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Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon. Travel, for example, to the EU or other parts of the world where there's no tipping. Workers are paid a living wage

Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon. Travel, for example, to the EU or other parts of the world where there's no tipping. Workers are paid a living wage and have benefits (esp. in countries that didn't go with employer-supplied benefits in the wake of WWII). They want no part of "tipping". Combine that with VAT-using countries, and it's delightful to look at a restaurant menu and realize there's zero obfuscation about what the final bill will be. Not to mention tipping as a vehicle for wage theft, and playing into a generally regressive compensation system.

dgzl 8y ago
I'm strongly against tipping, but I also don't need more reasons for Americans to dislike me, so I tip anyway.
- saidajigumi 8y ago
  Agreed: not tipping as an individual act in the US makes you a jerk, hurting workers without changing the system. Such change would probably have to be brought about via legislation that rolled up a combination of wage and benefits reforms.
  - Amezarak 8y ago
    The workers don’t want the system to be changed. I worked in restaurants for six years, and most of my friends still do. Servers make 2-3x what kitchen staff do, sometimes even better. Even on the very worst nights in the cheapest restaurants I’ve never seen a server come away with less than kitchen staff. Cash tips are also often underreported. Good nights can be absolutely fantastic. I’ve earned an entire 40 hour kitchen check in three hours waiting tables. Kitchen staff wouldn’t mind, managers wouldn’t mind, probably even owners wouldn’t mind so much, but servers would be mass protesting if you eliminated tipping. They want you to raise their employer-paid wage, sure. Affordable health insurance would be great. But they absolutely do not want an end to tipping. And no, no employer is going to pay servers what they’d make with tips on an average night, and even if they did, kitchen staff would go on strike unless they got it too. And then you’re looking at food prices skyrocketing.
    - dgzl 8y ago
      You make great points, but none of them justify the practice. Don't you find it curious how the rest of the world can manage this situation without tipping?
      - Amezarak 8y ago
        I don’t think there’s something so wrong with the practice that it needs to be justified. If you don’t want to tip, don’t. Believe me, not everyone tips. I’m not sure what the real problem with it (the wage issue, at least for restaurants, is a red herring$ other than it makes some people who dislike social interactions uncomfortable.
        sharkmerry 8y ago
        do you not tip out the kitchen staff, etc? you are all part of the chain, why not pay everyone the same?
        Amezarak 8y ago
        Is everyone at your company paid the same?
        dgzl 8y ago
        I'll try to clarify some important reasons why tipping is bad: 1. It offsets labor cost to the generosity of customers, putting an employee's take-home in the hands of the customer. 2. This creates an interaction with the staff where they have incentive to try obtaining an additional ambiguous amount of money from the customer. 3. Sometimes this means being overly characteristic, other times it means trying upsell you to raise the total amount, effectively raising their tip. 4. Other countries reject tipping because they want their employees giving you 100% service regardless of a tip incentive (because there is none). In America, good tippers are treated better by staff (especially at bars, think stronger drinks), while bad tippers get what they get (not something you want from a food serving establishment: watch the movie Waiting and try telling me foregoing tipping is a good idea). Tipping is an abomination of a custom that we should reject as a society.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Tipping doesn't hurt the workers, price obfuscation always benefits the seller at the expense of the buyer.
    - dgzl 8y ago
      (I think you have parent's assessment backwards, but): This exactly. When the minimum wage was created in the 30s, tipped workers were exempt if they could amass an identical wage from tips, a system some states still use. This is nothing more than business owners offsetting the cost of labor onto the generosity of customers.
- MisterTea 8y ago
  tl;dr when in Rome... I'm a NYC native, and I tip because I realize that the system is rigged to enable food and entertainment employers to take advantage of there employees. Yea, I don't like it either. But it's here so I just roll with it.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    > the system is rigged to enable food and entertainment employers to take advantage of there employees. And tipping is offsetting that burden to the customer.
robertAngst 8y ago
You say this is a good thing, until you go to Europe and get treated terrible service. I was seriously confused why our waters werent getting filled up, despite walking 10+ miles before noon. Or why the waiter wasnt coming to our table to take our order. Or why the waiter didn't check on us. After sharing this story with locals, it seems their expectations are far less for restaurants. I don't have much of an opinion on how to pay waiters, but Italy did not impress me.
- saidajigumi 8y ago
  I'm not familiar with Italy specifically, but note that service expectations differ broadly in the EU. In many countries, customers expect to be left alone until they signal the wait staff for something. The American notion of staff that hovers over and/or badgers you constantly is largely absent. In the countries I've travelled to, I've generally had excellent service, bearing the above in mind.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > The American notion of staff that hovers over and/or badgers you constantly is largely absent. This is a straw man. Nobody in the US expects this - and in fact, it's rare that this even happens. At most the server will "interrupt" you once once your food arrives to check in, and even that varies by restaurant. > In many countries, customers expect to be left alone until they signal the wait staff for something I think you're missing what people are talking about when they talk about "terrible or slow service" in Europe. It's not that they wait for you to signal to them, but that they take so long to appear where you can find them in the first place, and that once you do grab their attention, they still take ages to actually come and serve you. They're not necessarily doing anything important or urgent (chatting idly with their coworkers, wiping down the bar, what have you), and it's eminently clear that they simply don't view providing prompt and effective service to customers as their priority. I could give countless stories of how slow and inefficient service in Europe tends to be, or even how downright rude servers can be. For the record, yes, this is a strictly European phenomenon. There are plenty of other places in the world (both where tipping is expected and where it isn't) where this is not an issue.
fossuser 8y ago
This hasn't been my experience at least in the UK where they hand you the credit card device and then explain how you can add a tip.
- Normal_gaussian 8y ago
  An occurrence I hate. Personally I didn't see it at all until about ten years ago, it tends to arise at those same establishments that interrupt your conversation to ask you if you are "fine".
dlevine 8y ago
There was an episode of "Adam Ruins Everything" about this. Basically, during prohibition, restaurants couldn't sell alcohol (which was their biggest profit center), so in order to stay afloat, they cut staff wages and introduced the concept of tipping to cover the gap. It kind of stuck since then.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > There was an episode of "Adam Ruins Everything" about this. Basically, during prohibition, restaurants couldn't sell alcohol (which was their biggest profit center), so in order to stay afloat, they cut staff wages and introduced the concept of tipping to cover the gap. So, I guess its time for an episode of “Dragonwriter Ruins Adam Ruins Everything”. Americans imported the practice of tipping from Europe just after the civil war (some accounts say as an excuse for restaurant owners not to pay newly-freed blacks working as servers, but that's less than clear, though where such workers were common, it was certainly leveraged for that purpose), and there was criticism of the new but rapidly-spreading practice as unamerican and pro-aristocratic in the late 19th Century, before prohibition. Heck, here's a pre-Prohibition (1916) book about the practice of tipping in America, which even recounts past legislative efforts to stop it: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33170/33170-h/33170-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33170/33170-h/33170-h.htm So, no, it didn't start in response to Prohibition.
  - gcbw2 8y ago
    regardless of the real reason, it is to offset 100% of the risk to the employees (no business, no tip, no salary), while keeping >80% of the profits (lot's of business, staff keep at most 20%) all while making the client be the jerk.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      It’s basically a ‘gig economy’. Waitstaff hang out and wait for customers to come in, who they may serve for the chance to make $1-5 a customer.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon Oddly, imported fairly late in American history from Europe.
sgc 8y ago
They don't necessarily have a living wage and many hold down more than one job. But in general yes they have state provided health services.
edanm 8y ago
> Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon. Where did you get that idea? Just a quick glance at the Wiki article on tipping shows that tipping shows up in plenty of places outside of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity

dgzl 8y ago

I'm strongly against tipping, but I also don't need more reasons for Americans to dislike me, so I tip anyway.

saidajigumi 8y ago
Agreed: not tipping as an individual act in the US makes you a jerk, hurting workers without changing the system. Such change would probably have to be brought about via legislation that rolled up a combination of wage and benefits reforms.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  The workers don’t want the system to be changed. I worked in restaurants for six years, and most of my friends still do. Servers make 2-3x what kitchen staff do, sometimes even better. Even on the very worst nights in the cheapest restaurants I’ve never seen a server come away with less than kitchen staff. Cash tips are also often underreported. Good nights can be absolutely fantastic. I’ve earned an entire 40 hour kitchen check in three hours waiting tables. Kitchen staff wouldn’t mind, managers wouldn’t mind, probably even owners wouldn’t mind so much, but servers would be mass protesting if you eliminated tipping. They want you to raise their employer-paid wage, sure. Affordable health insurance would be great. But they absolutely do not want an end to tipping. And no, no employer is going to pay servers what they’d make with tips on an average night, and even if they did, kitchen staff would go on strike unless they got it too. And then you’re looking at food prices skyrocketing.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    You make great points, but none of them justify the practice. Don't you find it curious how the rest of the world can manage this situation without tipping?
    - Amezarak 8y ago
      I don’t think there’s something so wrong with the practice that it needs to be justified. If you don’t want to tip, don’t. Believe me, not everyone tips. I’m not sure what the real problem with it (the wage issue, at least for restaurants, is a red herring$ other than it makes some people who dislike social interactions uncomfortable.
      - sharkmerry 8y ago
        do you not tip out the kitchen staff, etc? you are all part of the chain, why not pay everyone the same?
        Amezarak 8y ago
        Is everyone at your company paid the same?
      - dgzl 8y ago
        I'll try to clarify some important reasons why tipping is bad: 1. It offsets labor cost to the generosity of customers, putting an employee's take-home in the hands of the customer. 2. This creates an interaction with the staff where they have incentive to try obtaining an additional ambiguous amount of money from the customer. 3. Sometimes this means being overly characteristic, other times it means trying upsell you to raise the total amount, effectively raising their tip. 4. Other countries reject tipping because they want their employees giving you 100% service regardless of a tip incentive (because there is none). In America, good tippers are treated better by staff (especially at bars, think stronger drinks), while bad tippers get what they get (not something you want from a food serving establishment: watch the movie Waiting and try telling me foregoing tipping is a good idea). Tipping is an abomination of a custom that we should reject as a society.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Tipping doesn't hurt the workers, price obfuscation always benefits the seller at the expense of the buyer.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    (I think you have parent's assessment backwards, but): This exactly. When the minimum wage was created in the 30s, tipped workers were exempt if they could amass an identical wage from tips, a system some states still use. This is nothing more than business owners offsetting the cost of labor onto the generosity of customers.
MisterTea 8y ago
tl;dr when in Rome... I'm a NYC native, and I tip because I realize that the system is rigged to enable food and entertainment employers to take advantage of there employees. Yea, I don't like it either. But it's here so I just roll with it.
- dgzl 8y ago
  > the system is rigged to enable food and entertainment employers to take advantage of there employees. And tipping is offsetting that burden to the customer.

robertAngst 8y ago

You say this is a good thing, until you go to Europe and get treated terrible service. I was seriously confused why our waters werent getting filled up, despite walking 10+ miles before noon. Or why the waiter wasnt coming to our table to take our order. Or why the waiter didn't check on us. After sharing this story with locals, it seems their expectations are far less for restaurants. I don't have much of an opinion on how to pay waiters, but Italy did not impress me.

saidajigumi 8y ago
I'm not familiar with Italy specifically, but note that service expectations differ broadly in the EU. In many countries, customers expect to be left alone until they signal the wait staff for something. The American notion of staff that hovers over and/or badgers you constantly is largely absent. In the countries I've travelled to, I've generally had excellent service, bearing the above in mind.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > The American notion of staff that hovers over and/or badgers you constantly is largely absent. This is a straw man. Nobody in the US expects this - and in fact, it's rare that this even happens. At most the server will "interrupt" you once once your food arrives to check in, and even that varies by restaurant. > In many countries, customers expect to be left alone until they signal the wait staff for something I think you're missing what people are talking about when they talk about "terrible or slow service" in Europe. It's not that they wait for you to signal to them, but that they take so long to appear where you can find them in the first place, and that once you do grab their attention, they still take ages to actually come and serve you. They're not necessarily doing anything important or urgent (chatting idly with their coworkers, wiping down the bar, what have you), and it's eminently clear that they simply don't view providing prompt and effective service to customers as their priority. I could give countless stories of how slow and inefficient service in Europe tends to be, or even how downright rude servers can be. For the record, yes, this is a strictly European phenomenon. There are plenty of other places in the world (both where tipping is expected and where it isn't) where this is not an issue.

fossuser 8y ago

This hasn't been my experience at least in the UK where they hand you the credit card device and then explain how you can add a tip.

Normal_gaussian 8y ago
An occurrence I hate. Personally I didn't see it at all until about ten years ago, it tends to arise at those same establishments that interrupt your conversation to ask you if you are "fine".

dlevine 8y ago

There was an episode of "Adam Ruins Everything" about this. Basically, during prohibition, restaurants couldn't sell alcohol (which was their biggest profit center), so in order to stay afloat, they cut staff wages and introduced the concept of tipping to cover the gap. It kind of stuck since then.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> There was an episode of "Adam Ruins Everything" about this. Basically, during prohibition, restaurants couldn't sell alcohol (which was their biggest profit center), so in order to stay afloat, they cut staff wages and introduced the concept of tipping to cover the gap. So, I guess its time for an episode of “Dragonwriter Ruins Adam Ruins Everything”. Americans imported the practice of tipping from Europe just after the civil war (some accounts say as an excuse for restaurant owners not to pay newly-freed blacks working as servers, but that's less than clear, though where such workers were common, it was certainly leveraged for that purpose), and there was criticism of the new but rapidly-spreading practice as unamerican and pro-aristocratic in the late 19th Century, before prohibition. Heck, here's a pre-Prohibition (1916) book about the practice of tipping in America, which even recounts past legislative efforts to stop it: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33170/33170-h/33170-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33170/33170-h/33170-h.htm So, no, it didn't start in response to Prohibition.
- gcbw2 8y ago
  regardless of the real reason, it is to offset 100% of the risk to the employees (no business, no tip, no salary), while keeping >80% of the profits (lot's of business, staff keep at most 20%) all while making the client be the jerk.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    It’s basically a ‘gig economy’. Waitstaff hang out and wait for customers to come in, who they may serve for the chance to make $1-5 a customer.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon Oddly, imported fairly late in American history from Europe.

sgc 8y ago

They don't necessarily have a living wage and many hold down more than one job. But in general yes they have state provided health services.

edanm 8y ago

> Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon. Where did you get that idea? Just a quick glance at the Wiki article on tipping shows that tipping shows up in plenty of places outside of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity