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Comment by aneth | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of anything else, it's wrong that servers are paid less per hour just because tips are common. This places an unfair burden on customers, and took tips from being part of a culture of discretionary generosity to being enshrined law. Since the tip is now required for the server to earn minimum wage, it is no longer a tip but a sort of marginally optional "fee."

IMO, a 10% service charge without expectation of a tip makes much more sense and is much fairer.

The entitlement culture in the service industry is so great that servers will angrily say things like "if you can't afford to tip on a bottle of wine, don't order it or stay home." Yikes. How about I just don't tip you.

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Servers are entitled to tips, although ironically not necessarily on wine; while it's customary to simply roll wine into your tip, if you're buying expensive bottles it's acceptable to tip less for it.

Tips are part of the way the market for restaurant service is organized. The expectation that you're going to participate in the full market by tipping is universal and an implied part of the US social contract. If this offends you, that's fine: just don't dine in places that expect you to tip. You'll be sending the message to the appropriate target, the business owners, and not to the servers who have no control over the way the market is arranged.

> just don't dine in places that expect you to tip. You'll be sending the message to the appropriate target, the business owners

How does that work? By telepathy?

> and not to the servers who have no control over the way the market is arranged.

It's _exactly_ the servers that need to unionise and get this archaic system outlawed.

Unionization. That'll fix everything. Sounds great.

My suggestion: next time you eat out at a nicer-than-average restaurant, ask the server what they think of your idea. I make a point of talking to servers, not because I'm particularly nice (I'm not) but because it's an easy way to get much better service in the future, access to tables on crowded nights, &c. I think you're going to find that restaurant servers do not see tipping as a cosmic injustice that they should pay union dues to stamp out.

You're against people organising themselves democratically for a common cause?

> next time you eat out at a nicer-than-average restaurant, ask the server what they think of your idea

Waiters in my country make a living wage, no matter what the weather is. And they get tips, too.

Waiting in the US sounds like a great deal - go work for a start-up on commission, if the business thrives you'll still be an employee, if the business falters you'll miss your rent payment.

The belief that unions have in the last 20 years been a very bad solution to most of the US labor problems they're applied to is not, if you apply your full brain capacity to the analysis, equivalent to the belief that unions should be outlawed.

I'm not sure what you think is supposed to happen when businesses falter. Are the taxpayers supposed to subsidize them?

The point is that the business owner is the one taking the risk of the business, as well as investing his money and making business decisions (including the decision to hire a server). Why should the servers take some of that risk when they are most far away from actual business decisions? why shouldn't, for example, the cook and the cleaning staff take the same risk as the servers?

As an employee, you certainly take a "risk" that your job will not last forever. You may be fired, downsized, or the company may go bankrupt.

Fortunately, since we live somewhere where you can fire, downsize, and go bankrupt, there are companies willing to hire you for some period of time between when they need you and when they don't need you anymore. Otherwise, who would hire anyone if they could never fire them (here's looking at you France)?

The possibility of losing a job is inherent and essential to the concept of employment.

Now that's just absurd, feeling entitled to receive extra cash for doing your job is ass-backwards. Taking an order, turning in the order, bringing out the order and then delivering the check is part of the job, any service that exceeds that deserves a tip. But feeling entitled to a tip for basically only doing what you're paid to do, is simply stupid.

I personally have no problem leaving a 5-10% tip of the sub-total at a restaurant for basic service, but feeling entitled to it is, I repeat, stupid.

What part of "it's not extra cash" is so hard for people to understand? It's not extra. The labor market for restaurant servers in the US is organized around the idea of tipping.

Think of tipping instead as a commission, except instead of the provider paying it, the customer pays. When a car salesman moves a car, we don't think of his commission as an "extra". Base pay for car salespeople is commensurately reduced on account of commissions.

Just because it's organized around the idea of tipping, does not justify the notion that it's not extra cash coming out of the customer's pocket. I'm not against tipping, I just find it idiotic that people have this notion that just because it's part of tradition and part of the system that it's not considered "extra cash". Tipping is extra cash that the customer is footing, so that the employer doesn't have to pay extra for the labor behind the service. Once again, not against tipping.

And when it comes to commissions, the employer adds it on top of your wage, keyword: employer.

It's "extra cash coming out of the customers pocket" in the same sense as the wine markup is "extra cash coming out of the customers pocket", or the corkage fee is "extra cash coming out of the customers pocket". You don't get to not pay the wine markup or the corkage fee.

But, ironically, solely because you do have the option of not paying the tip, the expectation of tipping is a terrible injustice to consumers.

Baffling.

You're totally misconstruing my words. I am not against tipping or feel that it's an injustice that servers expect a tip, hell, I've done almost every grimy job in the restaurant business; but what I'm saying is that a server feeling entitled to that tip is bullshit. It instills this notion of "pay me extra for doing my job", not "pay me extra for doing more than I had to at my job". It has nothing to do with consumers feeling an injustice because their servers expect a tip, it seriously has nothing to do with consumers. It has everything to do with a server's mentality that doing your job is enough to warrant a tip.

(I'll choose to ignore the condescension)

When the market arranges itself to pay servers 10-15% less than what the prevailing rate would be without tipping, the market is saying that servers are entitled to tips just for doing their job.

It is indeed true that servers expect a 15% tip simply in exchange for competently performing their job. So do their employers, and so do the majority of restaurant patrons.

I'm very unlikely to ever end up eating in a restaurant with you. I mostly do not care whether you tip or not. But the parallels between this thread and threads about software pricing are spooky: it's as if the part of the brain that enables most people to understand pointers-to-pointers and function pointers somehow cancels out some of the part of the brain that enables people to intuit how markets work.

Suffice it to say I am geeking out over this issue, not moralizing about it. Although: there's a moral component, and as a message board nerd, I'll pitch a little fit if we pretend that there isn't one. :)

And the injustice is in the system itself. An employer that decides to pay 10-15% less because that's how the market has arranged it to be is bullshit.

I'm not saying I don't understand how the market works, I just like to call bullshit when I see it. The market shouldn't be structured in the way that employers can excuse themselves for paying a less than a competitive wage, just because it's an accepted system.

In contrary to my opinions on "expecting/feeling entitled to a tip", I always pay 20%, just because I feel like it.

And I definitely agree, there's a large moral component to it.

I disagree that it's bullshit. In practice, servers (except when serving European tourists) tend to profit from the tipping arrangement. The mere fact that some of the responsibility for paying has been shifted to the customer isn't intrinsically unjust. And, it has benefits to small-business restaurant owners.

I (1) totally agree that reasonable people can disagree about whether restaurant tipping is an economically optimal scheme for compensating front of the house labor. I (2) have a little more trouble conceding that there's "bullshit" involved. I (3) have a lot of problems with the idea that it's reasonable to opt out of the tipping system by simply not tipping (not that you've suggested that, but others here have).

Ideally, tipping shouldn't be expected to compensate for a lower wage and rather should be given based on merit. But in regards to your mention of the market and how it controls the paradigm between wages and tips, I personally agree that people should be compensated in tips for their lower wage.

I completely support the tipping system and don't find any bullshit involved with it. My opinion is that it's bullshit that the market is structured this way to begin with, that eventually nurtured the notion that a tip is entitled. But that's just personal bias based on idealism.

The idea isn't "Pay me extra for doing my job" — it's "Pay me a standard tip if I do my job competently, pay me extra if I go above and beyond, or underpay me if I really suck." Think of it as part of the meal's price being contingent on acceptable service, because that's really more what it's like. Viewing it as "extra" is just intentionally working yourself up by categorizing things weirdly.

Tips can't both be discretionary and an entitlement. That's a contradiction, and I think where the discomfort arises.

Either they are an entitlement - in which case they should be disclosed and added as a fee, or they are discretionary, in which case the servers wages should not be reduced because of the expectation.

> IMO, a 10% service charge without expectation of a tip makes much more sense and is much fairer.

But isn't that basically just forcing a 10% tip on everyone with no regard for actual services rendered? While the tipping practice may be flawed, there is at least some built in incentive for the server to aim for more tips. With a mandatory 10% fee, the server has no incentive to go beyond their duty and the customer has no opt out.

Not really. The 10% is required and disclosed, so it is no difference than raising the prices. Tips on the other hand are an imposition since they are both expected and discretionary.

Sure, the 10% could be included in the price and wages raised, but it doesn't make much difference. It's the difference between a VAT tax and a sales tax - in the end the amount is the same - sales tax is just more apparent to the consumer.

I don't understand your logic that "required & fixed" is better than "expected & discretionary" but if that is how you feel then I'm not going to argue with you. We'll just disagree.

I agree. In fact, why not go a little further and make everything cost 10% more. Then, the customer knows up front exactly what the meal will cost. However the restaurant wants to split the revenue of the final check is up to the restaurant.

This a thousand times, and while we're at it please include tax in the advertised price. Growing up in Germany and the US, I find the US system incredibly deceptive and annoying..

There are some laws about this in most states of the US. If a restaurant charges a "x% service fee", then you must pay that fee. Deal with it. If they claim "x% gratuity is included in the check", then you can ask not to pay it.

I frequented a restaurant that did the latter. The problem was that they did a bad job of advertising the fact & would sometimes go as far as to not give an itemized check. I personally felt like I was being duped. This led to customers tipping on top on a tip & when customers found out, there was a lot of rage on Yelp et al. They repealed the auto gratuity.

Point is, if you are going to do this be loud and clear about it.

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