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I am always baffled when I read about the tip culture in the states. I find it so belittling for workers. It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer i

I am always baffled when I read about the tip culture in the states. I find it so belittling for workers. It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer is always right", with workers putting an extra effort to always smile and be nice in the hope for a fair tip.

burkaman 5y ago
It is belittling, and almost nobody except restaurant owners likes it. It's sort of a game theory problem - if we could coordinate everyone to stop tipping, then restaurants would be forced to pay their workers normal wages, and almost everyone would be better off. But if I stop tipping, I'm just an asshole making no impact on society. I guess the only practical approach is to simultaneously keep tipping and push for your city/state/country to eliminate the tipped minimum wage loophole.
- pitaj 5y ago
  I think you'll find that servers and bartenders are the most adimant supporters of tipping. They make a killing.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    You also get to take cash home after every shift.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Making a killing is pushing it unless you're working at a high end place. I really wonder how many HN people have ever worked in a waitstaff role. As much as you might hate it, tips keeps you just above minimum wage 95% of the time. Its not some money fountain like some people here seem to thing it is. People who want tips of course want it because it gives them money on top of minimum wage, why the hell would you expect someone to sabotage their own income stream?
    - toyg 5y ago
      The most professionalised elements are the ones who end up in high-end places, because they made a real career of it. Because of that, it's likely that they are also the ones most represented by unions and associations that might be consulted by policymakers. So when a policymaker puts forward an idea to improve their condition, and gets back an icy or ambivalent response (as well as a very negative one from employers, of course), he'll just shelve it very quickly.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        I'd be surprised if that was true. Unions are good when there is an "we are all in it together", but with tipping a great server can make a lot more than a bad one, so all the great servers will defect from the union for more money. The bad ones want a union, but they are also the ones management should get rid of. There are ways for unions to work around this, but the fact that some members see themselves as better than others in ways that are measurable make such unions weaker.
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
      > As much as you might hate it, tips keeps you just above minimum wage 95% of the time. At least here in California, I’m pretty sure there’s no special tipped minimum wage, so what you’re saying doesn’t apply.
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      I worked at several restaurants, and not high end ones. on average, I probably made 25% over minimum wage. I had essentially zero marketable skills at the time, so my only alternatives actually paid minimum wage. I was a big fan of tipping.
    - bnralt 5y ago
      If you want a real look at things, I'd suggest looking at servers discussing places that try to eliminate tipping. When tipping is discussed generally, it's often discussed like in this article - talking about how restaurants are only paying $2.13 an hour, how this or that customer didn't tipped or tipped almost nothing, how on this particular night they made almost nothing, etc. But if you talk about getting rid of tipping and replacing it with a living age? Look at the comments from this Reddit discussion some years ago (so the numbers are even higher when you factor in inflation) discussing Joe's Crab Shack's interest in getting rid of tips[1]: > But if you are doing good volume and the prices arent insanely cheap I cant see how youre only making $15 an hour. Are you in a poor section of town where people dont have much money? Do you get a lot of foreign tourists as clientele? I mean, $15 an hour I can make while asleep. But Im in Philly. Prices arent insane usually but they arent cheap. Plus its one of the best tipping cities in the country. Personally I wont take a shift if Im not confident Ill make at least $20 an hour. For me its not worth my time. ** > This may or may not be close to the industry standard, but my last restaurant, I probably made somewhere around $25/hr (tips + wage). Restaurant before that was way more high volume, and even though we didn't really get paid an hourly wage, I would guess we made about $30/hr or so. On good nights and the bartenders? Probably even more. ** > I was bored out of my mind all 6 hours of my shift tonight and made $14X, so call it $150, aka $25 an hour. Oh, and that's with a stiff on $120, and a $6 on $94 ** > Because serving tables isn't a job anyone would do for $7.75 an hour. It's not an easy job to excel at. I'll stay making my $25 an hour. Thanks. ** > This is what people outside of the industry don't seem to get. Strong servers arn't going to stick around for anything less than $20 an hour. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/4iuy2q/joes_crab_shack_has_cut_back_its_notipping_test/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/4iuy2q...
  - burkaman 5y ago
    I know there are some lucky bartenders that make a ton, but in my personal experience the people I know who have worked as servers and bartenders are not supporters. I'm actually finding it very difficult to find any surveys or research on this. I found one poll that shows tipped workers are in favor of a $15 minimum wage in addition to tips (obviously), but I can't find anything asking about a higher minimum wage without tips.
  - perth 5y ago
    Reminds me of the early pro slavery arguments about how people liked to be slaves working in the cotton fields
  - mcculley 5y ago
    This is not true for all servers/bartenders or for all restaurants/bars. Yes, a Hooters girl can make a lot of money, as can servers working at high end steakhouses. Servers at Denny's, not so much.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The good ones love the tip system. They get the most tips, and also tend to be the types of people recruited to the higher prices restaurants where higher tips are normal. They draw in repeat customers for their great service. I used to know a waitress who was making just as much as her engineer husband. She looked good for 55, but 55 will never look good enough to draw in many high tips based on looks. (good lucks is a factor in service to a lot of people, but it didn't apply here) The bad ones get bad tips and hate the system, but they should be fired anyway. On the one hand I don't like having to figure tips. However a few times I've got bad service and at least I could do something about it.
    - db65edfc7996 5y ago
      I am most curious what percentage of the population dynamically adjusts their tip in any relation to the service. It has just become an additional tax. I give a standard 20%, more if it rounds to a nice whole dollar amount. Even if I had bad service, I am still giving 20%. That's the social contract I am stuck with fulfilling.
      - exhilaration 5y ago
        Seconding this, unless the server kicks me in the groin they're getting 20%. That's the only way they're getting a livable wage and I'm sure not going to be the one to rob them of it.
  - xhevahir 5y ago
    I remember reading a pretty interesting book (Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City) where the author found that a great proportion of the tip income among his study's subjects came from friends and associates who also worked in food and drink service--they were basically just passing cash back and forth.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Restaurant owners do not like it. For them it means a fixed percentage of revenue has to go to the front of house. Also, it means that waitstaff will side with the customer’s interests over the restaurant’s. Consider for example a round of free drinks at a bar—increases the tip but costs the bar. Restaurant owners that have tried to eliminate tipping find a) customers are uncomfortable and sometimes try to tip anyway and b) would be customers compare prices without taking into account the fact that tip is included. The people I’ve talked to most inclined to support tipping culture are servers at mid to expensive restaurants and demanding foodies.
  - jklinger410 5y ago
    > For them it means a fixed percentage of revenue has to go to the front of house. ??? Tipping is not a "fixed percentage." You may have a few edge cases here, but I have to push back on the idea that business owners don't like it. They get to pay their front house staff next to nothing, this money consistently goes untaxed, and it gives their employees incentive to work hard. It also gives their front house the capability to make an income that the owner themselves would never dream of paying, meaning they can have talented employees just show up magically without having to alter their business in any way. I have to agree that the people who like it THE MOST are the people also most likely to complain: the servers and bartenders. It only takes some basic math to identify that being a server is the highest paying entry level job in the United States simply because of tipping culture.
    - danaris 5y ago
      > being a server is the highest paying entry level job in the United States simply because of tipping culture. ...if you get just the right job in just the right area. The exact same job—even at a chain—in two restaurants just a few miles apart could have massively different levels of tips.
    - kasey_junk 5y ago
      It’s not a fixed percentage but it’s close enough to think of it that way. The real problem is that they are legally prohibited from using tip share to pay their back of house more. This puts them in a situation where if they want to raise kitchen staff wages they have to raise prices and restaurant customers are extremely price sensitive. Several high end restaurants (were presumably there would be less price sensitivity) have tried doing away with tips and raising their prices to pay all staff a more uniform wage. It’s largely failed. Customers don’t like higher prices and front if house staff largely prefer tips as they make more (at the cost of lower pay for their kitchen colleagues).
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  I’m in CA, which doesn’t have a tipped minimum wage loophole, and the tipping culture keeps increasing what’s an expected tip, and more and more places expect you to tip, so it seems like it’s never going away. Just upwards. But also, it’s not just restaurant owners that like it. A lot of tipped workers make out really well with tips and prefer it that way.
- paxys 5y ago
  People who actually get tipped (servers, bartenders, baristas, caddies, drivers, delivery people) are by far the biggest proponents of keeping the current system in place.
seneca 5y ago
> It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer is always right", with workers putting an extra effort to always smile and be nice in the hope for a fair tip. That's exactly the point. It's meant to be an incentive to put in extra effort, and in my experience it works. Everywhere I've been that doesn't have restaurant tipping, for instance, has had notably worse service on average. Where it becomes a problem is that the tips are now treated as the expected wage, rather than something extra. Working entirely for something that is intended as an incentive is a bit perverse and demeaning. In the end, I think for this reason tipping ought to be done away with, but it does have its upsides.
peteradio 5y ago
Restaurants can really barely afford to stay open in my (small) region, frankly they are seen as a service to a town not a net extractor. I know the finances behind my locals and can tell you they would not be able to stay open if workers were not also compensated via tips, and workers would not be there without the requisite pay. Tips end up being the difference between having a restaurant or not.
- burkaman 5y ago
  Would customers be willing to pay marginally higher menu prices if tips were explicitly not allowed? I assume there must be research on this.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Changing menu prices is probably a bit less elastic than letting people be flexible with their spending. I'm more likely to buy the burger that I can afford and stinge on the tip if I'm tight and come back next week and guilt tip when I'm full. Raise the price across the board and I'm not coming the tight week.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Why should wait staff salary be the thing that gets sacrificed to economic downfall? They have much less control over what kind of food the restaurants sell and for what price. It makes more sense for those who have more decision power to eat the consequences. They can make cheaper burgers, lower salaries for everyone rather then single profession, change what they sell. The wait staff can only decide whether they work or not.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      Tipping as price discrimination, with positive empathy from a human face being the upsell. You can pay either $8 or $10 for the same meal. If you pay $8 you feel bad, if you pay $10 you feel good. Thereby the restaurant takes in the full $10 from people who can afford it and/or aren't psychopaths, but still makes the sale at $8 for anyone else.
cardosof 5y ago
I agree and in that regard I've always found EU countries much more humane, in the sense they don't have to take shit from a bad customer and smile because of the weight of the tip in their salary.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Yeah, instead the customer has to take it from bad servers with nothing they can do about it.
  - williamdclt 5y ago
    You can: - Talk back to the server (hopefully to de-escalate rather than escalate) - Ask to talk to their manager - Not come back - Leave a review That's hardly "nothing"
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Doubtful, a restaurant with bad service will go kaput. Restaurant owners do care about this kind of thing. It's called the hospitality industry for a reason.
  - bnralt 5y ago
    Personally, I've found service better in non-tipping countries than in tipping countries. My guess is it's because in most non-tipping countries, waiters spend less time trying to pretend to be friends with customers at every table and more time just doing their job. Having to wait for service because a waiter is spending a lot of time buttering up another table with inane chit-chat is annoying, especially when I have to pay extra for it.
h2odragon 5y ago
Its weird who is "supposed" to get tips, too. Someone who brings you a plate is supposed to get 15% of the bill for doing their job; but an auto parts store clerk who chases down something weird for you over 2hrs of searching may well be forbidden to accept any gratuity, and possibly even disciplined for spending too much time on a small sale.
- interestica 5y ago
  And the idea that the gratuity should be a percentage of the selling price of the goods is also weird. Someone makes more money if they did the same work but handed you more expensive food.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Real estate agents are the craziest example of this.
    - bena 5y ago
      That's just a commission on a sale. It's the similar, but not the same. When I buy a house, there isn't an amount tacked on to pay the agent, that comes out of the sale price.* Unless you're saying real estate agents are expecting tips now. That's messed up. *Now, there are a bunch of other hidden fees and closing costs associated with a house to where you just need X% of the cost of a house in just to handle that bullshit.
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        It’s not twice as much work to sell a $2 million house as a $1 million house. Why does it cost twice as much in real estate agent fees?
        bena 5y ago
        In this case, so? Like I said, you're not being charged anything there. It comes out of the purchase price. It's the agent who is listing the house at a price and sourcing the various inspectors and appraisers. They're putting in the work to sell your house at a price point. So, if the agent can manage to move your house for $2 million rather than $1 million, why shouldn't they get a larger reward? It's a different scenario from servers. Servers can't convince you to pay more for an item or for the business to sell that item for less. Real estate agents can.
brimble 5y ago
> I am always baffled when I read about the tip culture in the states. I find it so belittling for workers. It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer is always right", with workers putting an extra effort to always smile and be nice in the hope for a fair tip. There was an early-20th-century movement in the US to end tipping, for that reason. The thinking was that it created too much of a relationship of subservience rather than equals participating in commerce, to be compatible with American ideals of freedom. You see this sometimes in older media, as in the "Tipping is Un-American" sign in the film The Petrified Forest.
- KeAShizukuTio 5y ago
- davemp 5y ago
  > The thinking was that it created too much of a relationship of subservience rather than equals participating in commerce, to be compatible with American ideals of freedom. That's my feelings about tipping. The custom feels very classist. Depending on tips creates a social divide between service industries and their customers. I used to work for tips when I was growing up (~2010). My rate was about $15-20/hr which you just couldn't get as young teenager any other way. BUT, I had to force myself to be bubbly and make small talk or I'd make closer to $5-10/hr. The core service quality never changed--only how much I pleased/entertained my customers. I felt like the court fool or a beggar pleading for alms, so I eventually quit for a $10/hr job that I felt much better working throughout the rest of high school. The tipping experience did teach me the value of being personable, but I don't think the incentives need to be so severe.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    You have just talked me into tips. I want a server who will entertain me while I'm waiting. There is a line of course, don't do too much, but a bit of make me feel better about it is worth paying extra for. Service with a good bubbly personality is well worth the extra cost in my opinion.
mynameishere 5y ago
It is the employees who like tipping. You are falling for a common misconception.
- uxp100 5y ago
  The Front of House employees, but yes.
gexla 5y ago
It's like a hack for the owner to show prices at a <insert tip rate> discount to the meal. If everyone has a shared expectation that the tip is a certain rate, then that's the pay. Why not remove tipping and add that cost to the menu? But then maybe you wouldn't be as competitive? I'm sure there are people who can make good money on tips. That's more like a commission on sales. In that sense, you're taking the risk of a higher upside by working in this industry. But the way it actually works, is that most will pay the expected tip. some won't pay any tip at all, some will give a bigger tip, and the worker is left to absorb the variance on a low pay gig. The industry should remove the downside and allow the upside. You get paid X. There is no tipping system. But the customer can still tip if they like. I don't work in the industry. Maybe I'm way off. I hope the employment picture changes in the future so that people will appreciate face to face service. I can't reach Facebook or Google for support and I'll cry about my loss, but I'll feel entitled to rage on my server for my $10 meal? Doesn't seem sustainable.
nbaugh1 5y ago
This is much more about low wages than it is about tipping
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Tipping is a contentious topic. Perhaps counterintuitively, wait staff generally prefers a tipping model over fixed pay when given the choice. Tipping is more variable, but it can pay surprisingly well, especially for staff who are good at their job. It’s rare to find a no-tip restaurant that can match the earning potential of what a good server can make with tipping. It’s theoretically possible, of course, but in practice it doesn’t seem to work out in favor of fixed pay.
- bena 5y ago
  Servers like it because they can abuse information asymmetry to get more money. If I sit down at a restaurant, I don't know if the server has had a good week, a bad week, an average week, or what. So, not knowing that, if I'm sympathetic to their position, I'm inclined to tip well. Add on to that the constant pressure of tips upward. It's gone from being 10% on average to 20% on average in my lifetime. And also flat rates on certain services.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
And god help you if you don't tip. Searching the web reveals horror stories of food tampering and deliberately bad service. Imagine if you're from a culture where tipping doesn't exist and you simply don't know that you're supposed to leave some extra percentage for the employee.
ryanmarsh 5y ago
Ironically some expensive restaurants in the states add “gratuity” (like a service charge) to the bill and do not rely on tipping. This ensures their hard to recruit staff (sommeliers, skilled wait staff, etc…) can be paid enough to keep working there.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  I've only ever seen this policy applied to large parties, and it's below the standard tip percentage anyway.
  - binarycrusader 5y ago
    Go to cities like Seattle or San Francisco. You’ll frequently find places with an 18% or 20% service charge regardless of party size or even a no tips policy.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    I've never seen it below the standard tip percentage. I've frequently seen it above the standard tip percentage.
vincentmarle 5y ago
Yet somehow the service in the US is 10x better than in Europe.
- arprocter 5y ago
  As a redcoat in enemy territory I generally agree, although the golden retriever-esque fake enthusiasm in the states can be a little skeezy, when it feels like they're forced to act like that because the wage without tips is so low 'Yes, everything is still fine' - you don't need to check every 5 minutes
- HWR_14 5y ago
  This has not been my experience.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  I usually prefer the service in Europe (if it’s possible to generalize the continent like that). Americans waiters constantly intrude. I’d rather they stay away as much as possible.
xhevahir 5y ago
Supposedly its origin is tied in with race relations. I only vaguely remember the historical explanation and I'm too tired to look into it right now. Anyway, I agree that the phenomenon is pretty degrading.
dboreham 5y ago
Seattle tried this recently. It didn't go well. Servers pointed out to their customers that they personally didn't receive the "service charge" that was mandated added to the bill. So customers felt obligated to add a tip on top of the service charge. I haven't been a restaurant in Seattle in a couple of months, but I got the impression the experiment was largely abandoned.

burkaman 5y ago

It is belittling, and almost nobody except restaurant owners likes it. It's sort of a game theory problem - if we could coordinate everyone to stop tipping, then restaurants would be forced to pay their workers normal wages, and almost everyone would be better off. But if I stop tipping, I'm just an asshole making no impact on society. I guess the only practical approach is to simultaneously keep tipping and push for your city/state/country to eliminate the tipped minimum wage loophole.

pitaj 5y ago
I think you'll find that servers and bartenders are the most adimant supporters of tipping. They make a killing.
- bluedino 5y ago
  You also get to take cash home after every shift.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Making a killing is pushing it unless you're working at a high end place. I really wonder how many HN people have ever worked in a waitstaff role. As much as you might hate it, tips keeps you just above minimum wage 95% of the time. Its not some money fountain like some people here seem to thing it is. People who want tips of course want it because it gives them money on top of minimum wage, why the hell would you expect someone to sabotage their own income stream?
  - toyg 5y ago
    The most professionalised elements are the ones who end up in high-end places, because they made a real career of it. Because of that, it's likely that they are also the ones most represented by unions and associations that might be consulted by policymakers. So when a policymaker puts forward an idea to improve their condition, and gets back an icy or ambivalent response (as well as a very negative one from employers, of course), he'll just shelve it very quickly.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I'd be surprised if that was true. Unions are good when there is an "we are all in it together", but with tipping a great server can make a lot more than a bad one, so all the great servers will defect from the union for more money. The bad ones want a union, but they are also the ones management should get rid of. There are ways for unions to work around this, but the fact that some members see themselves as better than others in ways that are measurable make such unions weaker.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    > As much as you might hate it, tips keeps you just above minimum wage 95% of the time. At least here in California, I’m pretty sure there’s no special tipped minimum wage, so what you’re saying doesn’t apply.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    I worked at several restaurants, and not high end ones. on average, I probably made 25% over minimum wage. I had essentially zero marketable skills at the time, so my only alternatives actually paid minimum wage. I was a big fan of tipping.
  - bnralt 5y ago
    If you want a real look at things, I'd suggest looking at servers discussing places that try to eliminate tipping. When tipping is discussed generally, it's often discussed like in this article - talking about how restaurants are only paying $2.13 an hour, how this or that customer didn't tipped or tipped almost nothing, how on this particular night they made almost nothing, etc. But if you talk about getting rid of tipping and replacing it with a living age? Look at the comments from this Reddit discussion some years ago (so the numbers are even higher when you factor in inflation) discussing Joe's Crab Shack's interest in getting rid of tips[1]: > But if you are doing good volume and the prices arent insanely cheap I cant see how youre only making $15 an hour. Are you in a poor section of town where people dont have much money? Do you get a lot of foreign tourists as clientele? I mean, $15 an hour I can make while asleep. But Im in Philly. Prices arent insane usually but they arent cheap. Plus its one of the best tipping cities in the country. Personally I wont take a shift if Im not confident Ill make at least $20 an hour. For me its not worth my time. ** > This may or may not be close to the industry standard, but my last restaurant, I probably made somewhere around $25/hr (tips + wage). Restaurant before that was way more high volume, and even though we didn't really get paid an hourly wage, I would guess we made about $30/hr or so. On good nights and the bartenders? Probably even more. ** > I was bored out of my mind all 6 hours of my shift tonight and made $14X, so call it $150, aka $25 an hour. Oh, and that's with a stiff on $120, and a $6 on $94 ** > Because serving tables isn't a job anyone would do for $7.75 an hour. It's not an easy job to excel at. I'll stay making my $25 an hour. Thanks. ** > This is what people outside of the industry don't seem to get. Strong servers arn't going to stick around for anything less than $20 an hour. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/4iuy2q/joes_crab_shack_has_cut_back_its_notipping_test/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/4iuy2q...
- burkaman 5y ago
  I know there are some lucky bartenders that make a ton, but in my personal experience the people I know who have worked as servers and bartenders are not supporters. I'm actually finding it very difficult to find any surveys or research on this. I found one poll that shows tipped workers are in favor of a $15 minimum wage in addition to tips (obviously), but I can't find anything asking about a higher minimum wage without tips.
- perth 5y ago
  Reminds me of the early pro slavery arguments about how people liked to be slaves working in the cotton fields
- mcculley 5y ago
  This is not true for all servers/bartenders or for all restaurants/bars. Yes, a Hooters girl can make a lot of money, as can servers working at high end steakhouses. Servers at Denny's, not so much.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 5y ago
  The good ones love the tip system. They get the most tips, and also tend to be the types of people recruited to the higher prices restaurants where higher tips are normal. They draw in repeat customers for their great service. I used to know a waitress who was making just as much as her engineer husband. She looked good for 55, but 55 will never look good enough to draw in many high tips based on looks. (good lucks is a factor in service to a lot of people, but it didn't apply here) The bad ones get bad tips and hate the system, but they should be fired anyway. On the one hand I don't like having to figure tips. However a few times I've got bad service and at least I could do something about it.
  - db65edfc7996 5y ago
    I am most curious what percentage of the population dynamically adjusts their tip in any relation to the service. It has just become an additional tax. I give a standard 20%, more if it rounds to a nice whole dollar amount. Even if I had bad service, I am still giving 20%. That's the social contract I am stuck with fulfilling.
    - exhilaration 5y ago
      Seconding this, unless the server kicks me in the groin they're getting 20%. That's the only way they're getting a livable wage and I'm sure not going to be the one to rob them of it.
- xhevahir 5y ago
  I remember reading a pretty interesting book (Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City) where the author found that a great proportion of the tip income among his study's subjects came from friends and associates who also worked in food and drink service--they were basically just passing cash back and forth.
bradleyjg 5y ago
Restaurant owners do not like it. For them it means a fixed percentage of revenue has to go to the front of house. Also, it means that waitstaff will side with the customer’s interests over the restaurant’s. Consider for example a round of free drinks at a bar—increases the tip but costs the bar. Restaurant owners that have tried to eliminate tipping find a) customers are uncomfortable and sometimes try to tip anyway and b) would be customers compare prices without taking into account the fact that tip is included. The people I’ve talked to most inclined to support tipping culture are servers at mid to expensive restaurants and demanding foodies.
- jklinger410 5y ago
  > For them it means a fixed percentage of revenue has to go to the front of house. ??? Tipping is not a "fixed percentage." You may have a few edge cases here, but I have to push back on the idea that business owners don't like it. They get to pay their front house staff next to nothing, this money consistently goes untaxed, and it gives their employees incentive to work hard. It also gives their front house the capability to make an income that the owner themselves would never dream of paying, meaning they can have talented employees just show up magically without having to alter their business in any way. I have to agree that the people who like it THE MOST are the people also most likely to complain: the servers and bartenders. It only takes some basic math to identify that being a server is the highest paying entry level job in the United States simply because of tipping culture.
  - danaris 5y ago
    > being a server is the highest paying entry level job in the United States simply because of tipping culture. ...if you get just the right job in just the right area. The exact same job—even at a chain—in two restaurants just a few miles apart could have massively different levels of tips.
  - kasey_junk 5y ago
    It’s not a fixed percentage but it’s close enough to think of it that way. The real problem is that they are legally prohibited from using tip share to pay their back of house more. This puts them in a situation where if they want to raise kitchen staff wages they have to raise prices and restaurant customers are extremely price sensitive. Several high end restaurants (were presumably there would be less price sensitivity) have tried doing away with tips and raising their prices to pay all staff a more uniform wage. It’s largely failed. Customers don’t like higher prices and front if house staff largely prefer tips as they make more (at the cost of lower pay for their kitchen colleagues).
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
I’m in CA, which doesn’t have a tipped minimum wage loophole, and the tipping culture keeps increasing what’s an expected tip, and more and more places expect you to tip, so it seems like it’s never going away. Just upwards. But also, it’s not just restaurant owners that like it. A lot of tipped workers make out really well with tips and prefer it that way.
paxys 5y ago
People who actually get tipped (servers, bartenders, baristas, caddies, drivers, delivery people) are by far the biggest proponents of keeping the current system in place.

seneca 5y ago

> It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer is always right", with workers putting an extra effort to always smile and be nice in the hope for a fair tip. That's exactly the point. It's meant to be an incentive to put in extra effort, and in my experience it works. Everywhere I've been that doesn't have restaurant tipping, for instance, has had notably worse service on average. Where it becomes a problem is that the tips are now treated as the expected wage, rather than something extra. Working entirely for something that is intended as an incentive is a bit perverse and demeaning. In the end, I think for this reason tipping ought to be done away with, but it does have its upsides.

peteradio 5y ago

Restaurants can really barely afford to stay open in my (small) region, frankly they are seen as a service to a town not a net extractor. I know the finances behind my locals and can tell you they would not be able to stay open if workers were not also compensated via tips, and workers would not be there without the requisite pay. Tips end up being the difference between having a restaurant or not.

burkaman 5y ago
Would customers be willing to pay marginally higher menu prices if tips were explicitly not allowed? I assume there must be research on this.
- peteradio 5y ago
  Changing menu prices is probably a bit less elastic than letting people be flexible with their spending. I'm more likely to buy the burger that I can afford and stinge on the tip if I'm tight and come back next week and guilt tip when I'm full. Raise the price across the board and I'm not coming the tight week.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Why should wait staff salary be the thing that gets sacrificed to economic downfall? They have much less control over what kind of food the restaurants sell and for what price. It makes more sense for those who have more decision power to eat the consequences. They can make cheaper burgers, lower salaries for everyone rather then single profession, change what they sell. The wait staff can only decide whether they work or not.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Tipping as price discrimination, with positive empathy from a human face being the upsell. You can pay either $8 or $10 for the same meal. If you pay $8 you feel bad, if you pay $10 you feel good. Thereby the restaurant takes in the full $10 from people who can afford it and/or aren't psychopaths, but still makes the sale at $8 for anyone else.

cardosof 5y ago

I agree and in that regard I've always found EU countries much more humane, in the sense they don't have to take shit from a bad customer and smile because of the weight of the tip in their salary.

bluGill 5y ago
Yeah, instead the customer has to take it from bad servers with nothing they can do about it.
- williamdclt 5y ago
  You can: - Talk back to the server (hopefully to de-escalate rather than escalate) - Ask to talk to their manager - Not come back - Leave a review That's hardly "nothing"
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Doubtful, a restaurant with bad service will go kaput. Restaurant owners do care about this kind of thing. It's called the hospitality industry for a reason.
- bnralt 5y ago
  Personally, I've found service better in non-tipping countries than in tipping countries. My guess is it's because in most non-tipping countries, waiters spend less time trying to pretend to be friends with customers at every table and more time just doing their job. Having to wait for service because a waiter is spending a lot of time buttering up another table with inane chit-chat is annoying, especially when I have to pay extra for it.

h2odragon 5y ago

Its weird who is "supposed" to get tips, too. Someone who brings you a plate is supposed to get 15% of the bill for doing their job; but an auto parts store clerk who chases down something weird for you over 2hrs of searching may well be forbidden to accept any gratuity, and possibly even disciplined for spending too much time on a small sale.

interestica 5y ago
And the idea that the gratuity should be a percentage of the selling price of the goods is also weird. Someone makes more money if they did the same work but handed you more expensive food.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Real estate agents are the craziest example of this.
  - bena 5y ago
    That's just a commission on a sale. It's the similar, but not the same. When I buy a house, there isn't an amount tacked on to pay the agent, that comes out of the sale price.* Unless you're saying real estate agents are expecting tips now. That's messed up. *Now, there are a bunch of other hidden fees and closing costs associated with a house to where you just need X% of the cost of a house in just to handle that bullshit.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      It’s not twice as much work to sell a $2 million house as a $1 million house. Why does it cost twice as much in real estate agent fees?
      - bena 5y ago
        In this case, so? Like I said, you're not being charged anything there. It comes out of the purchase price. It's the agent who is listing the house at a price and sourcing the various inspectors and appraisers. They're putting in the work to sell your house at a price point. So, if the agent can manage to move your house for $2 million rather than $1 million, why shouldn't they get a larger reward? It's a different scenario from servers. Servers can't convince you to pay more for an item or for the business to sell that item for less. Real estate agents can.

brimble 5y ago

> I am always baffled when I read about the tip culture in the states. I find it so belittling for workers. It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer is always right", with workers putting an extra effort to always smile and be nice in the hope for a fair tip. There was an early-20th-century movement in the US to end tipping, for that reason. The thinking was that it created too much of a relationship of subservience rather than equals participating in commerce, to be compatible with American ideals of freedom. You see this sometimes in older media, as in the "Tipping is Un-American" sign in the film The Petrified Forest.

KeAShizukuTio 5y ago
davemp 5y ago
> The thinking was that it created too much of a relationship of subservience rather than equals participating in commerce, to be compatible with American ideals of freedom. That's my feelings about tipping. The custom feels very classist. Depending on tips creates a social divide between service industries and their customers. I used to work for tips when I was growing up (~2010). My rate was about $15-20/hr which you just couldn't get as young teenager any other way. BUT, I had to force myself to be bubbly and make small talk or I'd make closer to $5-10/hr. The core service quality never changed--only how much I pleased/entertained my customers. I felt like the court fool or a beggar pleading for alms, so I eventually quit for a $10/hr job that I felt much better working throughout the rest of high school. The tipping experience did teach me the value of being personable, but I don't think the incentives need to be so severe.
- bluGill 5y ago
  You have just talked me into tips. I want a server who will entertain me while I'm waiting. There is a line of course, don't do too much, but a bit of make me feel better about it is worth paying extra for. Service with a good bubbly personality is well worth the extra cost in my opinion.

mynameishere 5y ago

It is the employees who like tipping. You are falling for a common misconception.

uxp100 5y ago
The Front of House employees, but yes.

gexla 5y ago

It's like a hack for the owner to show prices at a <insert tip rate> discount to the meal. If everyone has a shared expectation that the tip is a certain rate, then that's the pay. Why not remove tipping and add that cost to the menu? But then maybe you wouldn't be as competitive? I'm sure there are people who can make good money on tips. That's more like a commission on sales. In that sense, you're taking the risk of a higher upside by working in this industry. But the way it actually works, is that most will pay the expected tip. some won't pay any tip at all, some will give a bigger tip, and the worker is left to absorb the variance on a low pay gig. The industry should remove the downside and allow the upside. You get paid X. There is no tipping system. But the customer can still tip if they like. I don't work in the industry. Maybe I'm way off. I hope the employment picture changes in the future so that people will appreciate face to face service. I can't reach Facebook or Google for support and I'll cry about my loss, but I'll feel entitled to rage on my server for my $10 meal? Doesn't seem sustainable.

nbaugh1 5y ago

This is much more about low wages than it is about tipping

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Tipping is a contentious topic. Perhaps counterintuitively, wait staff generally prefers a tipping model over fixed pay when given the choice. Tipping is more variable, but it can pay surprisingly well, especially for staff who are good at their job. It’s rare to find a no-tip restaurant that can match the earning potential of what a good server can make with tipping. It’s theoretically possible, of course, but in practice it doesn’t seem to work out in favor of fixed pay.

bena 5y ago
Servers like it because they can abuse information asymmetry to get more money. If I sit down at a restaurant, I don't know if the server has had a good week, a bad week, an average week, or what. So, not knowing that, if I'm sympathetic to their position, I'm inclined to tip well. Add on to that the constant pressure of tips upward. It's gone from being 10% on average to 20% on average in my lifetime. And also flat rates on certain services.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

And god help you if you don't tip. Searching the web reveals horror stories of food tampering and deliberately bad service. Imagine if you're from a culture where tipping doesn't exist and you simply don't know that you're supposed to leave some extra percentage for the employee.

ryanmarsh 5y ago

Ironically some expensive restaurants in the states add “gratuity” (like a service charge) to the bill and do not rely on tipping. This ensures their hard to recruit staff (sommeliers, skilled wait staff, etc…) can be paid enough to keep working there.

leetcrew 5y ago
I've only ever seen this policy applied to large parties, and it's below the standard tip percentage anyway.
- binarycrusader 5y ago
  Go to cities like Seattle or San Francisco. You’ll frequently find places with an 18% or 20% service charge regardless of party size or even a no tips policy.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  I've never seen it below the standard tip percentage. I've frequently seen it above the standard tip percentage.

vincentmarle 5y ago

Yet somehow the service in the US is 10x better than in Europe.

arprocter 5y ago
As a redcoat in enemy territory I generally agree, although the golden retriever-esque fake enthusiasm in the states can be a little skeezy, when it feels like they're forced to act like that because the wage without tips is so low 'Yes, everything is still fine' - you don't need to check every 5 minutes
HWR_14 5y ago
This has not been my experience.
CogitoCogito 5y ago
I usually prefer the service in Europe (if it’s possible to generalize the continent like that). Americans waiters constantly intrude. I’d rather they stay away as much as possible.

xhevahir 5y ago

Supposedly its origin is tied in with race relations. I only vaguely remember the historical explanation and I'm too tired to look into it right now. Anyway, I agree that the phenomenon is pretty degrading.

dboreham 5y ago

Seattle tried this recently. It didn't go well. Servers pointed out to their customers that they personally didn't receive the "service charge" that was mandated added to the bill. So customers felt obligated to add a tip on top of the service charge. I haven't been a restaurant in Seattle in a couple of months, but I got the impression the experiment was largely abandoned.