I'm not well-versed in the history of coffee shops, but it seems to me that it is not a well-established norm -- as compared to bars and restaurants, for example. But I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken about this.
>If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any week, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate
I'm old enough to remember a time that giving extra money to someone for handing you a cup of coffee would be thought absurd. Sit down eatery? No problem, there's prior art before I was born, disagree though I might. But this recent bullshit of "tip, because my employer doesn't pay me enough", whether its Starbucks, McDonalds, or your fave local coffee shop: yeah, fuck that. McDonalds doesn't need my subsidy.
No, but the person to makes and hands over your coffee does.
> I'm old enough to remember a time that giving extra money to someone for handing you a cup of coffee would be thought absurd.
Then you're probably also old enough to remember when wage increases tracked with productivity increases, or when minimum wage kept up with inflation and the cost of living.
The place where I first noticed the "tip your cashier" thing happening was the Panera at my university. Why in the hell would I tip someone who's job is literally to take my order, and maybe hand me a pastry? These people aren't making minimum wage either, I had some friends there and the job paid significantly more.
Do you also tip at McDonalds?
Buying a muffin at a coffee shop and not paying a premium on top of the asking price is not sadistic. It's a normal commercial transaction. Based on your logic, why don't we tip fast-food workers, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, etc...
No, that isn’t for the tip, that is literally the job they are paid to do by their employer. Choosing to tip should only be if they have gone above and beyond what you would expect. I’m from the UK and find the US tipping culture bizzare and stressful - I had truly terrible service in a restaurant in New York once and they literally chased me to the door when they realised I hadn’t tipped and threatened to call the police if I didn’t tip him at least 10%.
They were bullying you by threatening to call the police. The cops would have been annoyed to show up for that, and nothing about what you did is illegal.
- I was 12 the first time we visited the US. My dad was at first confused, since the hotel porter was hanging around, then he was embarrassed, as he didn't have any small cash.
- In New Orleans on a business trip, I kept forgetting to tip the barmaid. Other people at the bar were throwing her dollar bills on my behalf.
- Most recently, chip cards were fairly new — although I've had one for 14 years. I don't want to tip by card, it complicates my expenses, but navigating the dark-pattern UI on the payment machines was often confusing. Several waiters assumed I was stuck with the "new" chip card.
For example, do you make a point of tipping the cashier at McDonalds? I'd bet that if you tried to and a manager saw you they would refuse it because the company doesn't want others to feel compelled to tip because they want to retain their image of a low-cost restaurant. Coffee shops selling $5 cups of coffee don't have that concern because people who frequent those places probably are a lot less price sensitive than those who eat at fast food restaurants.
15% used to be the norm across the board and adjusted from there based on the level of service. Now 20% is expected regardless of the level of service. In restaurants where a 20% gratuity is included in the bill I've noticed a significant drop-off in the level of service, even to the point where I would tip less than 20% if given the option, and I say that as someone who worked as a waiter at one point.
And quite frankly, it's disgusting that the person who spends may 30 seconds providing service gets X% of the bill when 99% of the work is done in the kitchen by guys who don't get paid anything extra.
Yikes,wait till you find out how much the ACH and CC networks get for providing a fully automated service.
A guy bringing me a plate someone else cooked has not earned 20% of the bill.
I'm highlighting this part because it's one of the main contributing factors to dining out less and less, for me, and that includes coffee shops. I always tip well when going out; ergo, I don't go out as often.
Going off of the "I'm not very unique" rule of thumb, businesses are losing some amount of money because of tipping culture.
Only in the most trivial sense that people know that, between sales tax and tipping, they're going to be paying a price that's 25-30% more than what's printed on the menu. And most people have some degree of price elasticity.
But I honestly can't imagine it matters much whether those adders are folded into the price up-front or you just know that you're going to be paying more than the printed price when you get the bill.
In the first place, I tip well partly because of information asymmetry: I don't know how well the staff are paid from one place to the next. This means that one place may pay their staff pretty well, and I'm still adding 20% to the cost of my ticket, and another place may pay their staff pretty poorly. This is placing the two businesses on an uneven competitive footing, and encouraging more businesses to pay their staff as poorly as they can get away with. This may be business-as-usual in the current American business culture, but the end result is that I'm subsidizing bad business practices.
I'm also subsidizing poor tippers. I know there are people out there who, for whatever reason they justify to themselves, don't tip, and I know that there are some businesses that don't pay a living wage (probably most, today), so I try to cover an extra portion of that cost.
It's also removing much of the incentive for food service businesses to seek out untapped efficiencies. I'm pretty sure labor costs are the largest expense category for any food service business, yet they continue to pile on more staff because people like me are helping them get away with it. I can order a Starbucks from an app on my phone, right? So why is there someone at a cash register who punches my order in to a machine when they've already got the software that would let me do it myself?
If tipping were banished and these businesses had to pay all of their staff a fair wage, it's likely that my total bill would go down.
At what point do we begin to consider that choice stiffing the waiters you would've tipped if you did go out?
P.S. I also avoid going to coffee shops where tipping is expected.
Corporate taxes don't factor in either because they are only on profit over and above all expenses. Increasing wages of an employee and shifting payment from tips to w2 income merely ensures the employee pays the taxes they should've be paying in the first place and will not increase corporate taxes.
If wait staff shifted to higher wages, the employer would increase prices and could note on the menu that tipping is not necessary, but appreciated. If that was the case, I would still tip, but only for above average service.
It constitutes a HUGE part of your take home pay for two reasons:
- If you are a waiter, tips will be multiples of your hourly pay.
- Tips will be under the table, saving you another ~25% easily.
So if you make a tipped hourly wage in Ohio:
- $4.15/hr * 7 hour shift (5pm open to 12pm close): 29.05
- Wait 6 tables, each with 3 seated parties, that tip you each $10: $60 * 3 = $120
Tips represent 4x of your salary. If your job gave you an untaxed 400% bonus at the end of every day, would you vote against it?
Shouldn't you compare to the minimum wage at least? Or you could compare to a standard wage similar to what would be paid in other countries.
Not in the state of Ohio, apparently. In many states, waitstaff can be paid below minimum wage, because tips!
I'd be rather more worried about getting caught by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
If the IRS went on a crusade against underreported tips, there would be an absolute bloodbath in the poorer parts of this country, as tips easily represent more of their income than wages. Fortunately untaxed tips have dropped dramatically now that fewer and fewer people are using cash for transactions, so the IRS has had to take no such corrective actions.
My son was a waiter and did very well for himself while in school. Far better than working in my fast food restaurant when he was younger and I paid more than minimum wage.
Given the choice, I had several staff quit on me because they got a waitressing job and getting tips to make more money was the reason. I had several waitresses tell me that was the reason they would not work for me.
My son always tips 20% or more, no matter the service, because he was a waiter once. I tell him he's foolish as I tip 15% for good service and adjust up/down accordingly.
Wait staff love tips because it gets them paid significantly more than if they worked a retail job.
After visiting Europe, tips are necessary for good service. The rudeness and lack of service was culture shock.
All Europe was like this?
There is a stereotype that blacks are worse tippers than whites. As https://www.ebony.com/news-views/are-black-people-really-bad... comments, it might be because blacks have "Insufficient education about tipping", or "a loop of circular behavior where Blacks have been traditionally discriminated against, Blacks expect to be treated poorly and treat servers with disdain, servers treat Black patrons with less care because they “know” Blacks tip poorly, and Blacks continue to tip poorly because they continue to get substandard service." (there are a couple of other proposed reasons).
See for example http://www.tippingresearch.com/uploads/JFSBR_race_revision_a... which includes the quote “I will not take Black tables unless I have no other option; call me racist, but I also walk out with more money than the people who end up with them.”
Yes, if you are a black American, you might get rudeness and lack of service in service in your own country - because wait staff think you won't tip well.
Over here, more than a single interruption ("is everything OK?") is intrusive. Fake smiles and fake enthusiasm aren't desirable either.
In most of the EU you tip for good service. IE; only if your food came in a timely fashion, was not mis-prepared or incorrect and if the wait-staff are generally being polite, kind, courteous.
The idea is that you’re rewarding good service, not that your bound by social convention to give a percentage extra on top of what was agreed upon when you read the menu.
While we’re on the subject, the idea of excluding tax on good until you reach checkout is absolutely insane to me.
I was also a waiter in the restaurant. I hated the stress, but could find no jobs with comparable schedule flexibility/required qualifications that paid as well.
But when pushing, it's worth it to be mindful of where you exert your force. The causal flow (from not tipping to wages being raised to the point where tipping is not necessary) is indirect enough that it is uncertain to effect the desired change. Might there be other paths to achieving this goal?
There are articles on the internet. Just type in "tipping slavery" in google. The Time magazine's article should come up on the first page.
These are different.
... what?
Tipping was something that the patricians/bourgie upper class did to help uplift the waiters/service staff in Europe. It caught on in the USA in the late 1800s and fell out of favor from that upper class in Europe by then.
Largely, USA coopted a "noble gesture" from wealthy Europeans and it has persisted ever since for like a century.
Anyways, I hate tipping as well.
That's another wrinkle that many people don’t know about, right? Tipping in the United States actually dates back to slavery.
The origin of tipping is really the feudal system, it’s this idea of noblesse oblige. But when tipping came to the United States, it had a real racial tinge to it, because, originally, the workers who earned tips were almost exclusively black workers—they were newly freed slaves.
There was this massive anti-tipping movement to protest the practice, a resounding populist movement that actually got anti-tipping bills passed in six states across the country, including Washington state and many southern states. What’s interesting is that that movement, the anti-tipping populist one, ending up spreading to Europe and succeeding, because the labor movement picked it up and said ‘we are professionals, and we shouldn’t have to live on tips, because we should be paid by our employers.’ That’s why you see so little tipping in Europe. What we started here spread there and actually killed it at the origin in Europe.
We, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction in the states. The restaurant industry, which was hiring newly freed slaves as tipped workers, really wanted the right to hire these workers but pay them next to nothing. So they put forth this idea that they were valueless and really shouldn’t have to be paid by their employers. They essentially made the argument that newly freed slaves should get a zero dollar wage.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/i-dar...