away with it."
But that's not what you're saying, right? Surely it can't be.
This political nonsense can be twisted any way anyone likes.
Isn't that a basic assumption for most pay? Living wage + performance bonus
I work a job without tips and it works fine.
It is against the law to payout the kitchen staff from the tip pool so the front of house tend to make lots more money than the kitchen, making it harder for them to find kitchen staff.
Abolishing tips isn't necessary to do this, all you have to do is set prices appropriately and pay the back of house staff correctly. (You know how some restaurants add a front-of-house "service fee" on large groups in lieu of free tipping, just do the same thing, except roll it in before computing prices, and that's your back-of-house volume-of-service pay. If you don't want to have it be a volume-based, on-top-of-hourly wage thing, do the same thing to calculate prices, but project your average volume and set your hourly wages appropriately to include what your existing wages would be plus the average amount the price increase would provide.)
It does mean that your price will have to be higher relative to your food cost than other restaurants, which might lose business. But if retaining cooking staff is valuable enough that you want to balance things, this should actually pay for itself. And, anyway, getting rid of tips and rebalancing pay between front of house and back of house means either you are going to lose front of house staff to other jobs more easily (because their total pay is cut) or increase prices just as much as you would without abolishing tips to boost back of house pay plus enough to replace the tips. Abolishing tips has no real effect here.
But by replacing tips with a 20% cost increase means the customer stays at the same cost to them.