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I have to question both that it will always exist, and that it's a nice thing to do. To the former, there are many occurrences of societies without tipping (Ko

I have to question both that it will always exist, and that it's a nice thing to do. To the former, there are many occurrences of societies without tipping (Korea?), although this is shifting as western influence progresses. To the latter, let's look at this as a commons problem: The more people who tip, the less business owners think they need to provide as base salary, eventually tipping becomes assumed to maintain a minimum standard of living as it has for most minimum wage American service jobs. It distorts incentives and muddies the water around providing meaningful minimum wage guidelines. On top of that it provides a negative customer experience. I have the money to tip. But I'd like not to turn making simple purchases into a "how much do I have to give extra to not have people look at me odd?", a game of "how can I drop this in the tip jar so that they SAW me drop it in" and other really... fake social tendencies that I'm not happy with myself for exhibiting, but I can understand the need for. If I knew I could go somewhere that might have slightly higher base rates, but both treated their employees at a better level AND spared me the social/mental cost of the tipping ecosystem, I'd let my money speak for itself.

chatmasta 11y ago
My mom has been a waitress my entire life, so I feel pretty qualified (if a little biased) to talk about this subject. She regularly has nights where she makes $300+ in tips. If tips did not exist, the restaurant would presumably pay her minimum wage or something close (as opposed to the "minimum wage with tip" they currently pay). There is no way this would come even close to paying her the same amount that tips do. From what I've seen, tipping is a far more efficient way of allocating resources (direct from the client to the waitstaff) than employment (client -> restaurant -> waitstaff). Not only is it more efficient, but it encourages waitstaff to build good relations with clients, and vice versa. Removing tipping removes a fundamentally personal element from the service economy. It hurts the workers by putting less money in their pocket and reducing their economic autonomy. And it hurts the restaurants because, I guarantee you, it will cause them to lose their best waitstaff. Why work for peanuts of a salary when you can make way more in tips? (Also, tipping is a wonderfully efficient way to discover which customers are not worth being nice to. ;) )
- mason55 11y ago
  > She regularly has nights where she makes $300+ in tips. If tips did not exist, the restaurant would presumably pay her minimum wage or something close (as opposed to the "minimum wage with tip" they currently pay). There is no way this would come even close to paying her the same amount that tips do. Why are you so sure about this? Many people work service precisely because they can make tips. If they were now limited to a fixed minimum wage they would look elsewhere and put upward pressure on service salaries.
  - chatmasta 11y ago
    I agree. But if tipping is removed through some global measure, such that no restaurant offers tips to its employees, then where would that upward pressure come from?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- cballard 11y ago
  > Why work for peanuts of a salary when you can make way more in tips? This is why they won't pay servers minimum wage (i.e. Danny Meyer doesn't). Europe doesn't have tipping and service is perfectly fine -actually, better in many cases, in my experience they bother you much less, and there's no aggressive pre-bussing because unless it gets to the point where the business fails, table turnover doesn't matter nearly as much to the employees.
  - CM30 11y ago
    I'm not sure where you're from, but Europe definitely has tipping. Over here in the UK, it's almost expected, sometimes even as an addition on the top of the 'service charge'. Heck, it's not even just restaurants, people over here also tend to give tips to hairdressers and beauty salon staff as well.
- danieltillett 11y ago

chatmasta 11y ago

My mom has been a waitress my entire life, so I feel pretty qualified (if a little biased) to talk about this subject. She regularly has nights where she makes $300+ in tips. If tips did not exist, the restaurant would presumably pay her minimum wage or something close (as opposed to the "minimum wage with tip" they currently pay). There is no way this would come even close to paying her the same amount that tips do. From what I've seen, tipping is a far more efficient way of allocating resources (direct from the client to the waitstaff) than employment (client -> restaurant -> waitstaff). Not only is it more efficient, but it encourages waitstaff to build good relations with clients, and vice versa. Removing tipping removes a fundamentally personal element from the service economy. It hurts the workers by putting less money in their pocket and reducing their economic autonomy. And it hurts the restaurants because, I guarantee you, it will cause them to lose their best waitstaff. Why work for peanuts of a salary when you can make way more in tips? (Also, tipping is a wonderfully efficient way to discover which customers are not worth being nice to. ;) )

mason55 11y ago
> She regularly has nights where she makes $300+ in tips. If tips did not exist, the restaurant would presumably pay her minimum wage or something close (as opposed to the "minimum wage with tip" they currently pay). There is no way this would come even close to paying her the same amount that tips do. Why are you so sure about this? Many people work service precisely because they can make tips. If they were now limited to a fixed minimum wage they would look elsewhere and put upward pressure on service salaries.
- chatmasta 11y ago
  I agree. But if tipping is removed through some global measure, such that no restaurant offers tips to its employees, then where would that upward pressure come from?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
cballard 11y ago
> Why work for peanuts of a salary when you can make way more in tips? This is why they won't pay servers minimum wage (i.e. Danny Meyer doesn't). Europe doesn't have tipping and service is perfectly fine -actually, better in many cases, in my experience they bother you much less, and there's no aggressive pre-bussing because unless it gets to the point where the business fails, table turnover doesn't matter nearly as much to the employees.
- CM30 11y ago
  I'm not sure where you're from, but Europe definitely has tipping. Over here in the UK, it's almost expected, sometimes even as an addition on the top of the 'service charge'. Heck, it's not even just restaurants, people over here also tend to give tips to hairdressers and beauty salon staff as well.
danieltillett 11y ago