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.
Its definitely worth a read.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
And yet fully half of those things are beyond the control of the person you're tipping for it.
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).
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.
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.
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.
The power dynamic comes from creating a system where people are forced to work to meet their largest expense: rent.
I'm all for automating jobs in general, but we're not there yet.
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.
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.
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.
So you also dislike bonuses for white collar professionals?
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.
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.
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.
It's a completely different situation than bonuses on top of a salary that already covers living expenses.
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.
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.
(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.)
But it's absolutely not correct that paying people with bonuses lowers their effective tax rate.
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.
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.
Also, if you're still working there and looking for fresh CS grad (Scala and Linux admin experience), my email is in my profile ;)
New York State's budget situation is good or bad based on how good or bad bonuses are -- we're talking billions of dollars.
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.
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.
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 think this should be obligatory link in all bonus related discussions:
I am not aware of a study on this, but I would bet my annual income that those factors affect your bonus.
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.
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.
Do white collar professionals always expect to get a 20% bonus, no matter how well the company does?