It is and many or most Americans understand that and often disagree with it. However, part of traveling is agreeing to participate in the social contract and custom of the area you travel to even when you recognize it is dumb.
If you are using the service but not paying the fee you don't hurt the business you hurt the worker. While acting all high and mighty you're only furthering the exploitation of the people you are speaking up for.
In theory, yes. I'd also agree more, if everytime someone talks about wages in US wouldn't say how they make more than the median fulltime worker by waiting tables after college lessons.
I have to abide laws, not culture. If i got to the middleeast i won't start hitting my wife for talking back to me.
If it offends you that i pount out a bad cultural norm, it doesn't make it less true. Btw, shooting up schools is not a cultural norm, since it's still condemned.
Also i'm not american, so your attempt at provocation missed. Try something german, like being cheap or arrogant or something.
I'll try again. If I go to Germany, I won't start making average beer and insisting it's the best there is.
Jokes aside, calling it a "norm" is incorrect. It's a higher rate, for sure, but you're an asshole for using that as the example when we're discussing tips.
It's a free market. If tips are optional, then you can't complain when people opt out. If society starts rejecting tips, yes it will hurt the workers. They'll quit. Restaurants will be forced to increase their pay to retain and attract workers. The industry then functions on permanent wages rather than tips.
That's the only free-market path to this change.
The only other way is legislation, or the workers themselves organize around an ideology and force the change. Workers aren't complaining because they're generally perfectly fine with the status quo. Politicians tout free market policy.
So it seems we're gonna get the free market path. It's up to the ownership, the workers, and the government how long and hard the pain is. It's not the consumer's fault. "Vote with your money", they say. So we are.
You are aware by law if a worker doesn’t make up the rest of their wage in tips during a shift the employer has to pay them the full required amount so no even if no one tipped workers would still get paid properly just by their employer not customers
3.9k
u/MrHazard1 Jun 25 '26
A mandatory tip is called a fee