I guess the only practical approach is to simultaneously keep tipping and push for your city/state/country to eliminate the tipped minimum wage loophole.
Restaurant owners that have tried to eliminate tipping find a) customers are uncomfortable and sometimes try to tip anyway and b) would be customers compare prices without taking into account the fact that tip is included.
The people I’ve talked to most inclined to support tipping culture are servers at mid to expensive restaurants and demanding foodies.
??? Tipping is not a "fixed percentage."
You may have a few edge cases here, but I have to push back on the idea that business owners don't like it. They get to pay their front house staff next to nothing, this money consistently goes untaxed, and it gives their employees incentive to work hard.
It also gives their front house the capability to make an income that the owner themselves would never dream of paying, meaning they can have talented employees just show up magically without having to alter their business in any way.
I have to agree that the people who like it THE MOST are the people also most likely to complain: the servers and bartenders. It only takes some basic math to identify that being a server is the highest paying entry level job in the United States simply because of tipping culture.
The real problem is that they are legally prohibited from using tip share to pay their back of house more.
This puts them in a situation where if they want to raise kitchen staff wages they have to raise prices and restaurant customers are extremely price sensitive.
Several high end restaurants (were presumably there would be less price sensitivity) have tried doing away with tips and raising their prices to pay all staff a more uniform wage. It’s largely failed. Customers don’t like higher prices and front if house staff largely prefer tips as they make more (at the cost of lower pay for their kitchen colleagues).
...if you get just the right job in just the right area. The exact same job—even at a chain—in two restaurants just a few miles apart could have massively different levels of tips.
This is almost certainly largely because of another of the incredibly frustrating aspects of tipping: it's entirely informal, with no way to tell what's expected of customers. The etiquette around it can be extremely confusing on both sides, too—I've heard stories of workers who are strictly forbidden from acknowledging tips to customers, so that if you asked, they would have to say "no, you don't need to tip", even though they're still considered tipped workers legally.
So unless there's explicit statements from the establishment of "we do not accept tips for our workers, because we make sure their wages are high enough not to need that", you can't take "you don't need to tip" at face value. Hell, even then you can't; I wouldn't be remotely surprised to see unscrupulous business owners put that even when they do not, in fact, pay their workers well, especially in areas near where other places say it truthfully.
Reducing fixed period costs (e.g. labor costs of servers, rent, IT hardware) to revenue based splits (e.g. tipping, hotdesks at coworking spaces, the cloud) is an excellent way to minimize risks and most businesses are willing to pay a premium for that.
I really wonder how many HN people have ever worked in a waitstaff role. As much as you might hate it, tips keeps you just above minimum wage 95% of the time. Its not some money fountain like some people here seem to thing it is.
People who want tips of course want it because it gives them money on top of minimum wage, why the hell would you expect someone to sabotage their own income stream?
But if you talk about getting rid of tipping and replacing it with a living age? Look at the comments from this Reddit discussion some years ago (so the numbers are even higher when you factor in inflation) discussing Joe's Crab Shack's interest in getting rid of tips[1]:
> But if you are doing good volume and the prices arent insanely cheap I cant see how youre only making $15 an hour. Are you in a poor section of town where people dont have much money? Do you get a lot of foreign tourists as clientele? I mean, $15 an hour I can make while asleep. But Im in Philly. Prices arent insane usually but they arent cheap. Plus its one of the best tipping cities in the country. Personally I wont take a shift if Im not confident Ill make at least $20 an hour. For me its not worth my time.
**
> This may or may not be close to the industry standard, but my last restaurant, I probably made somewhere around $25/hr (tips + wage). Restaurant before that was way more high volume, and even though we didn't really get paid an hourly wage, I would guess we made about $30/hr or so. On good nights and the bartenders? Probably even more.
**
> I was bored out of my mind all 6 hours of my shift tonight and made $14X, so call it $150, aka $25 an hour. Oh, and that's with a stiff on $120, and a $6 on $94
**
> Because serving tables isn't a job anyone would do for $7.75 an hour. It's not an easy job to excel at. I'll stay making my $25 an hour. Thanks.
**
> This is what people outside of the industry don't seem to get. Strong servers arn't going to stick around for anything less than $20 an hour.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/4iuy2q...
There are ways for unions to work around this, but the fact that some members see themselves as better than others in ways that are measurable make such unions weaker.
I like my student job since it's outdoors, and I have other revenue streams, but you don't get any tips. So my colleagues usually jump at the occasion to work in a restaurant whenever they can even if our workplace is extremely pleasant to work at.
They want to keep tips going because not because it allows them to barely reach the minimum but because it makes them way more money. Otherwise, they'd advocate for removing the different minimum wages.
I'm actually puzzled, and I'm wondering if you have ever worked in a waitstaff job because I've never ever met a waiter being against tips.
At least here in California, I’m pretty sure there’s no special tipped minimum wage, so what you’re saying doesn’t apply.
I used to know a waitress who was making just as much as her engineer husband. She looked good for 55, but 55 will never look good enough to draw in many high tips based on looks. (good lucks is a factor in service to a lot of people, but it didn't apply here)
The bad ones get bad tips and hate the system, but they should be fired anyway.
On the one hand I don't like having to figure tips. However a few times I've got bad service and at least I could do something about it.
Even if I had bad service, I am still giving 20%. That's the social contract I am stuck with fulfilling.
But also, it’s not just restaurant owners that like it. A lot of tipped workers make out really well with tips and prefer it that way.
Unless you're saying real estate agents are expecting tips now. That's messed up.
*Now, there are a bunch of other hidden fees and closing costs associated with a house to where you just need X% of the cost of a house in just to handle that bullshit.
Like I said, you're not being charged anything there. It comes out of the purchase price.
It's the agent who is listing the house at a price and sourcing the various inspectors and appraisers. They're putting in the work to sell your house at a price point.
So, if the agent can manage to move your house for $2 million rather than $1 million, why shouldn't they get a larger reward?
It's a different scenario from servers. Servers can't convince you to pay more for an item or for the business to sell that item for less. Real estate agents can.
Indeed, for the seller this makes sense and the agent's and seller's incentives are aligned. But there's a nasty externality created where real estate agents contribute to a constant upward pressure on housing prices. This eventually helps make housing unaffordable.
There was an early-20th-century movement in the US to end tipping, for that reason. The thinking was that it created too much of a relationship of subservience rather than equals participating in commerce, to be compatible with American ideals of freedom.
You see this sometimes in older media, as in the "Tipping is Un-American" sign in the film The Petrified Forest.
That's my feelings about tipping. The custom feels very classist. Depending on tips creates a social divide between service industries and their customers.
I used to work for tips when I was growing up (~2010). My rate was about $15-20/hr which you just couldn't get as young teenager any other way. BUT, I had to force myself to be bubbly and make small talk or I'd make closer to $5-10/hr. The core service quality never changed--only how much I pleased/entertained my customers. I felt like the court fool or a beggar pleading for alms, so I eventually quit for a $10/hr job that I felt much better working throughout the rest of high school.
The tipping experience did teach me the value of being personable, but I don't think the incentives need to be so severe.
> I want a server who will entertain me while I'm waiting.
Not everyone does--people are fickle. There's also a reason theaters don't use a pay-what-you-want model. Having your lively hood to depend on the whims of strangers is no way to operate.
Your lively hood ALWAYS depends on the whims of strangers. It doesn't matter what you do, you depend on strangers to support you.
It's one thing if someone's being friendly and entertaining because they're being paid a salary or ticket price to do so - like a magician or tour guide or something. That's still artificial and potentially forced and stilted, but at least it's a reasonable, tit-for-tat kind of artificiality. With tipping it feels not only artificial but patronizing, condescending, and servile. You're at the mercy of the capriciousness and cruelty of customers. Or, alternatively, in some cases inadvertently thrusting them into a position of guilt and obligation and pity.
It's not that bad since the employee probably knows what they were signing up for before taking the job, and some can make a lot of money from it, but, overall, the whole thing just feels... weird.
I don't think this is something you can fault tips for. If anything it suggests that tips are working as intended, presumably without tips your employer would bake such expectations into your customer facing role anyway?
The issue with depending on customer satisfaction is that human beings only have agency over themselves. No matter how polite and courteous an employee is they cannot force a customer to be satisfied or that said satisfaction should result in a nice tip.
There are too many variables outside of your control such as the individual customers, shift schedule, volume of customers, the literal weather, political mood, etc. Some days I would go home with like $30 for the day's work despite behaving the same as my high earning days. You are not actually getting paid for your performance directly.
On average you may make more, but if you're in a low income position you are not equipped to ride out the variance. You are being exposed to so much uncertainty and raw humanity that it affects your mentality. It's much harder to shake off making $60 for an entire weekend of work because customers were grumpy when you only have $250 in your bank account and your car payment is due. As an equation it may look equitable, but that equation is not reality.
Businesses that support the tipping system are leaving their employees out in the proverbial wind. Instead business owners should assume the risk and actually manage their employees in an equitable fashion.
I'm sure there are people who can make good money on tips. That's more like a commission on sales. In that sense, you're taking the risk of a higher upside by working in this industry. But the way it actually works, is that most will pay the expected tip. some won't pay any tip at all, some will give a bigger tip, and the worker is left to absorb the variance on a low pay gig.
The industry should remove the downside and allow the upside. You get paid X. There is no tipping system. But the customer can still tip if they like.
I don't work in the industry. Maybe I'm way off. I hope the employment picture changes in the future so that people will appreciate face to face service. I can't reach Facebook or Google for support and I'll cry about my loss, but I'll feel entitled to rage on my server for my $10 meal? Doesn't seem sustainable.
Perhaps counterintuitively, wait staff generally prefers a tipping model over fixed pay when given the choice. Tipping is more variable, but it can pay surprisingly well, especially for staff who are good at their job. It’s rare to find a no-tip restaurant that can match the earning potential of what a good server can make with tipping. It’s theoretically possible, of course, but in practice it doesn’t seem to work out in favor of fixed pay.
If I sit down at a restaurant, I don't know if the server has had a good week, a bad week, an average week, or what. So, not knowing that, if I'm sympathetic to their position, I'm inclined to tip well. Add on to that the constant pressure of tips upward. It's gone from being 10% on average to 20% on average in my lifetime. And also flat rates on certain services.
- Talk back to the server (hopefully to de-escalate rather than escalate) - Ask to talk to their manager - Not come back - Leave a review
That's hardly "nothing"
That's exactly the point. It's meant to be an incentive to put in extra effort, and in my experience it works. Everywhere I've been that doesn't have restaurant tipping, for instance, has had notably worse service on average.
Where it becomes a problem is that the tips are now treated as the expected wage, rather than something extra. Working entirely for something that is intended as an incentive is a bit perverse and demeaning. In the end, I think for this reason tipping ought to be done away with, but it does have its upsides.
- Older generations tip maximum 15%, and decide what to tip based on service quality
- Millennials tip a flat 20%, regardless of service quality
- People who worked in the service industry will tip 30%, because they know what it's like.
But, yes, it's creeped up from 15% before tax to 18-20% on the total bill in general.
Someone didn't need to do anything and as far as I know, no individual decreed anything. (Although possibly guidebook and etiquette writes have helped contribute.)
It makes some sense with inflation and probably lack of increase in wait staff salaries. Restaurants often show recommended tips and even mandatory service adders for large groups. But, for the most part, it's probably been mostly organic.
Customer 1 (richy rich): $5 + $2 tip
Customer 2 (workin man): $5 + $1 tip
Customer 3 (poor man): $5 no tip
Total: $18
Menu: $6 burger
Customer 1 (richy rich): $6 + $1 tip
Total: $7
You've reduced your customer based on true affordability and perceived affordability. This doesn't consider the margin on selling a single burger but generally you need to push product rather than sell master pieces.
Because there are plenty of places that don't work with tips that do fine. Hell, some of our least expensive options operate in a tip-free environment. And no restaurant where tipping is expected is selling for the same price as fast food places in the first place. So it's not the scenario where you're looking at two options that seem equally priced, but one has the hidden tip tax on it. No, you're looking at two options where one is just more expensive and you have to tip.
And why are restaurants special in this regard? Why does no other sector have to operate on this model, where a customer has to directly pay a businesses employees? And why only in the U.S.? How did the rest of the world figure this one out but we can't seem to shake it?
Tipping is stupid and is anti-ethical to actual customer service as it pits staff against the customer and creates resentment in both directions.
Anyway I was speaking specifically on my own regions circumstances, we don't have fastfood within a 1hr round-trip. That 1hr adds up to a few bucks gas and time I don't have. There is no 2 options.
Workin man this week is poor man next week and then some weeks he's richy rich. Do you want to capture all forms of this guy?
None of this is rigorous of course but ya know we don't have a town full of 1 guy with a single budget. We have a town full of people with various and changing budgets, what kind of mechanism can be put into place to keep base finances workable in tight times while extracting more in good times?
Surely there must be a way because every other business seems to manage, and so do restaurants in 50%+ of the world.
Customer 1 (richy rich): $5 + no tip
Customer 2 (workin man): $5 + $2 tip
Customer 3 (poor man): $5 + $1 tip
The tip amount seems to depend more on empathy/demographics than the amount of money one has to spend.
Why are commercial rents so high? Because vacancies are preferred over "market rate" rents. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939860
Not saying this is the case, but when a business shuts down the property it operated in stays in place. The rent will continue to rise to meet the financial demands of the property owner. So the next fool comes in and tries to run a business that is doomed. The young workers rents are subsidized by parents. Unless a restaurant owner is working in the trenches then they will NEVER be able to run the business effectively.
The banks get richer either way, but at a certain point there will not be any restaurants left as the societal contracts erode.
It makes more sense for those who have more decision power to eat the consequences. They can make cheaper burgers, lower salaries for everyone rather then single profession, change what they sell.
The wait staff can only decide whether they work or not.
You can pay either $8 or $10 for the same meal. If you pay $8 you feel bad, if you pay $10 you feel good. Thereby the restaurant takes in the full $10 from people who can afford it and/or aren't psychopaths, but still makes the sale at $8 for anyone else.
I forget the name of who put this idea forward, but businesses that barely break even when paying the absolute minimums, don't necessarily do worse if labor costs go up universally in an area, and everyone can begin to afford to use the services.
Most restaurants can barely afford to stay open because most restaurants are run by people who have no business running a business. Hell, let's be honest, most businesses are run by people who have no business running a business. Most people don't really want to run a business, they want to do something else, but also get paid to do it.
There are plenty of small restaurants around the world that get by fine without tips and manage to pay their employees. But for some reason, the U.S. thinks this is somehow impossible.
Tipping is stupid. But since servers can make more money than on a set wage, they don't mind that the restaurant owners are essentially pitting their employees against their customers. You know what would increase the overall level of service? If the restaurant paid a decent wage to their employees and then removed the obligation from the customer to pay the restaurant's employees.
Yes, that’s how capitalism, markets and commerce work. It has good parts and bad parts. If you don’t want the government to get involved when it’s going well, why get them involved when it isn’t? Greed and hypocrisy, that’s why.
'Yes, everything is still fine' - you don't need to check every 5 minutes