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Comment by TheOneTrueKyle | Hacker News Reader

When I was younger and financially unstable, I had a decision to make. Take a crappy restaurant job or live out of my car. I chose to live out of my car. Every time I hear the argument that people in the restaurant industry are getting unfair pay, I ask myself, "I wonder who made that decision to work there in the first place"

Stop this bullshit tipping. These people made a choice and then chose to complain about it.

Also, this only seems to occur with FOH employees in the restaurant industry. You don't really hear BOH employees (you know, the people who actually do the work of cooking your food) complain.

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It is very interesting. I worked in restaurants for many years and I never knew a server who made less than the back staff - usually they made several multiples of their pay in a night.

I assume it's because servers (and I was one!) feel generally more empowered when it comes to their pay; they think complaining will accomplish something (strengthen social norms to tip), while kitchen staff know that what they get is what they get.

No doubt server pay varies wildly, but I worked at a cheap buffet essentially just bussing tables and I never made less than kitchen staff and sometimes made up to 6x what they would make in a shift - usually about 3x, and management directed that we report the minimum amount possible, to get out of their payroll tax contribution, I assume.

On top of that, employers are in fact nominally required to pay the difference between their tipped wage and the "real" minimum wage if they don't get enough tips (for some reason this isn't commonly known) to make the difference, but that situation is probably rare enough that businesses skate by without fulfilling their legal duty. [1]

Frankly, I liked waiting tables and I'd do it again if it paid as much as programming. It's not all that crappy. :) And at the same time, I have a lot less sympathy for servers than I used to. Save your sympathy for the people who are paid minimum wage and don't get tips. Yes, that server is getting $2.15 instead of $7.25, but a) the business is required to make up the difference between $2.15 + tips and $7.25 and b) no server I have ever heard of, anywhere, is making less than $7.25/hour with tips.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

This is interesting. I am also in the same camp except BOH. If I could get paid to cook for living with the same pay I make now, I would do it in a heartbeat

This is what I find interesting about the situation, and why I see tipping as a cultural rather than ethical imperative. If it was about poverty or social justice, it is a terribly inefficient way to go about fighting those battles. If instead you theorize that Tipping is largely about smoothing interactions between those of a higher economic class and the people who immediately serve them, the whole thing makes more sense.

Even taking class out of it, tipping when you are out drinking kind of makes sense like "hey thanks for working so I can go have fun. Here is a little extra so you can treat yourself when you are off work." The idea is to make it less awkward for the customer to drink in front of someone who is sober and working, Because that is kind of an awkward situation for many folks

Is there a possibility for smoothing out this social awkwardness that didn't involved monetary value?

Is there a way for society to make these jobs appear simply as a job and not some exchange of money for this psuedo caste system I am placing on you while I eat my salmon?

I am generally curious. I don't eat at restaurants for this reason. I have no interest in being involved with this human interaction. Which is a shame because food is my life...

Sure, there are plenty of places where you Walk up to order and pay and then walk up to get your food, and tipping norms seem super different there, I would assume because it seems a lot less like you are being directly served. If we are running with my model, the idea would be like they are manufacturing your food and you are buying it, rather than someone coming and serving you at your table.

If you are in the South bay, try dish n dash for super good food sold in that style.

To be clear, I am not super clear on tipping norms in that case, but observationaly, most people seem to tip a lot less, and some people just tip the change.

These types of establishments are the places I'm finding myself if I decide to go out to eat these days. Me personally, I come for the experience of the food, not the service.

I much prefer this system too!

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12393551 and marked it off-topic, because most of it turned into a nasty spat.

All: we ban accounts that repeatedly post the ugly sort of comment seen below, so please don't post those.

Unfortunately the fine subthreads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12393884 get punished with the rest. I feel like a teacher making everyone stay late after class.

Not everyone has a choice, for example if you had kids at the time then living in your car would be unacceptable. Meanwhile, restaurant patrons make a choice to eat somewhere where tipping is customary.

If you had kids then you wouldn't need to live in your car because the government would volunteer to pay your rent.

Great news for the 2.5 million homeless kids in the US.

http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20141117/homeless-ch...

Yeah, that was a stupid comment. My experience was basically that while living on a minimum wage job my coworkers who had kids were way better off than the rest of us. Agitating because they were the people who really seemed to care the least. Even with their kids they only wanted to do the bare minimum.

Clearly that isn't always the case though, thalami you for pointing that out

Its nice that you think its that easy. People who have never been poor for very long seem to bizarrely overestimate the welfare state.

Most people that fall into financial hardship can either pay the same bills you do or end up homeless. Some portion of the long term disadvantaged can eventually find their way into programs to help them out after years of waiting.

My experience with it first hand was that people I had worked with who had kids had a higher standard living than I did, and couldn't have been struggling that much since they still had money for cigarettes alcohol and weed, whereas I would barely be able to pay my rent and eat and couldn't afford air conditioning. I'm sure that isn't always the case though, I've probably just had an unusually bad experience with the people I've happened to know.

Was it not your choice to have the kids?

I'm tired of this cultural excuse of "what about the kids!"

If you chose to have kids, either explicitly, or through choice of recklessness, you deserve to own up to your decision. If you can't, or won't, that's what CPS is for.

Let's stop giving people excuses just because they brought another person into the world. In fact, lets hold them to an even higher standard for choosing to invoke a LIFE without themselves being able to support it.

If you live in a place where you know your servers are paid less than they spend on gas and don't tip on the premise that they should have made better life choices congratulations you are a terrible person. You could just factor that into the cost and decide if in total the experience is worth it or you could cook your own food.

They are getting unfair pay in some places, thanks to bullshit laws that give them a truly ridiculous minimum wage.

No they aren't. Read the law. A server's hourly wages with tips will always be at least the federal minimum wage.

Did you make the throwaway account just to congratulate yourself for sustaining yourself with food bought by welfare/others instead of working for a living?

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