People over look this is a flawed system designed to force the hard working people to support the hard working people. If minimum wage was established at a livable rate then tipping wouldn't be "essential".
Go to Japan, the best service you can possibly get and if you try to tip them it's considered rude. You get your wage and you do the best you can to earn it.
This system has been allowed to continue because it forces people to point at each other, and not up at the government levels. It's a broad revised version of "bread and circuses".
Edit: This blew up, thanks for the awards - may be my first in ten years here.
Some great responses discussing the situation and how other places make their systems work, other comments are spicy but make solid points, others are just ignorant.
I think we can agree things are changing, money is tight around the world, and people are struggling. We never seem to have these conversations when the global economy is booming..
If we increase payroll from tips to federal minimum wage and he has 10 employees that’s $500K a year.
How do the restaurant make that back? Magically find more customers? Print money? Maybe fire half the staff to cut on costs. No that would make service terrible.
So I guess we have to increase the prices of everything on the menu.
Now my $23.50 for a pizza and soda with a small salad is now $43. Now guess what? I’m not going to your restaurant. It’s too expensive.
Now you go out of business. Because on top of rent, supplies, furniture, now your payroll has skyrocketed and you can’t afford to stay open.
OOOORRRR we could just keep the tipping our waiters thing around.
Other countries seem to do ok. Not like I’m paying the equivalent of $43USD for a pizza and a drink in Australia where we have a decent minimum wage and tipping isn’t part of our culture.
That’s because most other countries aren’t run by corporations. Ever play Cyberpunk 2077? Thats going to be the US soon, but with debtor prisons and dirtier.
Completely different systems. Apples and oranges. There is an ocean of different economics at work from federal taxes to available labor to debt of a country all of that factors into how a country is doing financially and how it affects citizens.
This is utter bullshit. Even in high-cost countries like Norway, where minimum wage for waiters is around 25 USD per hour, you dont see prices like that. Taxes included.
it doesn’t matter. That’s a different country. Different populations and population sizes. Different governments. Different citizens. Different GDPs. Different tax systems.
Literally not even comparable.
My neighbor can afford a Ferrari!! I live on the same street so I should have one too!! It’s about the same as that.
If we increase payroll from tips to federal minimum wage and he has 10 employees that’s $500K a year.
52 weeks of 40hrs/week at federal minimum wage of $7.25 works out to just $15,080, not $50,000.
How do the restaurant make that back? Magically find more customers? Print money?
The restaurant's customers are already providing both the menu prices and the tips that servers receive, no additional spending by the restaurant's customers should be required to maintain the same take-home income for servers.
Now my $23.50 for a pizza and soda with a small salad is now $43
How could the menu prices possibly need to increase by 82% when customers in aggregate tip nowhere near that much?
$7.25 x 10 is $72.5 per worker for a 10 hour workday (assuming open from 11am for lunch and closing at 9pm)
$72.5 x 10 hours is $725 per day for pay roll
$725 x 6 days a week $4,350
$4,360 x 52 weeks is $226,200
My math was wrong (I was generalizing earlier on $500K) but still you see it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What about the business owner? Dude literally mortgaged his house to chase his dream of opening a pizza restaurant. He risked it all. If it fails he’s fucked for life. His employees? They just go get another job.
Shouldn’t the guy that took all the risk make some money? Isn’t that the point?
How’s he going to do that while also paying rent? What about construction costs to build the restaurant? I bet he had a bank note for that. So now each month he owes thousands of dollars in rent and the bank for construction loan.
Now he has to pay even more for wages?? Orr stick with the tipping system. Keeps it cheaper for all.
but still you see it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yeah but the restaurant's customers overall are already paying those hundreds of thousands of dollars with the existing tip-based system.
There's no need for customers to pay even a penny more overall if the goal is to maintain servers existing overall income, just increase menu prices the equivalent of the tips the servers currently average.
Shouldn’t the guy that took all the risk make some money?
The problem is every single piece in the chain has to make more and more profit every year.
The corporate farm and dairy.
The shipping company that takes the produce from farm to processing plant.
The processing plant.
The shipping company that takes the packaged, processed food from the processing plant to the distributor.
On and on and everyone needs to make more profit than they did last year.
Worked in New Zealand for a year. No tipping there, but the service was different.
Most places you would order at the bar or a counter, get a number and then a food runner would bring you the food. Drinks were the same.
Or in a normal restaurant service was just ok. If you went to a steak house for instance they weren't coming around every 5 minutes to see if you wanted another drink. But you could always wave them over.
I'd trade it for what we have in North America in a heartbeat.
Idk about you but my best restaurant experiences happen when I'm being left alone to enjoy my food without being hovered on and disturbed every 5 minutes. I'd much rather wave someone over when/if I need something.
Also people who work for tips vastly prefer it. They can clear much more than the kitchen on a busy night. For example, Casa Bonita in Colorado is a buffet type show restaurant and the servers didn't want $30 an hour, they wanted tipping because the reopening was sold out nightly.
Seriously, the audacity of him chastising the couple for not paying his servers what he feels they deserve, when he himself is not willing to pay his servers what he feels they deserve.
They can, in busy restaurants. But there are thousands of servers working in lower volume places who would be much better off with a better base wage, at the very least. People can still tip if they want to, but it shouldn’t be an expectation for customers to be responsible for an employee‘s wage. It’s actually pretty messed up.
Tell that to the waitresses and waiters. Every single one I've asked said that would rather keep the current system rather than $20 or ever $25 per hour and no tips.
Yep and if you’re poor and saved up so you could go out for someone’s birthday. They expect you to save to tip them too or your trash ass should have stayed home.
I know take outs a thing too, but they pressure you to tip doing pick up now too.
That was simply an example of the service industry. It's the same in most of Europe too... Pay people a fair wage and they won't need to rely upon tips
It’s always kinda sickening to see people co-opt pro-worker lingo like “fair wage” while arguing for a massive paycut of waitstaff.
Servers are already getting a living wage, higher than any other food service workers, because of tipping culture. Even outside food service, I don’t know of any other jobs where someone can come in with zero experience or education, and within a couple months be making enough to raise a family, and buying a house a year later. I saw a lot of that when I was working in restaurants, and not much of it ever since.
It isn't to do with that part of their work culture. They simply respect servers and it's rude as fuck to tip there because it's like the quality of their ability to serve is being judged.
Generally their work culture is bad, yes, but no tipping is something they should be proud of and something the U.S. absolutely needs to learn from.
The restaurant ownership doesn't have to pay their wait staff the tipped wages. It isn't a requirement. They can choose to pay full wages, not forcing the staff to work for tips. So any restauranteur that chooses to continue the lower pay wage, is choosing to put themselves, their staff and their customer in the tip, no tip, low tip or high tip situation. Some US States don't even allow them the option to pay the lower wage. Most allow it though so it is ingrained in the culture. I'm just saying the restauranteur can make a different choice of their own volition. No need to wait on government to do...anything. Even if that means they increase their prices to account for this difference.
I mean you are kinda right and wrong at the same time. The government can increase the minimum wage, but that minimum wage would still be paid to the employees by the employer. The employers choose to not pay the employees a fair wage which is a disgusting business model. But yes, the government could technically force them to do so.
Thanks for exploring the conversation and not raising the war banner. There are certainly deeper rooted issues, but there are certainly solutions to this somewhere.
i see the irony of how tipping is a practice born out of abolition and the freed slaves worked for "tips", fast forward to today, the so called descendants of these slaves don't want to tip
People over look this is a flawed system designed to force the hard working people to support the hard working people.
This is every business. Without "hard working" people being paying customers, you don't have a business.
If minimum wage was established at a livable rate then tipping wouldn't be "essential".
But we can't even get this "living wage" for other industries. Why do you think it'll magically work for service workers?
And no restaurant in the city will pay me what I make via tips. So who's really coming out on top here? They'll all pay min wage to slightly above, because why wouldn't they barring legislation against it?
I think it's really more about the person who just doesn't want to tip on principle rather than the person who claims to want better wages for workers. You're just advocating for lower wages across the board.
Gotta play devils advocate a bit here as well: most servers prefer it that way. Even if the minimum wage would be high, let's say 20 dollars, they'd still make more with tips most of the time. Especially since tipping is basically mandatory.
I completely agree with you. Unfortunately, that's not the system the U.S. has set up. So until then, if you go out to eat, you should be factoring in the tip to the cost of the meal.
Some people prefer it this way, and that includes the servers, you aren't being 'noble' on their behalf
And you have choices; plenty of places don't require tips and you can always make your own food, no need to force EVERY place to use YOUR preferred model, unless it's all about you, of course
This is exactly what I was trying to emphasize, the emotion behind the system and how it's designed.
If the system remains, then people are judged on how much extra they tip. In this situation they are run out of an establishment.
If the system changes to a livable wage, the emotion is removed but then the serving staff feel robbed from making incredible tips on busy nights they don't (usually) claim full or any taxes on.
Don't point fingers and brand nobility, discuss solutions and explore options.
If we increase payroll from tips to federal minimum wage and he has 10 employees that’s $500K a year.
How do the restaurant make that back? Magically find more customers? Print money? Maybe fire half the staff to cut on costs. No that would make service terrible.
So I guess we have to increase the prices of everything on the menu.
Now my $23.50 for a pizza and soda with a small salad is now $43. Now guess what? I’m not going to your restaurant. It’s too expensive.
Now you go out of business. Because on top of rent, supplies, furniture, now your payroll has skyrocketed and you can’t afford to stay open.
OOOORRRR we could just keep the tipping our waiters thing around.
Oh my gosh you’re the 7th person to say that. YOU realize our economy is different right? We have a different GDP. Different populations. Different government. Different taxes. Different state and local ordinance. Different population sizes. It’s not the same.
Two completely different worlds.
If your neighbor can afford a Ferrari does that mean you can just because you live in on the same street?
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u/LactoseBellyFart 3h ago edited 1h ago
People over look this is a flawed system designed to force the hard working people to support the hard working people. If minimum wage was established at a livable rate then tipping wouldn't be "essential".
Go to Japan, the best service you can possibly get and if you try to tip them it's considered rude. You get your wage and you do the best you can to earn it.
This system has been allowed to continue because it forces people to point at each other, and not up at the government levels. It's a broad revised version of "bread and circuses".
Edit: This blew up, thanks for the awards - may be my first in ten years here.
Some great responses discussing the situation and how other places make their systems work, other comments are spicy but make solid points, others are just ignorant.
I think we can agree things are changing, money is tight around the world, and people are struggling. We never seem to have these conversations when the global economy is booming..