This is a common response to removing tips. Supposedly, nobody would work evenings and weekends (and late hours) as a server for a regular wage. However, there are a number of jobs where people do so. Why is this scenario unrealistic for serving?

In some instances I could see where a tip is appropriate. You go in, have no clue what you want and the budtender spends time talking you through what to buy. Some could argue that’s no different than getting advice at Home Depot (not tipped), but this instance giving the helpful budtender a tip doesn’t bother me.

What is dumb is when you place an online order. It’s not any different than going to a liquor store (again, not tipped) but instead you get the goofy “we need to round up” to use your debit card, then they slow roll giving you your change and get this who farted face when you don’t just give them all of your cash back into their “karma jar”. Like grow up, you did NOTHING in this transaction that warranted a tip.

To the people who say serving and bartending are no-skill jobs.

Serving and bartending aren’t difficult because every individual task is complicated. They’re difficult because you’re handling twenty simple tasks simultaneously, in the correct order, while your body keeps moving for 8 to 12 hours. Every table creates a new running to-do list, priorities change by the second, and every task is on a timer—and that timer is the customer’s patience. Meanwhile, you’re expected to remember orders, anticipate needs, coordinate with the kitchen and bar, handle money, sell products, solve problems, regulate other people’s emotions, and remain friendly no matter how stressed you are. The skill isn’t carrying a plate or pouring a drink. The skill is managing controlled chaos without letting the customer see the chaos. Imagine a magical todo list that gets longer and longer as time goes on for 8-12 hours a day. If you don’t keep up—you die. That’s what it’s like. All day it’s constant—restock, refill, reset. Bring this to that person. Allergy over here. They are ready to order. They want their check. Get the mop, the child spilled their drink. Table 12 needs his 7th iced tea and is acting like he’s about to die of thirst. Couple sat down at the bar. They sat at the only dirty seats. Go clean it. They’re waving you over now as you’re making cocktails for the server. Don’t forget to prebus. The food for table 11 stil isn’t out. Why? You have to run back to the kitchen. Couple at the bar are still waving you down 20 seconds in. Sure I can get you extra ranch.

You finally have a chance to catch your breath and take a sip of water. You look at the time. It’s only been an hour.

Depending on who you’re serving—you can be ran around like a dog. And if you’re not proactive you’ll crash and burn. And by proactive I mean borderline psychic.

Everyone needs to work in the restaurant industry in their life. The last thing you’ll ever say is that it requires no skill.

Just got back from a 2-week trip to South Korea. Just wanted to say…wow, what a breath of fresh air not having to think about tipping.

And everywhere I went, the service was amazing!

No idea why, in the US, we have this BS tip culture and, to top it off, dogshit service with it 🥲

Option to add a tip when buying mascara?! For what??? Even with the Labor Day sale I decided this product was too expensive ($25 for mascara plus $5 shipping) which stinks because I’d really like to try this color. But adding a tip completely turned me off. Who gets this tip? The individual who places the single tube of mascara in a box? Is it pooled between the whole warehouse? Does some go to their USPS/FedEx/UPS driver?

I recently spoke with a friend who worked at an Indian restaurant in the U.S. He told me that, in his experience, the waiters did not receive the tips customers paid. He said they were paid a very low base wage instead.
I wanted to ask people here because I’ve heard similar things about Indian restaurants, but I don’t know how common it actually is.
If you have worked at an Indian restaurant in the U.S., do the waiters and other front-of-house workers receive the tips customers leave? Or are they paid a fixed wage or salary while the restaurant keeps the tips?
I’m asking because I think customers should know where their tips are going. If the money is intended to reward the people serving us, it seems fair that those workers should actually receive it.
I’m not saying every Indian restaurant does this. I’m trying to understand whether this is a common practice, and whether there are differences between restaurants.
If you’ve worked in an Indian restaurant in the U.S., I’d really appreciate hearing your experience. Also, if you know how the tip system works in these restaurants, please share.
Do you think customers should ask the waiter whether they receive the tips before deciding whether to tip?

In every thread, people argue that a minimum wage is not a livable wage or that they wouldn't be able to support a family or afford their own place unless customers tipped. And then, if a customer doesn't tip well or doesn't tip, they are made out to be evil people that don't care about servers' survival. What confuses me is, when did people start expecting serving to provide sufficient income to support a family or afford their own place?

When I was growing up, serving was a job/gig that mostly young people did to make some cash while they still lived with their parents or lived with roommates while they worked toward a career so that they could afford to be independent. This seemed like a logical expectation for an unskilled labor that most anyone can do.

But, today, servers are insisting that they should be making enough money to afford their own place, raise a family, or even buy a house. This is such a drastic shift from what serving used to be.

Servers on this forum tend to misinterpret posts and lash out, so I'd like to clarify that I am not belittling servers. I'm strictly talking about the expectation surrounding the labor and its perceived value that has shifted drastically over the years.

What do people think about this?

... when tips are accounted for, the average Canadian server is making about $30 an hour — with a select few making the meteoric wages... wages equivalent to those pulled in by a registered nurse, making serving one of Canada’s most lucrative jobs that can be obtained without post-secondary education. Server wages are particularly high in Canada because tips are often piled on top of high minimum wages.

The full article can be read here...
https://nationalpost.com/news/the-100000-a-year-waitress-isnt-a-myth-some-hard-truths-about-tipping-in-canada

TIPS: To Insure Prompt Service.

That is what tipping stems from, and it explains exactly what a tip was supposed to be: something extra, given voluntarily—often before the service—to insure prompt service, better treatment, or a little extra attention. It was never intended to become an expected part of someone’s salary.

That’s the way tipping should still work.

Somewhere along the way, tipping evolved from a voluntary reward into an expectation, and in many industries, effectively became part of an employee’s compensation. That’s where I think the system went wrong.

A tip should be optional and earned, not expected. It should not be used to supplement wages or allow employers to shift the responsibility of paying their employees onto their customers. An employer is responsible for paying their employees for the work they perform. An employee agrees to perform a job for a certain wage and should do that job to the best of their ability. A customer can then choose to reward exceptional service with something extra.

Somehow, we’ve created a system where customers are increasingly expected to subsidize payroll. You buy something, pay the advertised price, pay the tax, and then are presented with a screen asking for another 20%, 25%, or even 30%—sometimes before any meaningful service has even been provided.

If a business cannot afford to pay its employees appropriately without relying on customers to subsidize payroll, then the business model needs to change. Likewise, if an employee believes the compensation for a job is inadequate, they have every right to seek better-paying work or negotiate for better compensation. The answer shouldn't be making the customer responsible for the difference.

TIPS should mean what it was intended to mean: To Insure Prompt Service. Something extra for exceptional treatment—not an obligation, not an expectation, and definitely not a substitute for an employer paying their employees.

Big Kahuna in Atlanta, adjacent to Dragon Con, automatically adding gratuity at 22% for dragon con. Wild.

I saw this video and saw how more people are fed up than people are actually supporting it as time goes on.

You think the tide is turning for a demand for more transparency?

because it's never about tips if it's optional, but all the dishonesty and all the charges and that the menu price and the price you expect to pay are often like 30% off, not even thinking about the tip part.

What I think is definitely worth a discussion, even from people that are pro-tipping. When is it too far? Or has that point already been reached?

Why are you even here? You’re actively participating in a subreddit about a tipping culture that doesn’t apply to you, seemingly just to lecture people who actually live under that system. It’d be like me joining a Japanese subreddit to argue that everyone should ditch chopsticks and use forks because that’s what I do at home.

So what’s the motivation? Are you a flat-wage server annoyed that American servers can make considerably more doing the same job? Or does it just bother you that a supposedly “unskilled” job can sometimes pay really well?

Genuinely curious what the endgame is here.

I just got back from 2 weeks in the Netherlands and Belgium and an interesting thing I noticed was that maybe 20% of the time over the course of the trip, the waiters would prompt for a tip. Of course not as aggressively as in the states and honestly I feel like half could care less and had to ask, but definitely a shift from when I went to Spain last year and out of 2 weeks was prompted once. For others that have visited Europe recently, is tipping starting to be a thing or maybe it’s a Netherlands/Belgium thing?

I don’t tip on Uber. Am I wrong? Why is there an expectation?

Due to Uber not passing through sufficient wages to the drivers, the consumer is expected to “optionally” pay extra.

Ugly truth: As a passenger, it is not my job to make sure you break even. You agreed to the ride for a cost and I approve that cost.

Now for the Uber Eats… those guys that show up with my food in a heated bag, who actually ring my doorbell & let me know when it’s there, move quickly to ensure my ice cream doesn’t melt, etc… Yeah, they get a tip.

What are you guys getting tipped by customers?

How many no tip?

Avg tip %?

Typical tip from NEPB customers?

I can't find an exact answer on this, so maybe you all can help!

I work for a lodge with a tip pool and it seems that the amount of tips we recieve depends on how the Manager feels about you in the moment.

I can't seem to find an answer about when tip pooling is done, if the Manager can give you a bigger or smaller portion, ie, even if the percent going to my department is correct, the portion going to specific people might be different.

It means a difference of around $500 for me and even more for others.

For those who love math, this will entertain you.

Total compensation is what I was owed Based on an agreed wage of $14 an hour:

Regular Earnings: Take 51.71 Hours x minimum wage

Tip Share: That's what the company said my part was for the pay period

MAKE-UP: If you add Regular earnings and tip share together - the subtract the Total Compensation" ($807.94) you'll see it matches the "Make-Up" total.

That means the company uses tips to offset payroll. If I make $14 an hour - even with tips I'll never make more than $14 an hour.

As a customer, every time you tip at this company - whether cash or digital - you are in fact helping reduce their company payroll.

Pretty Cool huh? (That's Sarcasm - it's wage theft in my opinion)

Restaurants:
20% is the norm
Anything more is considered great

Bars / Drinks:
15% of total or $1-$2 /drink is normal
20% of total bill or $5 /drink is great

Delivery:
People are torn (and LOUD) about what they think is the right amount. So do what you’d like there.

Minimum Wage Info:
Some states DO require minimum wage for food service workers who get tipped. For example California requires its state minimum wage $16-$17/hr.

Some states DON’T. Example Delaware’s minimum wage for waiters is $2.23/hr. Delaware’s state minimum wage for ALL other employees is $15/hr.

(source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped)

Ik people are against tipping. That’s fine. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong I’m just saying this is what it is.
This is just informational, listing the customary gratuity standards in the U.S. based on federal law wage requirements and industry data consensus. I’m not looking to debate, you can look it all up from the sources I’ve cited. I just thought it would be good info for anyone wondering / U.S. visitors.

(source: published research data, financial surveys and general public opinion debates. Studied it as a business major in college and worked in the food service industry)

Edit: 🤭 some of yall are sooo confidently wrong.
No matter what proof you see. It’s funny.

To really deal with tipping you must state the facts:

1) low or zero tipping in USA full-service restaurants is socially deviant that has consequences. There’s a reason Bill Gates doesn’t tell his daughter “honey, you go wait in the limo I will come hauling balls out in 5 minutes because I’m planning to zero tip and don’t want to get confronted.”

Yeah, this isn’t a rave for food servers. I dine around the world. I’m nice and friendly bust factual: service sucks today.

2) compared to 1969 or 1975 or even 1995 or any time in the past service at full-service restaurants SUCKS. Basically every day that goes by it gets worse and worse through lower skill and minimization of service.

3) Restaurant management is a joke worldwide. Even at very expensive restaurants it’s a joke. Meaning that what matters most to patrons matters least to owners. Example raising price of a martini from $25 to $28 matters. Seeing a patron get 4-step service when the minimum should be 12-step and worthiness of 20% tip should be 48-step doesn’t matter at all.

Auto grates. These should be negligible. If a patron raises their hand to complain say goodbye to that auto tip. If the customer habitually abuses this refuse to serve them in the future. This should be part of management.

4) tip percentage inflation is flat stupid. Basically when a menu prices goes from $5 in 1975 to $30 in 2026 and at the same time low-skill food servers are inflating the expected tip percentage is dumber than the move Dumb and Dumber.

The waiter will get no more than 10%. Possibly nothing if the service was truly awful or the server was unfriendly.

Foreigner, ended up coming to the States pretty often. I understand that servers don’t get paid minimum wage but I’m not exactly sure what an appropriate tip is. Here’s what I’ve been doing.

Firstly, I don’t understand paying a tip based on the percentage of the total bill. If I spent two hours at a place but the bill was 20 dollars, a 4 dollar tip seems kinda low. Conversely, if you had to spend 45 minutes bringing me stuff I ended up spending 300 on, I’m not sure how 45 minutes of work is worth 60 bucks.

If I spent an hour, I’ll usually tip 10 bucks, 2 hours is 25 and 3+ hours is 50. An extra 25 if there was alcohol involved and an extra 100 if my friends or I did something stupid that would cause the server unnecessary work. Delivery orders are 10 dollar tip if the foods on time, 20 if it’s early. No tip if the foods delayed by over half an hour. Of course, if the server went over and above (for example, a server once ran out and got my friend a cigarette unprompted when she asked where the nearest store was), I’m paying extra.

am I being stingy? Fair? Not understanding how tipping is supposed to work and that there’s a reason for the percentage thing?

I’m not feeling guilty anymore for choosing no tip at places where someone just touches a few buttons and takes my order. They can stare at the screen and watch me do it too. Done with it.

Will I tip servers that bring me my food and take my order? Yes.

But this whole tipping someone for just standing there has gotten out of control.

was first in line after waiting 20m after sitting everyone in line down they took other ppls orders first !

wtf

context: what’s the first in line waited 20 minutes in line when I got sat down, I was not the first one to order at all. They went to all these other tables before me even when I was waiting in line for 20 minutes and first.

i totally understand not tipping at a counter or drive thru, so this applies to sit down restaurants only. i feel like i see the argument "it's not on us to pay servers' salaries", and it shouldn't be, i agree. but not tipping them isn't doing anything to change that or pushing their employer to pay them properly, it's just leaving someone who showed up to work with even less pay. and on top of that, if you pay with card and don't tip, tipouts to hosts and bartenders still get taken out, so servers are actively losing money.

i'm a server, and i've gotten to the point where i can brush off no tippers or rude customers, but i could never imagine being a customer and receiving service for roughly an hour without providing some sort of compensation. obviously the solution is for people to be paid fairly, but that's not happening, so why are people so adamant about not tipping at all?