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Comment by BirAdam | Hacker News Reader

Not saying it’s good or bad, but I used to know some people who made 6 figures a year on tips straight out of high school and stayed in the food business because of it. I never did… I’m not a particularly friendly or warm person. But, those people do actively defend tipping and they expressly do not want salary/wage systems.

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You’ve just described my sister’s ex-husband. Friendly guy, knows how to work customers just right to get a tip and made good money for giving up his weekend nights. If I wanted to get a rant out of him, all I had to do was ask about tip pooling.

I'm not advocating for the abolishment of tipping (I explicitly stated this btw), but I am against its expansion and an economic system where bribery is required for an employee to take home a living wage. If we had a social standard where everyone was making at least a living wage then I have no problems with you wanting to depart with extra cash. No one here is really advocating for making tipping illegal, we just don't think it should be used to supplement income.

Stories like this make me think tipping should be abolished more. I feel bad for the other less charismatic servers. Just get rid of tips and pay them higher across the board.

I have a friend with no education who has been a server and bartender. When he is able to work as a server, the money flows in. He's currently working at a Brazilian steakhouse where the standard tip for a table of 4 is $36 before counting money spent on drinks, meaning that after splitting up the tips with other servers and the backroom staff, he's still making well over $70 an hour on a slow day.

Of course, when he was between serving jobs, he was working at a doggy day care for $12 an hour.

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