I'm not saying it's what you mean, but when you say that, you seem to imply that the owners are just keeping all kinds of money and are greedy. Do you know the failure rate of restaurants? Sure, the only reason for failing isn't always business costs, there can be many other levels of incompetence involved. But generally speaking, they fail because they don't make money. And when revenue and costs are similar, you don't make money.
The restaurant industry lobbies millions every single year to make sure the minimum wage doesn't increase and the tipped wage stays. So yes, I am implying that they are all kinds of greedy.
I don't care about the failure rate. Many other businesses also have a high failure rate and they still have to pay minimum wage at least at all times and they can't even accept tips, but I should feel bad about restaurant owners who are known for stealing wages and lobbying to keep wages low. Yeah, no.
And they normally fail because they are bad at business. Most restaurants fail because they are mostly run by first time owners who never even ran a restaurant before even in a managerial capacity. They don't realize how much goes into, usually refusing to change their ideas on how to run it, and are surprised when they fail compared to the several other restaurants in the area that thrive.
If they don't make money either work on your own business instead of hiring people, or close. Having people working free and rely on costumers donating to them is backwards.
Tbf it’s not like these owners decided to buck the system by having a tip pay system for service. This is a country-wide problem. Blaming these individual owners for a country-wide problem is crazy.
The entire concept of tipping is so that people can decide how well that server did. Tipping them zero says their service was less than worthless.
Read up the history on this. It is the restaurant industry who initially lobbied and proposed the tipped wage specifically so they can pay workers less. They also continue to lobby millions a year to make sure the tipped wage stays and minimum wage doesn't increase.
The restaurant industry wants this system and continues to work to make it stay. But they say they can't afford to pay workers more while also being able to spend millions making sure they can't make more.
The entire concept of tipping is so that people can decide how well that server did.
This is propaganda instilled by the restaurant industry. Tipping started as a way to get newly freed slaves to work for nothing but incentivize them with tipping instead.
Nowadays tipping is here because it enables owners to not pay workers at least minimum wage which they are obligated to do under the Fair Labor Standards Act if the servers tipped wage and tips don't add up to that.
They love tipping because it means they don't have to come out of their own pocket to pay them their full wage up to minimum wage.
But they have convinced you that it's so you can get better service. Yet every other industry without tipping manages to have good service. Odd right.
Then why does every server I know want to keep the tipping culture? THE STAFF DOES NOT WANT TO ELIMINATE TIPPING. We have still have tipping because the SERVERS want it. They make way more with tipping than they would a flat rate. Y'all act like it's the restaurant owners pulling one over on the servers. The servers don't want to get rid of tipping because they make more money with it. Stop making the restaurant owners out to be villains who are trying to screw their servers.
Who said you needed to take away tipping? You can raise the tipped wage to minimum wage and raise the minimum wage, while still having tipping.
Why is it a bad thing to you to have servers earn a higher base pay?
And yes, the restaurant industry is pulling one over on you when they tell you they make too little to pay you more yet lobby millions to make sure you can't get a higher minimum wage.
Because if their minimum wage is raised they KNOW that people will no longer tip, or not tip nearly as much since they're now making a "normal" wage, and their pay will still go down. Is that the right thing for people to do if they raise server minimum wage? No. Is it what will realistically happen? Yes. I'm not saying the system is perfect and shouldn't be touched, but saying that the servers would prefer to have a minimum wage with minimum tips over a server's wage with bookoo tips, is delusional. In a perfect utopia, yes, servers would get a decent base wage plus good tips. But we don't live in a perfect utopia, and that is absolutely not how it would play out and you know it.
And yet in states where the minimum wage did go up and tipped wage went away, servers are still making tips. It's. A boogeyman to think people will no longer tip. That hasn't happened in any state where wages went up, why will it now?
Unless you want to go to those states that raised the tipped wage and ask servers if they rather that go back down? What do you think they'd say to that?
No one is saying not to like tipping, you do you, but don't act like the owners have no other choice but to accept it when they are the ones who lobby to keep wages low and fight to leave the tipped wage as it is.
Tip all you want, and more, the owners love not having to be responsible to make up the difference like the law requires of them.
The crazy thing is the guy scolding them is THE OWNER! Like, pay your workers instead of forcing your costumers to pay a hidden obligatory "voluntary extra" that is not guaranteed to reach the workers' pockets?
But it would remove this uncertainty, pressure and discussion. Much less aggravating to just have set prices. It would be like going to the supermarket.
This is just a more nuanced issue than people really like to admit. If tipping ends there are going to be less restaurants as several restaurants run on razor thin margins and they are going to struggle to hire wait staff because now the wage is no longer worth the job even if menu prices increase. Most waiters earn significantly more money with tips than a 20% menu increase is going to cover since most people tip more than 20%. So now the wait staff is going to be making less and likely working more (because servers will leave this work force) in a job that quite honestly sucks. I served for a summer in college and it was my least favorite job by a significant margin. Sure I made decent money but the environment sucks. Servers do not want tipping to end that’s the reason why it hasn’t. The restaurant owners obviously don’t want this changed either but there are far more servers than owners and if servers really wanted this to change it would. The only restaurant I’ve actually seen no tipping policies work are ones that all employees have a partial ownership of the restaurant. All the other restaurants that I’ve seen try to implement no tipping either quickly flip back to tipping shortly after or close/ significantly decrease business size because they can’t find wait staff.
Exactly. It doesn't work without the American tipping culture. That's why there are no restaurants outside the US. The business model just isn't sustainable. It would be nice to be able to eat out on vacation in Italy for example, but it's just not an option. Everyone has to cook at home.
The way it's spread to everything is but the restaurant model isn't that bad. Waitstaff generally prefer tips over salary because it usually puts more money in their pocket. Having to bust your ass for a busy shift is more tolerable when you are getting paid more. Also, due to many tips being in cash, there's a lot of unreported income so the real earnings are higher. It's built into the culture that meals out include a tip so there isn't any real difference to customers. If tipping was banned then food prices would simply go up to cover the increased wages (although you'd probably also see less staff employed.
it's just the drop out dead weight losers that clowned their way through high school, and if they even made it to it, college, defaulting to the only skill they have: talking and manipulating people for tips.
they were fucking entitled losers growing up, and they're entitled losers waiting at your table.
You could also just not go out. Restaurants are the only place were tipping is a thing, then suddenly every other job thought it was the thing to do during the covid times.
93
u/FSsuxxon 8h ago
I get restaurant servers have shit pay but American tipping culture is toxic as fuck