Wait, Are We Supposed to Tip 25% Everywhere Now?
foodandwine.com
foodandwine.com
But please remember that the service worker you are considering tipping or not is not the one who put you in this situation and they are also getting a much worse deal out of it than you are. Not tipping will not matter at all to the person who controls the payroll but will matter to the person who relies on the tip as an important part of their income.
If you hate tipping, agitate for living pages. Don't just tut-tut at wait staff.
If the argument is that tipping keeps their prices low (costs/wages), aren’t you just ending up paying the same price anyways in the end? Like, why all this extra BS?
Just pay decent wages, set fair prices, and make no more tipping “the norm” instead.
Eventually they would. When the cashier at the yoghurt shop mentioned realizes that they can get paid more at some other shop / restaurant, the owner would realize they have to pay more to get employees.
Unfortunately, this would be a slow process.
The article is talking about the proliferation of tipping. It is certainly _not_ assumed or agreed upon that all the places asking for tips should be receiving them. Furthermore, even the places that traditionally expect tips have never actually had an agreed upon amount.
So no people are certainly not being robbed when they aren't paid something that people never agreed to pay them.
Or, if you'd like, point out exactly (meaning quote) what statement I made which is contradicted by that comment.
"People say that again and again but at the end of the day, unless everyone collectively stops tipping, or the government intervenes nothing will change. And since the government won't make any progress the only thing consumers can do is withhold their tip."
This is what I'm taking issue with:
"And since the government won't make any progress the only thing consumers can do is withhold their tip."
And most of that tip money goes directly to the landlord. Meanwhile, the cost of education and health care continues to skyrocket. Makes you wonder whether unregulated capitalism is as amazing a system as it's made out to be. It's amazing for those at the top, I suppose.
Anyways, don't take it out on the worker. This country is a hellscape for most young people right now.
Huh? You're saying one can only get a minimum paid job with a college degree (plus lots of debt). Isn't that saying that the selection of the degree wasn't the wisest choice? i.e. ROI
Not sure I would put the blame solely only on the capitalist system for that.
I said that many people working minimum or low wages have college debts; I did not say that “one can only get a minimum wage job with a college degree.” All beetles are insects but not all insects are beetles, you understand this right? I can’t imagine a more fatuous thing to say. Disgusting.
I was trying to be subtle and I thought it was obvious. It's (mostly) down to accountability and the choices that people make.
If you go into debt and choose to study "Stem/Law/Finance", you mostly won't be working in a minimal paying job.
If you go into debt and choose to study (I don't know) "French Art Literature", you might have problems getting by.
Is this 100% guarantee? Of course not, having Finance from Wharton and choosing to live in farmland state won't do you that much good. If you have a law degree from Harvard and choose to look after an ageing parent in SmallTown, US, you'll most likely have a hard time. Sometimes bad things happen to people.
However I don't believe the majority of graduates are in that position. I suspect they made bad decisions in choosing their major, maybe they partied too much and didn't get the grade they wanted.
Of course, you might have to move to a major city. If you don't that's a choice.
I don't understand why there is an expectation that if you spent a great deal of money to go to college and then don't have a valuable skill that you can sell to society, that everyone should give you a break.
With that list I was able to find one near me that publicly announced it would not accept tips anymore.
Restaurants pay workers the minimum wage for tipped workers ($2.13/hour in most states), but must make up the difference if the worker's wage plus tips don't equal the minimum wage ($7.25 in most states).
When I waited tables, we were forced to turn out our pockets at the end of a shift and count out our tips in front of the boss. A lot of us took cash tips and stuffed them in our shoes beforehand.
Plus waitstaff had to pay for the credit card charge (2% at that time for MasterCard and Visa) if someone charged their meal, so reducing that as much as possible was helpful.
So, my approach is I don't go to places that expect tipping. If I go somewhere for the first time and I'm asked for a tip, I tip. And then I never go back there ever. Simple.
And I tell you what. If everyone did the same this is a problem that would solve itself.
Back in Toronto, it was reported that one owner was helping himself to a portion of the tips - a public shaming event.
In theory. I have no illusions that other people tipping will lower my prices. The business owner will simply see an increase in revenue in most cases. In many cases, it would even be used as justification to pay their employees less unless they can bring in tips; this already happens at most restaurants.
I'd much rather hold the business owner to the expectation that they have a viable business strategy and pay their workers an appropriate amount while also charging their customers an appropriate amount.
It's fundamentally a form of price discrimination. They can get more money from people who want to spend more, so they can lower their prices in order to capture more customers who want to spend less.
> I'd much rather hold the business owner to the expectation that they have a viable business strategy and pay their workers an appropriate amount
I don't know how you can hold the business owner to that, whether or not they collect non-service-related tips (aside from passing minimum wage laws). That's between the business owner and their employees, who also don't expect me to tip.
On one hand, tipping exists because restaurant workers are paid under minimum wage and that is still legal for some reason.
On the other hand, NOT tipping in protest directly harms the restaurant worker for a problem that's well beyond their control.
Personally I tip 50-100% because most times it goes 100% to the worker and I won't miss the money. Only exception is pooled tips since there have been stories of owners skimming from those pots and how the money is split up is complicated. There, I tip 20%.
"Wait, are we supposed to eat at restaurants now?" - No.
Don't get me wrong, if you sell greeting cards or whatever and use a POS system that has a tip screen, I find that silly, and yeah, we should have a broader discussion about tipping culture. But all of this getting up in arms seems like solely an exercise in dropping coins into the outrage media machine. Just hit the other button.
[ ] Socially [ ] Financially
Just advertise the price and I'll decide whether to buy or not. Then I'll pay you the price that you advertised. If you configure your POS terminal to make it awkward, I probably won't want to come back.
(Culture note: Not American)
Employees are going to want their employer to have a 'give me more money' button at the end of every purchase, and this is just currently in vogue because of touchscreen point of sale systems. I have plenty of neurotic millennial tendencies, but I usually only see older generations complain about the tip screen. If I don't think I should tip for buying a candy bar then I won't. Is there a concern that all transactions will require something that will eventually become more than a tip, like some required fee? Is it so upsetting to be presented with the number 25%? Please help me understand.
In all of those cases, you clearly have the ability to simply say no. At the same time, any socially aware person is likely to resent being pressured for money.
Your argument would make sense if tipping was something done for exceptional service. It makes less sense when it is essentially universal and implicitly risks worse service in the future at best. Even at restaurants, tipping disproportionately rewards the people who have arguably the least difficult job and does so in an empirically discriminatory way that has almost no relationship to service quality whatsoever (https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/71781).
To "tip" my hand completely, I think my original comment was born out of a frustration that so many social problems will be complained about by a HN-type crowd as some vague social ill that cannot be solved by 'taking our (tipping) business elsewhere.' Sometimes it seems like these complaints only suggest that nothing can be done except 'make noise' about tipping or else it might become something our family members will do. As the author of the featured article points out, facing down the fact that many wait staff need tips to make a real living on top of minimum wage is definitely a big problem, but to me, it's a more concrete problem than 'I'm mad I have to tip because I bought chapstick.' There is a time and place for venting about the screwy society we live in but I hope we continue to talk about changing tipping culture and paying people properly.