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There are restaurant employees that expect a tip because they prepared your food then packaged it up. This is an insane concept to me. In that case these same employees should tip the grocery store clerk that rang up and bagged their groceries, or to their amazon delivery driver, or to the dental assistant that cleaned their teeth. It's absurd to me that the burder of closing the pay gap is on the customer. I'm not opposed to tipping for service but lets taper those expecations a bit. If you already get paid for doing the job, don't expect the customer to foot the rest because the owner doesn't want to participate in profit sharing (the business does good, so do you, hence bigger effort in making sure the business succeeds)

> There are restaurant employees that expect a tip because they prepared your food then packaged it up.

'Expect', one word with two very different meanings.

    1. To predict or believe that something will happen

    3. To consider reasonably due.  Synonyms: hope, want, wish

They 'expect' a tip in the sense that they want one, but they don't 'expect' tips in the anticipatory sense, because tipping glorified cashiers just isn't part of the American tipping culture. Baristas and the like put tip jars on the counter but I'd guess that only 1 in 10 people ever put anything in those jars. I never do.

As someone who visited America on a business trip - my biggest shock was when we went to a restaurant, and the server we had was downright rude(and it wasn't even just my observation, our American hosts also agreed with this). So at the end of the meal, I said - well the server was rude, that means we don't tip, right? To which our American hosts went "no no, that would make you look like a dick - just tip less, like 10%, that will show them".

I still think about this interaction to this day. I don't think the system "washes out" anyone - because(based on my single and anecdotal experience) people will tip no matter what, because otherwise they might look bad.

I think the reaction from your American hosts was either unusual, or they privately disagreed with your assessment of the server's rudeness. Maybe that is a restaurant they wanted to return to later and didn't want to burn bridges.

I don't hesitate to refuse a tip if the server is truly rude, but I'll also not return to that restaurant for a long time. This has only happened a handful of times in my life. If the service is neutral then I'll leave a neutral tip, usually 15% unless the total is low and rounds up to a nice whole number.

> If you don't like to tip, there are plenty of restaurants where tipping isn't expected; specifically those where you carry the food yourself from the counter to your table.

Idk where your at but where I'm living in America, these kinds of places still very much encourage a tip and will still give you some dirty glances if you skip the tipping page at checkout. On principle, I won't tip these places, but there's very much still a social expectation.

The problem is the incredibly low wages employers are allowed to pay at tipped establishments.

Federally that wage is $2.13 per hour.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

That's only if the employee has earned more than $5.12 in tips. For what it's worth, I know many illegal aliens making $+20/hour in tips. Minimum wage here is not a problem.

For what it's worth, I don't know anyone who has had the employer make up that $5.12 when they didn't get it in tips, and kept the job.

It becomes an issue for waitresses who consistently cannot get tips; the law says their employer has to make up the difference, but in practice such people don't last long in the business. If a waitress is consistently unable to get enough tips to clear minimum wage, there's probably a good reason for it and they're just not cut out for the job.

Consider that single 20% tip on a $40 order once an hour is enough to clear the federal minimum wage. It doesn't take much, if you can't make that much in tips then either the restaurant is dead or you're consistently fucking up orders.

You're basically describing the system as it is intended to work. If a business cannot survive without paying someone minimum wage, we've decided as a society that it is not worthy of existence. On the other end, if the person sucks at the job and is costing the business money, I don't know why there is an expectation the person keeps the job. I certainly don't receive that benefit.

> If a business cannot survive without paying someone minimum wage, we've decided as a society that it is not worthy of existence.

An appeal to the decisions of society? I'm not sure that's the argument you're looking for; American society has decided that it works differently for waitresses.

Even for establishments that do pay more... so many fast food/takeout places have tipping on their checkout process now. Starbucks in my city, as an example, pays a baseline well above most similar positions in the area, but they still expect tips above and beyond.

I don't blame someone for wanting and accepting more... It just feels weird to tip when the service is baseline, vs say a waitress where they take your order, bring drinks, refills, corrections, additions, etc. and generally with a pleasant personality.

With respect to Europe, in the UK it's pretty common to see a "voluntary" 10% added to the bill for table service these days.

The expectation of tipping for more and more things and the ratcheting up of default amounts in digital payment systems are somewhat annoying. But knowing that you'll be paying 20-25% more or so in a lot of situations between tipping and sales tax isn't really that much more of a mental burden. Honestly, I'm more bothered when restaurants also tack on various fees for "living wage" or health insurance or whatever.

I'm actually ok with that if it's clear and up front - as in, written on the menu, which in my experience it usually is. It's not like you have to guess the additional expected fee at the end.

Well, yes, but how many people going into a sit-down restaurant in the US don't know that they're on the hook for about a 25% add-on when they get the bill? Maybe if it's the first time visiting but certainly not in general.

Those places where I have to carry my food also ask for tips when I checkout.

Correct and I really hate it.

> If you don't like to tip, there are plenty of restaurants where tipping isn't expected; specifically those where you carry the food yourself from the counter to your table.

Generally such restaurants serve significantly different kinds of food, and are typically lower quality. You can't expect these kinds of restaurants (typically fast food, food trucks, buffet food, etc.) to out-compete restaurants that they are hardly even competing with in the first place (e.g. fancier sit-down restaurants).

Plenty of people simply choose not to eat at those sort of restaurants. If this is an issue you feel strongly about, it is within your power to choose not to eat at restaurants with waitresses. Such restaurants are a luxury you choose to indulge in.

>If you don't like to tip, there are plenty of restaurants where tipping isn't expected; specifically those where you carry the food yourself from the counter to your table

These places still ask for a tip. Even to-go only places practically demand tips.

I was recently told by a friend that it was just as socially expected to tip for counter service as it is to tip at a sit down restaurant.

Your friend is crazy, or rather it seems they fell victim to the scam. Businesses want you to tip for counter service because you're helping to pay for their labor expenses and they get to pocket the difference. The person behind the counter hopes that you'll tip because they were told when they were hired that tipping would help make up for their low wages.

They want to push the perception that society thinks you should tip for counter service, but it's not real (at least not yet). I don't tip for carry out or for retail transactions. Tips are reserved for people who perform a service (waiting on my table, cutting my hair, etc) and not for every employee I interact with who handles food.

There was an exception made at the height of the pandemic for restaurants that had few if any indoor diners. We tipped them for carry out because it's money they would have been getting if it were safe to eat inside like we wanted to. Now that most people are back to their old habits (safe or not) I think it's fine to stop tipping for carry out orders.

I don't agree with my friend, but she was incredibly outraged that I choose a tip of zero at a donut shop, this is how this came up. If you're being intellectually honest there's no logical justification for why a server "deserves" a tip and counter staff don't.* Half the time the server isn't even the one physically bringing you your food/drink - that's often done by a runner or a bus boy.

Because the entire tipping culture is based upon shame if a non-insignificant amount of people feel that they are expected to tip whenever asked for a tip, it ends up being the the same as if there was an actual social obligation to tip. Then there can become one.

*There actually is a social obligation to tip counter staff - only if you're ordering an alcoholic drink though.

Waitstaff put in more time bringing food (if they do that, but tips are pooled anyway), topping off drinks, handling odd requests, and then taking care of checkout. They also make $2 an hour while the person handing doughnuts gets at least minimum wage which seems like a good justification for hitting 0% at the bakery register.

You're right about bartenders being the exception. That I tend to view more as an outright bribe for better drinks and faster service which is honestly not ideal either.

I do think businesses are taking advantage of our guilt and conditioning to try to normalize tips where they never existed before. Hopefully your friend can be brought around to see that. The fewer people who accept it, the slower it will spread. I really hope "tip creep" pisses people off enough that we start to question the entire culture of tipping.

>They also make $2 an hour while the person handing doughnuts gets at least minimum wage which seems like a good justification for hitting 0% at the bakery register.

False! In my locale waitstaff make the same (high) minimum wage as everyone else.

> If enough people hated tipping, restaurants that don't have tipping would eventually out-compete those that do.

What makes you say this? As another comment points out, minimum wage is lower for restaurant workers in most (all?) states. How would a restaurant without tips outcompete in this system?

Restaurant wages are lower for waitresses, not for cooks, cashiers, etc. Fast food/etc restaurant workers get the normal minimum wage at the least.

Such restaurants can out-compete restaurants with waitresses by simply offering the sort of self-service that most people prefer, if in fact most people prefer that. It's not as though these restaurants are forced to pay their waitresses more; they don't have waitresses at all. That's one less expense they have to worry about.

> there are plenty of restaurants where tipping isn't expected; specifically those where you carry the food yourself from the counter to your table

I assume you haven't eaten at any of those kind of restaurants since 2019.