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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I don't like tipping culture, but it does allow for wealthy people to subsidize service and incentivizes good service.

People that are more price sensitive tip lower and every once in a while a waiter will experience an extremely generous tip. I'm not convinced that forbidding tips would increase net wages paid to servers.

In terms of who is paying, restaurants will simply raise prices to account for higher wages. Their margins aren't that big.

Finally I think tipping definitely incentivizes good service. Its partly cultural, but I've noticed much higher level of service in the US compared to Europe were tips are not expected as much

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tips incentivize to be white, young and female - there is almost no correlation between service quality and tip size:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036233199...

>and incentivizes good service

Does it?

I think for most folks getting lots of tips they find that he tips feel more like they're going to be... whatever they're going to be. Meanwhile their day to day job is more about other things going on, or if the food came out cooked wrong ... not so much something they control like a light-switch enough to make changes.

I'm not sure that incentivizes much at all.

I've actually gotten much better service in places like Australia / Japan where tips aren't a thing.

From my understanding, poor people are often the best tippers in the USA, and rich folks tend to not tip.

Having worked as a server for years I can say your second paragraph is definitely not true, or at least it wasn't for me.

Rich people had a higher than expected number of cheapskates, but on net definitely tipped more.

Statistically speaking, really rich people never cross paths with most establishments

I've noticed much higher level of service in the US compared to Europe were tips are not expected as much

Might be true, but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. If someone is forced to be excessively friendly/caring because he/she fears that otherwise he/she might not get enough pay, this is a toxic work culture in my opinion. Also (even though I don't have data on this) it might also create unfair advantages to certain people, for example I think it might be possible that people who are more attractive (especially in restaurants) get payed more. But for the last thing I am just guessing here.

I think it should be less about forbidding tips, and more about disincentivizing them, currently, if you make less than tips, some people feel like they personally have to tip because otherwise they're taking away (expected) wages

Give waiters minimum wage, split the cost among all sales, and if a server actually goes above and beyond, then I don't think anyone would complain about tipping them extra

Last time I was a waiter (more than a decade ago now) at a mid-range restaurant, on dinner shifts we were all making $15/hr on a slow night and sometimes over $50/hr. There's no world in which we'd have been making more without tips, and we wouldn't welcome it.

> it does allow for wealthy people to subsidize service and incentivizes good service

My anecdotal experience is the wealthier people are far more likely to tip less.

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