5 ms·

We need to tip in America because the prevalent attitude here is "I don't get paid enough for this shit." It's not so much about paying people a living wage, as

by et-al 10y ago

We need to tip in America because the prevalent attitude here is "I don't get paid enough for this shit." It's not so much about paying people a living wage, as much as changing the way people view their jobs and obligations. Everyone wants to change the world, but how many people will actually pick up a stray piece of trash and throw it in a bin?

runako 10y ago
If only that were remotely true. In many/most states, the minimum wage for a variety of jobs is not in the range of "livable". For example, minimum wage for restaurant jobs in Georgia is $2.13/hour [1]. They actually don't "get paid enough for this shit," so their attitude actually matches reality. Tipping is a necessary component of the compensation if we want to continue our practice of letting certain employers have exemptions from labor laws. EDIT: $2.13/hour is $340.80 per month, if you are given enough hours to make full-time. Taxes etc. come out of that (you will probably see some of that money again when you file your taxes, for all the good it will do then). (Yes, I know the employer is supposed to top-up the staff to e.g. $7.25/hr. That does not always/usually/ever happen.) You are correct that paying people more than a pittance changes how they view their jobs. [1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm
- et-al 10y ago
  I waited tables a decade ago. If I recall correctly, it was $2.95 + tips and I believe with a 4% tip-out. So your 15% tip became 11% real quick. So I hustled. I'm not saying that we should continue to screw over people who rely on tips as living wage. What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. After all, we've heard anecdotes about service in Europe being poor. Yes yes, they don't tip in Asia, and service is excellent. Don't forget the social fabric is different there.
  - andreasvc 10y ago
    > What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. Except you do not give any argument for why that is the case, but just hand wavingly claim it. Why exactly wouldn't it work if tips were abolished, all the prices on the menu are raised to match the average income from tips, and salaries raised to make up for tips? I don't see why good service would only be possible with tipping.
    - et-al 10y ago
      Because customer service is draining. Because even when you get paid $75k, dealing with assholes still sucks. I'm gonna hand wave some more: most Americans when they think of good service beyond just being quick on delivery. Good service is about having a friendly conversation and building rapport with another person. It's may be weird for those of us with introverted tendencies, but this is Middle America with big smiling teeth. Now.. by giving me an immediate incentive (tip) to smile through a bad customer's rudeness (or even harassment--please don't ever hit on people paid to serve you, ever), I'll continue to smile and pour on that syrupy niceness even when I just want to tell a person that they're an asshole and never have to deal with them again. Personally, I have absolute no problem with tipping, or paying higher prices to pay restaurant workers a better wage, but I think people who are pushing no-tip don't understand the complexities in place. In the restaurant world, at the end of each night, you'd get a huge wad of cash, and you felt you had worked for it (even though it can be argued people tip consistently). So even though the carrot may not be real, it still convinced people to act a certain way. Now take away that carrot, take away the cash. You just have better paid McDonald's workers.
      - nikdaheratik 10y ago
        I disagree completely. For one thing, many McDs employees in countries with a higher minimum wage also have a better attitude, but there are also standout employees at McDs in the U.S. The issue isn't just that the workers at higher minimum wage places are paid more, it's that they are better employees because the managers there can't afford to hire a mediocre one (especially since it's harder to fire them), so they get good employees and train them. And the instances where I've had really good service from McDs in the U.S. are often cases where there's an economic downturn and you have alot of overqualified people taking that job as it's better than nothing. Service in any restaurant is more a function of the kinds of employees you can attract (through wages) and the amount of training the manager puts into their staff. Tipping is only important in that it allows some restaurants to pay a fairly decent amount of money to attract higher quality workers for only a couple of nights when a straight wage would require a larger time commitment to get the same amount of money. However, a (necessarily higher) straight wage would also allow more workers the opportunity to make a decent full time living as a waiter or bartender, which means you could have really good servers even on less busy nights of the week, but fewer servers on the busiest nights as there's less flexibility in hiring and firing.
  - kentosi 10y ago
    Aussie currently living in NYC: Rarely tipped back home and the service is on par.
  - nikdaheratik 10y ago
    There's no reason why it can't work differently, as mentioned elsewhere, but it would require alot of change in the way these businesses are ran in the U.S. and there's not that much incentive. Most likely the end result would be the same as far as service goes. From having lived in both the U.S. and Australia, my feeling isn't so much that tipping is the reason why the service is better. I've had excellent service in some places in Australia and lousy service in places in the U.S. My feeling is that the management makes a point of emphasizing customer service more in the U.S. than in other places (even in businesses that don't have tips), and this is true across the board. Increased competition in the U.S. is some of it, and just plain cultural attitude is alot.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Service is Europe is not poor. Not by a long shot. When talking about service you have to consider cultural differences too. I'm american, in the country that I studied abroad in the service expectations were different from cashiers than American cashiers and neither are tipped. I also would prefer to have much less fake friendliness.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  Not sure why you'd accept that very long. I'll tell you how it works here (swe): Most of restaurant employees in the city are organized. There are no minimum wages, instead the union and the corresponding employee organization agree on a minimum compensation. A restaurant that doesn't want to follow the agreement will risk being blockaded by both this Union and any other union that symphathizes, for example their trash won't be picked up. The salaries for restaurant staff are still among the lowest at $3k/month, but still it's 80% of a police or nurse salary. This might sound like the Union runs an extortion scheme, but interestingly the employers organizations are supportive as it means a lot less regulation and more flexibility. The result of this model is a pretty flat structure in comp: a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    > a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country. Why shouldn't it?
    - alkonaut 10y ago
      Not saying it shouldn't, but it should because qualified work can be paid more not because unqualified work can be paid less. Having an organized workforce that says "the minimum cost for full time work of any kind is a living wage" flattens it.
    - rodgerd 10y ago
      Why should it?
  - bduerst 10y ago
    That's because Sweden uses Unions effectively, and no, it's not extortion. Working class support for unions in the U.S. has been steadily declining for decades and sits around 50% today.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Do you feel like the unsupported assertion that employers do not obey the law helps to bolster your point? If so, is it because you feel facts are subordinate to emotional resonance?
  - runako 10y ago
    There's plenty of support for this assertion. If you spend a few moments, you can find it quite easily. I included that point because there are a lot of foreign readers of HN who may not realize how widely flouted our labor laws are here in the US.

by et-al 10y ago

runako 10y ago

If only that were remotely true. In many/most states, the minimum wage for a variety of jobs is not in the range of "livable". For example, minimum wage for restaurant jobs in Georgia is $2.13/hour [1]. They actually don't "get paid enough for this shit," so their attitude actually matches reality. Tipping is a necessary component of the compensation if we want to continue our practice of letting certain employers have exemptions from labor laws. EDIT: $2.13/hour is $340.80 per month, if you are given enough hours to make full-time. Taxes etc. come out of that (you will probably see some of that money again when you file your taxes, for all the good it will do then). (Yes, I know the employer is supposed to top-up the staff to e.g. $7.25/hr. That does not always/usually/ever happen.) You are correct that paying people more than a pittance changes how they view their jobs. [1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

et-al 10y ago
I waited tables a decade ago. If I recall correctly, it was $2.95 + tips and I believe with a 4% tip-out. So your 15% tip became 11% real quick. So I hustled. I'm not saying that we should continue to screw over people who rely on tips as living wage. What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. After all, we've heard anecdotes about service in Europe being poor. Yes yes, they don't tip in Asia, and service is excellent. Don't forget the social fabric is different there.
- andreasvc 10y ago
  > What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. Except you do not give any argument for why that is the case, but just hand wavingly claim it. Why exactly wouldn't it work if tips were abolished, all the prices on the menu are raised to match the average income from tips, and salaries raised to make up for tips? I don't see why good service would only be possible with tipping.
  - et-al 10y ago
    Because customer service is draining. Because even when you get paid $75k, dealing with assholes still sucks. I'm gonna hand wave some more: most Americans when they think of good service beyond just being quick on delivery. Good service is about having a friendly conversation and building rapport with another person. It's may be weird for those of us with introverted tendencies, but this is Middle America with big smiling teeth. Now.. by giving me an immediate incentive (tip) to smile through a bad customer's rudeness (or even harassment--please don't ever hit on people paid to serve you, ever), I'll continue to smile and pour on that syrupy niceness even when I just want to tell a person that they're an asshole and never have to deal with them again. Personally, I have absolute no problem with tipping, or paying higher prices to pay restaurant workers a better wage, but I think people who are pushing no-tip don't understand the complexities in place. In the restaurant world, at the end of each night, you'd get a huge wad of cash, and you felt you had worked for it (even though it can be argued people tip consistently). So even though the carrot may not be real, it still convinced people to act a certain way. Now take away that carrot, take away the cash. You just have better paid McDonald's workers.
    - nikdaheratik 10y ago
      I disagree completely. For one thing, many McDs employees in countries with a higher minimum wage also have a better attitude, but there are also standout employees at McDs in the U.S. The issue isn't just that the workers at higher minimum wage places are paid more, it's that they are better employees because the managers there can't afford to hire a mediocre one (especially since it's harder to fire them), so they get good employees and train them. And the instances where I've had really good service from McDs in the U.S. are often cases where there's an economic downturn and you have alot of overqualified people taking that job as it's better than nothing. Service in any restaurant is more a function of the kinds of employees you can attract (through wages) and the amount of training the manager puts into their staff. Tipping is only important in that it allows some restaurants to pay a fairly decent amount of money to attract higher quality workers for only a couple of nights when a straight wage would require a larger time commitment to get the same amount of money. However, a (necessarily higher) straight wage would also allow more workers the opportunity to make a decent full time living as a waiter or bartender, which means you could have really good servers even on less busy nights of the week, but fewer servers on the busiest nights as there's less flexibility in hiring and firing.
- kentosi 10y ago
  Aussie currently living in NYC: Rarely tipped back home and the service is on par.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  There's no reason why it can't work differently, as mentioned elsewhere, but it would require alot of change in the way these businesses are ran in the U.S. and there's not that much incentive. Most likely the end result would be the same as far as service goes. From having lived in both the U.S. and Australia, my feeling isn't so much that tipping is the reason why the service is better. I've had excellent service in some places in Australia and lousy service in places in the U.S. My feeling is that the management makes a point of emphasizing customer service more in the U.S. than in other places (even in businesses that don't have tips), and this is true across the board. Increased competition in the U.S. is some of it, and just plain cultural attitude is alot.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Service is Europe is not poor. Not by a long shot. When talking about service you have to consider cultural differences too. I'm american, in the country that I studied abroad in the service expectations were different from cashiers than American cashiers and neither are tipped. I also would prefer to have much less fake friendliness.
alkonaut 10y ago
Not sure why you'd accept that very long. I'll tell you how it works here (swe): Most of restaurant employees in the city are organized. There are no minimum wages, instead the union and the corresponding employee organization agree on a minimum compensation. A restaurant that doesn't want to follow the agreement will risk being blockaded by both this Union and any other union that symphathizes, for example their trash won't be picked up. The salaries for restaurant staff are still among the lowest at $3k/month, but still it's 80% of a police or nurse salary. This might sound like the Union runs an extortion scheme, but interestingly the employers organizations are supportive as it means a lot less regulation and more flexibility. The result of this model is a pretty flat structure in comp: a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country. Why shouldn't it?
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    Not saying it shouldn't, but it should because qualified work can be paid more not because unqualified work can be paid less. Having an organized workforce that says "the minimum cost for full time work of any kind is a living wage" flattens it.
  - rodgerd 10y ago
    Why should it?
- bduerst 10y ago
  That's because Sweden uses Unions effectively, and no, it's not extortion. Working class support for unions in the U.S. has been steadily declining for decades and sits around 50% today.
oldmanjay 10y ago
Do you feel like the unsupported assertion that employers do not obey the law helps to bolster your point? If so, is it because you feel facts are subordinate to emotional resonance?
- runako 10y ago
  There's plenty of support for this assertion. If you spend a few moments, you can find it quite easily. I included that point because there are a lot of foreign readers of HN who may not realize how widely flouted our labor laws are here in the US.