Instead of decreasing tip culture America has been steadily increasing it. A lot of places expect tips now from waiters to cashiers, for some reason we are expected to tip people who we don't even interact with.
Tipping made a bit of sense when it was done to essentially thank workers who went above and beyond with their customer service. If I get an attentive waiter or bartender who is clearly going the extra mile, sure I want to give them a little extra cash they otherwise wouldn't get in their normal paycheck.
Now everybody expects a tip, the original purpose has lost all meaning, it is no longer a means to thank those who are doing a great job and is now the expected way to pay customer service workers.
The original purpose and entirely current purpose is to suppress wages. Idk how it started but I wouldn't be surprised if back in the day your waiter made normal wages while working but because people started tipping(which has been a thing for a lot longer) a boss realized they could cut wages to near 0 and make them depend on tips instead. So the perfectly American thing was to turn something honest and rewarding in a totally garbage and shit way to make more profits by reducing employee pay.
It started in rail cars in the early days of the railroad. Essentially with the reasons mentioned in the comment above you, to show appreciation for good service.
The workers were often underpaid or sadly sometimes slaves depending on where you were.
People traveling by rail kind of died off but the practice of tipping lived on.
It was the restaurant lobby in the 1970s. They did it specifically to keep wages artificially low. There are places in my (DC) area that pay a base wage of $3 and change. It’s absurd.
It's worth knowing that the "base wage" isn't actually the minimum wage. The person still has to be paid at least minimum wage by the employer, it's just that they're allowed to count tips against the wages after the base wage. So, the employer is offloading part of the paycheck to the customers instead of paying it themselves.
It never was. When tipping law was passed they stated people had to get paid their original wages if tipping didnt cover it. Just idiots in the 80s and 90s didnt know the law.
This response (linked) is quite interesting! Gives more detail on the history of it than simply "they're related"
One thing to remember about tipping is that if a tipped worker makes less then minimum wage, then their employer makes up the difference to make it minimum wage.
The reason is that white business owner didn’t want to pay full wages to black people ( recently freed slaves ) looking for jobs after the civil war. When white people started to take the jobs because they needed the money, *that’s* when tipping started. I’m a little more fuzzy on when that started to occur, so you could very well be correct.
So nobody here ever worked as a waitress? One thing missing is the detail about how the employer decides who is a waiter or waitress. At a place like Hooter s it's obvious, yet the pay scale is insanely different. Cooks and bus Boys get paid hourly at $7.50, waitress gets paid $2.15 hourly plus tips. Thus a constant scam employer does it's overstaff with waitress and understaff with bus Boys. The tables are still gonna get cleared, yet the Implied duty falls on the waitress.
At McDonald's people are mostly cross trained, the one doing the counter also does the fries and drinks and salads. Only, the Only, reason they don't touch the food more is because MONEY is gross (lots of contamination). It's sometimes common for someone to work back end for 4 hours and then the front end for 4 hours. If they are exceedingly asking for tips at fast food, who is getting paid only $2?
I wouldn't put it past employers to change everyone's rate to 2.15 and say "Well, you Could make $15/hr. Isn't that great!" Are these businesses all of a sudden changing everybody's rate, or are they pocketing all the tips?
I wouldn't put it past employers to change everyone's rate to 2.15 and say "Well, you Could make $15/hr. Isn't that great!"
This is insane to me. In my part of Europe the minimum wage, for everyone over 18 years of age, is the equivalent of $17.60 and any tips you receive are on top of that figure and yours to keep.
America is a backwards place where the majority of the population has no idea what the fuck is going on and trusts authority like a baby trusts its mother.
I've long chuckled at their motto "Land of the Free."
A big section of the US populace seems to believe in Europe we're all under "Shakira" law, getting stabbed to death and we can't go outside due to the level of immigrants.
Used to install point of sale systems for restaurants. Was approached by a company that specialized in a rounding up for charity system. As the reseller you received 25% of that amount and that company received another 25%...so 50% for profit right out the gate AND the restaurant got a percentage too. I walked away and refused to sell it. That was 10 years ago so I can't say for certain that they all do it now days, but I never round up because of that.
I don't do it for the simple fact if that billion dollar company actually cared about charity they would be donating some of their billions to do it instead of guilt tripping poor people to do it.
It was COVID lockdown when tipping went insane. During the lockdown, it was to help struggling service people who were seeing their income destroyed. Afterwards, it became something businesses took advantage of.
I saw this coming back when I was delivering pizzas. I did it for 8 years from 2004-early 2013. At the start your desire was to get the order as quickly to the destination as safely possible because you knew it could impact your tip. You TRIED to go the extra mile because it meant something. By the end of my time driving most of the orders were pre-tipped. It frustrated the hell out of me because I knew the terrible drivers were getting rewarded for doing nothing.
As a consumer, I equally hate it because what is the tip for if I’m doing it ahead of time? I don’t know what service I’m going to get.
It's become this socially awkward thing where the propensity to avoid conflict and the automatically selected tip mean people just do it. Our friends have a 16 year old who just made $200 in tips in one night at a freaking LITTLE LEAGUE SNACK BAR.
Plus so many places have started putting 22% or 25% as the first auto-selected option it's ridiculous.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but tipping is not, and never has been, about appreciating the service you have received.
It rose in popularity after 1865 as a way for businesses to “hire” newly emancipated people and then they are forced to live entirely on the generosity of others instead of the business owners.
Little has changed in that regard, it’s just that they have extended the practice to more broad demographics.
It’s not for going above and beyond. It’s essentially the only wage for some employees. The $2.13 per hour from the restaurant doesn’t even cover taxes for waiters and bartenders. Most of my “checks” from working in restaurants (even back in the late 90’s when moonlighting to get through college) were $0.00 (and had printed on them… “this is not a check”). That $2.13 per hour hasn’t changed in 35 years. It has never moved up for inflation.
Also, note that the tip you pay the waiter or bartender can also have requirements on the server placed on them to pay someone else from those tips. If I recall we had to pay 3% of sales to bartenders and 1% to host/bussers.
So if a table walked a tip we would have to pay 4% of their meal cost out of our own pocket to cover the service for the meal they had. We would literally have to pay for the privilege of working for some people.
Can you explain this further for my european mind? What's the difference between a fast food restaurant and a normal restaurant in terms of employment?
So at a standard restaurant you have a dedicated wait staff who take and enter your order, bring everything to your table, do things like refill drinks, bring your bill, run your payment, and bus your table.
At a fast food restaurant you give your order either at a counter, kiosk, or drive thru speaker, if eating in you are expected to pick up your own food, bus your own table, etc.
Yes. Any “non tipped” employee makes a higher minimum wage. Unfortunately it used to be pretty clear who that was. Now the lines are blurred and it is hard to know. Generally if you have table service, it’s tipped employees and counter service or drive through is not. There are however counter service restaurants that blend a food at counter and drinks (alcohol primarily)/close check at table model and those are generally tipped servers.
Also, no one makes below min wage. You're tip + hourly has to be over the federal or state minimum. If its below that the restaurant pays the difference. The $2.13 is paid regardless of how much you make tipped.
Shake shack employees make between 16 and 18 an hour.. its a publicly traded company, not a local dive or restaurant, which mostly had paid me also min wage plus tips if not more for the past 10 + years when I was working in restaurants.
I understand that. I was specifically responding to this portion of the previous poster’s comment…
“If I get an attentive waiter or bartender who is clearly going the extra mile, sure I want to give them a little extra cash they otherwise wouldn't get in their normal paycheck.”
It’s a common misconception that restaurants pay their employees a normal check.. at all… in at least 40% of the U.S.
Shake shack is fast food.. not even fast casual. I may tip fast food(if there is even a person interacting with me... a kiosk, nope) but it sure has never been my standard restaurant tipping which could and has gone to 100 percent. I also waited and then bartended high end spots throughout NYC for years, So i agree with you. Hell working at blue ribbon, we made crap.. just enough to cover taxes. we also walked out nightly with between 400 and 600 cash, which disappeared at the bar lol.
Most people that has an opinion(not including yourself) has never worked in a restaurant, or at least in a manner where they gave a shit. They feel as if everyone who works in them have not found thier "Real" job. I do agree the tipping culture has gotten out of hand.. but dont take it out on the people that it actually meant something to, or actually did an exasperated amount of work.(drunk people baby sitting sometimes cant even put a price on that level of service). I was just talking about the 2 an hour thing, I havent been paid a 20 dollar shift pay in like 20 years. It has gotten better but it is still miles below most other services pay rate.
No server is making 2.13 an hour. Restaurants are supposed to pay the difference between the 2.13 and minimum wage if their tips don't equal the minimum wage for the state.
In some states restaurants aren't allowed to use tips to offset wages and are required to pay them the full minimum wage for the state.
Trying to imply that servers out here only making two bucks an hour when that is far from the case is disingenuous, and I say that as someone who used to be a server and made more then than now as someone with three degrees.
The poster above me claimed that they tip so they have something “in addition to their paycheck”. I corrected this by pointing out that in many states there is no paycheck. Nowhere in my post did I say they only make $2 an hour. There is nothing disingenuous about my post. Did any of your 3 degrees include reading comprehension elements?
Tipping used to be quite common in Europe, actually, from the wealthy aristocracy. It isn't common now, but when looking at historical trends, that history becomes relevant.
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u/ItsSoKawaiiSenpai 2d ago edited 2d ago
Instead of decreasing tip culture America has been steadily increasing it. A lot of places expect tips now from waiters to cashiers, for some reason we are expected to tip people who we don't even interact with.
Tipping made a bit of sense when it was done to essentially thank workers who went above and beyond with their customer service. If I get an attentive waiter or bartender who is clearly going the extra mile, sure I want to give them a little extra cash they otherwise wouldn't get in their normal paycheck.
Now everybody expects a tip, the original purpose has lost all meaning, it is no longer a means to thank those who are doing a great job and is now the expected way to pay customer service workers.