3 ms·

Tipping is a backwards system, honestly. No real minimum wage laws, so pass what should be the employer cost on to the customer? It's even crappier for worker

Tipping is a backwards system, honestly. No real minimum wage laws, so pass what should be the employer cost on to the customer? It's even crappier for workers when bosses dictate that tips should be pooled or whatever. Honestly it should be more regulated and the minimum wage should be ate least reasonable.

mindslight 4y ago
> It's even crappier for workers when bosses dictate that tips should be pooled or whatever. Your comment made me think - I wonder if a way of reigning in this weaponization of tipping culture would be state laws for transparency of where tips actually go. Let's say anywhere that solicits tips must clearly post how that money is divided up (on the menu, tip jar, POS terminal, prominent signs, etc). Whether it all goes to your server, whether it's pooled between servers, pooled with the whole staff, whether any doesn't go to employees for any reason, etc. I'd think the servers who actually benefit from tips (individually tipped at nice places) would be fine with this, while the places where it's become a general guilt-tax that just gets averaged out and used as a substitute for wages would be laid bare.
- PrimeMcFly 4y ago
  I agree with you that tipping transparency would be good, but honestly they should just raise the minimum wage and stop worker exploitation, that's a much better solution.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    While I agree with the thrust of your comment, I don't think that's a solution to tipping - the same dynamic would still exist, because it's effectively a form of differentiated pricing based on how much you can guilt each customer.
    - PrimeMcFly 4y ago
      I don't understand. Minimum wage as a reasonable price would eliminate tipping altogether in most low-end to medium rate restaurants - the means through which they guilt the customer would be eliminated. People would still try, and it would take a while for the culture to dissipate entirely, but most people would eventually realize there would be no reason to tip and so wouldn't.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        There's a lot of ground between "just raise the minimum wage", and making it so that most patrons feel that the staff working at a restaurant are the same socioeconomic class as them and therefore aren't being "exploited". It would sure be nice if we could snap our fingers and "stop worker exploitation". But throwing an idyllic state of affairs out as a "solution" to reject a concrete idea that might actually move us towards a better place is counterproductive. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if you ask restaurant workers about tipping many actually like it because good servers at good restaurants apparently do end up making a decent wage. So like a lot of things, the tiny sliver of shining meritocracy ends up carrying water for an overall oppressive dynamic. Which is why I think some transparency into what exactly a "tip" means in any given context would go a long way - the various ways business owners divert tips is itself a very direct form of worker exploitation.

mindslight 4y ago

> It's even crappier for workers when bosses dictate that tips should be pooled or whatever. Your comment made me think - I wonder if a way of reigning in this weaponization of tipping culture would be state laws for transparency of where tips actually go. Let's say anywhere that solicits tips must clearly post how that money is divided up (on the menu, tip jar, POS terminal, prominent signs, etc). Whether it all goes to your server, whether it's pooled between servers, pooled with the whole staff, whether any doesn't go to employees for any reason, etc. I'd think the servers who actually benefit from tips (individually tipped at nice places) would be fine with this, while the places where it's become a general guilt-tax that just gets averaged out and used as a substitute for wages would be laid bare.

PrimeMcFly 4y ago
I agree with you that tipping transparency would be good, but honestly they should just raise the minimum wage and stop worker exploitation, that's a much better solution.
- mindslight 4y ago
  While I agree with the thrust of your comment, I don't think that's a solution to tipping - the same dynamic would still exist, because it's effectively a form of differentiated pricing based on how much you can guilt each customer.
  - PrimeMcFly 4y ago
    I don't understand. Minimum wage as a reasonable price would eliminate tipping altogether in most low-end to medium rate restaurants - the means through which they guilt the customer would be eliminated. People would still try, and it would take a while for the culture to dissipate entirely, but most people would eventually realize there would be no reason to tip and so wouldn't.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      There's a lot of ground between "just raise the minimum wage", and making it so that most patrons feel that the staff working at a restaurant are the same socioeconomic class as them and therefore aren't being "exploited". It would sure be nice if we could snap our fingers and "stop worker exploitation". But throwing an idyllic state of affairs out as a "solution" to reject a concrete idea that might actually move us towards a better place is counterproductive. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if you ask restaurant workers about tipping many actually like it because good servers at good restaurants apparently do end up making a decent wage. So like a lot of things, the tiny sliver of shining meritocracy ends up carrying water for an overall oppressive dynamic. Which is why I think some transparency into what exactly a "tip" means in any given context would go a long way - the various ways business owners divert tips is itself a very direct form of worker exploitation.