Something I don’t get, why is it percentage based? I mean, I get it from the waiters perspective. But as a customer? Whether my one plate of food is 20$ or 200$, he did the same thing. Scaling with more items or time spent would seem more appropriate.
If you are are trying to find logic within tipping you might as well chase windmills. It’s dumb as bolts.
Chasing a windmill would be really easy tho.
Just don’t get chasing waterfalls though.
I see it as a sneaky incentive from management for waiters to upsell you on more sides, drinks and desserts.
Since the more marked up extras a waiter/waitress can fool people into getting, the better tip they can hope to earn at the end because of the %-based expectation.
Well usually more people means a higher bill, more people is more work. Lots of places even just add gratuity to the bill once a group size is large enough.
But tipping is dumb, and working in the service industry sucks… I have no easy solutions.
I have no easy solutions.
There’s an easy one that could be legislated tomorrow by any states.
Raise minimum wages and enforce it throughout ALL workplaces, including wait staff. Nobody should be earning less than a living wage just because they’re restaraunt staff.
If you’re getting the same level of service at a restaurant serving $200/plate meals as you are at TGI Fridays, either you’re being ripped off of your local Fridays has amazing servers.
Serving a $200 meal requires a lot of knowledge and physical skill that the server down at Chili’s probably doesn’t have. The kind of restaurant that sells a $200 meal also has a larger support staff that must be given a percentage of the server’s tip
What difference is there between serving a $200 meal and a $50 one?
I think you’re looking for the difference between fine dining and nouvelle cuisine / haute cuisine. Think of it like the difference between a nice steakhouse where the server essentially takes your order and gives you a plate, and one of those Instagram dinners where they serve your dessert in hollow chocolate balls and serving is a more involved and delicate process because of the nature of the food you’re serving
I have a place down the road that makes guacamole in a molcajete at the table.
That is way harder and more impressive than pouring a little hot chocolate.
If you can scam them into paying it then more power to you though.
Sounds like that server deserves a generous tip, I hope you take good care of them :)
Americans be like; “If you can’t afford to pay 69% tip then don’t go out eating at all”
If you’re going to say “69%” , you need to call it eating out, not out eating.
It’s only eating out if it’s 69%, otherwise it’s just sparkling oral.
Also, complaining that things will cost too much if waiters eek by on more than minimum wage.
The cost is literally the same… Restaurants would just be upfront about it then.
You assume the restaurant’s prices are connected to wages in any meaningful way. We’re paying the wages. That’s all food cost and profit.
I gotta say, complaining about being on the verge of a recession while going out for a $70 meal really puts my poverty into perspective.
Every time we go to Toronto we go to the same restaurant because they don’t accept tips, they just pay their staff really well. Fantastic restaurant and I love supporting them.
I’ve literally never seen a waiter get angry about not leaving a 25% tip. Can we please avoid manufactured outrage?
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Tipping is good bc you van pay the employee directly. What needs to change is that tips need to be mandatory and when tips fall short of a living wage the business must pay pay to make up.
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I agree wholeheartedly! Let’s make tipping mandatory. In fact, let’s add it on to the price of your bill automatically. Better still, let’s just add it onto the menu price. Oh hey, we’ve come full circle.
No, it should be a direct payment to the staff.
I just stopped going to places or using services that expect me to tip. I hate the idea of tipping.
Cook at home, we don’t want you there anyways.
**Gosh I didn’t realize Lemmy was so full of broke assholes hell bent on taking money out of service employees pockets. Very working class of you guys!
LMFAO. I love people like you… If you demand everyone stay home… You know what will happen? You won’t have customers in the restaurant. Which leads to less tables, which leads to less wait staff needed. You will simply lose your job. So not only do you not get tips… but you won’t even get your minimum wages.
Congrats you’re ruining it yourself!
Bro I work 50 hours a week. If my place closes, another one will open. I’ve worked at at least 15 different places since I’ve been 18. We hate you and resent you for walking in the door, regardless of tipping.
Literally, just stay home. If you can’t afford to tip, or don’t want to, just stay home.
I look at it as Actual price = menu price + lowest suggested tip + $5 tip awkwardness penalty. So a place near me has a $12 lunch-size sub sandwich that’s really good. But they ask for a 15% tip. So rather than just never eat at my favorite sandwich spot, I regard it as a $18.80 lunch and only buy it on rare occasions or when my company is paying.
Actually pay restaurant workers a decent wage goddammit!
I don’t really get why the expected percentage went up. 15% was the standard for a LONG time. 20% meant you thought they were great. Now 15 is considered shitty, like an insult, and we’re supposed to do 18 or 25 or 30. Meanwhile prices also went up. Why am I supposed to tip 25% now? Service hasn’t changed.
“On the verge” of a recession? What the fuck planet are you living on?
“No need to worry, citizen! We have once again successfully avoided a recession by changing how a recession is defined!”
How can it be a recession when the .01% is richer than ever before?
What do you mean? Corporate profits are higher than they’ve ever been!
/s in case that wasn’t obvious
I just don’t tip. Period. Zero. Nada. Unless I have the initiative of doing it because I feel that the person did an excellent job.
Zero shame on not tipping.
Who the hell tips at McDonald’s?
(this is a joke about price hiking and inflation)
Look at this guy, paying $70 at a restaurant. How many are you buying for? 5?
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How about increasing wages to promote more consumer spending? Henry Ford-- a literal Nazi-- of all people, knew this!
Henry Ford paid those high wages to his own staff. He did not prevent any other local companies from also paying low wages.
So Ford’s strategy had a significant advantage over minimum wage laws, in that his strategy didn’t destroy any jobs.
When you increase minimum wage, there is a sliver of the market that gets shut down: the set of jobs that made sense between the old minimum and the new minimum. Those are jobs that people were happy to work, but which they aren’t allowed to any longer. Those people are now out of a job.
When Henry Ford decided to pay his own workers well, he did so with his own money, and in a way that didn’t break anyone else’s existing economic arrangements.
In other words, he didn’t violate anyone’s consent in order to enact his version of economic activism. This matter of consent is the key difference between the actions of a private entity, and the actions of a government.
That’s complete and utter BS. Spain has risen the minimum wage from 735€ (2018) to 1080€ (2023) and unemployment has gone down. And if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business you weren’t having a benefit on your customers but on your workers. And that has another very different name.
if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business you weren’t having a benefit on your customers but on your workers
I’d say if the customers were buying what you were selling, then it was of benefit to them too
That would be a benefit FOR your customers. A business has to benefit FROM the customers, not from the workers.
Here in Brazil, tipping is not normal. Instead, restaurants and bars will add a 10% service cost to the bill. This 10% is then weekly divided between cooks, waiters, bartenders, etc, the proportion being decided by the restaurant.
That is of course not a law, but it is so common that restaurant workers already consider that when thinking how much they make. My sister worked as a bartender at a restaurant recently, and she would add R$300 (roughly $60, yes it’s not much, but remember we’re a middle income country) to her monthly paycheck from this.
I remember when I realized tipping is insane (like 15 years ago at a bar). One of my friends was talking the waitress up and she was complaining about another table and the tip she expected. Some quick math worked out to she expected 40%.
Keep in mind by doing that she probably raised her tip from your friend by at least 10%. I wouldn’t assume there wasn’t some strategy in that conversation.
