Comment by aeadio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aeadio | Hacker News Reader

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Let the industry self-regulate that. You stipulate a reasonable minimum wage, but like most other industries, mid-level and above restaurants need to pay a competitive wage, or talent goes elsewhere. If the going rate post-tip is about $36/hour, then the restaurants can target that as their post-tip benchmark wage.

I can tell you as a different type of talent worker, nobody is trying to pay me minimum wage. Minimum wage is set to ensure there's a reasonable floor on downmarket offerings. When you're 18 and fresh out of school and you work at your local Cracker Barrel, minimum wage ensures you don't get exploited. It's not the benchmark for experienced workers who have picked up a valuable skillset.

You have all these restaurant operators crying that getting rid of tippers puts them out of business, makes their business unviable. Well for one, that's nobody else's problem -- there's no contract, no constitutional guarantee that you're allowed to be in business. Making something economically viable is the whole game.

But it seems like everyone just flunked grade school arithmetic.

The cost is a wash at the end. At mid-range restaurants and above, practically everyone tips the same 18-20% on top of the base cost of the meal. If tipping is made illegal, you can expect meal cost across the board to rise by about this much to make up the difference. It's the exact same cashflow. You can pay a living wage on what you're already charging customers on the final card settlement.

They all seem to be imagining this nightmare scenario where they're forced to raise their menu prices, and that prices them out of the business versus their competitors who, somehow, don't need to do the same.

The law shouldn't cater to business operators with no business sense.

> You have all these restaurant operators crying that getting rid of tippers puts them out of business

They're not exactly wrong, I suppose. A restaurant isn't in the business of food, they are in the business of letting the patrons feel like they are kings for a moment of their life. Being able to throw some shilling at "the help" is part of the experience.

I've experimented with not offering tipping as an option when I have worked on the floor and customers become quite irate about it. I was actually a little taken back at first, but it makes sense when you stop and think about why the business model exists.

That's not say restaurants couldn't pivot into a new business model, but outlawing the old model would absolutely see that business go under. Anything else would be in violation of the law.

> there's no contract, no constitutional guarantee that you're allowed to be in business.

Fair enough. But by the same token, it is curious that there are calls to end the experience customers crave and one that provides a pretty good living for those doing the work. All parties are making the transactions voluntarily.

> If tipping is made illegal, you can expect meal cost across the board to rise by about this much to make up the difference.

Indeed. Which is way better for me as it is easier for me to skim my margins off the top. Humans aren't perfect calculators. They wouldn't notice a few cents here and a few cents there in my favour. The law prevents me from taking a margin from tips, though, so there is much greater accounting visible to the worker there. I suspect the "tipping should be illegal" idea stems from restauranteurs themselves.

I am certainly a proponent! Bring on making tipping illegal. Who doesn't want the cashflow through their own books? But until then, I am beholden to my customers and staff. Without them, I truly don't have a business.

I just wanted to say that your post challenged (and will likely change) an assumption I've always had about restaurant owners and tipping culture. I've always just assumed, without ever having been restaurateur, that both servers and owners loved/supported the tipping status quo. Of course servers love it. But why restaurant owners? "It lets those greedy restaurant owners pay their staff less!" as the trope goes. It never really occurred to me that it's kind of a pain for you, too, and that you'd also rather just ditch it.

The thing I don't understand though is: How is tipping sneaking in to other non-restaurant businesses, if it's not really supported by the business owners? After all, they're the ones deciding to offer the option to tip.

> After all, they're the ones deciding to offer the option to tip.

I don't have direct experiencing running a retail business outside of hospitality, but I would venture to guess it is the only way to retain staff. After all, if you are the worker, why would you work at the store that refuses to allow tips when you can just as easily go to the store next door that does?

Superficially, it is true that the business owner gets the final say, but they don't get to make the choice in a vacuum. You don't have a business without staff.

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