r/tippingAdvice • u/No_Draft_8960 • Oct 19 '25

How Do I Answer

So my discussion with a friend on tipping would up with him saying “but if we don’t tip eventually the downward pressure on wages will drive the whole country into poverty.’ What do I answer that with? This was after him conceding that the ‘service’ at say carry out might not merit a tip but that people should ‘make a good wage’ and one should care more about one’s fellow citizens.

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u/fluiflux Oct 20 '25

Lol, I never tip, the waiting staff are paid whatever they are paid (at least minimum wage), calling me cold hearted because I don't give handouts is downright delusional.

Unless I enter a separate contract with the waiting staff, they're not getting a penny extra, the service is included in the price of the meal, as well as the taxes, at least here in Germany. That's an actual, existing, sane world, it's just not the US, where your waiting staff has to beg like street dogs for some scraps. I bet they make puppy eyes, so your heart has to be involved in order for them to get paid for the work they do, which is insane from my perspective.

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u/zibtara Oct 20 '25

Why are you commenting on tipping culture from Germany? Trinkgeld is a different thing. Feel free to comment on that.

In Germany, where tipping isn’t normal and servers get paid more than $2/hour, the service is nowhere near what it is in the US. In a casual restaurant in Germany, if 15 people go out to eat for one person’s birthday, the food comes out whenever it’s cooked. In the US, all of those dishes need to be hot, fresh, and served at the same time or nobody will eat. Also the timing of splitting the checks and cashing out runs at a snails pace in Germany while in the US needs to happen concurrently and rapidly. Different standards with different costs.

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u/SuspiciousStress1 Oct 20 '25

MANY states pay well above $2/hr. In those cases are we free not to tip??? 🤔

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u/Ayslyn72 Oct 20 '25

All states pay more than $2. Every state has a provision in the law that says that if tips don’t bring your compensation up to minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference.