No tipping means better business | Hacker News Reader

No tipping means better business

tastefulventures.com

314 pointswlimdo526 comments

As a person who was born and living in a country which has no tipping culture. The tipping sucks.

I should have been fully informed how much should I have to pay before I purchase something or some service. Any extra demand from agreed amount should be illegal.

I also don't want to waste my precious time on paying the tip for calculating tax.

The worker's salary is a employer's responsibility. If the the worker become underpaid without the tipping, then the worker is underpaid by the employer.

>The worker's salary is a employer's responsibility. If the the worker become underpaid without the tipping, then the worker is underpaid by the employer.

This! Tipping is nothing but the employer passing the buck and guilting the customer.

I find it very funny when people argue that increasing the minimum wage would increase costs for consumers (I don't necessarily disagree; in some cases it would, whether that is a bad thing is a different matter). I personally would pay a higher price, no tips and ensure that the workers serving can meet their basic needs via wages alone.

Just an FYI, but if a tipped employee does not meet the minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference.

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm

This is almost certainly going to rarely happen. Almost no server feels empowered enough to insist on this. And restaurant owners will start insisting on collecting and counting cash tips so they can fully account for the wages. No server wants their boss counting their cash tips. At least in Massachusetts, declared tips is self reported.

I'm surprised this is still allowed by the IRS. When I was a waiter back in the 80's in California, we went from self-reporting to turning in our tips. All the tips were pooled, then divvy'd up between waitstaff, busboys, cooks, managers etc. And taxes were taken documented. So our "paycheck" was puny since the withholding was taken from our hourly payrate.

I've even seen something very shady recently - a nice restaurant that added a mandatory 20% "service fee" to our party of 7, had fine print that said "60% of your service fee goes to your wait staff."

The implication is that not only is this restaurant, which we ended up paying ~$80 a person to eat dinner + wine + dessert at, screwing their customers with the mandatory service charge, they're also screwing their employees by keeping 40% of it for the owner. I won't eat there again...

Edit: Added visual proof (and name and shame): https://s3-media4.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/t3UUaCU8gl6zPsVQghlv...

I would be happy to learn that the 40% was going to the cooks. It's still a shady practice, and what makes it worse than not informing your guests ahead of time is that they're doing this in the name of "providing a livable wage for our staff." Pay your staff a livable salary and stop screwing your customers over...

> keeping 40% of it for the owner

Depending on the city and state, this could be illegal. I'd encourage you to ask the server if the 40% goes to the kitchen or the owner. If the latter, write a letter or make a call to your labour law enforcement group.

It's not illegal.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.pdf

>A compulsory charge for service, for example, 15 percent of the bill, is not a tip. Such charges are part of the employer's gross receipts. Sums distributed to employees from service charges cannot be counted as tips received, but may be used to satisfy the employer's minimum wage and overtime obligations under the FLSA. If an employee receives tips in addition to the compulsory service charge, those tips may be considered in determining whether the employee is a tipped employee and in the application of the tip credit.

Hence my caveat, "depending on the city and state". For example, it's not allowed in California [1].

[1] http://www.tipcompliance.com/polLearningCenter.cfm?doc_id=89

> The implication is that... they're also screwing their employees by keeping 40% of it for the owner...

Probably not. In the restaurant I worked at was customary for the waiters to tip the kitchen and support staff. Owners were not tipped.

I doubt that the 40% goes to the owner, it probably goes to the kitchen staff.

Hopefully the hostess and back of the house was tipped out with that 40%. It's also likely that 40% went into the owner's pocket though because that's totally legal! Since it was a non-negotiable service fee the DOL doesn't consider it gratuity (as gratuity is strictly optional) so they don't have to pass it on to their staff. I've seen this happen plenty of times, usually in the catering business, though not to the extent of 40%, usually around 5-10%.

Others have been willing to backtrack:

http://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/seattle-restaura...

I used to do accounting for a restaurant and I would disagree with you and say with the move to modern Point Of Sale software restaurants not doing this would be the exception now. We checked this every pay period to make sure servers were at or over the proper hourly wage because it is illegal to pay them less.

Florida based for reference, tips are self reported here too but our POS system would automatically transfer tip amounts when a credit card was the payment method. So our payroll system already has that amount. Then we had an electronic time clock where servers scanned their hand to clock in\out, and it was set to prompt them for declared cash tips. It was a nicer restaurant (avg check a bit over 100$). Occasionally a server wouldn't declare enough tips to hit minimum wage for a pay period and the first thing HR would do is check to make sure they were declaring cash tips. In 5 years working there I can't remember a single time a server was actually under minimum wage for a pay period, they just weren't declaring cash tips because CC tips usually covered it.

I have been out of hospitality for a few years but I am seeing even smaller places with POS systems run on Ipads. I would assume since we live in the future these have similar features to the ancient 'micros' brand POS system we used and could integrate with quickbooks or better accounting software to run payroll and do these calculations.

P.S. for any server (or employee anywhere for that matter) who thinks their company is doing something illegal you don't have to even talk to your manager/boss/owner, just call the Department of Labor they pay people to fix these problems for you.

That's at a nice restaurant though. It's more common than you think that there are restaurants just using paper tickets. I think Waffle House still does paper checks only and that's a huge chain. And most mom and pop restaurants too.

I've waitressed before and when I was a little short of minimum wage several times due to us being a slow/cheap restaurant the management just said "Some weeks you make more some you make less" and didn't try to correct it. I couldn't risk loosing my job. Sure, if they fired me for reporting them they'd be in trouble, but how long would it take for me to get justice and force them to pay? I wouldn't be able to eat while I waited for some kind of justice to be doled out.

That is an unfortunate position, and I doubt you are the only one to have experienced that. I was personally employed at a place that didn't pay overtime, that is why I was aware of the DOL as a tool. One of the other employees called to try to get an investigation going and shared it with us. The owners never knew.

That rarely gets enforced. Employers don't want to pay, employees want to enhance their wages by not paying taxes.

And in many cases, not reporting your tips as income and paying income tax on them is illegal...of course, not much chance of getting caught.

IIRC, reporting lower-than-expected tips increases the probability of a tax audit, and required tip reporting for payroll and other tax purposes makes it not-that-hard for employee underreporting to be detected and established in the event of such an audit.

This idea of "making up the difference" comes up in every convo on tipping. The counter point is usually that it doesn't happen. (Debate ensues...)

But even if it happened FOR SURE EVERY TIME. What an inefficient system! Rather than just paying the minimum wage up front, with predictable, projectable costs, businesses spend person hours on calculating tips, hours worked, per employee, etc. And then have to pay (potentially) widely varying amounts at the end of the cycle.

I get that some customers and some servers like the practice of tipping. But why not require employers to pay (at least) the minimum wage, period. You could still tip if you want to, and an you can still try to earn a tip if you want to. But now it's more like a bonus, gravy, than the difference between rent and no-rent.

  you can still try to earn a tip if you want to.
  But now it's more like a bonus, gravy

Isn't that where we started? I don't think that's stable. If some people get tips, the next tier of goodish servers is going to think they deserve tips, until you end up where we are now.

You can start there and stay there. This does not escalate like you assume. The rest of the world works just fine with this system.

I suspect that the escalation in the US has something to do with employers getting greedy and trying to reduce wages to factor in tips. I don't have any evidence to back this up.

> Just an FYI, but if a tipped employee does not meet the minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference.

In most cases, they'll also be fired quickly if they don't, so they'll overreport tips to "make" the minimum wage even if they don't actually receive enough.

Whether or not tipping should exist, if it does, it shouldn't substitute for the minimum wage, it should be entirely on top of it.

It's more insidious than that, since cash tips are self-reported income, it's also a great way to shield income from the IRS and reduce taxable income

It's an ingrained part of US culture. An individual restaurant owner _could_ try to change it, but that would probably be very hard.

Add mental strain of thinking should I and how much should I tip. Also hassle if you don't happen to have change readily available. Sometimes it's just easier to go to a place where you don't have to think this.

Mental strain, really?

I would say it definitely contributes to "decision fatigue".

I'm not a native speaker so 'mental strain' might be a bit overblown expression for this. I'm also from a culture where tipping is not common so for me it's also a cultural difference to deal with.

One more thinking.

The tipping is dumping.

The seller(who is the employer) offered a product with the price they choose. That price should reflect all the necessary costs of the product, including the salary to the workers.

By demanding the tipping, they make the price cheaper than it actually is.

That is dumping.

> By demanding the tipping, they make the price cheaper than it actually is. That is dumping.

No. This would apply if you actually paid less than it actually is

It might be false advertisement though

Exactly. It's false advertisement, and wouldn't be acceptable in most countries that care about such things.

> By demanding the tipping

If it's demanded by the establishment, it's a service charge, not a tip. They are legally distinct things.

A tip may be expected by the server as part of social custom, but it is not demanded by the establishment from which you purchase.

Omitting tipping and taxes from prices is deceitful and annoying, but it promotes consumerism and getting people to spend more.

The key for restaurants is to minimize the menu item price when you decide what to order. Even if you have a mental limit of $15, you might spend $17.55 on lunch because the menu said $14 when you ordered.

> but it promotes consumerism

Phrased as if it was a good thing.

It's good for extracting money from restaurant patrons :p

As for humanity, imo capitalism is the wrong model if we want to optimize for global happiness. Directionally, basic income seems better, though I'm sure the devil is in the details...

I don't have strong opinions on tipping either way. Personally, I prefer a culture where tips are an optional extra in culture. You do it when pleasantly surprised. That's nothing more than an "i like it this way" though.

That said, who says "the worker's salary is a employer's responsibility?"

Monetary culture is ancient and emergent. It's culture. Complicated, organic, varied and local. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't want to change it if it's bad or impractical. But, is a culture of tipping bad.

I like that this article is culturally focused. Wage disparities, the social outcomes of these etc.

> That said, who says "the worker's salary is a employer's responsibility?"

...The employer does the second they hire the worker

Is there a place where "tips are an optional extra"? It seems wherever I've been they are either expected or not expected/allowed...

I think when you get out of the food service industry (at least in the U.S.) tipping is more fluid. A tour guide or a ski instructor for example, while I would say tips are customary the "rules" are much less codified so it's largely more in the category of optional

As far as I can tell, that's how tipping works in France (and I would assume most mediterranean countries).

I live in Greece, and it is an optional extra here. If you pay with a card, a lot of times there is a menu on the POS which you choose a percentage for tipping, which ranges from 0% upto I dont remember how much (but a lot).

Personally I always give a generous tip, (unless the server intentionally does something bad), just because it feels good to. It is not charity or pity for low wage. It is just that I would welcome a tip too if I were in the waiter's shoes, no matter how much my wage would be.

Only way i have seen tipping happen where i'm from is on a "keep the change" basis at bars and similar.

Australia would count for tips as an "optional extra" (for food service. I don't think I've ever tipped anyone else in Aus)

In Germany it's somewhat "optional", as the tip is supposed to represent how happy you've been with the service and there's legislature in place that specifically states that tips are not supposed to be part of the wage. But that also depends on the service you are using. A small tip can also go a long way of making you a preferred customer: At my favorite Thai place I sometimes round up what I pay by 50 cent, in return I get a free serving of spring rolls (worth 2,50€) with every order, making the 50 cent investment a rather good deal ;)

Spain. It is common to "round it off" as a tip around here, but not mandatory in any way. Examples:

You get a beer somewhere, it's 1.75€ and you round it off to 2€. That's a reasonable tip that says "service has been fine, thanks.".

You get dinner somewhere, it's 57.25€ and you round it to 60€. Same thing as above.

You get dinner somewhere, it's 57.25€ and you pay exactly that amount. The message is "the price was fair enough for what I got". Nobody will look badly at you.

You get dinner somewhere, it's 57.25€ and you pay 70€. The message is "you have been wonderful hosts, thank you VERY much".

Also, tips are not just for the service, but for the entire experience. You tip if you want to compliment the service, but also/alternatively because you want to compliment the food, or the ambient, or whatever.

This is generally how I used to go about it till a friend mentioned that I'd need to do the 20% bit.

Yes, it's anywhere outside of strong US ties. In New Zealand you'll get chased down the street by the honest waiter telling you that you've forgotten your change.

As others have pointed out in this thread, many other countries have wonderful systems in place that work without mandatory tipping.

No disrespect intended, but like with things such as gun control laws and plastic currency in different colors materials and sizes (two examples of things implemented on a wide scale in other countries with NO adverse effect), I am always bemused when US based people keep insisting that it will never work there.

>> That said, who says "the worker's salary is a employer's responsibility?"

Why would it not be? The employer pays the employee for their labor. The exception is with tipping, in which the employer passes most of the paying responsibility to the customer.

>> I also don't want to waste my precious time on paying the tip for calculating tax.

20% is an easy calculation. Move the decimal point over one, and double. $24.30 becomes $2.43, doubled you get $4.86 which is your tip. Round it up to $5 if you want. Did you really enjoy the service? Add another $2 or $3. Terrible waiter? Subtract $2 or $3.

20% is also a big part of the bill, and if you go out everything is overpriced already.

The standard tip for table service at a restaurant in the US is 15%.

Not for at least a decade, more in larger cities.

A percentage-based tip scales with the prices on the menu, which are closely associated with the cost of living in a particular area. A 15% tip is exactly as appropriate in 2016 as it was in 1916. It works as well in Florence, Alabama, as it does in Baltimore, Maryland.

The only reason to increase the percentage of table service tips is if the restaurant employee does more for the customer. I have not observed this to be the case in the last decade, in larger cities or out of them.

As logical as that might sound the tipping percentage is a matter of cultural norm and not about maintaining a status quo. In metropolitan areas 20% has long since been the standard and is arguably increasing. The rest of the country has been steadily catching up.

There is considerable upward pressure on that, with many recommending an 18% or 20% norm (and restaurants themselves are actively part of this with the tip hints they provide on bills.)

And retail stores are now putting Christmas holiday items on sale before Halloween. At some point, you have to plant your feet, grit your teeth, and hold the m-f-ing line.

You can recommend 25% of the total if you want. Heck, recommend 40%. But as long as the restaurant business continues to operate with respect to employee pay in the same fashion that is has for decades, I will continue to consider 15% of the pre-tax total to be a reasonable tip for median-quality restaurant table service. If that ever becomes such a bad tip that servers can't be arsed to work for it, I guess I can pay higher percentages with proportionally higher service expectations. If you want me to tip 25%, you can bet your ass that if I so much as order a burger, I will be asking my server what the cow was named, how old it was at slaughter, and to identify the stockyard where it was finished. (Note: My grandfather actually asked one of those questions. At a diner.)

Of course, according to my brother-in-law, mine is "the most stubborn family that has ever lived". Recommending 18% on my bill is a great motivation for me to calculate exactly 15%, to the penny, instead of estimating and using the ceiling function to the next whole dollar. People like me are just one of the many reasons why tips are not now 80% or more of your bill, and why you can't yet buy Christmas decorations in the seasonal aisle of your local retailer on Memorial Day. You're welcome.~

Try doing 20% on an american credit card bill when you're drunk and leaving the house, where it wants you to write down the total AND the difference.

It's completely retarded in every conceivable way.

Isn't that an either-or? I've always either written the tip or the total amount on trips to the US.

All of the americans i was with told me to do both. But they were drunk too, so who knows.

As an American, I have always written both the tip and the total on the slip. Until this moment, I have never actually considered only writing one or the other.

I probably will continue to write both as I'm a little paranoid about people making changes to the values before they get put into the machine, and having to change 2 lines is harder than 1.

Is that more likely than you making a mistake and the person picking the higher value?

> retarded

Maybe consider not using this word anymore.

Just write the total. No need to calculate the difference - leaving it blank works fine 100% of the time.

0% is an even easier calculation.

You just take a zero, and add a dollar sign to the front.

> Terrible waiter? Subtract $2 or $3.

Really? Surely if they're a terrible waiter/terrible service, you shouldn't leave any tip.

In most cases the service you get is merely a function of how well managed the place is that's it. I believe that it's somewhat unfair to withhold an employee's salary because their management is dysfunctional. Even if they were downright lazy they still work somewhere where they are allowed to be downright lazy.

I say this as someone who has worked for both very dysfunctional management as well as very functional, process oriented management. The difference between how well customers were served was like night and day. Some issues that contributed to the dysfunction was lack of training and lack of feedback.

Also, in many places tips are pooled, every single person I know who was a tipped employee was part of a tip pool, so you probably taking away salary from an amazing server in the process. Sometimes back of the house is tipped out a small percentage as well.

Restaurant service is, above all, a team effort, so basically tipping is super unfair no matter how you slice it.

My brother-in-law is a waiter and his work complaints echoed this. At his current employer they pool tips, but mgmt has overstaffed for nights that are traditionally slow. That means easier work, but also less money.

In places where they don't pool the direct wait staff might still need to give a cut to others. It was explained to me that the busboys will sandbag you if they feel cheated, and then good luck turning over tables in your section when they haven't been cleared.

>mgmt has overstaffed for nights that are traditionally slow

Of course management doesn't have an incentive not to over staff because they aren't paying the employees hardly anything anyways. Add that with employees bribing^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htipping other employees and, wow, what a dysfunctional system.

I'd imagine bartenders would pretty much always be required to pool tips with each other since whenever there's more than one working they always work in a team.

If you plan on leaving a $0 tip, you'd better complain to the manager first.

Why is it my responsibility to do performance reviews of restaurant employees? The management already forced me into a performance rating system through tips, I shouldn't have to sit down with the manager to do a detailed performance review too. Besides, if the food and service was so bad that it warranted a $0 tip, I'm probably not coming back.

For one thing they have no idea if you have a legitimate complaint, are someone who has such high standards that it's not worth catering to, or simply a cheap bastard. They care strongly about the former, will shake their head at the middle and will dislike you if it were the latter.

If you actually speak up they'll have a better idea.

If the manager has no idea whether or not the service warranted a 0% tip, then that's the problem right there. It's his job to know that.

My point was that if the service was bad enough to not leave a tip, complaining to the manager might result in you not paying for the food, either.

You can demand that the bill be discounted or waived entirely (or that what you paid be refunded) if you didn't get what you were expecting. For instance, if you walk out of a movie because the sound was a half second out of sync and the picture was out of focus, you could just eat the price of the ticket, or you could find a manager and get your money back for the low, low cost of just voicing what was wrong with your experience.

What else would you do? Angrily write a bad Yelp review in your car?

I don't care about getting comp'ed food (unless the order was obviously wrong and I was over charged), that's not going to make up for the 2 hours of wasted time. I'm not going to spend another 15 minutes waiting to talk to a manager while I "demand" that the bill be discounted or waived.

Fortunately, I live in an area where there is no end of new restaurants to explore, if I have bad service at one, then I just won't go back there. Problem solved (for me).

For the record, I've never tipped 0% (but have tipped only 10% for particularly bad service).

I come from a country (Australia) where I can always leave a $0 tip, and the server won't mind because they are paid properly by their employer.

I wouldn't leave a $0 tip in a country where tipping is an essential part of the server's income, but I do think such a system is backwards.

Worse still, tipping is merely a way of keeping class hierarchies, and it's disgusting.

When a person walks into a restaurant in the USA they can waive a $20 bill at a waitperson and say if you do what I want, and if I like you, and if I'm feeling generous, I might give you some of this.

Of course, they might not too.

Labor laws, minimum wage, etc are all there to make this illegal in a work contract, and it should be illegal for tipping too because it's gross.

> When a person walks into a restaurant in the USA they can waive a $20 bill at a waitperson and say if you do what I want, and if I like you, and if I'm feeling generous, I might give you some of this.

So you also dislike bonuses for white collar professionals?

Because it's exactly the same thing.

Except it's not.. the requirements for getting a bonus should be well defined

Like the sales guys met some quota to determine company wide bonus even when you are an engineer with no influence on the sales guy?

No, because unlike a bonus, tips make up a significant portion of waitstaff's regular income. If they don't get their tips then maybe they don't make rent.

It's a completely different situation than bonuses on top of a salary that already covers living expenses.

> No, because unlike a bonus, tips make up a significant portion of waitstaff's regular income.

Bonus makes up a significant portion of my regular income. I'm sure that's true for many other HN readers.

> It's a completely different situation than bonuses on top of a salary that already covers living expense.

In many cases, salary does not cover living expenses. In some instances bonuses can be 10x annual salary or more. Even if bonus is only 3x annual salary, you wouldn't say that salary covers living expenses as few people live on only 25% of their income.

What employers are paying 3x and 10x salary in BONUSES? That's ludicrous.

Also, if you're still working there and looking for fresh CS grad (Scala and Linux admin experience), my email is in my profile ;)

Financial services.

New York State's budget situation is good or bad based on how good or bad bonuses are -- we're talking billions of dollars.

I'm including things like annual equity vesting in bonus. This is not uncommon for senior individual contributor positions in high paying tech and finance companies. It's also not uncommon for sales and senior management roles in all industries.

Is the bonus agreed upon before starting work or do you just work for pennies with the hope your employer is feeling generous at the end of the year?

It depends on what you were able to negotiate. You might have a guaranteed bonus in your first year, but you might rely on your employer's generosity in future years. In some cases, the bonuses may be based on certain targets, but those targets can become impossible to meet if your employer changes certain aspects of your situation.

Even in the very unlikely event that you have an airtight contract, there are instances where the employer simply will not pay you. Legal action might be the only recourse in this situation. Sometimes you are required to go through arbitration and sometimes you have to sue.

At some finance companies yearly bonuses are up to 20 monthly salaries.

That's just for tax avoidance, those 'bonuses' are mostly part of their contract.

> That's just for tax avoidance, those 'bonuses'

Can you teach me how this tax avoidance works? It seems that I am missing out. Can you also specify the jurisdiction where this works?

> mostly part of their contract

I can think of many people whose bonuses are 3x or more their salary and who do not have a guaranteed minimum bonus or even a strict formula based bonus.

http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/income-and-investments/bonus...

1. The Percentage Method

The IRS specifies a flat “supplemental rate” of 25%, meaning that any supplemental wages (including bonuses) should be taxed in that amount.

This works for bonuses up to 1 million.

> I can think of many people

Yes, there are plenty of idiots even in finance.

This only affects the withholding of bonuses (the amount the IRS has you pre-pay as an estimate of taxes.) It does not affect the actual income tax on bonuses.

(It's mostly a disadvantage. I get about 60-70% of my income in bonus and stock which is treated the same; it just means that, if I don't plan ahead for it, I end up with a surprise tax bill on April 15th. I do plan ahead, but the whole process is obnoxious.)

I find large interest free loans useful.

You will have to pay penalties if you underpaid over the course of the year. This makes it not interest free.

There are plenty of games you can play with withholdings. EX: As long as you witholdings are enough to pay last years taxes or 90% of this years you are good.

Or if your bonus is in January you can have a higher witholdings from salary and the default 25% from the bonus. Just balance it by the end of the year.

But that's just simple stuff, there are also other benefits to the company.

I don't hate this (and it's why I don't pay quarterlies--also, I tend to generate enough deductions to be okay.)

But it's absolutely not correct that paying people with bonuses lowers their effective tax rate.

> So you also dislike bonuses for white collar professionals?

I do dislike them, because in a way they are the similar - you work really hard and you can't be sure if you will get it or not.

It's the classic carrot on a stick motivation.

> Because it's exactly the same thing.

At most companies, how you get a bonus and how much it is is very clearly defined, and so in that regard, it's not similar to tipping at all.

> At most companies, how you get a bonus and how much it is is very clearly defined, and so in that regard, it's not similar to tipping at all.

I'm surprised that this has been your experience. In many cases, even cases where bonus is 3x annual salary, the bonus is "discretionary" and little is clearly defined.

I worked in finance sales for about 3 years. Bonuses are fun but I have seen a lot of misconduct in the pursuit of a bonus. Maybe its just banking...

I'm all for the no tipping and i happily work without a bonus. And i would expect other to as well. If you can't show up and be consistent in performance without a carrot then thats maybe not a great reflection of how you work and what you value.

My values at work are to get paid. I think that's why most people work instead of doing their hobbies all day. The carrot is payment. Nothing wrong with that.

Is your bonus based on predefined criteria? Do you negotiate it ahead of working, or after the fact? Does your skin colour, sex, how you dress affect your bonus?

> Does your skin colour, sex, how you dress affect your bonus?

I am not aware of a study on this, but I would bet my annual income that those factors affect your bonus.

> Bonuses are fun but I have seen a lot of misconduct in the pursuit of a bonus. Maybe its just banking...

It's not just banking. I was horrified at some of the behavior I saw from the sales folks at a software start-up I worked for (including the CEO). As a sales lifer, our CEO came up with some pretty generous comp packages for the sales team that promoted bad behavior and short-term "wins" that the rest of us would be cleaning up for months.

I agree with this so much. Because of strict regulations, non-financial sales is infinitely worse than anything you'll see in finance.

> I worked in finance sales for about 3 years. Bonuses are fun

I think this should be obligatory link in all bonus related discussions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

As someone who relies on a bonus the way that waiters rely on tips, I dislike bonuses very much.

It's possible that they're unavoidable given the volatile nature of business revenues and perhaps a system with no bonuses would result in lower total compensation.

It's not really the same thing unless you're thinking of a different bonus than I am. The bonuses I get are typically a couple times a year after a long slog through a difficult or time sensitive part of a project.

A server gets their tips probably about once an hour or so and the amount from one customer may differ with essentially the same service for another customer. Esentially random and arbitrary.

Because it's exactly the same thing.

A bonus is paid to you by your company (evaluated by your boss) and is more like profit sharing.

A tip is paid directly by the customer. The customer has no way of knowing if you are being paid a living wage or not. They have different incentives if they are a regular or not. The waiter at a busy restaurant will see hundreds of customers a day, but the customer may only interact with this waiter once. The waiter understands the house systems and knows how to maximize tipping. These are all ways that the waiter has an information advantage and can wield it against the customer. Maximizing tipping and providing good service to everyone are seldom the same thing.

People like to think that tipping puts the customer in power but it really just sets up the customer to be gamed. This aspect doesn't exist when we're talking about bonuses with your employer.

> So you also dislike bonuses for white collar professionals?

Do white collar professionals always expect to get a 20% bonus, no matter how well the company does?

I've not read this second one yet but the first was very good:

http://prole.info/

Abolish restaurants. Might be interesting to you to give it a chance.

I was thinking the other day that the 1800 world of servants living upstairs/downstairs has been replaced by privatised slaves who have no job security, no guarantee of lodging and nothing other than temporary masters. The situation we have right now is demeaning, these people have little choice.

No doubt someone will tell me if we kill these businesses people will have no jobs, but I want a more radical reform than this.

Honestly not trying to be rude, but is this satire?

The job is demeaning because it's made to be so. Cooking in and of itself isn't demeaning. I love to bake. I don't love to bake and be treated like crap and get paid like crap and have no financial security.

I too love to cook. For myself in my time. I keep the surplus value I create and enjoy it. In the past when working in a cafe I've not enjoyed being ordered about by people who know I cannot afford to answer back.

Okay, thanks I wasn't sure if it was satire, because some people say an extreme thing to make a point.

Well a lot of that comes from tipping culture and low pay. Like you need to lick my shoe in order to get your $3 tip. It's a power dynamic-- you're reliant on their money, so you're lower than them. And society looks down on restaurant workers in general as lazy people. People's views on restaurant workers needs to change.

I've waitressed before too. I knew people who liked their job most of the time, you get to be around people, you get the satisfaction of someone enjoying a good meal you've made and being happy about it. Some people prefer physical work. I don't think the job itself "has" to be eradicated. But of course no one likes the people treat you like crap or the awful pay.

Yes I wouldn't say every minute of my time in a cafe was bad. I enjoyed producing, adding value etc. The tips didn't really come into it much for me because my base wage was enough. It wasn't going to make or break my week.

The power dynamic comes from creating a system where people are forced to work to meet their largest expense: rent.

That's true of any job though. Why single out restaurants?

I'm all for automating jobs in general, but we're not there yet.

For me I'm thinking of "the service industry", the lower end. Here employees are low-skill, therefore at the mercy of employers who can swap them out for a less testy serf if required.

Those further up the value chain have more of a give-and-take relationship with their employer, the supply/demand curve is more in the favour of the employee. The employee has better savings and is not facing missing next week's rent if they are fired. A very different dynamic.

It is a different dynamic. The minimum wage needs to be up, but I wouldn't go from saying that to "shut down all restaurants".

Not sure about what could be done about supply/demand. They are low skill jobs. Most people could learn to do them pretty quickly. That doesn't mean they don't deserve to be paid properly-- the current economy is creating those jobs, we still need service people. They are working hard. But as far as supply/demand goes, I think there would always be a surplus of people who have the ability to do those jobs.

Well as I stated in the same column where I provide the link, I've not read it, I doubt you have in this time either.

That said, the system creates these imbalances so I would not look to simply treat the symptom.

Progress depends on a deficit of cheap labour to encourage automation. Globalisation has seen companies move manual low-skill jobs to other countries. Meanwhile land prices are up and so are rents. People must take what they can get whilst the usurers run rampant.

Thanks for the read!

Tipping is supposed to be for exceptional service.

For example, if the wait person takes your order and brings your food and nothing more I wouldn't tip.

If they do the above and keep your water glass filled constantly without need to ask, if your meal, drink orders and dessert come out promptly and correctly, if they ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times, etc I would tip.

Getting good service is starting to get hard to find. Some waitstaff are really good some hate their job and really don't care about the experience you have at the establishment you are in. It's just a job.

Also I've worked in kitchens, I know what douche nozzles customers can be. That's when you can see who your best wait staff is. During times they have to deal with them.

>> "If they do the above and keep your water glass filled constantly without need to ask, if your meal, drink orders and dessert come out promptly and correctly

This shouldn't be considered exceptional. It's what I'm paying for and should not require tipping.

>> if they ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times

I understand you included 'appropriate' but this is honestly the thing that irritates me most about tipping culture. When I visit the US the barrage of 'how is everything etc.' throughout every meal drives me insane. Leave me alone to enjoy the food and conversation, stop interrupting it.

It's hard to do the latter. When is the appropriate time to intervene to ask if everything is ok?

But I can't tell you how many times I've not had a fork, or needed a drink and my waitperson never came to ask if I needed anything. The frustration can go both ways.

> When is the appropriate time to intervene to ask if everything is ok?

Where I grew up (The Netherlands) this simply does not exist. If you need something you ask the waiter and only then they'll come to you. Likewise for the check, the check only comes when you ask for it. It is considered extremely rude to get the check before you've asked for it.

Of course, after living in the US for 5 years I've become accustomed to all kinds of weird things (like the insistence of having salad before the entree, and entree not being an appetizer, simply blows my mind).

Can you elaborate on "entree not being an appetizer?"

Outside the US and Canada 'entrée' is served before the main course. In the US and Canada entrée refers to the main course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entr%C3%A9e

>> "When is the appropriate time to intervene to ask if everything is ok?"

When the meal is finished. If there's a real problem all it takes is for me to catch the eye of one of the many weight staff walking around and raise my hand and they'll come over.

I bartended for a couple years (and waiting tables was a part of that). it's actually pretty easy. After their food comes out, ask if they need anything else. If you see an empty glass, ask if they want a refill. Otherwise, just drift by occasionally and pay attention to the table. If they need you, they'll be looking to make eye contact / flag you down as you walk by and you won't need to say anything if they don't want you. Basically just don't be one of those servers that stands at the wait-station or bar, playing with your phone or socializing with co-workers without paying attention.

In my opinion, absent of delivering food, asking if people want refills, or addressing an obvious problem, you really shouldn't be interrupting people. The end result is good service without being annoying.

thats is also wrong.

repeat visits is what you do for good to exceptional service/product at a good price.

tipping culture is just the lazy way for restaurants owners to deal with high attrition rates and lack of training and decent wages.

I don't think so. At least for me, I tip because I've worked in a kitchen. I've worked with waitstaff. I know how hard that job can be. If you are happy, and do a good job with me I would feel guilty not paying you a tip because your normal wage is shit and it's almost impossible to live on. So if I can tip you $15 bucks raising your hourly to at least $22/hr or so I feel good for helping that person being able to live. It's voluntary. Its cash. I expect you to pocket it and not pay tax on it. But that's your call.

So if they earned a decent wage to begin with, that would be better, right?

> if your meal, drink orders and dessert come out promptly and correctly, if they ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times, etc I would tip.

And yet fully half of those things are beyond the control of the person you're tipping for it.

I'd say closer to 75-100%.

If manager or owner hoses the servers and doesn't staff appropriately then they aren't going to be able to "ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times" and it wouldn't be their fault. Nobody can do the impossible. It's like personally blaming the cashier when the line is long.

I'd also start it earlier with training. If someone isn't trained for the job they are doing and never get any feedback from management, is it really their fault if they do it wrong? (I say this as someone who worked somewhere where training was more or less "yeah, go figure it out" so I have a lot of empathy)

I wrote on HN a while ago about my experience waiting (at least) a half hour to pick up a site-to-store order at Walmart when there was literary no customers. I never personally blamed the staff for it though because I could see the dysfunction in the system they were given to work with (and I could see the physical discomfort the staff was in dealing with it).

Reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalunya, where Barcelona was an Anarchist state for a while, he points out that tipping was banned. He also says that despite many problems the anarchist state "seemed like something worth fighting for".

Its definitely worth a read.

Some online services (e.g. Doordash) which ask you to pay a tip upfront even before the service irrespective of the quality. And, the default option is pre-selected to 15% of the cost on the checkout page. This after a specified delivery charge, and some "fees" bundled along with taxes etc.

And I read articles about how companies like Doordash are not making profits and are riding on VC money. It is just passing the buck onto the customers to keep their uneconomical business models afloat.

> I should have been fully informed how much should I have to pay before I purchase something or some service.

You are. A tip is, by definition, not something you have to pay.

> The worker's salary is a employer's responsibility. If the the worker become underpaid without the tipping, then the worker is underpaid by the employer.

The thing about tipping, though, is that even if the employee were "fairly" compensated, they could still be "underpaid". This of course is only in the case where the tip is after the service.

What I mean by this, is when the tip is after the service, if the person is tipping fairly (or tips at all - some of these buggers just don't tip!), they will tip based on the level and quality of the service. That is what a tip is for.

If the person goes above and beyond their customer's wants and desires, and does so regularly (if the customer is a regular), those tips can be (and should be) a fairly large percentage. For instance, when I tip - if I get adequate service, I'll do 20%. But if I get better service, my tip rate will go up; I have done well over 100% at times when the service was worth it.

Now, I know that's an anomaly on my part - but going over 20% shouldn't be unexpected, if the service is worth it. It should also go the other way, of course (poor service -> less of a tip). It should serve as feedback to the employee as to how customers view their service, and how to improve it.

If the person does their job correctly (and makes an effort to go above and beyond customer's needs), and people tip properly (always an issue in today's world), then the employee can easily make well more in a day than what they would get being "paid fairly" by their employer without any tips.

However, today there are multiple problems: First, in so many cases, employees don't go "above and beyond" and so don't see the proper sized tips. But there is the other issue of people not tipping or tipping poorly - and so we have a feedback loop to the bottom. I'm not sure what has caused this, because I know it didn't use to be this way here in America.

For instance, my wife works in a service industry job. Recently, she had to cater to the desires of a customer, ultimately going well outside the parameters of her job and position to make this customer happy (I won't go into much detail - but it was room service with a multiple course meal, in a hotel chain that doesn't provide this service, for a family of four). Despite preparing and delivering enough food to feed a small army, doing so with a smile and a wave, and going out of her way to do this (while staying late on her shift) - she received zero tip from these people. These are long-term guests of her employer, too (they've been there longer than she has worked there); they have never been treated unfairly by her.

It's an unfortunate consequence of our system and society, and perhaps cultural - for some reason, many see service workers as "beneath them" or something, and refuse to tip. In other cases (like your's), there are other cultural conditionings from that side that makes tipping seem unnatural or foreign in some manner. All of this ultimately feeds into these employees doing a worse job than they might otherwise, again leading to a negative feedback loop.

That said - everywhere my wife has worked, after she has worked there for a limited amount of time, the customer satisfaction scores for her area have increased; she does receive accolades and positive response from staff, guests, and her employers. People write glowing positive Yelp and other reviews mentioning her, and how her attitude and assistance made their experience extremely enjoyable. Furthermore, when she has left positions (for one reason or another), those scores drop like a rock (she follows them afterward sometimes), and customers generally follow her to her new employer - her service is that good.

I shit you not, she has groupies.

And she generally makes good tips. At least from those who understand what tipping is about and for.

When I made a similar argument in similar discussion on Reddit, I was instantly labeled the worst and the most vile person ever for not appreciating daily struggles of poor waiters

This is the problem.

The obvious way to get rid of the tipping culture is to not give them, or give as much as you the customer believe it is worth (rather than a standard 15 / 20%).

Doing this it will be the waiting staff that suffer rather than the restaurant owners, who you are trying to pass the message to.

Went to an Indian restaurant in NY, the waiter was awful not just bad but an asshole, we left without tipping and the manager ran after us telling us we had to tip or he would call the cops.

How about you pay your damn employee or fire him for being incompetent?

Tipping itself should not be illegal, it is mine evaluation and almost personal relationships with service guy/girl. If you're okay with standard cold service, just do not tip.

It also should not be mandatory, that's right.

Tipping is also extremely inconsistent in at least three ways.

One is the idea of a percentage: how does that make any sense? When I go out for a rare nice dinner and the tip alone ends up being $20 or so, I ask myself: did this person/restaurant really do any more than the server of the last entire meal that cost $20? Of course not, and yet somehow it would look weird to pay $40 for a $20 meal with tip, for the same service?

Another inconsistency is where to tip. Yes, tip at restaurants but what about the zillion other places that sometimes explicitly and often implicitly expect tips? Do we have to slip a dollar to just about everyone in case they expect a tip?

And finally, the inconsistency in who tips. Sometimes I tip generously because I assume there will be other people who just don’t tip at all, or tip poorly, and I feel some obligation to balance the pot. I don’t know why, it just seems like the right thing.

It would make a lot more sense to end all these charades and just show exact prices. (While we’re at it, let’s make sure utility companies do the same, up front, no fees.)

> One is the idea of a percentage

I've always found this odd too. Say for a special occasion I decide to go to a high end steakhouse... mid-range bottle of wine, two nice steaks, a'la cart sides, appetizer, and desert we're at $500. That's $100 at 20%. Did that person really do more work than the person I tipped $10 at Chili's (an american casual family restaurant)?

> Another inconsistency is where to tip

I usually end up spending 20 minutes Googling "what to tip _______" before going anywhere or getting an deliveries.

Here's the thing. I worked in the restaurant business in various capacities all through college. As a cash transaction, it will come as no surprise that a lot of tips go unreported as income. From time to time the IRS will decide the reported income from a restaurant seems low and audit the staff. It was generally understood that if you had reported 10% of your sales as a server/bartender as tip income you'd be ok. If not you were in trouble (and this happened to people I know). So if you tip $20 on a $500 dollar tab because it's the same amount of work as $100 dollar tab. your server will most likely still claim $50 in income and be at about break even once the taxes are paid on it.

This still doesn't explain why it should be a percentage other than that everyone assumes a percentage.

You're right. I didn't say it did. I was just trying to give some insight into how it works for people that have maybe never worked for tips. I am of two minds about tipping. As a customer it would be nice if these jobs provided a decent base pay + benefits and everything was just priced into the meal. On the other hand I would have hated this when I worked for tips, as I hustled and provided good service which allowed me to make a lot more than co-workers who didn't.

>hustled

This word is telling. If I go out to dinner I'd really prefer to not be hustled.

hus·tle ˈhəsəl/ verb

    1.
    force (someone) to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction.
    2.
    North Americaninformal
    obtain by forceful action or persuasion.
    3.
    North Americaninformal
    engage in prostitution.

How would they be "in trouble"? You mean the IRS is going to ask them scary questions? Or does the IRS really go around fining people with no more evidence than "Well, we think that maybe you earned more in tips than you reported, because someone else reported that they earned more..." Any CPAs or tax attorneys care to share their experiences? I can't see how the latter could be legal.

Yes, on average the server at the high end restaurant did substantially more work, and they performed it more expertly.

they were better able to answer questions and offer suggestions (including off-menu changes that might help you). They timed your meal for your enjoyment rather than for turnover. They made sure you had fresh silverware, a clean table, and a full glass. They coordinated your bar, wine, and food orders so appropriate items were presented at the appropriate time. They verified the kitchen gave them correct dishes before they brought them to you. They devoted a lot of energy into ensuring that a small number of guests have a great experience.

They're able to earn decent livings because they are at the top of their field.

The folks at chili's are granted no autonomy. Their goal is to turn the table quickly, with the least effort; and to do this with the least skilled staff. They work hard, but their goal is to serve a large number of guests with a tolerable experience, not a great one.

Yes, they bring food and drink, but the focus is on throughput, not on quality.

It's similar to the difference between code written by a low bid contractor versus a talented on-site team. If you want anything unusual or if you care about quality and the experience, you'll greatly prefer the on site staff. Even if some execs might not understand why you can't offshore 100% of the work.

All of these things you describe, fall under what I consider "their job"

Your point being?

and part of the compensation package associated with "their job" is tipping.

So assume that if they (and the back of the house, in the event of tip pooling) were paid a meaningful base wage it would have cost 20% more for the experience of dining at the restaurant. Do a calculation and add that to the check, because that's what you would be paying if we didn't have tip culture.

The thing is... people are okay with that. It's how most every other country works. Americans are paying it anyways, the only difference is sometimes the waiter(ess) gets shafted because the business outsources the responsibility to their customers.

I don't live in a tip culture (not in America), and things seem to move along just fine. There's no shortage of people eating out in restaurants, nor a shortage of wait-staff working there..

That's not the point I was making. The point I was making was if you are so offended by the idea of tipping imagine that:

* If we didn't tip, these experiences cost 20% more. (We can't know whether that's the right number or not, but I think it's a good place to start)

* Now just apply 20% to your check and go on about your day.

This is legitimate advice for a person baffled by tipping -- just pay 20% more and move on. If we lived in a world where that waiter got paid a meaningful wage, that's what you'd be paying.

Agreed. Where I'm from, if a restaurant or a fast food doesn't satisfy these things (aka doing their job), then I simply don't go there.

While I'm not disagreeing that a server at a high end restaurant has substantially more work to do. I'd argue that simply the lower volume of orders and higher level planning by the restaurant managers is a more critical piece here. It's like running on a bespoke finely tuned server versus just trying to use auto scaling cloud services and crossing your fingers.

I agree. I think the reason has to be that you are getting a better level of service and they will have a much lower volume of tables so they need a higher margin per table. (Obviously there are some high volume / high cost restaurants but that isn't the norm.)

That has generally not been my experience... but I have never spent $500 on a meal before, so my experience is with the lower to mid-tier priced establishments.

It could be an incentive. Some customers are more valuable than others and using percentages means the employees will be extra nice to high-value customers and not waste too much time on the low-value customers.

Of course they should be nice to everyone, but if it is a busy day and they have to choose, the restaurant owners would prefer that they prioritize the ones who spend more.

Yes. Another inconsistency involves the point in time at which a tip is expected. Historically tips came after the meal (or other service), and in theory you would tip well if you were happy with service, and badly or not at all if you were unhappy. In itself that made a little bit of sense (w/o considering the contradictions you mentioned).

But nowadays you're often expected to tip at beginning of meal (i.e., when you order and pay at register), and your tip is not tied to quality of service at all (and very often there isn't even any actual service, other than taking of order and preparation of food). As an older person this strikes me as bizarre; grew up in atmosphere where tips were always after meal and explicitly tied to quality of service.

I'd definitely am curious as to the impact on tips when it's expected upfront like that.

Nothing makes me feel like a sucker more than tipping before service is rendered, and then getting bad service!

I think that it's a mistake to think that because all POS systems used at restaurants support tips and you interact with that system up front at fast casual restaurants, therefore a tip is expected up front at those restaurants; it's generally not (and I've even seen some such places that use touchpad rather than write-on-reciept entry for tips pre-select "no tip"); virtually every source I've seen recommends that, if you tip at all at such places, you carry cash and tipping after service at such places [0]. And tipping at fast casual restaurants is far from a universal norm in the US. [1]

[0] e.g., http://vegasseven.com/2016/03/16/really-need-leave-tip-fast-...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/322702/consumer-tipping-...

You're absolutely right however I'd argue that the presence of that tip line there leads people to feel bad and leave something there, which starts the feedback loop going to the point where it is/will be expected

At that point it is just the psychological impact you allow suggestions to have on you. One could probably make an "employee-owned" store (WinCo, Trader Joes) with lovely staff and get away with doing this to sweeten the pot for employees.

You say "just" the psychological impact. Which is of course true, but I would leave out the "just" and emphasize that, yes, this is all about psychological impact. I go to these kind of POS restaurants/coffeshops all the time, and I can't recall one where it didn't have a tip screen. I know of several that are also set up so that "no tip" is not even one of the options, the only easy options you have are to select 10%, 15%, 20%, and if you want to leave no tip you have to select 'custom' and then set it to 0.00. This is all about psychological impact.

RE psychological impact: It has often crossed my mind, but I have never investigated, whether the employee on the other side of the POS screen sees whether I have entered a tip or not after I click 'DONE' and the screen is swiveled back around. My decisions are mostly based on thinking they can see this, and I would be less likely to leave a tip, or more likely to leave smaller tip, if I knew that they don't see this info.

If you try hard you can make it so they don't see it but usually they will. When I see people click through far enough to get to that point they almost universally have left 0% which IMO speaks to that psychological impact. They don't want to leave anything but feel bad not doing so.

Me? I'm a sucker for those things. For one I admit that I don't want to seem like a cheapo, and then on top of it it's often at most a buck or two that we're talking about, not a big deal. So I fall for the scam and click the button that leaves money.

Not only that but you've got people behind you in line who can see what you are doing, and you don't want them judging you! What if you we with a date, or a friend, or your boss or coworkers? They can see the screen and you want signal you are a good person to these people.

A good person, by the standards of tipping culture, tips appropriately after service; tipping before service destroys the link between service and tip that is the fundamental conceit of the tipping culture.

Visibly tipping before service is not signalling that you are a good person.

That is precisely the thing. The link between service and tip was the "fundamental conceit of tipping culture". But no longer. You simply tip for certain kinds of jobs (e.g., coffeeshop baristas) and not others (McDonald's cashiers). It is pointless to try to make sense out of it; it makes no sense.

> But nowadays you're often expected to tip at beginning of meal (i.e., when you order and pay at register)

I've never seen this, other than at places where I'm not being waited on. At these, I don't tip unless I am particularly satisfied by the place.

Try going to a foreign country, almost any, and have this conversation. They'll look at you like you've gone insane, really. Every conversation I've had with a foreigner about this and they think American's are batshit when it comes to the tipping strategy and how much noodle time and effort we spend on it.

Basically it's a type of freeloading. The business manager is dumping off their decision making, verbal and monetary feedback to their employee, onto the customer as if we're the employer (in part). Which is just stupid. It doesn't really give the proper feedback in any reliable sense compared to even a mediocre manager.

I've talked to several people from my home country who won't visit the US because they don't want to deal with the social trauma of deciding who to tip when and why.

Someone should look into how much this is costing the US tourism industry.

> The business manager is dumping off their decision making

The individual business manager is powerless about this. It's an ingrained national culture.

> The individual business manager is powerless about this. It's an ingrained national culture.

I've been to restaurants that clearly advertise that tips are not accepted and this has already been factored into pricing and wages. I never try to tip when I go to such a place.

I think it's overwhelmingly a unidirectional expectation. Tippers feel like they ought to tip more than they'd ever defend tipping as a concept. The economic evaluation pretty much shows most people tip the same whether they receive good, average, or poor service. It takes exceptionally poor service to get enough people to lower their tip that the waiter recognizes the negative feedback, and there's probably yet another line below that where they decide to alter their behavior. And in the meantime it negatively reflects on the business overall.

Worse though, business managers/owners are responsible for programming their point of sales systems to include tip lines for employees who definitely are not wait staff and thus are subject to the normal minimum wage, not the lower tipped employee minimum wage. So it really is business managers who are stiffing their customers with this responsibility and the ensuing behavior.

California for some time now doesn't distinguish in their minimum wage between job types; no waiter there is making $2 an hour or whatever it used to be 20 years ago.

> Someone should look into how much this is costing the US tourism industry.

I for one consider the whole social awkwardness of tipping as a huge negative against revisiting the US again...

It makes some sense in that high end restaurants employ high end servers, who has more and better skills than Olive Gardeners, so they command a higher wage.

> did this person/restaurant really do any more than the server of the last entire meal that cost $20?

This question applies to the bill too.

And don't forget the entire lower class of super-important minimum wage earners who collectively have disdain for minorities that don't tip as high.

The insanity is amusing just typing it out, amongst other commenters talking about how strange America seems from other countries.

I am a white male, but speak with a heavy accent despite living in US for over a decade. One time a server lectured me about tipping right before leaving the bill.

spend a couple years getting stiffed by people with heavy accents, you'll start lecturing too.

keep in mind these people don't earn a living wage, they live off of tips.

It also, to some extent, favors appearance over service.

Somehow, this seems to speak significantly to life in the U.S.

Of course, attractiveness is favored, everywhere. But in the U.S., we make it central to career success -- perhaps a bit more and in a wider range of roles than elsewhere in the world.

And we often fool ourselves, favoring physical appearance over reciprocity.

Having lived in Japan for a long time, I kind of dread visiting America because of the whole nonsense of tipping (and lot of other reasons, really). There's simply no concept of it here and yet the service is excellent. I don't know what the typical wage is but I know people who work in service jobs and seem to have a lot more disposable income than their counterparts in the US.

I also know people who work as servers and bartenders in the US and (predictably) they hate the idea of ending tipping even if it means a higher base wage. I suspect they're wrong but then I don't have to walk in their shoes.

I've worked as both a server and a delivery driver, and even after having left both jobs I'd still be in favor of tipping because I think it incentivizes the worker to do well at their job. The US simply doesn't have the same culture Japan has.

That said, travelling to the US shouldn't be handicapped by a fear of tipping. Don't tip, or do, but not going because of it is an unfortunate choice.

The US simply doesn't have the same culture Japan has.

While this is true, it also sounds as an excuse not to improve. It is clearly time for the culture of United States to change, and not just change, but strive to change for the better. Punting won't do that.

There is too much punting going on everywhere, which is one of the reasons the world now finds itself in the problems it finds itself in. Please help stop the vicious downward spiral. Not punting on problems is a low hanging fruit.

I don't think it does. Tipping is expected even if a bad service is being provided. I live in a country where you have to give tips everywhere and everywhere the service is awful. Why not be fair and pay the employee well (and also pay taxes for that amount).

edit: I was thinking about how to award good employees and I think it's simple: give a small paper form at the end, where people will provide ratings for the service provided. Not all of them will fill them, of course, but I think you will get some feedback about who are your best employees and who are the worst. Also, regarding tips, how do they help the kitchen staff (in the restaurants, you can find other examples on other businesses)? That sistem isn't fair.

The difference between bad service and good service might only be 15% vs 20% and IME most American's do not tip punitively anyway, and tip the same no matter what.

The employer is in a much better position to assess staff performance than customers... And it's not the customers job.

If a waiter sucks they won't fire themselves just because they're only getting 15% tips.

>The employer is in a much better position to assess staff performance than customers... And it's not the customers job.

I disagree, after all it's the waiter who interacts with the customer most, while the employer mostly can only watch from afar or has other (better) things to do.

In that regard a 5% difference on the tip won't do much at all. If the waiter expects to get tipped anyway, regardless of how bad the service was, then he's far more likely to give bad service and just get 5% less tip.

But if getting any tip at all depends on the quality of service, then waiters at least have to try to deliver some decent service, instead of just doing an half-arsed job and getting their "guaranteed", although somewhat smaller, tip.

If the manager can't tell that the customers are having a bad time they have no business running a restaurant. IME in the best places the manager comes to the table at the end (after entree is served or pre-bill) and ask whether you're having a good time / experience / meal / etc.

At any rate, I've not heard of tips being collated by the manager, and the employees with the smallest tips fired/disciplined... but perhaps it does happen? Unless that's the case IMO customers aren't assessing performance in a meaningful way.

> But if getting any tip at all depends on the quality of service

In the US it does not, service has to be DIRE to get 0.

You think the manager has better things to do than observe their employee's performance? Isn't managing personnel just as important as managing, say, inventory? Isn't the manager's job to make sure the customer is well served?

The manager, for example, can observe if the employee is the problem or the customer. I've observed customers (from the outside) fly off the handle for no reason whatsoever. An employee shouldn't be paid less because the person they are serving is awful. They also shouldn't be paid less because the back of the house is short staffed so the food took an hour to be cooked, because people will tip less for that reason.

Also there's the people who believe "good service" means being served by a young attractive woman who smiles at you.

I'd like to know what good service means to other people. Good service to me is you take my order and bring me what I ordered.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535700...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296301...

While tipping is not an enormous driver of service quality (primarily for the reason you mentioned—that tips are expected even when service is poor), it does appear to be correlated with better service to some degree.

> I'd still be in favor of tipping because I think it incentivizes the worker to do well at their job

Not in my experience. For instance, I've seen cab drivers expecting a 20% tip to be added by default regardless of the quality of service, courtesy and help (if any). It feels terrible to be asked to pay 120% (in total) for mediocre or even lousy service.

A very aggressive taxi driver (it was one up from a regular taxi, but don't recall what) drove my Gran and me from SFO to SF, the drive was TERRIFYING, would have been 1* on Uber. Yet he angrily demanded a 25% tip, he didn't get it. Fuck that guy.

I'm in Australia, and we don't have a mandatory tipping culture, but we do still have optional tipping.

I've tipped extra on those occasions where the service has been exceptional and above the call of duty. But I don't like to feel pressured to tip when someone is just "phoning it in".

it incentivizes the worker to do well at their job

However, tipping only exists in certain jobs, and apparently people who do other jobs do them just fine in the US. So tipping doesn't seem to be necessary.

By the way, I also think the tipping issue is a significant annoyance when going to the US. I love visiting the US and definitely it's not a reason for not going (and I don't think the GP meant that either), but probably my most uncomfortable moments there (excluding when I was detained at customs, I think due to having the same name as a criminal) have been when I got disapproving or even downright angry looks for (unintentionally) not giving the expected tip due to not knowing all the details of customs by state, restaurant type, etc.

I should clarify, there are a lot of reasons I don't like going back to the US and tipping is just one small part of it. It would be off topic to go into them here but, obviously, a dislike of tipping culture is hardly a reason to move to a different country and never return.

Yes, it's not the same culture.

The USA is very much about what's in it for me? One has to be paid extra, explicitly (apparently), to do one's job well, paid to give good service, paid to be nice (?).

Is it necessary to have a direct tip for doing those things? In a different culture, those are things your salary pays for.

>it incentivizes the worker to do well at their job

The entire point of being a server is to offer the customer a pleasant dining experience.. that is literally the major job qualification in customer service. Are you saying that people that work in retail aren't incentivized to do their job because they don't receive tips. I think its absurd, because if you ever work retail, you take much more crap from customers on top of working just as hard.

The wages for waiter are not very high, when I was a student there (12 years ago) I was paid 720 yens per hour (not in Tokyo though, I imagine wages there are higher). I think the reason people here tend to have more disposable income is that a lot of people live with their parents and the fact that the cost of life is not as high as in the US.

I do agree with you though, I dislike tipping and I find the service in Japan without tipping to be better than the service in US with tipping. For waiters in the US, from what I've seen so far they are overpaid compared to the kitchen staff in restaurants because tips are not distributed fairly (and by law in some states, the kitchen staff cannot get a percentage of the tip). In Japan, it's the contrary, the kitchen staff would tend to be better paid (and more respected) than the waiters.

I used to wait tables. They hate the idea of ending tipping because servers almost without exception make much, much more than any of the kitchen staff. Eliminating ripping and raising the base wage would almost always be a pay cut. I worked at a buffet, not anything fancy, and it was easy to make $20/hr. No employer was going to pay that for the work I did.

Not only does the employer NOT want to pay that much to their employees, tipping encourages waitstaff to turn tables faster, increasing both the restaurant's bottom line, and the number of tips.

Here's a pickle: I agree with the direction of this article, but I don't agree with most of the individual points and statements. I think the expectation of tipping in the US is in general a bad thing, but has enough upsides for business owners and some higher-earning servers (and even some customers) that it will be hard to dislodge. I also think the incentive for any business to change is probably not as high as the author's wishful thinking makes out.

I mostly disagree that "it’s robbery", or it's some kind of unpleasant surprise at the end of the meal for the customer. Tipping is not a secret. You know it going in. You might not like it but it's not a new thing that gets sprung on you at the end of the meal. If you can't afford to tip at the level you want to, you probably won't enjoy eating there. It is too costly for you regardless of the printed menu prices, because you know in advance that if you experience service you really love, you're going to be delighted and you'll want to be generous with a tip - but if you feel like you can't afford the extra 20%, that will be unpleasant for you and the server.

Printed Price + Tip + Tax is the cost of many services in the US. It is not an ambush. I still prefer non-tipping cultures, like where I grew up, but I accept that this is the real cost of things here.

There are complexities related to the psychology of putting cheaper prices on the menu than you really end up paying, I agree with that, but it is not as simple as many of us seem to think.

Much of this article, and many of these comments, seem to ignore the realities of the complicated and entangled cultural accident that tipping the US is. It might be better to unravel it - but it will be difficult, and it will have costs.

> has enough upsides for business owners and some higher-earning servers

You don't need to mandate tips from everyone and their brother to do it. High-earning servers who serve the specialty needs of the rich will always earn their high tips. It's the fact that it's expected from everyone that's annoying.

> You don't need to mandate tips from everyone and their brother to do it.

Tips are never mandated.

Yes, it is annoying. My point is just that it being annoying doesn't mean that is easy to solve, or that the cost of solving the annoyance in a non-systematic way is worth it (i. e., trailblazing restaurants forge ahead on their own, instead of, say, legislation about it).

Also, most proposed solutions seem to involve raising the base cost to the customer... at which point the customer is no better off, and has instead lost the freedom to tip low or nothing if they choose, for whatever reason, to do so.

Tipping is not mandated, though. Unless there is an automatic service charge, in which case it is not exactly tipping. It's just a fee, like your parking or anything else to be factored in to the overall cost of the meal.

Is tipping somewhat mandatory in the US? Everywhere I've been it's up to the customer to decide if he wants to leave the tip. What if I won't leave tips?

It is seen as extremely rude. If you are picking up the bill for a party or a date and don't tip, it will shine a very negative light on you. And whoever you are with will probably leave the tip behind in your stead.

EDIT: If it was obvious to everyone that the service was bad, leaving without a tip will be fine.

In some places, the wait staff will grab you on your way out and notify you that you didn't tip enough (say 20% instead of 30%).

I tip 15-20%, have lived in the States and Canada my whole life, and this has never happened to me.

Just adding that to provide perspective of how common this is, for readers outside of North America.

Like the other commenter, I've never had this happen. If I tipped way below what other customers tip, I would like to be told politely and then make a choice about whether I was going to tip more, but I think even that would be frowned upon by business owners or managers. Usually, if I'm not sure (such as a service I rarely use), I will ask somebody what a typical tip looks like. A good example is a buck a bag for bell staff at a hotel - or $5 a bag for Skycaps, if you would like them to ignore the weight of your bag ;)

This happened to me once in NY at a fairly nice place. The waitress came back and asked what was wrong with the service, when we were really just a group of stingy Europeans.

I am American. I grew up pretty poor and we didn't go out to eat when I was a kid. When I was about 15 I went to a diner. My uncultured friends and I didn't leave a tip, not because we didn't want to, we legitimately just forgot to leave a tip. I would never forget now since 1) I pay by card and they have a tip line and 2) I am used to eating out now. The waitress followed us outside to the parking lot demanding a tip, it was awfully hostile.

some places will auto add tips to your bill, regardless of party size

If that's declared up front on their menu, I don't mind because I have the choice to not eat their if I'm not OK with that. I've never had to pay a service charge that I can recall on a small party. Usually over 6 or so.

I read an argument once that that tipping is probably illegal under US employment law because, in practice, its racist. Research indicates that servers who are ethnic minorities are tipped less than white women, who are tipped most. Sure the employer isn't doing the discrimination themselves but they are setting up compensation scheme that, in practice, is discriminatory. This is called "adverse impact" in US employment law and is still illegal, there doesn't have to be intent.

Maybe challenging tipping in court would be the best way to eliminate it. I'd be interested in reading the ruling no matter the outcome.

EDIT: Quick Google, Here's some research on the subject http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

As an aside, I actually went to a pretty expensive restaurant where the busboy did most of the work. The only thing the waiter did was take our order, ask if everything was ok, asked if we wanted another (paid) drink (the busboy refilled our water several times), and brought us the check. They busboy did everything that wasn't money oriented. I asked him if he got tips, he said he got 10%. 10% of the compensation for at least 50% of the work! I noticed all the busboys there had something in common - they were all black teenagers. The waitstaff also wore button down shirts and ties and the busboys wore polo shirts. I was extremely uncomfortable with the situation.

> I read an argument once that that tipping is probably illegal under US employment law because, in practice, its racist. Research indicates that servers who are ethnic minorities are tipped less than white women, who are tipped most.

Wouldn't that make minority owned businesses racist too by the same logic? If people make choices based on race, it puts them and their employees at a disadvantage.

How does that follow?

It seems like you're only classifying the physical labor as "work", and ignoring the skill and effort it takes to do all the stuff a waiter/waitress does. There's a lot of memorization involved, being able to answer a lot of different questions, making sure the meal gets delivered as soon as possible, with the right stuff, and checking back at the correct times to see if anything else is needed, including drinks. It's a lot harder than it seems.

The bussing jobs are a lot more physical and there's less to think about.

Also, he gets 10% of the tip... But where does the rest go? You're assuming the other 90% goes to the waiter/waitress, but it's possible a large portion of it goes to the kitchen staff.

The busboy was the one who made sure the meal was delivered as soon as possible with the proper stuff. The waiter had no part in the food or drink delivery.

Even if "it's a lot harder than it seems" (which really, what?) it's not 90% more work the busboy was doing... remember the busboy also buses the tables. Answering a few questions about the menu is not significantly more difficult than clearing tables.

(Then there's the places where the kitchen staff brings out the food...or they have "runners" who are responsible for bringing out the food.... really, I hate to generalize but as a group servers have a seriously inflated sense of importance, restaurant service is a team effort)

As someone who worked in the restaurant industry, and who's immediate and extended family worked in the restaurant industry, this feels like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

I've worked at pretty nice restaurants and while attitudes like yours were pretty pervasive, the only real difference between bussing and waiting was that wait staff was over 21 and thus able to serve alcohol.

I can also tell you from years of experience that waiters are the most stuck up classist poor people I've ever seen.

In this particular case the waiter didn't even bring us the alcohol, someone else did. Bartender? Runner? Who know, but it wasn't the waiter (or the busboy).

This works perfectly well in Australia, where tipping is entirely optional and not necessarily expected - however can still be done, if you feel like it.

In the advent of tap based payments especially - which is now ubiquitous in Australia - and you just tap your phone / card / device to the terminal which already shows the bill, I'd say tipping happens mainly in higher end restaurants.

There's certainly no lack of restaurants in Melbourne - with plenty of people enjoying the vast array of options for eating out. I for one am happy to not have to worry about tipping on everyday meals, however on special occasions I will add say 5-10% if particularly pleased with the service.

This ! This is exactly the same in Denmark. Tips are included in the price, but it is still custom to tip if the service is good and you can afford it usually around 5%.

No, tips are not included in the price. I think you are confusing tips with salary. And tips in Denmark seldom tends to have any relation to the price of the meal.

Yes.. tips are technically included in the price since the waiters union made an agreement with the employers union that waiters salaries should be covered fully by the employer. And yes tips often has a relation to the price of the meal that again often has a relation to the level of service.. If you are just out of school or still studying then it might be different for you which makes the system even better since you are not expected to even tip and therefore pay what you feel like.

Unless everyone decides to kill tips all at once, this will never work out. No server will work for a fixed 20% increment when they have the potential to get a lot more than that, especially on Saturday nights. There have been plenty of examples of this not working out [1].

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/15/478096516/why...

The articles mentions a raise of 15 to 30%. A waiter who makes 40% tips would probably accept a no-tip job at a 30% raise (Assuming the 40% tips weren't very stable).

At least some of the 30% would go to back-end staff. The article I linked to presents a case where the cooks etc had a raise because of this.

Very rarely do I cite market forces to address social problems, but to me this feels like an appropriate situation for it. Restaurants are constantly getting applications, and many who do not do well on high-tip nights will appreciate the stable paycheck. I won't put non-sense statistics to it, but while many servers do earn huge paychecks from tips, many others scrape by and fight for hours at minimum wage and have the constant threat of termination looming over them when they aren't able to get enough tips to cover their wages and the restaurant has to pay the difference. (Assuming the restaurant is even operating on the level)

There will be a period of social adjustment and probably some resentment as tipping restaurant hold-outs have servers that brag about huge payouts. But over time the more stable paycheck will be more reliable and better for servers, and while some servers may leave over lack of tips, they will soon find it difficult to find a place that does have a tipping policy.

But part of the problem is that the tipping-culture already VERY quickly corrects that problem.

Restaurants generally over-staff, and tend to get really cutthroat about who stays and who gos when it's needed. A place I worked when I was younger would regularly take the lowest performer off of saturday nights every saturday night.

The ones who aren't making a huge amount of money on the busy nights are already removed from it before they can even think to complain about it.

And it was a very "open secret" that if the restaurant needed to "supplement" your wage for ANY reason, you were going to be gone the next week. I saw it happen many times. So it was somewhat common for the wait staff to "pad" their own wages with tips if they had a bad week.

So now you get the situation that everyone involved wants to keep tipping.

* Well-performing waiters want to keep tipping as they make a lot of money, not tips means a huge pay-cut.

* Under-performing waiters want to keep tipping because they know the second the restaurant needs to pay their wage, they will be the first to go. So it's either keep their low-paying job, or have no job.

Yup. Once we had to start pooling our tips, you better be getting a minimum of 10%, or you'd get crappy shifts. 15% was expected, and to be a star waiter, 20%+ was the goal. This was partly to weed out the underperformers, but also to limit underreporting of tips by waiters. No one liked pooling, so they'd surreptitiously pocket a few tips.

I disagree with the conclusion since the premise (tipped wages make for unstable work) is exactly what the restaurant owners are complaining about, and many servers do as well. As others replied, the high payout often overshadows the rainy days for those servers lucky enough to get a killer night of tips. They remember that because it's an actual event as opposed to the night the spent not earning money while looking at their phone. In the long term it's unsustainable and it is more of a problem for restaurant owners than most want to admit.

There will be holdouts no doubt but overall the rest of the world has no lack of people willing to wait tables. They just get a steady pay check out of it instead of hoping for hours.

> have servers that brag about huge payouts.

I'm pretty sure that this is a form of Gambler's Fallacy.

I've heard a story of a waiter who got a high rollers table one night and walked away with a $1,000 tip.

But I heard it from a girl who worked with him. He was a 20-year industry veteran. She was some five years in at the time. The story was told another five years after it happened.

Sure, it was a massive payout on one night of work... But they don't recount the stories of the hundred rainy sundays where nobody shows up, you close shop early and go home with less than minimum wage.

They also save the story of how they couldn't get a mortgage because the bank can't see the income from tips.

I've heard the story of feeling "stuck" in bartending a number of times. You make more than you could in any other career with no skills, but you can't do anything with the money, it isn't fulfilling, the hours suck, retraining is hard and so is starting at the bottom on a new career ladder.

I know a few who've tried and failed to leave the industry and one who became an accountant for a fortune 500 (and now 'mom' too!).

Anyways, I've gone off on a tangent. My original point was unless you're getting those big-tipping payouts every night (eg: the million dollar a year Vegas bottle service girls) serving likely isn't as good as it "feels"

>I'm pretty sure that this is a form of Gambler's Fallacy.

Definitely. In my experience the waitstaff who most vigorously support the tipping culture are the ones who don't keep exact track of their tips and heavily overestimate their average hourly pay. They are also the ones who gamble the most on scratch-offs, keno, etc.

Any server who drops out because of that will simply be replaced. Waiters and waitresses are constantly churning through restuarants in any case, so the impact on business ought to be minimal.

Certainly wouldn't say "never". It may be true in some places, but there's a successful gastropub in our town (open for one year now) which applies a uniform 20% service charge rather than asking for tips. It doesn't have any more or less difficulty getting staff than other nearby establishments.

> No server will work for a fixed 20% increment when they have the potential to get a lot more than that, especially on Saturday nights.

So don't make it a fixed pay increment, make it a floor set by a fixed pay increment, but allow it to go higher with a revenue sharing formula.

Went to a revolving sushi bar tonight. Everything was automated. They even had a touchpad where you can put in orders (like miso ramen soup), which get delivered by a belt. The only thing the servers did was sit us and bring us water. We asked them to replace a leaking soy sauce container and they never did.

We tipped 0$ -- there was essentially no service. I kinda felt bad, but talking it over with my wife, I couldn't really find a reason to tip.

Were you actually requested to tip? If so, it seems strange. When I've gone to many kaiten-zushi places it is usually stated that you shouldn't tip at all (in Japan you don't). There used to be one like that downtown Berkeley off Durant that closed a few years back.

I also don't understand tipping at food carts. Customers stand in a line to pay and get their food, and are also expected to tip (either via Square or through tip jars).

Edit: the expectation is generally implicit, and while standing in line, I can't help but notice that most customers hit the minimum tip percentage on Square, which is usually 15%

I never hit that minimum thing. I'll give $1 every once in a while because they're friendly and the town is so expensive, but the food prices already definitely reflect that, and there is no service, so /shrug

IIRC with a few extra clicks on Square you can find a menu that will give you a "no tip" option. It's definitely hidden on purpose.

ive never seen a square display without a no tip option, and I'm pretty sure the restaurant is who decides what options are there

You're right that the restaurant probably decides. The option has always been there when I looked. When it doesn't, I'll refuse to pay.

Unless you get seated and have the food delivered by the server to your table, there is no expectation of tip - no matter what Square says.

For what it's worth, I sometimes hit the minimum tip percentage solely because a colleague at work is with me. The "impulse" to hit that button is greater if that colleague is my boss. But, even when I'm surrounded by strangers, I still feel this need to hit the tip button.

Ultimately, I think right now the social expectation of tipping in this situation is in limbo- whether you do or don't, it's ok.

There was more than no service. If they work on tips then you stiffed them even thought they didn't do much.

The donut shop I buy from put a new card reader system in place (probably to support chip cards). The UI requires you to enter something for a tip before you can proceed. It irritates me so much that I have stopped going as frequently. It's as if my waiter at a restaurant would hover over my table watching what I put on the tip line of the dinner bill. Infuriating dark pattern.

Oh my god this guy is a freaking genius! He totally cracked the restaurant code!

> "Make your food delicious."

No shit? That could possibly make customers happy?

> "Next, consider cooking an art form."

Aha, okay...

> "Go ahead: Kill tips and list a fair price for your bowl of brisket pho, grilled lamb shawarma, or omakase."

Haha, okay... well if it's this easy... how could everyone get it so wrong? Damn!

---

FYI - I never felt uncomfortable to tip in a restaurant. I go even as far as that I don't dine in restaurants which have a no tip policy or where the tips go to the owner instead of the staff.

Also, restaurants already charge a fair price. It's one of the longest running industries and they do still pretty well, so clearly they already ask a "fair" price for their phos. The wage for a chef or other staff is not determined by the menu price but by the market rate. If you have more people who can cook than people who need a cook then it's a bit tough isn't it.

Tipping is about the perception of social class and giving the buyer the perception of having power over others, by giving them a mini power-trip.

In no other circumstances is a unilateral and after the fact negotiation acceptable. Would YOU work for a variable salary with no clear criteria on what affect it, no guarantee of salary regardless of your skills an effort and for which studies have shown that the colour of your skin, your sex and the mood and social background of the customer has more effect on your salary than anything else?

If the service and the food is good, I tip 15% and go back for more and talk about it to everybody I know. If the service or the food is bad, I tip 15%, never go back, and let everybody I know, know about it.

The problem is that two equilibria exist. The equilibrium of a tipping culture is reinforced by high-performing wait staff. If one restaurant or one city adopts a no-tipping policy, the well-tipped will move, the poorly-tipped will stay, and quality will suffer. The other problem is that the tipping culture has created many extrinsically motivated workers. Cultures without tipping require people who intrinsically perform well, but years of living under the carrot and stick of tipping has produced transactional workers.

The no-tipping equilibrium perpetuates because most customers don't like the math and decision-making required after every meal. And most workers don't like being put into a Skinner box. And finally, the best wait staff in no-tipping cultures don't realize how much they're subsidizing the worst wait staff.

We as a society simply fell into the worse equilibrium. The only solution is a national edict, but this likely won't happen because there isn't the political will, and the beneficiaries of the current system know who they are and what they'd lose.

To avoid the math for the customers, restaurant can simply advertise price before service (like all restaurants), and add a compulsory service charge (say 15%).

In terms of incentive, what about firing the low-performers, like in other industries.

You are implying that tipping as an incentive works, I disagree, in my experience people tip based on the overall experience and a large part of that is taste which the wait staff has no influence over. What about a bonus for everybody, based on the profit made that month?

>Now what if we were to magically make tipping disappear? Think about the diner for a second. What if, by removing tips from your restaurant, you’ll actually end up delighting more guests, improving your food, and retaining employees?

Well, I've dined all over the world (not an American btw), and the US had the most friendly and alert waiting stuff, which I guess it's at least party because of the tipping.

Sure, in expensive restaurants all around the world you can get good service and waiters that always hover nearby. But in the US that's also true for the neighborhood diner.

Nah, it's more of a cultural thing. In the US, waitstaff is expected to be attentive and stop by constantly. In other countries, they're expected to leave you alone unless you need them, so you can enjoy your meal without being annoyed. For example, in many countries, they'll never approach you or bring you a check until you flag them down to ask.

I think it's less about tipping, and more about customs.

Totally agree with this; customers in different countries have different expectations.

Personally, when I've eaten in the US I've found the waiting staff to be annoying - I just want to be left alone to eat, not pestered with fake smiles and boring pleasantries because they want a tip.

That actually might explain the problem. I live in EU, at my local cafe place which is quite large ~40 tables I usually see 2 cooks, 1 barista and 3 servers even when its 90% full in the evening (1-2 servers in the morning or during day when its 50% full). Yes, wait times are quite long, usually takes good 20 minutes and you only interact with a server 3 times at most, when you make an order, they bring you food and when they bring you receipt.

I can see that to provide the level of service described, frequent checking in on tables etc you would need probably 5-6 servers so the costs would go up significantly. Regarding customs, yes I definitely prefer servers to get me my food and get out of the way, and it is considered normal.

I mainly go out to eat to spend time with friends/colleagues and no to eat, so I guess in Europe cafe is mostly seen as a place to have a chat rather than eat.

I never saw waiters actually try and turn tables even when the place is full and there are some tables where people finished eating, paid for the food and just sit there chatting for a good hour. Yes it is considered rude to do that when place is full but it is more of cultural thing.

Italy here.

Speaking of restaurants (not "cafe's") i.e. where you actually have lunch or dinner, (which means normally at least two courses) the number of servers is function of the level of the place, it is more or less "coded".

The range goes from "bad" or "slow" service which is 1 server every 25 people to "excellent" or "fast/responsive" which is 1 server every 8 people.

You won't find 1/25 if not in really cheap places, nor 1/8 if not in really expensive ones, average is 1/12 to 1/16.

Leaving the table free after having eaten is exclusively cultural, no waiter will ever dare to tell you to free the table or bring you the bill if not asked for, with the rare exception of long time customers with which there is confidence, in which case the waiter may ask this as a personal favour, on the other hand any long time customer will notice that the place is full and leave the table free as soon as possible.

Good restaurants (and capable waiters) can understand from a number of signals if you are in just for a quick meal or if you are in for a meal at leisure and serve you accordingly.

Definitely cultural as the other guy said. When I visit the US I imagine I get much the same experience as you but instead of "friendly" and "alert" my description would be more "intrusive" and "transparently faking a level of happiness I only experience very infrequently and never while at work."

I am from the US and I couldn't agree more. The whole fake niceness is just so draining on you to put up with all the time, day in and day out. You aren't my friend, I am just trying to get through my day.

>The whole fake niceness is just so draining on you to put up with all the time, day in and day out. You aren't my friend, I am just trying to get through my day.

So, genuine unfriendliness (try France waiters) or rudeness (try a lot of Europe) is better?

Rudeness is cultural.

And yes I'd prefer whatever you consider "rude" that happens Europe, as I've never experienced anything near what I would consider rude in Europe. I'm looking to eat dinner not get a lap dance.

Admittedly, I've never been to France specifically.

>but instead of "friendly" and "alert" my description would be more "intrusive" and "transparently faking a level of happiness I only experience very infrequently and never while at work."

I don't require genuine friendliness from waiters. Feigned friendliness and politeness will do just fine, since the purpose is to just get better service, not to make friends with the people at the restaurant.

So, the problem is we get it much less in Europe.

Consensus says its not a problem. Europeans (as a group) don't consider that a "bug," its a "feature." Hence the cultural part. Going out to eat is seen as a time to relax and spend time with the company you choose to go out with rather than to be hustled by a stranger.

If you are looking for "better service" in Europe it seems you are looking in the wrong places. May I suggest a strip club instead?

I think this might come down to individual preference. Personally, I find the whole US dining experience rather uncomfortable. Because I come from a country without a tipping culture (Australia), I'm never sure if I'm tipping way too much, or way too little. So my meal always comes with a nice side-order of "paranoia that I'm committing a social faux pas".

I also hate the constant 'how is your meal going sir?' check-in; I just want to eat in peace without some poor guy feeling he has to do the whole fake-buddy routine every 5 minutes to earn his tip. But there seems to be no polite way to say "Hey, no need to constantly check on me, or be creepily friendly. I'm going to tip you anyway". It just feels so contrived.

Maybe I just have poor social skills or something...

Haha. Funny to read this as I have similar feeling most of the time, but the reason is that I almost never tip. I know I might be considered an a-hole, but I just cannot justify paying additional 10-20% for the "how's your meal" bs every time I go out to eat (and I go out a lot). If somebody agrees to be paid below the living wage it's not really my business and I think it's up to the owner and his staff to make these things straight.

Last year I have also visited Australia for the first time with my wife and we absolutely loved the fact on the contrary to other Western countries you are never expected to tip in there. From what I understand waiters get their reasonable salaries, the food is quite expensive, but if you see 38$ in the menu, you know you are going to leave 38$ on the table. Nobody has to waste their brain cycles thinking about how to tip the dudes. We live in EU and find EU and US tipping culture a major pain in the a.

My experience is a little less worldly. I live in the US, and I've visited Canada, Japan, and touristy parts of Mexico and the Carribean.

My experience is that the US, in general, came in last or tied with Mexico and the Carribean. I'm not talking bad service, just not as nice as Canada (second place) or Japan (first place).

Canadians tend to just be nice people (I've got relatives there, so I'm probably biased) and I think that's why it's got good service.

Japan has a culture of customer service that leads it to be the best, IMO. Anyone who has learned some Japanese and then visited Japan will have stories to tell you of how amazingly nice the clerks are and some of the odd situations you can get in because you don't know the culture. For instance: You aren't supposed to ask, "Do you have any (X)?" This is because they can't tell a customer "no". If you do this, they'll take you to the part of the store that would have the product, and then say something like, "It would be here if we had it."

Instead, you're supposed to say, "Do you not have (X)?" and then they can answer "Yes, we have none."

That isn't to say that people don't have bad experiences there. A co-worker of mine said she had a bad experience and found that clerks were rude to her. (She's very nice, so it wasn't her attitude or anything.) But in general, the stories I hear are of amazing levels of service.

I think that tipping as a percentage of the meal cost is absolutely idiotic.

I have never gotten good service at an expensive restaurant, and yet the receipt gives you the math for 18%, 20%, and 22% tips.

I have gotten good and bad service at cheap restaurants (something like Steak and Shake), and tip accordingly.

The "work" is not anything different between the two jobs. Just take my order, bring me my food, and refill my water glass (heck, leave me a pitcher of water and I'll be much happier and do the refilling myself!). Why does the expensive restaurant expect a $10.00 tip for this service, while the cheap place is happy with a $2.00 tip for the same amount of work?!?

This! I have never heard a compelling explanation of this. It gets doubly weird with alcohol in the equation. A group of 4 shares a $60 dollar bottle of wine with dinner. The waiter/ress brings a bottle and pours 4 glasses. If that doesn't kill the bottle they leave it and often the guests refill on their own.

= $12 tip

A table of 4 gets 4 glasses of pop $2.50 each, each a different kind. The waiter/ress brings 4 full glasses to the table, and then goes back and forth filling them for each individual.

= $2.00 tip

What?!

Because tip culture helps the restaurant owner make money. If you incentivize your wait staff to push expensive specials and high priced wine by the bottle, then both they and the restaurant make more $$.

Wholeheartedly agree.

I feel like these numbers were just made up. Who decided 10% is good? or 20%? Why is it a percentage?

This whole system is absurd to me. If we follow the same logic then why don't programmers get "tips" when they do a nice commit message? or deliver on time? why are servers so different?

Just saying it out loud makes me giggle because of how silly it sounds.

> This whole system is absurd to me. If we follow the same logic then why don't programmers get "tips" when they do a nice commit message? or deliver on time? why are servers so different?

Because they are making below minimum wage (something like $2.00 and change per hour, iirc) - and tips are to cover the rest.

So maybe, if you were in the same situation as a software developer, you would want a good tip for good service.

But you're not. We're not. We're are typically salaried, or work on some other contracted rate. It is fairly fixed, and perhaps if we do really good work, and the employer is generous, we'll get a bonus. Sometimes.

But don't pretend that we need tips. We don't. Typically we make several times the amount of minimum wage, and in most cases we are in the top 10% or more of wage earners (at least here in the United States).

And that's exactly my point.

Why do they make less than the minimum wage? Why do laws allow it? Why are they treated as a "special case" instead of just having a set wage like all the other professions?

I never meant to say we (software developers) need tips or anything like that, it was just a hyperbole to show how ignorant this "special" system is.

> Why do they make less than the minimum wage? Why do laws allow it? Why are they treated as a "special case" instead of just having a set wage like all the other professions?

It probably has something to do with history or tradition - around the tipping model in the US.

Basically it was the case (and still is generally) that if you did your job exceptionally well, and made the customer feel genuinely that you did an exceptional job at handling their needs and wants, they would tip you - and in many cases, the tip would be very favorable.

This worked great if you were the one getting the tip directly; if you were so lucky and so skilled, you could easily make much more than what you would have gotten as a "fair wage" (indeed - for example for bartending you can make a lot of money as I understand it).

This doesn't work well, though, in cases where you have to do tip sharing - because then you, as an exceptional service provider, are now potentially supplementing others who give average or even sub-par performance (though it can be favorable if everyone was doing exceptionally well - but this is rarely the case).

It also doesn't work well if you have customers not upholding their end - ie, tipping appropriately for the level and value of the service they receive.

I personally adhere to a tip rate of 20% for standard service; if you do better, you get more, if you do worse, you get less (but I tend not to go below 10% - unless you really deserve it). However, I'm increasingly seeing myself as being an outlier; many people either tip poorly, or not at all.

I like the idea of tipping based on time at the table if you need some metric to go by. Which also usually means a bigger tip at a more expensive restaurant because you usually stick around for longer. But at least if you take 20 minutes to eat at a cheap place and 20 minutes at a pricey place you could pay the same tip.

It's a progressive charge.

If you have more money to spend, a lot of the time you'll end up spending more on desserts, drinks, etc. Then you pay a greater amount of money for the service. If you have less to spend, you'll buy fewer things, and pay a smaller charge.

It's a tax on generosity.

It's amusing the way everyone who lives in tipping countries swears by how much better it is and how much they prefer it. And conversely, people who live in no-tipping countries say the same about their system. Most people simply like what they're used to, and don't bother considering the other side of the argument.

In my own case, I live in a tipping country. I find that I have maybe ten restaurants I frequent. And since I've been here for twelve years, I constantly run into the same waitstaff. Incredulously, I once ran into the same waiter at three separate restaurants in my time here. If I were to give one of them a bad tip for bad service, there's a good probability I'd end up having them serve me again, and that does not sound pleasant.

So the tipping is basically mandatory for me, unless I'm willing to never eat at a place again. And to date, I've left no tip exactly once for a waiter who took our drink orders, came back ten minutes later to say there was a problem with the machines so we asked for water and took our order, the backstaff brought out the meal, and we finished the meal without ever having received anything to drink, and had to ask the staff at the front for our check because the waiter never came back. Another time we left a bad tip and never went back to a restaurant that made us wait over 30 minutes in a near empty place before anyone took our order. The staff knew we weren't served, and the longer they waited, the more awkward it became, and we kind of both decided we weren't going to leave until they served us.

It's also strongly worth considering some of the racial undertones of tipping. It's pretty well regarded among waitstaff here in the US that black people don't tip well, and as a result, they receive worse service, which in return leads to worse tips. It's a self-fulfilling circle.

I can imagine myself as an employee. If tips are resulting in huge paydays, I'd obviously prefer that system. But if I were constantly getting highly variable paychecks, that would be a big problem as my landlord wouldn't take a smaller payment because business was slow this week. A steady income provides much-needed stability.

I can also imagine myself as a customer. A tipped waiter would try to upsell me more and push wine on me. Yet a non-tipped waiter might not be as attentive since there's nothing in it for them to do a better job.

Weighing all the pros and cons, I'm personally of the opinion that we should abolish tipping, abolish the $x.99 bullshit pricing and just say $x+1, stop charging $2-3 for a ten-cent soda to subsidize the food prices, and roll taxes into the prices so if it says $10, you pay $10, period. Leave "how'd we do?" cards that customers drop off into a sealed box on the way out to control for good service.

But, I doubt I'll live to see any of that here.

The problem with no tipping, in my experince (especially in Europe), is that waiters aren't incentivized to turn tables. If you go to a popular spot for dinner that happens to be completely full and ask for a table, the waiter will usually shrug their shoulders and say 'Sorry, try again tomorrow.' Usually, there is no concept of a waiting list or a waiting time estimate, because diners are conditioned that they can spend 3 or 4 hours over a bottle of wine, and there would be no pressure to pay and leave, so waiters find it impossible to make any promises regarding when a table would free up. Additionally, the waitstaff won't be paid extra to make an effort and try to serve more tables on a given night (being on a fixed salaries), so they'll be quite leisurely about their business.

Of course, if you happen to be the one who got there early, and you like having 3-hour meals while chatting with your friends, it's the perfect arrangement, because nobody will pressure you to eat, pay, and leave in 30-40 mins as usually happens in the US.

> Of course, if you happen to be the one who got there early, and you like having 3-hour meals while chatting with your friends, it's the perfect arrangement, because nobody will pressure you to eat, pay, and leave in 30-40 mins as usually happens in the US.

If I'd like to be pressured to leave asap I would go to a fast food chain. So, this doesn't sound like a problem at all, more like a feature.

It is a nice feature unless you're on the other end of the deal, walking from one completely full restaurant to another looking for a table. In a sense, it's an inefficiency because a table may free up shortly after you leave, but the staff wouldn't care to predict that.

You could call and make a reservation.

Not every place does reservations.

This is something I've also experienced during my travels to Europe, in particular in Paris. I will say I've found this to be a "feature", not a "bug". In addition, it's uncommon for the check to be presented without it first being asked for, whereas in the US, once you "pass" on desert, you're given a check.

I'd love to see a non-tipping culture organically rise up. I'd choose restaurants that pay a living wage for all full time employees, sans the need for tips. I know some restaurants have experimented with negative results, but I'd like to (maybe wishfully) believe that this can still take hold in the US.

I would imagine that the restaurant considers it closer to a bug than a feature because its tables are finite. Parties that come in looking for a table aren't necessarily going to be queued up, most will just go somewhere else.

Precisely that! But apart from the inability to predict table occupancy (for which you could theoretically come up with some ML solution), the other issue is that from a strict economic sense, having people occupy a table for 3 hours vs 1 hour while paying the same amount of money is a singificant opportunity cost to the business. In essence, from the perspective of the restaurant, people who are having a 3-hour meal and a long conversation are using a resource for which they're not paying, while other potentially paying customers are being turned away.

A nice side effect of the tipping culture in the US is that this inefficiency is eliminated. That's why I find it hard to believe that businesses will find it in their best interest to eliminate tips.

>A nice side effect of the tipping culture in the US is that this inefficiency is eliminated.

What you consider an "inefficiency" is part of a lifestyle in big parts of Europe. Going out to eat isn't just considered "calorie intake" that needs to be "as quick and efficient as possible", it's considered leisure and social time, especially in the southern parts of Europe like Greece, Italy or Spain.

It's also very seldom that people really manage to just drink one bottle of wine in 3 hours, usually it's bigger groups and they tend to drink a lot once they finished eating. Depending on how the restaurant prices their drinks the "3 hour drinking group" can end up making way more money for the restaurant than trying to shove 3 parties of "Just eat something with a small soda", into the same timeframe.

Precisely this, if anything, it's part of the experience you pay for. His suggestions of using ML for occupancy and optimizing for turnover would more likely ruin the restaurant. Luckily in business schools being aware of cultural differences is being taught more and more.

Yes, and some of us really appreciate this. I love long lunches and dinners. I hate visiting many US places and feeling rushed.

Sometimes I think American dining is about just food, rather than the whole experience of dining, which includes the conversation with friends and family.

I usually just reserve a table a couple of days in advance … (Germany)

Being able to talk and enjoy your time even after you’ve finished your meal is a feature, not a bug.

(But there are tips in Germany, though the average tip is probably well below ten percent.)

If you go to a popular spot for dinner that happens to be completely full and ask for a table, the waiter will usually shrug their shoulders and say 'Sorry, try again tomorrow.'

Or better yet, when the waiter at a cafe says very politely, "Oh yes, sit anywhere!" when there isn't an empty chair in the place.

You make this sound like the best thing ever and not like a problem. Glad to live in europe where it is exactly like that.

See, the problem is you aren't comparing to enough places. People don't typically sit around restaurants for three hours in Japan despite there being no tips. I'd say there are other cultural factors at play here -- European customers don't want to be rushed out and would dislike a restaurant that hurried them, tips or not.

Then this is a problem with management that doesn't care to offer a certain level of customer service. Management should make a policy and make things up front. If their staff can't carry out their expectations, then fire them and bring in new staff. It shouldn't be the customers that do a managers job.

From personal experience (just anecdotal) I would say service in the US is much better than for example in the Netherlands (my own country). I think you'll have to think of other things than service to make this happen.

Other options:

+ Start with clear signs to indicate for other businesses (cabs, hairdresser) that tips are not expected.

+ I will assume that you pay the 20% to your personnel anyway. So basically you offer a guilt-free paying experience. We will genuinely be happy by whatever you pay.

+ The international card. Communicate that you don't want that Americans are the only ones paying 20% more.

+ Build up a name as employer. Advertise with that.

+ Mix and match your service offerings with others, being a library, place to date, etc where tipping is less obvious.

+ Have people pay online before the meal. Subscriptions is also possible.

+ Uber-experience. Do not pay the restaurant directly, but have intermediate company taking care of it.

Service in Spain is also much better than The Netherlands, I'd say on par with US service.

I think Dutch service is just particularly bad, and tipping clearly doesn't explain the difference since Spanish service is so much better without the expectation of tipping.

I'm from the Netherlands but have lived in Finland and Switzerland as well, and in both those countries service is better than in the Netherlands.

In Finland nobody gives tips so it has nothing to do with that, just that, generally speaking, the Dutch don't seem the most service minded people.

A lot of the advice here is good and has nothing to do with tipping. Pay your staff well, don't add service charges (adding "fees" for "health care" is a counterproductive political statement), just charge a fair price that covers your costs. I love going to places that include sales tax in the advertised price. I would never return to a restaurant that nickel and dimed me for their health care expenses.

But I also love tipping generously. I don't believe poor service should be punished with a poor tip. More likely poor service means your server is also having a really bad, overworked day and deserves the tip more. But I guarantee if you tip well every time you go to a local restaurant regularly you will get spectacular service after a few times.

As for non Americans who are confused by tipping, it's no more important or intimidating than typical expected manners in other countries. In Paris shopkeepers expect you to say bonjour and au revoir and cashiers expect you to have exact change. There'll always be cultural gotchas when you travel. If you're unsure whether to tip it's totally acceptable to ask.

Is the restaurant industry in need of saving, from a restaurant owner's or diner's perspective?

I'm fully on the "tipping is terrible for everyone involved" side, but I wonder if the framing here is based on anything.

There's a great Freakonomics podcast about this subject: https://itunes.apple.com/nl/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354...

The bottom line is that from the perspective of the diner, it will not really matter (quality remains equal), but from the perspective of the restaurant, things will get a lot better.

2 actually. Also available outside iTunes:

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-tipping-be-banned-a-n...

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/danny-meyer/

It certainly seems like it should be more efficient for 100 people to eat dinner in a restaurant than for 40 people to cook 100 meals. (100 / average household size (~2.5) = ~40)

And yet it's considerably more expensive.

Because, it seems, a considerable amount of the cost of restaurant food goes to the overhead costs of the real-estate owners and the financial system. This is both directly and indirectly (the cost of the rent or financing of the restaurant space + the portion of employee wages that go to renting their homes + the cost of everything the employees purchase going towards rent etc.)

In other words it seems a disproportional amount of our economy goes towards people that own instead of people that do.

How do you solve that though? Increase rent-seeking taxes (interest, rentals, etc) and lower income taxes? (basically lowering significantly the benefits from buying things you don't use yourself)

This is not a problem of people who decide on the laws, as they are the owners. So in their pont of view it's the opposite that should happen.

For things like this, since the majority of lawmakers are also real estate owners, it would be a non-starter. But, even if it did happen, I feel like the food costs would just increase to compensate for the taxes, since the rental prices would certainly go up disproportionately.

But food prices _wouldn't_ go up in the owner-operated restaurants which would then have a significant competitive edge. Likewise real estate prices should go down, higher taxes would mean less demand and owner-operators would be more motivated to buy than investors. Likewise investor dollars would be guided by taxes to more productive targets.

Investing in restaurants that own land as opposed to investing in land that restaurants use seems like it would have significantly different effects to the economy.

> And yet it's considerably more expensive.

Even after you've included all of your costs?

It's easy to say the raw food ingredients are considerably less expensive, but that's only a small part of the story. There is a cost of having a kitchen (tools and space in the home), utility costs, not to mention your time.

Maybe a high end specialty restaurant that is selling an experience, but I'd be surprised if you could actually compete with a place like McDonalds on cost.

Maybe a high end specialty restaurant that is selling an experience, but I'd be surprised if you could actually compete with a place like McDonalds on cost.

Fries and a hamburger are about the easiest thing to make, requiring no special equipment. The ingredients are a lot cheaper than buying at McDonald's, too.

If you have more than one person eating, then the cost savings can really add up.

> Fries and a hamburger are about the easiest thing to make, requiring no special equipment.

For all practical purposes of modern urban life, you at least need some kind of specialized heating apparatus.

More importantly, somewhere to store that apparatus. Which is quite often a kitchen. In San Francisco, the median housing cost per square foot is almost $1,000. A small kitchen is defined as 70 square feet, or $70,000. If we assume a rate of 3%, the opportunity cost of that kitchen is almost $6 per day, or $2 per meal if we assume three meals per day.

That brings the cost of an $8 McDonalds meal down to about $6 right there.

Then there is your time. San Francisco has officially declared that your time is worth at least $13/hr. At that rate you have just 28 minutes before you've already used up that $6. That includes gathering the ingredients, prepping the food, cooking the food, and cleaning up afterwards. That does not leave a lot of room for error, even for something as simple as burgers and fries.

It does indeed get better with scale, but I have also left off a number of other costs, including the cost of the food itself. For a single person (in SF) it is no contest without even getting into other costs.

Of course, there is something to be said about the food you can create yourself, versus eating at Mcdonalds every meal. Cost isn't everything.

There's also the fact that you can't just buy enough to make one hamburger and some fries. At a minimum, you can buy enough to make 2-3 hamburgers (and you'll have leftover buns, cheese, etc). So now you have to store that extra stuff (more sq footage and refrigeration costs). You might not eat it all (and it goes bad, meaning you throw it away). Or you might freeze it for later (maybe - some things you can't freeze of course).

I don't think you can get an apartment without a kitchen.

Of course, that doesn't mean they are free. There is a very real cost to having the means of production.

...Have you never cooked a meal for yourself or something? Yes, even after accounting for those things, which are amortized over time, the cost of a single meal is not 4+ times the cost of the ingredients. Maybe if you insist on comparing cooking to your hourly wage it starts to look more competitive.

As for McDonald's, well, if you want McDonald's-quality food you can do it cheaper.

> ...Have you never cooked a meal for yourself or something?

No? I try to cook most of my meals. In fact, I prefer it over eating out. I'm not convinced it is fiscally optimal though, but I'm okay with paying the premium for my preference.

> which are amortized over time

Like I pointed out in my other comment, simply having a small kitchen in San Francisco will cost you $2 per meal (assuming you eat three meals per day in it), on average. And that amount per meal goes up if you ever decide to skip a meal or eat away from home on occasion. That is not an insignificant amount when prepared meals are also available in the single digit range.

> Maybe if you insist on comparing cooking to your hourly wage it starts to look more competitive.

If we're talking a programmers wage, you can barely even get into the grocery store before you've accrued enough to pay for several McDonalds meals. Never mind the actual cooking, cleaning, etc. It's not even in the same ballpark of competitiveness. But, like I pointed out in the other comment, even if you only accounted for minimum wage, it barely gives you enough time to serve a meal before it is costing you money.

For a fair analysis, you do have to consider some amount. Maybe not the full amount that you would make at your day job, but something for sure. It is another opportunity cost, after all. If you are not including opportunity cost, you are not painting a true picture.

> As for McDonald's, well, if you want McDonald's-quality food you can do it cheaper.

I wouldn't get too hung up on McDonalds specifically. There are some decent mom and pop joints that will give you a good meal for even less than McDonalds. The point was to exclude $50+ a plate-type places, or whatever, as they are selling an experience that so happens to include food.

My point is that if you compare like meals with like meals home cooking is going to be far cheaper just about every time. If you compare cooking a steak to eating eggs and potatoes at a diner maybe not. Restaurants sell just about everything at at least 4 times the cost of the ingredients. The energy and so on aren't exactly free but they're not running a charity either.

And further, it's not like there are all these no-kitchen apartments for rent so you almost certainly have a stove anyway. Your average refrigerator apparently costs you less than $12 a month in CA (http://homeguides.sfgate.com/calculate-cost-run-refrigerator...) so it's a pittance too.

> My point is that if you compare like meals with like meals home cooking is going to be far cheaper just about every time.

Is that meant to be a tangent to the original discussion?

This discussion was about restaurants not seeing the benefits of economies of scale. I'm suggesting that they have, it's just not particularly obvious because people are quick to ignore most of the costs of cooking at home.

If all you are saying once you have already invested in the means of production, and don't value your time, that a home cooked meal is cheaper... then sure. I'm sure just about everything you could possibly buy is cheaper than retail if you are only including the raw materials you need to get the job done.

If you already have a garden and your time is free you can grow the food for far less than the grocery store charges. Heck, if you already own a silicon fab and don't value your time designing chips, you can likely build a computer for a fraction of the cost of one in the store. But that's a pretty silly way to look at it. There are real costs to having the production capability that should not be ignored.

Well, I'd argue that we should talk about the world we actually live in and not one where people have homes without stoves and with silicon fabrication devices.

Well, that's certainly an interesting topic of its own, but I don't see how it applies to the context of this discussion.

Because arguments like the square footage of your stove as a percentage of your rent assume, unrealistically, that you have to opt in to having a stove instead of it being a standard part of dwellings.

> And yet it's considerably more expensive.

Is it? I thought one reason that obesity was higher among people with lower incomes is that it's cheaper for them to buy prepared food than to work an hour less and cook themselves?

If I spent the time I did on cooking on paid work instead, the money I would make could pay for a very good meal. (of course, I don't, I still cook because I can't spend every waking hour working or I'd go insane)

That's not exactly it. It's more practical and it's more expensive but not so much more expensive that it's out of reach like better prepared options might be.

This essay left me confused - it starts by suggesting that tipping is bad, and that raising prices, possibly above the cost of tipping, will bring a net win. I was very curious to read about why.

But then the essay shifted to two seemingly unrelated reasons: (1) if you make the food delicious and the service great you can charge more, and (2) if you pay the kitchen staff more, you get less turnover/happier cooks. These last two don't support the central thesis - why does ending tipping help cooks get paid more? At the end of the day, fixing all other costs, cooks get paid more if servers get paid less, whether that's from ending tipping or increasing chef salary. And obviously making delicious food would be great, but what does that have to do with tipping? If you end tipping, suddenly everyone will try harder?

An article examining the effects of increasing chef pay at the expense of service pay would be very interesting to me. I would gladly sacrifice some professionalism in service for increased food quality, and I wonder if others would, too.

Maybe I'm ruining it for everyone, but when I've gone to New York's budding "no tip" restaurants, I've thrown a cash tip on the bill.

Guess what happened next? I was asked my name, and the next times I went, I got seated faster, comped chef's recommendations and a generally friendlier interaction with my server. Same thing happens abroad, where the locals don't tip well.

I don't understand how people get shocked by fundamental rules of incentives.

(Side note: this works everywhere. No, I don't put cash on my banker's or retail clerk's counter. But I do make an effort, particularly when doing things they'll earn a commission on, to do my business with them. In exchange for the minor hassle I have a better experience and get an enjoyable relationship out of what would otherwise be drudgery.)

As a New Yorker, I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Tips are flat-out refused at the no-tip restaurants. And the idea that your tip was tracked in a database and that you actually got better service the next time because of it is entirely in your mind, I'm sorry.

There's actually a tremendous amount of research on incentives, and they don't always result in the behavior you'd think.

I concur.

A no tip restaurant would NEVER take your tip. How the hell would they divy up the 10 bucks if top you give them among the entire staff?

Best case scenario the waiter pocketed it.

> Best case scenario the waiter pocketed it.

Perhaps. But the waiter still manages, the next time I come, to speed up my wait, have the chef (or owner, if he or she were in) drop by the table, et cetera. From what I can tell, in conversations with them, they each appreciate the gesture.

I will admit my observations are co-mingled with regularity.

> Tips are flat-out refused at the no-tip restaurants

From experience, they are not. I don't typically carry cash, and actually draw it to test this hypothesis every time I visit no-tip restaurants. The first time I do it, I am usually reminded I am at a no-tip restaurant. After I insist on the excellence of the service the tip is always accepted.

> the idea that your tip was tracked in a database

Database? It's just a server, bartender, maître d', restaurant owner, et cetera remembering your name and face.

You could insist on giving extra money at any business or for any service and most of them would take it.

What would generally happen if you tried that in a place that stated they didn't accept tips in the UK would probably be that you'd be smiled at, your money would go in a charity tin and the server would make a mental note to serve you last next time. I suspect your ego would then simply reject the obviously bad service you received the next time and you would convince yourself that you had somehow benefited rather than accept that your previous actions were arrogant, culturally imperialistic and unwise.

I've traveled the world and have come to the conclusion that diners are better off in a tipping environment. Realize this is purely anecdotal but time and time again we have come to the realization that incentives matter and incentivizing good service makes sense to me (and I shouldn't have to order a bottle of wine at lunch to get it). If all someone is going to do is play telephone from one side of the room to the other, no thanks, I'd rather save the 20% and order off an iPad.

I would kill to order off an iPad

My favourite luncheon place in Singapore has iPads at every table. So much more relaxed then a waiter.

Which place is that?

I remember when Ichiban switched to iPads and optimistically fired about 30% of their wait staff, presumably after drinking the kool aid. The service was horrendous until they hired them back.

It's in our office block (aperia, well north of the cdb). Not sure what it's called, but makes lunch a breeze and means I'll usually go there rather than grabbing a sandwich from Spinellis coffee shop

I would kill to _pay_ with an iPad.

Absolute biggest hate at restaurants: waiting too long for the bill. I have eaten. I have enjoyed it. I now want to go somewhere else for a drink, or catch my train home, or whatever. Don't make me wait.

Which other services would you introduce tipping to?

Fast food?

Buying shoes?

Car wash?

Repairing plumbing?

Fixing a computer?

I don't see why eating in a restaurant should need extra incentives to the waiters, when we expect good service without tips elsewhere.

Many years ago I was working in the US for a few months and went to get a haircut. I wondered why the guy looked at me strange when I suck my hand out for my change.

It wasn't until I was back in my hotel room that realised I was probably supposed to tip.

Same experience on my first trip to the US. The taxi ride from airport to hotel was $12. I didnt have small notes on me as i had just changed my money, so i gave him a $20 note.

I waited and he just looked at me incredulously and asked "What? Do you want CHANGE??". I apologised and said i forgot about the tip thing and perhaps he could just give me a couple of singles as change. I thought that basically 40% tip was a little high. He gave me a couple of bucks back with ill grace.

Pretty much turned me off the whole expected tipping culture altogether.

Cab drivers are notorious for "tipping themselves" (withholding some or all change unless explicitly asked for it).

>I don't see why eating in a restaurant should need extra incentives to the waiters, when we expect good service without tips elsewhere.

Forget what you "expect".

Do you actually GET "good service without tips elsewhere"?

My point (and the parent's point) exactly.

Usually the service is worse in 'tip expected' industries.

That hasn't been my experience at all.

From a baseline of having eaten at restaurants all over the world, eating in US restaurants that tip have some of the best service.

The comment to which you replied was talking about different industries, not a single industry across different countries. Your comment doesn't refute the point.

The comment to which I replied is still a moot point if what I say is true for the industry under discussion.

Whether the service is worse in some other tipping industries, is not an argument as to whether the service is worse in tipping restaurants.

That depends what you mean by "good service"?

If you mean responding quickly when we want something, and dealing with problems professionally, then yes.

If you mean constant attention and fake smiles then no.

Yes? I really dont see the difference here. In both cases they are paid. In non tip environments usually even well better because its a nice salary plus random tips here and there

Whether they are paid better or not is obviously irrelevant.

Somebody can be paid handsomely and do a crap job if there's nothing to motivate them otherwise.

With no tipping better service doesn't buy you much. With tipping better service buys you a larger tip.

A no tipping environment is usually "optional tips" in my world view. Therefore i can not agree with that.

Your world view certainly does not encompass Japan then. It is basically not possible to leave a tip there. You'll be chased down the street with the money you 'forgot'. And if you could get past that misunderstanding, through insisting, then you'd be insulting the server by rudely highlighting your spending power, over their presumed economic need.

US tourist forces tip into pocket of waiter. Waiter fired by owner for taking tip. True story.

> usually.

Obviously there are exceptions.

Some of those already have incentives: commission. Tipping is not much different.

Commission is different because it's included in the price and the customer gets no say in it.

Agreed. Tipping culture gives more power to the customer and results in better service in my experience. Every time I come back to the US I experience a noticeable increase in attention and service. Also, when abroad, if they find out you are from the US many servers will put in extra work as they know there is a decent chance you will tip based on your home culture. I always tip even in countries where it isn't expected especially if I plan on frequenting the establishment regularly. Im happy to pay a bit more for more attentive service.

The thing people seem to be missing though is that a set "expected tip level" ruins the whole thing. If you are expected to tip 20% for just "service" what incentive does that give to provide "good service"?

Sure you might have a higher chance of getting 30% for good service - but I think it's probably easier to get 10 or 20% for good service in a place where 0% is the expected level.

If you aren't getting service worthy of tips, don't tip. No one is going to stop you on your way out. You may get worse service the next time you come back. However, why would you go back if the service was bad the first time?

> If you aren't getting service worthy of tips

Thats the idea also where there isn't a set level of expected tip (like in most of the world).

I'm not opposed to the idea of tipping, I'm opposed to the idea of a specific level of tip being expected, effectively making it a part of the staffs wages (which consequently means staff isnt' paid if you choose not to tip).

I was stopped and asked for a tip in a Canadian bar when I went to take the drinks back to our table. A dollar per beer to take the cap off.

But North American's do seem to enjoy paying more than advertised. First a bunch of taxes, then some tips, I don't get it.

You are probably missing the point. Most people would not mind tipping for good service. It is when the tip is thrust upon you that it becomes a problem. When people start saying stuff like 'oh! you are robbing the waiter of his income', it becomes downright offensive. Tipping should be contingent on good service. It needs to be earned, not demanded to make up for an employer skimping on wage.

I disagree.

I'm an expatriated US citizen, and I find the restaurant service abroad on par with US restaurants, with the only difference being how much lip service is given by the servers.

To explain it simply, in US restaurants, I feel like someone is trying to brown-nose the entire time. It's not value that I seek, it's someone doing something and trying to place value on it. The servers are mostly pleasant, and at worst, it's just over the top corporate politeness being enforced, with of course the occasional just bad service.

Abroad, the server is indifferent - when the food is ready, it is brought. They are as polite as you would you expect a restaurant server to be, and in general just want to take your order, deliver food, and then get out of your way because they know you're not at the restaurant for their company, you're there to have some food and drink, presumably with friends/family/colleagues. And just like with US restaurants, there is occasional bad service.

The difference in my mind is the attempt to provide the 'service' that isn't really necessary. This isn't looking down on servers or dismissing the effect a good attitude can have on enjoying a meal, but for the most part the degree to which it is taken when I'm back in the US is over the top. I know it's hard work and that the servers want to do everything possible, but corporate politeness isn't the way to do it. It makes the experience feel really rushed to me and it also feels like a process instead of me being able to just relax and enjoy some good food.

What upsets me is when I have to wait too long for refills on drinks and if I'm not checked back on to see if anything else is needed shortly after the food is served. I've had many experience in non-tipping countries where you may never see your waiter again after the meal is served. Of course, thats just my experience but it seems fairly consistent. I never have that problem in the US and if I do, I certainly don't tip.

If there is poor service report it to the manager or something but please don't withhold a tip. I've explained the reasons in another comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13263490

I cannot speak for all restaurants and all counties, but as noted in my comment, I'm currently abroad in Russia (St. Petersburg), and while it's true that the servers generally don't check in for anything else other than the bill once the food is served, it's also true that they'll be there pretty much immediately if you ask for them or signal them. A simple gesture and they'll be there pretty much as they are able to be.

To me this seems the right balance of service and respect of privacy.

As an aside, my experience is that most restaurants also don't really do refills so much as "another drink purchase", so it kind of makes sense in my mind that they're not keeping an eye on how much liquid you have left - if you want to spend money on another drink, you'll let them know.

I think this is just a cultural difference as well as a different way of business. To me having a server constantly checking in on how much is left in my glass or interrupting to pour a drink is more disruptive than a quick gesture to catch the server's attention and signal them over.

> incentives matter

Is the US system of tipping as an expected part of the pay of service staff really an incentive though? Isn't the incentive of service staff really just based on getting more than the "base tip" (which can be 10, 15 or 20%)?

In countries where he "base tip" for the expected level of service is zero, tips can still be 10% or 20% for good service.

Interesting. It depends on what you mean by better off. I almost never had problems at restaurants with no or optional tipping. The waiters tend to behave professionally and this is what I wish. But in the US, I always feel uncomfortable with the over-the-top behavior of waiters. They behave like I am their long lost high-school friend and I find that creepy.

Based on what I've seen in the US, tipping doesn't encourage good service, it encourages noticeable service.

I'd rather be served by a slightly inattentive sullen teenager in the UK, than a perky waitress with a fake smile pestering me all the time in the US.

I respect that but find it to be a bizarre tradeoff I would never willingly make.

I would pick the perky attentive waiter sporting a smile that neither you nor i know is fake over a sullen inattentive person anywhere. In fact, if someone is having a bad day, I actually appreciate the effort to make it better with a fake smile than imposing it on me with a bad attitude. I've experienced overbearing waiters and the solution is as simple as politely asking for space. Nobody walks away from a moment like that feeling angry.

Back to the ultimate point: the question at hand is does tipping (overall) add to or take away from the quality of service provided to the partron. Based on my experience the answer is yes. All else equal - a person may or may not care about the tip.. in which case you get your base level of service. However, you may come across someone that does, in which case you are overwhelmingly more likely to get better service as a result.

Last thought: I find that tipping for service establishes a more direct human bond between me (the recipient) and the person performing the service that ultimately adds (positively) to the mutual experience. Rarely have I been anywhere where I walked away thinking I would have gotten better had I not tipped.

> sporting a smile that neither you nor i know is fake

If it's not fake, they're doing a bad job showing it.

>the solution is as simple as politely asking for space. Nobody walks away from a moment like that feeling angry.

Not angry, but it is an awkward thing to request, and I'd rather not have to.

>I find that tipping for service establishes a more direct human bond between me (the recipient) and the person performing the service

I absolutely disagree with that. I find reliance on tipping creates an alienating subservient relationship. No one is going to be genuine when they're depending on my opinion of them for their pay that evening.

Yes. This is why I never go to Indian restaurants any more. Love the food, can't cope with the false bonhomie, so I order takeaways instead.

(UK resident.)

How about a third option: a professional that knows how to give food and wine recommendations when asked with no fake smiles and pestering. In some european countries this would be normal even for small moms-and-pops restaurants.

3rd option seems fine dining place with wine experts and all. I think those sullen teenager or perky waitress would be working at a diner or something.

Incentives matter, but a percentage based tip is simply the wrong incentive. It is the same amount of work for the waiter if I order $10 spaghetti and a $30 bottle of house wine, or if I order $50 steak and $300 bottle of Champagne. Why should s/he be rewarded for my own choices, based on no input or effort on his/her side whatsoever?!

In another thread someone mentioned how bad the service is in Dutch restaurants (which, being Dutch, I agree with). In the Netherlands tipping is not required but it's not uncommon to tip for good service. Yet the service is bad. So I don't believe tipping is such a good incentive. Unless perhaps you pay the waiters the absolute bare minimum and they basically need the tips to survive.

It also doesn't really explain the fact that tipping in the US is basically mandatory, regardless of good service. If it's basically mandatory, where's the incentive to offer good service?

>Realize this is purely anecdotal but time and time again we have come to the realization that incentives matter and incentivizing good service makes sense to me (and I shouldn't have to order a bottle of wine at lunch to get it).

But this works both ways: If the service staff expects to be tipped regardless of the quality of service, then there's not much incentive for good service in the first place, because the customers are expected to tip anyway and bad service will just result in a marginally lower tip.

If customers are not expected to tip at all, then the service staff has to put in some actual effort to get a tip, because their service needs to be so "exceptionally good" that the customer actually notices it, instead of just taking it for granted.

I'm American. I've traveled enough and I've even lived outside of the US for a time. I have no idea how you can come to this conclusion, I've never had noticeably bad service outside the US and certainly nothing like "play[ing] telephone from one side of the room to the other." The only difference I notice is there's disturbingly fake niceness in the US and they rush you out after you're done eating. I guess if you are looking for someone to pretend to be your friend you'd get that. Personally, I'm just looking for a meal with my dining companions.

I used to hate tipping but now I love it. I spend >100 nights/yr in hotels, and tipping the bellman/doorman well on the way in is one of the best investments in a good stay (calibrating tips for the point where he gives you his name, and ideally phone number, for "if you need anything else"; $10 in most third tier US cities; $20 in a place like New York). Las Vegas basically runs on $5s and $20s -- everything from "valet lot is full but we can keep your car right here for you" to moving carts full of pelican cases to getting vehicle maintenance done to whatever.

In the Middle East/Central Asia I am very happy to be "the American who tips and is polite" vs "the American who is worth $5k if we call that guy...".

In China I had hotel staff literally spend the afternoon with me navigating Beijing police to recover a $5k loss (successfully; btw Beijing tourist police are awesome too.)

Tipping reasonably well at restaurants/cafes you frequent (I try to pick a couple per city) makes getting tables, impromptu meetings, etc much easier to set up.

If you view tipping as an obligation it sucks, but once you view it as a chance to get what you want it is great.

But when you realise that tipping is bribing public officials to get service that regular taxpayers do not get, doesn't that take the shine off?

I don't consider a hotel bellman to be a public official, despite the Pinochetian uniform.

(In the case of Beijing, the police were just friendly and no tip was expected. The hotel staff I'd tipped (concierge, etc) were the preparation; it was the #4 guy at hotel (director of guest experience; reports to GM) who helped me. He is senior enough that I didn't tip him, but did get him rewarded through Starwood, and will bring him a suitable gift next time I'm in Beijing -- presumably a bottle of alcohol of some kind not commonly available in China, or some other US thing)

Have you ever actually bribed someone? It's fun. Makes you feel like you're in the movies.

It's great until you start getting threats of arrest for stuff you didn't do as bribe solicitation.

Also bad: running afoul of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (if you're an American or in a business which has any connection to the US).

Certainly bribes (or "tips" as many Americans call them) are illegal for U.K. Citizens.

If you view tipping as an obligation it sucks, but once you view it as a chance to get what you want it is great.

If you have the money to tip for such amounts. All others will just the lower quality service.

Coming from a Western European country that does not have much tipping, I think I like egalitarian customer service more ;).

(Not meant as a personal attack, just to point out that it's not feasible for everyone to do this.)

The thing is tipping is usually after service, so if it is single round game, you can free ride.

I'm actually glad that people visually like me (techie upper middle class white American business traveler) seem to have a good reputation worldwide for tipping well -- it means I get service as if I'd tip well even beforehand.

What would suck is being a black guy or otherwise profile as not likely to tip (French?) but being personally willing to tip. In that case, you probably tip initially before service.

You keep saying "tip". I think you mean "bribe".

So in those cases you're tipping to get service beyond their job. Or we could call it "actual tipping". That's fine by itself. The problem is when "tipping" replaces wages and becomes obligatory. But, annoyingly, the former tends to lead to the latter. It's a hard problem to solve.

Sounds like you like bribery and skipping queues.

I had a hotel owner give me a ride downtown when the cab didn't answer. I gave a stranger, who was in a different hotel lobby, a ride to the airport on my way out when the cab didn't answer. I had someone at a takeout place offer to bring a replacement order to my house when I noticed my order was wrong (couldn't eat it) when I got home. I've had plenty of positive experiences with non-tipped customer service employees, when I was working non-tipped consumer service I always strived for good service.

Some people just want to provide good service and/or be nice people without the expectation of a monetary reward. I'd much rather have those people serving me than the ones who require bribes. I really don't want to turn all interactions into business transactions, I don't think that makes the world a better place and it encourages an extreme form of classicism where the only people welcome are the people who can afford ever increasing bribes every single place they go.

I also really don't want "impromptu meetings" when I'm trying to eat my dinner with my dinner companions.

No-tipping trends are starting to reverse now, however: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/why-rest...

Upscale and some midscale restaurants in NYC have seen a drop in demand since no-tipping policies have been applied. Its not clear if this is purely a product of pricing psychology, or if service quality at the upscale end starts to suffer with service staff having less incentive to provide top-notch service.

A fast and entertaining take on this topic: "Why Tipping Should Be Banned - Adam Ruins Everything" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vivC7c_1k

Anecdotal, but there's a supermarket chain in the Southeastern U.S. (Publix) that pays their employees a living wage, provides health coverage, and makes a point of letting the customer know that staff (even the folks that load your groceries into your car) doesn't accept tips. The food costs are a little bit higher than, say, Walmart, but closer to that end of the spectrum if Whole Foods is the opposite end. I don't know how well that model would translate to the restaurant industry but, personally, I would give preference to establishments that opted for that model than the current $2something/hour minimum wage + tips.

I'm from Europe so I'm not very familiar with the tipping etiquette in the USA, but if I understand you properly, you're saying that in supermarkets like Walmart, people give tips to the personell? Like to the cashier?

That's quite a culture difference with Europe, here they would think that you were crazy if you would do such a thing ...

No, sorry if I wasn't clear. I used Walmart as an example for low cost but their employees typically aren't tipped. There are other, smaller (local or regional chains) grocery stores where employees can accept tips, however.

In many grocery stores the checkout lane have two people: the cashier and a 'bagger' who will bag the groceries for you and, if requested, will bring them out and load them into your car.

The bagger sometimes gets a tip, especially if they are handling heavy items like cat litter.

(Baggers are common in grocery stores with large parking lots: so they were common growing up in a mid-sized city in the Midwest but I've never seen one in NYC)

Id like to support businesses that pay their employees a living wage but as a consumer it is difficult to find that information. I'd like to see a sign in each store along the lines of "our lowest paid employee makes X/hr, has X days of paid vacation, and is eligible for health insurance" this might be something the market could correct for if the information asymmetry was removed.

Short of ordinances requiring that information be displayed, you're right, it's probably not ever going to be easy to find. It's enough for me if businesses that treat their employees well are encouraged to make that information known. Businesses that are hiring will usually list benefits in their "apply now" signage, so that's a start.

I think to some extent, this compensation method puts the ball in the waiters' court and requires a lot less performance management on the businesses part. I'd be interested to know if service is better/worse/same in non-tipping countries.

The last issue "Chef's will love you" has a lot less to do with tipping or not (personally I'm against tipping and wish it would go away, but its not why back of house staff get stiffed).

Back of house staff, in the US, cannot tip share. Its against the law. Assumedly this was originally meant as a worker protection, but in recent years, especially at higher end establishments, it acts as a wage limit for the people making the food.

We should change the labor laws for restaurants to allow for both worker protections (restaurants are notorious labor law violators) and to allow back of house staff to get some of the tip income.

Those are bizarre laws. I'm not sure if Netherland has any laws on tipping and sharing them, but I think some places share their tips with the entire staff. If you can tip the waiter for excellent service, then you should also be able to tip the kitchen staff if the food is particularly excellent.

The labor laws in the USA are extremely bizarre. Wait staff have a different, much lower, minimum wage than other workers. The restaurant is required to pay them the regular minimum wage if their tips do not make up the difference, and this is a source of many labor complaints.

For most wait staff this is not an issue. Their tips put them well above minimum wage status, but that is one of the big drivers of the tipping culture in the USA. Many of us know (as in had to pay our rent that way) that if you don't tip the waiter 20-25% it dramatically impacts their income. But that money cannot be shared with the back of house staff.

For high end restaurants this has a real impact on their ability to keep young kitchen professionals (and its also a driver of why so many undocumented workers work in low end kitchens, its a very poorly paying job in almost all cases).

The restaurant I worked in during the 80's pooled tips, and both the chef and the line/prep cooks shared in the pool. I think even the lowly dishwasher was included, though we all gave him part of our own tips before putting them in the pool.

You'd need to consult a labor lawyer to be sure but that is probably a labor law violation unless the front of house staff was being paid the regular minimum wage and not the credited wage.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.pdf

IIRC the front of the house participated in the pool (I know because we were irritated with the Mgr getting our tips). The hostesses got min wage, but the managers were salaried (with bonuses).

How can laws on tipping have an impact on restaurants' ability to keep kitchen staff? They can still choose to pay them more, can't they?

Because 20-25% of the bill goes to one section of the workforce & customer appetites for the higher bills above those rates that would be required to pay better wages don't exist.

> Back of house staff, in the US, cannot tip share. Its against the law.

Do you have a reference for this? I know of a few restaurants, in New York and Arizona, where the kitchen shares in the pool.

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires tip pools to only include "employees who customarily and regularly receive tips" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act#Tippi...).

... my understanding is that provision generally excludes back of house staff (except busboys), but as usual the details of any particular situation require an actual legal opinion.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.pdf

A labor lawyer could answer better, but if the restaurants are paying the credited wage and not the full one that is probably a labor law violation (which are rampant in restaurants).

Federal law and that of some states allows a lower minimum wage for tipped employees. [1] So the financial delta for the restaurant may be bigger than that described.

Blame the powerful restaurateur lobby. [2]

[1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/02/464852535/for...

Tipping is truly one of the stupidest aspects of American society. It's unfair to both the worker and the customer.

He takes China as an example but from my experience service often sucks in average restaurants in China. I would have often preferred to show my satisfaction with the service through my tip or lack thereof as I'm used to from my native country.

editorialized title. Tsk.

the tipping situation sucks, but the larger economic problem is effectively due to rent extraction by the landlord. when a restaurant can't afford the rent that, say, a bank can, they are effectively priced out of the market. All excess returns and up going to the land owner. This effectively becomes a variant of baumol's cost disease. Once again, return on capital trumps return on labor.

I remember, many years ago, living in Manhattan: in a short period of time, for restaurants on each corner of an intersection were replaced with four banks. A vibrant spot died.

This is why I support the land-value tax.

Landlords would only be taxed on the value of their land and not the property they're building.

They're heavily incentivized to develop as much as possible to pay tax, since land-value tax doesn't care about the cost of any improvement you make.

This wouldn't change landlord's incentives and therefore unlikely to change the outcome.

You would need to explain that to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Efficiency

A landlord's decision to improve or not improve the property only depends on 1) the cost of the improvements and 2) the expected revenue stream from that improvement, neither of which are affected by an LVT, since the LVT only cares about the unimproved value of the lot.

I can't follow the technical arguments you're making.

You are a landlord. You need to decide whether to make an improvement to your property.

There are only two things you care about:

1. How much money does that improvement bring in?

2. How much does that improvement cost?

Neither of those two inputs are affected by a land value tax. Therefore the landlord must reach the same decision, regardless of whether there is an LVT or not, and so LVTs have no effect on whether landlords improve their property.

You might think that they'll be motivated to improve the lot in order to be able to pay the LVT, but that rationally doesn't factor in to the decision to improve the land or not. It only affects the price of the land (Imposing an LVT makes land prices fall by the discounted future cost of the tax).

And not to be rude, but it seems strange to jump into discussions recommending LVTs as a solution to an economic problem without first understanding basic economic theory.

I misunderstood the LVT as something that is levied against the landowner every year?

And not to be rude, but it seems strange to jump into discussions recommending LVTs as a solution to an economic problem without understanding basic economic theory.

I read an economist article on it, and I thought that I understood it. Apparently I don't.

I won't be recommending it in the future until I fully understand the consequences.

> I misunderstood the LVT as something that is levied against the landowner every year?

Yes, but it still doesn't affect the (rational) landowner's decision. Imagine an improvement that can net the owner $Y a year in profit. A rational owner should always make that improvement, regardless of whether the government is also taxing them $X a year on the land.

If they doesn't have the money/capital to do so, they should sell the land to someone else. Obviously not every landowner acts fully rationally, but in the aggregate, landowners should act pretty closely to that model.

>Yes, but it still doesn't affect the (rational) landowner's decision. Imagine an improvement that can net the owner $Y a year in profit. A rational owner should always make that improvement, regardless of whether the government is also taxing them $X a year on the land.

It's not just about whether return is positive, it's about the highest ROI considering opportunity cost.

Consider a simple case where two lots with one story of development each can produce as much as a single lot with two stories of development. With a tax on land+improvements, a landlord does not prefer one over the other. With a tax on land value only, the single lot with two stories is preferred.

>If they doesn't have the money/capital to do so, they should sell the land to someone else.

Indeed. If the neighbors have ten stories of development, a landlord with a one-story building will not be able to afford the LVT and will sell to someone who can afford to build ten stories.

> With a tax on land value only, the single lot with two stories is preferred.

Yes, but that's because tax on land + improved value distorts incentives (by discouraging improvements).

Usually when we say the LVT doesn't affect incentives, the baseline of comparison is against no land taxes of any form. In that world, you would prefer to develop the single lot because you need to buy less land, so the result is the same as with LVT.

> Usually when we say the LVT doesn't affect incentives, the baseline of comparison is against no land taxes of any form.

That really confused the whole discussion as the current situation is tax on land + improved value, making it look like you were arguing from the other side. No tax at all is anyway taking it to the extreme as the government need money, so it becomes merely an academic exercise.

LVT changes #2, because the ongoing tax cost of putting a new high rise on your empty plot of land is no different than it being empty or it having 4 single family homes. The property tax bill make having a single family home an expensive luxury in dense cities because of the high land tax relative to the amount of improvements on it.

In our current scheme, improving property is disincentivized because it increases your property tax bill with reassessments.

Or am I missing something?

I doubt this very much. They'd be incentivized to make more improvements. Under our current regime what is currently a smaller profit would translate into losses under LVT.

Theoretically there's no difference between a smaller profit than is possible and a loss for rational profit maximizing agents but the psychological difference is huge.

I agree with the author. Having lived in Japan for a number of years, where tipping isn't done, I can say that the dining experience is far superior. Servers don't have to feel like beggars and patrons don't have to feel like their being panhandled.

I also agree that nothing screams "I'm a sphincter!" quite like asking for a 20% tip on a muffin, or a cup of coffee. Unless you physically came to me, got my order, and brought my food to me, you don't deserve a damn tip.

Another thing that restaurant owners do that is deserving of a throat-punch is to confiscate tips and dole them out to other workers, or divvy them up evenly amongst the servers. When I give someone a tip, it is because they've done a good job, and I want to show THAT PERSON my gratitude. I'm not remotely interested in helping the restaurant owner make payroll. That's not what my tip is for.

Tipping sucks and it is grossly abused throughout the restaurant industry. I'd be happy to see it die a deserved death.

No offence, but how does physically coming to you and bringing your food justifies paying additional 10-20%? As mentioned above, I live in EU and almost never tip, because I cannot really understand this cultural thing. Why should I pay a special tip to sbd who brings my food and not clerks in a bakery or a garbage track drivers? I'm being serious here, I'm trying to understand why people do this. Is there any other reason than "the custom"?

Tip to americans: tipping is ultra-confusing to foreign visitors. But you dont depend on tourism so you dont see it. Its an arduous procedure and the amount changes from state to state. It leads to a lot of misunderstanding. The service is good , leaning on overbearing sometimes, but overall i think its more hassle than benefit.

It's not that hard, and doesn't vary from state to state. I agree, we would be better off if we did away with it, but it's very easy to understand.

Whenever you eat in a sit-down, full service restaurant, you typically want to leave 15-20% of the full purchase price of the food as a tip. Don't feel obligated to do this at fast food restaurants or anywhere where you get the food at the counter. It's not that hard to remember this, but I agree, it can create some socially awkward circumstances, especially for tourists who "forget" about the custom.

It varies, 15% in california would be considered low, and you would never know why the waiter made that weird face. It is weird in taxis. And what is the proper etiquette in a bar? And what kind of bar? A bellboy?

More generally, however, a 'tip' is supposed to be an arbitrary amount out of someone's good heart. The fact that it is a preset amount, and you need a calculator, is weird and time-consuming. Again, it may not look so from the inside. My assumption is that it's a relic from a time when workers were uneducated and by default rude. It really seems like an ancient thing nowadays.

Tipping isn't a thing in Australia. I'm not sure I'd know the first thing for the right way to tip if I visited the US. And yet we seem to enjoy high quality food, and I believe our hospitality wages are higher in general.

( perhaps this is all anecdotal, but tipping has never seemed to make sense to someone not in the mix of it )

Tipping is a thing in Australia, but it's not the pseudo-compulsary thing it is in the US. We do pay significantly higher hospitality wages here; nobody is going to starve if you don't tip, and nobody is going to hold it against you. However if you receive excellent service, it's customary to demonstrate your thanks with a bit extra on the bill, and it will be appreciated.

I lean toward agreeing with this article, however laws would probably have to change in order for it to work. Raising prices, say by 20%, and passing that money directly to servers is fine IMO. That would not only eliminate tipping, but really invest employees in the success of the restaurant. Further, the restaurant could decide the "tip" portion of the price on expensive alcohol as well, eliminating the ridiculousness of calculating the tip for the food and alcohol separately (many people don't tip the full 15-20% on very expensive bottles of wine, for example).

Where this falls down is that tax would then be charged on the raised prices, meaning we're now paying a tax on the "tip". I think many people would find that hard to swallow. So it's a good idea, but local and state tax laws would have to change.

It doesn't matter. People will _still_ tip. While the vast majority of us _hate_ tipping, there are some out there who absolutely live by it emotionally (I'm talking about the tippers here), and maintain a healthy amount of guilt if they don't tip.

Case in point: One of the biggest wins of Uber was to remove the tip concept from getting a ride. It made the whole experience effortless and seamless. Portland being Portland, however, has drivers who post placards in their cars suggesting tipping (against what I thought was company policy), and riders buy into it, as you can't possibly exist in Portland without constantly trying to be the nicest person on the planet.

Mark my words: if this happens, restaurants will charge 15-30% more and we will simply start tipping on _top_ of that.

Hell, even during my last trip to Germany, I noticed an expectation for tips.

I've never tipped an uber driver however one only needs to spend some time in /r/uberdrivers to learn that many drivers around the country actually do expect tips. It has nothing with Portland being Portland. They'll also point out that Uber hasn't said "no tipping" for a long time, although IIRC the drivers aren't allowed to ask for one.

I completely agree with your last two statements though.

Uber drivers are allowed to put up signs soliciting tips in some regions as they won a couple lawsuits.

I choose to tip drivers when they provide extra services or goods. If a driver gives me a bottle of water or lifts heavy luggage for me, I'll sometimes give him some money.

You might argue that this is stupid, because it's a catch 22; unless everyone does it, you lose as a business if you do it; nothing motivates people more than raw dollar value and you'll either lose your staff or have to put prices up to pay them more.

...but, you look at Uber, and there's no tipping there; and it's great for the consumer, and (astonishingly) drivers seem fine with it, despite objectively being exploited blatantly and paid less than taxi drivers.

So, maybe there is something to be said for an all digital disruption to the food scene, somehow...

Honestly, I can't see how it would work though; you have to actually demonstrate that your new 'no tip' solution works somehow, not just armchair philosophize about some way to 'magically make tipping disappear?'

Uber also pays drivers more than they charge users to begin with.

Sure, I'm just saying, it's clear you can make a business out of this sort of thing.

Whether it's profitable, that's another question, clearly.

Like I said, I can't imagine how it would work; but maybe there is some kind of like, 'you subscribe to a service, the service pays out 'tip equivalents', you don't have to tip' scheme that might make sense there somewhere.

Basically, it's not totally implausible there might actually be a business that solves the whole tipping thing somehow.

I think you were right about the catch 22 thing, which is the core problem that this article misses. Uber doesn't have tipping but don't you rate your rides in a way that can ultimately reduce the amount of work that driver gets? It has the punishment inverse of tipping.

Uber might not be the best example as they are losing money like crazy to incentivise drivers and customers.

Tipping is asking the consumer to do the work of management - you decide if our employee did a good job and how much they deserve. I'm here to have dinner, thank you, not to assess how your employees behave and decide how much they should be paid.

Wage slavery is especially rampant in the food and beverage industry where low margins and high competition are the norm.

Including "tips" (you could still tip for extraordinary service) as well as sales tax in the price might be the first step towards more transparency and fair pay for everyone involved (owners to waiters) in what essentially amounts to a luxury service anyway.

Tipping is great because it provides the customer with some leverage to pay a price they feel is fair. Not to mention it allows many many many many people to live somewhat comfortably despite working in what would be considered a lowly occupation. We haven't even talked about how service workers are salesman and saleswomen who are provided the opportunity to be compensated more for greater achievement, and the business in turn as well.

It sounds like the people who dislike tipping are the same people who struggle to stand up for themselves to salespeople, and feel pressured to pay extra just to remove themselves from the social setting. I don't mean to be accusatory, but I believe it's likely this is a major motivating factor to dislike tipping despite the complete advantage it gives to you as a consumer.

I can and have walked out without tipping when the service was bad.

When I go out to eat, I do so to unwind. The implicit pressure to tip detracts from that experience and I dislike it. It is not a question of what I am capable of doing. It is about not having to deal with the unfairness of an average or a poor waiter demanding to be compensated.

You bring up a huge an often overlooked point. The owner makes the same amount of money if a customer chooses whether or not to tip. But stands to lose money if a customer is unable to afford the meal and ends up not coming in. In a business where every dime counts, it adds up.

Complete advantage? I've seen those dickwads, toying with the wait staff to make themselves feel like a big man.

How about disliking tipping because it's demeaning to everyone involved. People relying on my charity to make their rent, despite working a full time job. What kind of messed up system is this?

If I go to a brewery for a pint (brewery, not brewpub) there's a tip line on the credit card receipt. I've been to a couple wineries for a glass of wine...And never seen a tip line on the winery recept. Can anyone explain this one to me?

I'd rather tip than get a bill with service tax included, which is itself taxed by the state authorities. If the service is crap, my tip is going to be zero. What sucks is restaurants that share the tip between employees, which means unmotivated employees get the same amount as the motivated ones. It's also a cultural thing - in Southern Europe there's a strong tipping culture. In Hungary you get a service tax on the bill instead. In Austria they will thank you and look extremely grateful for a tip of even one cent. Optional is good. No tip is fine as well. But don't tell me what to do and especially do not regulate tipping.

Mexico all inclusive vs Thailand. Anyone that has been to these two places would have to agree that tipping directly correlates to the quality of service. This is why I'm going back to Mexico for the 9th time in 4 years.

Can you elaborate on this? What is the tipping culture like in Thailand?

I presume you mean in Mexico that since everything is all-inclusive, the only real payment is tips so it strongly affects service quality.

Tipping in Thailand is not much of a thing. The service greatly suffers from this. If you do go into a 5-star hotel in the city they tend to attract a crowd that expects tips. This is where you can find really good service. The people were always pleasant, just not very motivated to serve you.

Everywhere I've been in Mexico the service has been top notch. In all inclusives you are still expected to tip the people.

I think the title should say "Having an expected floor for tipping of 20% and tips of 30% for excellent service, is not a better incentive for good service than a floor of 0% and 10% for good service".

Removing (banning) tipping all together in a restaurant is doable, but as an owner you may want to ensure you have incentives left for employers (e.g. let customers anonymously rate the service after online bookings and hand out bonuses etc).

I prefer the normal system where staff is paid in full (so no part of their expected income is tips) and customers tip for good service. This is how it works in most of the world.

Where I live tipping is a matter of gratitude; you tip if you were treated well, and you don't if you weren't. I think it's easier to reason about, and is almost never problematic for anyone involved

Jobs that have a high component of tip income, generally tend to be low wage (total comp), seasonal, have high turnover, employ younger workers (again, generally), and are transaction oriented.

With the above in mind it makes sense to use tipping to align enployees and management in a situation where management can't spend the time developing/micro managing its employees

You think the average teenage valet is going to run for your car on a hot day if there is no tip?

If it is his job, he will run for the car. Otherwise he'll lose his job?

He'll lose his job in a month, when a distracted and overworked manager finally decides he's had enough. But since he only wanted that job for a couple of months, he doesn't care about it.

But a tip is something he's going to get here and now. Much better for immediate motivation.

I would agree except for the fact that tips have been found to largely not correlate with performance. http://freakonomics.com/2012/12/28/do-we-really-tip-based-on...

I totally agree that there is a tremendous amount of variance in what people actually tip (in the case of the valet, it can literally depend on the amount and denominations of the cash in one's pocket), but I think it does matter in tail cases, and I would hazard that the providers of the service know this as well...at least providing incentive not to be awful or to be excellent (for those so inclined)

That link doesn't provide any facts to back up your claim.

As someone who has worked in the food industry, tipping is definitely correlated with performance (among a couple other obvious factors).

Yep, sorry about not good link. Here is better one: http://www.tippingresearch.com/uploads/managing_tips.pdf

Yes, there is a correlation, but it is extremely weak.

The way you talk, is like if basically the all rest of the world didn't had a functioning commerce without tipping.

Then again, it's also the typical mindset of the common American about everything else that works great in the rest of the 1st world but for which the average American keeps finding excuses not to do. I.E.: Universal Healthcare, Free Access to higher education, Gun Control, Light Drugs Legalisation, etc.

Any consideration of tipping has to take into account the fact that it lets owners shift risk to their employees (since more of a slow night will come out of their pockets instead of the owner's) -- especially when laws specifying that employers have to make up the difference if a wage with tips is less than minimum wage are poorly enforced.

Also, tipping culture is almost like sales commissions. When I waited tables, if I sold a bottle of wine, that could add $50-100 to the bill; I would pocket $10-$20 more per table. That's a helluva incentive.

I wish more american restaurants would embrace the iPad ordering tools I've seen crop up. Then the waiter just brings out what you ordered. I like the food at waitstaff-based restaurants but as I often eat by myself (and work or sit around on HN during that time), I think the idea of being waited on is silly.

Also: tips on carry out? Why is that an option.

Along the same lines, on a visit to San Fran I was surprised to see a 3-4% healthcare surcharge at restaurants. You sit for a nice meal only to get a sticker shock when the bill comes. smh

On the other hand, living 6 years in Paris where there's no tipping but also has ridiculously poor service culture gets one to build some positive opinions about tipping too...

Having worked in the restaurant industry for over 12 years, started as a bus boy at 15 years old, then waiter, then bartender and finally moved to General Manager of the whole place. I can tell you that tipping is absolutely necessary.

I can say that the article is dead wrong about this. Tipping is the best thing that's ever happened to the US Restourant business. Especially at great establishments with repeat customers.

Here are a few reasons:

1) As an owner of a place there is only one of you, impossible for you to cook and go greet the guests and do everything to make them feel special. Your staff, the waiters the bus boys will feel like owners through tipping. If they do a shitty job they don't get paid, it doesn't get more capitalistic than that. It's the the same thing that motivates employees of startups that have equity.

2) For customers Tipping is not required if they do a shit job you don't have to tip 20%. Leave 10% or less, that's the whole point. You as a consumer have the power. Not the owner or the staff.

3) The math is a bit annoying but most places will put the math in your receipt.

4) The best establishments with repeat customers benefit from tipping the most. The waiters and staff have to treat your guests very well and it is in their best interest to keep high paying, high tipping customers happy and coming back. The waiters will complain and fight with the chef when they do a bad job that's how much they care about things going well. Their livelihood is at steak.

5) Now compare waiters in good establishments that get good tips to folks working at McDonalds. There is no comparison, the waiters are motivated the McDonalds worker gets paid no matter what and makes no tip. No extra effort necessary. For that matter compare them to any worker hat dosent make a tip and doesn't have to hustle.

Anyway, I am a bit too passionate about this but the author is very wrong on this one.

Tipping creates a common goal among the owner and all the staff it is crazy to ever think of getting rid of something that makes your employees work harder and better and is a carrot and a stick that gives the consumer all the power.

I seriously got very annoyed at most places I went to eat during my trip to the US last year.

Having good service is not coming every 5 minutes ask if I'm all right, if I need something, if this or that. Leave me alone, I want to eat and enjoy, not have to reply a waiter eager for a tip.

Also the whole vibe is very "fake", I never felt really "welcomed" in any of the places I went to, the greetings, the whole attitude looked like a sham, I went to upscale places and just normal diners and it was all the same.

I'm sorry but I don't think this is healthy as a society, I prefer the level of service I had in São Paulo or here in Stockholm, waiters are genuinely nice or just get out of your way and let you enjoy the experience or just your food.

Tipping culture looks like whoring: if you pay enough anyone can be nice to you, I'm sorry but I don't like to know that the niceness is artificial and that I'm paying for it.

I agree with you - there's a fine line between being genuinely helpful and nice to doing it just because they want tips and most places cross it.

> Your staff, the waiters the bus boys will feel like owners through tipping. If they do a shitty job they don't get paid, it doesn't get more capitalistic than that. It's the the same thing that motivates employees of startups that have equity.

So... why not have startup devs get tips?

Or... wait... why not do actual profit-sharing at restaurants? Give monthly or quarterly bonuses based on profit-sharing calculations.

I sometimes get amazing service at mcdonalds/fastfood places. Had a few phenomenal experiences at a local wendy's last year. The service level has far more to do with the actual people involved vs whether they're tipped or not.

I worked in fast food and our service was exceptional! It was because the place was run like a well oiled machine.

It had to do with the owners, who were very process oriented and educated people. Plus they really cared. Management was, in turn, very good. All the managers there when I was there had been there over a decade so they probably were paid well. The managers, of course, managed their staff well. It really was a nice place to work.

But in US - restaurants is not the only place you tip. A 20% tip on $40 bill amount to $8, which is okayish. 10% would be perhaps okay for most people.

But recently I moved home and paid $850 to movers for 6 hours of work(4 guys and a truck), the 20% of that would be $170. I paid $40 in tips and yet I felt guilty and I thought I heard some grumbling between movers. Similar thing happened when I took a cab from Denver to Boulder and paid nearly $120 and driver explicitly asked for tips and the only option in app was 20%.

I don't know about other people here but paying $170 tips on a service seems like a ripoff and is not practical unless you are already rolling in dough.

Personally for me - tipping is slippery slope. As a personal not born in US, I am always unsure how much I should tip. Heck there is a expected tip in TO-GO orders.

>As a personal not born in US, I am always unsure how much I should tip.

Honestly, as an American, I think everyone has different ideas, even those born here. You can see it right here in these comments! That contributes to the anxiety people have around here about tipping. There's even a joke about it on Seinfeld - "How much do you tip a chamber maid?" It was a long back and forth about how much is customary to tip a hotel chambermaid and nobody could agree on it. The person who suggested the most ended up being a criminal who the local news described him as a "generous tipper." Later on George realizes he forgot to tip her entirely.

When I was growing up (poor, lower class) I was taught that 10% was a customary tip. When I got to be an adult and I started my job as a software engineer I've noticed people seem to tip 20% so I moved to 20%. I don't know if its just my family who tips 10% or its just the upper class who tips 20%? Who knows? Someone here even suggested 10% and got downvoted for it.

I wouldn't think to tip movers. We had some people come with a truck and haul away some stuff, were we supposed to tip them? Were we supposed to tip the furniture delivery people? :/ I am sorry if I accidentally stiffed them.

I have to completely disagree with you on almost all points. I grew up in a culture where tipping was not mandatory but something that you did just because you wanted to/ felt like/were a regular (and tipping in this case is not limited to restaurants, it applies to delivery people, mail etc.)

1) "feel like owners" is just an excuse, because at this point, I'm forced to tip, if I don't, I know fully well that the server won't be making minimum wage (I know the restaurant has to pay them by law, but no server would want to loose their job over this)

2) tipping is not required but social pressures in groups general dictates that you tip. Also if I do get bad service, why should I tip 10%? (why not 0%?) - and that's exactly what I mean - I should NEVER be tipping anyone, the restaurant has to pay it's employees. If I feel like the service was exceptional, I don't mind tipping, but just in general - no tips should be necessary.

3) I don't generally mind the math (especially if you are paying electronically) as the machine can let you choose how much % you'd like to pay (that said, it generally does not tell you if it's applied before/after tax and is another thing to consider over the price of the food itself)

4) This once again should not be the concern of the customer - if at all, its' very easy to deal with this the same way tech companies do - with equity or bonuses.

5) I'm not too sure, but if I pay electronically, I can tip at McDonalds too. (obviously it's not forced, and I can if I want and have a great service, and I love this method).

Let's be real here. The reason these stories are popping up is that the restaurant industry is getting squeezed, hard, by supermarkets that are moving towards prepared foods as online delivery starts to nip at their business.

Restauranteurs at mid priced places want to capture more value. No tipping means that the waitress currently pulling in $20-30/hr makes $15, and they pocket the difference through higher prices and shrink-ray.

All of these ethical arguments, armchair economic dissertations and tales of tipping PTSD woe are nonsense. It's all about dollars and cents for yet another dying industry.

The author of this article needs to travel a bit.

> what if we were to magically make tipping disappear?

Tipping is nonexistent in most of Europe, and guess what: the service absolutely sucks as a consequence.

Why would waiters go out of their way to please you? They don't make more money doing so. So your orders take forever, waiters never smile or even show any kind of a pleasant attitude. It's a terrible experience all around.

Tipping is awkward and the fact that the prices you see are never the prices you pay is annoying, but it has upsides.

There are far cheaper ways to eat than going out and being waited on hand and foot. If you don't like that kind of service and the premium price that comes with it, go to the grocery store and cook your own meal!

It's not always cheaper, especially when you account for time and effort lost.

Eating out isn't only about fine dining; there are plenty of cheap and healthy places quite suited for everyday meals.

Are these places you refer to self service? If so tipping isn't really in play in most cases.

It varies. Sometimes there is service; sometimes you order at the counter and they bring your food over. Anyway, I always tip, because I want them to remember me in a good way - which works perfectly.

BTW, one full meal in such places around me usually costs around $5-10. With a typical salary of a senior engineer outside of SF, it's still quite an affordable option.

And here's why this guy is wrong. Next time you're in a restaurant getting mediocre service, ask if the tips are pooled and divided equally.

Always overtip breakfast waitresses.

I prefer the American system, where the tip is optional, to the European system, where they just add it to your bill.

The idea of separate charging for food and service acknowledges a certain orthogonality in the two activities, and also offers the service staff a measure of unbundled independence, in the diner's perception. It reflects the tradition that serving food professionally is a real skill and is partially unrelated to the food itself.

in France 15% service charge ivs built in, it means service staff are professionals as they get paid properly, and I never experienced diners convincing themselves that the meal was bad as a result.

Personally always find this moaning about tipping, which seems to afflict a large though thankfully not majority proprtion of the population, selfish and small minded.

If you don't like paying for a genuine service, ie. someone at your beck and call, stay at home.

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I have to laugh at people who wring their hands over tipping at restaurants. The guilt and anxiety that the custom of tipping induces is kind of silly.

There's a simple calculus to tipping that some people just can't seem to stomach:

  Tip based on the amount 
  they'll spit in your food.

That's what you're paying for. Clean food.

In general, the reality is that tips only improve service after a customer or group has been recognized as a good source of tips.

Tips are bribery, not commission. Once tips are recognized for what they are, the motives for all participants becomes clearer. If they're never going to see you again, a good tip is rendered meaningless.

Sorry but this is utterly cynical hogwash. I've tipped very well at places I've gone because a waiter was extremely enthusiastic, helpful and passionate about their service. They mastered the menu offering and offered helpful information as I was making my meal choices. They treated me like a guest in their home. Their attitude toward their work had nothing to do with me as a first time visitor in most circumstances.

Or, you know, finally unfuck your riddiculous system where paid vacations is a luxury, minimum wage is pathetic and health insurance is not the standard...

We did most of that after the great depression unfortunately it took the great depression to summon the political will to pull it off.

> finally unfuck your riddiculous system

Would you please stop posting rage rhetoric to HN? We've asked you this before, but you're still doing it a lot. Fulmination lowers the quality of discussion, even when you're not attacking anyone personally.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13263073 and marked it off-topic.

I'm astonished by the number of people here who feel some sort of psychological pressure or discomfort from tipping. Just relax, smile and give (or don't) something like 10%.

It isn't that big of a deal.

EDIT: Apparently I offended someone who is unable to function in the real world.

In the UK or rest of Europe that's fine, in the US 10% is grossly offensive. (Which IMO is insane but it is what it is.)

This idea was suggested long time ago - it doesn't work.

What do you mean by "it doesn't work" exactly? No tipping in restaurants does work in many countries where people are paid a living wage from the outset, from Norway to Czech Republic.

And it works fine in many other industries in the U.S. where there's no tipping.

Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group has a no tipping policy. I believe he's one of the most successful restauranteurs in the world.

"Year of Upheaval for Restaurants That Ended Tipping"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/dining/restaurants-no-tipp...

It's taking some restructuring of how the restaurants are being run, which is to be expected. USHG is also in a good position to try this, as they have relatively deep pockets, but this, as well as how many other societies don't have tipping at restaurants belies the idea that "it doesn't work".

As an aside, I'm surprised that the article makes no mention of USHG.

I'd love for the US to move away from our bizarre tipping culture. However, if we do it'll remove one of the simpler douchebag cues we have.

Person who leaves exactly 15%: douchebag.

Person with leaves no tip: douchecanoe.

Person who leaves a penny: doucecraft-carrier USS Doucheprise.

Tipping is such an easy filter for the people you want to spend time with.

Tipping is essential. It's the most common generosity exercise in everyday life. It gives us a chance to flex a muscle we don't flex often enough.

We should be doing it more, not less. We should tip the cashier at the grocery store and our mechanics and our mail carriers and the referees at high school sporting events.

Paypal tip jars and Humble Bundle's Pay What You Want model are two examples of tipping on the web that I'd like to see more often. The more nudges toward generosity, the better.

Right, but it shouldn't be mandatory. The issue with the current model is that it's not really a gratuity but rather a necessity. To be quite frank, tipping does not make me feel generous at all.

As long as it's not required.

Tipping is for cases where you are delighted by the service to the point that you feel the server deserves additional compensation for their work. When it turns into a hidden cost (like tax in tax-excluding prices) it is not okay, and it is not generosity. It's the real life equivalent of dark patterns.

> Tipping is essential. It's the most common generosity exercise in everyday life

As someone who comes from a country where tipping is not part of the culture (Australia), I'm struggling to understand this. What are we missing out on by not having it?

Notice in Australia only higher end places have table service and not that great service either. That's what we miss out on in Australia. We have much more self service cafes and much less attentive service when we do get it.

...Australian places work around the higher minimum wages through self service and I've been to a few places now that have touchscreen ordering (McDonalds, some yum cha places). Expect to see more of that to reduce labor costs.

The problem in the US is that tipping have become a part of the employees salary not a bonus for good work.

That's absurd. I could make an even more valid argument that employees should be aiming for perfection in their work, regardless of the incentive of a tip. In Japan, no one tips, and customer service is better than anywhere else on earth. Dangling money on a stick is a loser's game. Winners have pride in their work.

Don't forget your software development consultant. I wouldn't mind an extra 20% :)

I'm not convinced of your point, but I wonder how far you could take it. Do you tip your kid's teacher, your professor, a librarian, your doctor, your doctor's assistant? What if the referee is actually wealthy and does it for the love of the game? You'd have to make explicit judgements about every job's place in the socioeconomic hierarchy, and not everyone is going to appreciate getting grouped with the waiters.

I think everyone is overthinking my comment, which I was surprised to find was the most controversial thing I posted here in weeks. I like your take, because it questions where the line should be, and my answer is, how generous do you want to be?

I'm not saying people should tip because they get good service, or because the service provider is poor or because they want to encourage specific results, either in the present or in the future. I'm saying people should tip, full stop.

I am also in no way suggesting that people should be forced, coerced, or otherwise compelled to tip. That's definitely not generosity.

Generosity is good. Sometimes goodness can be goodness regardless of the result. I could care less if it makes a waiter work harder or makes them entitled. That's an entirely different and mostly unrelated problem to getting people to be more generous.

If I give additional money to a bartender to encourage them to serve me before other (possibly poorer) people, that is not generosity.

restaurants will be gone when we all start popping meal pills. The tech is probably 3-4 years out by conservative estimates.

Will the meal pills replicate the taste of your favorite food? Because I'm not going to restaurants for their nutritious value.

2000 calories -- that's a lot of pills.

The first implementation is known as "M&Ms".

Make an M&M flavored Soylent a la Dairy Queen's Blizzard and we're in business.

Any scientific research to back this up ? Genuinely curious but slightly skeptical.

Not if you ask nutrition professionals.

I mostly go to restaurants with people to enjoy a cup of coffee over conversation. The belly-filling is incidental.

(for the sake of beautiful symmetry, I don't go to restaurants by myself..)

No way.

We've already had a huge preview into how well artificial food replacement products are received by the general public, in the form of Soylent and similar meal replacement drinks and powders.

The answer is that these products have niche demand at best, even before considering the problems they've had with quality control, negative health reactions, etc.

My own experience is that a few years ago I spent a few months living on a Soylent-like concoction of nutritional supplements . It covered all my nutritional needs and had me feeling great in some ways (just like Soylent users report), but after a while led to dreadful problems with my digestive system and mental wellbeing.

After everything I've seen and experienced, I'm very long on conventional food.

They seem to be having some issues recently.

On October 12, 2016, the company announced it would halt sales of the "Soylent Bar" due to reports of gastrointestinal illness.

On October 27, 2016, the company halted sales of Soylent Powder 1.6 as a cautionary measure.

For me, restaurants are not about getting nutrition, they are about enjoying the food and spending a nice time with friends.

I'm assuming you've never been to a country that doesn't have tipping, or were shielded from service in such a country, if you were. Customer service in these places is horrible. Why? Because it makes no difference to them if you are pleased or not. They could care less.

If doing some simple math is so difficult, your phone has a calculator, or ask for a pen and paper.

I don't know where you've been, or how you've been treated, but I've had many great dining experiences outside of the US, as well as many terrible ones inside the US.

But you have a better feedback loop where there is tipping involved.

So not true.

I don't tip the checkout staff at the supermarket. Service is fine. I don't tip my accountant. Service is fine. I don't tip the car valet. Service is fine. I don't tip the waiter. Service is fine.

Why should the waiter provide poor service uniquely amongst all these untippes service providers?

If you experienced poor service in a non-tipping culture, it's not because the server knew there was no tip coming. It's because you had a bad server.

The evidences indicates that tipping does not improve service.

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/psychology-agrees-with-d... ... and many more.

Especially in cultures where it's expected. I see people get awful service sometimes and then they tip. Tipping in restaurants in the US is not about service. It's about being able to pay employees below minimum wage and make them dance like monkeys to pay the rent.

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