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I don't like the particular focus he puts on customers not tipping well. He mentioned feeling like he's being nickel and dimed to access his tips, but that's pr

I don't like the particular focus he puts on customers not tipping well. He mentioned feeling like he's being nickel and dimed to access his tips, but that's precisely the same feeling we customers have now about tipping. I can understand why customers don't leave a big tip at a movie theater too - the ticket for the movie already paid for access to the theater, and the food prices inside are also highly marked up as is. Asking for tips on top of that is exhausting and annoying for the customers. He should have perhaps spent more time on the topic of corporate profits.

xoa 3y ago
So this is actually a reply to @huytersd post which I think had sort of an interesting potential angle on this I hadn't considered before and I want to steelman a bit more then the replies so far: >Meh I hate tipping culture as much as the next person but you really can’t run, for instance a dive bar, and pay the bartender $15 an hour. The foot traffic doesn’t bring in nearly enough most of the time. So I'm reading this as essentially observing that certain work roles are vastly more dynamic then others. If someone is, as the article describes, working flat out on their feet for weeks straight 8+ hours, maybe that should be $40/hour or more, many multiples of minimum wage. Conversely if it's an absolute dead period where mostly people are just sitting around (and free, and perhaps even should be encouraged, to do other enjoyable/productive stuff on their phones/tablets/computers), and the business is effectively paying for warm bodies to be there just in case, minimum wage would be fine. Tipping kind of, in a hacky way, could sort of capture this, where ideally if business is booming people get paid more (potentially lots more) and if not the wage automatically decreases. However, for all the excellent reasons everyone has pointed out in this thread and others, tipping is a pretty poor way to do it prone to abuse and failures. But a completely flat wage might not reflect the work well enough either in practice. However I think we have a better model for this: sales commissions (be it direct, real estate or the like). There pay is also tied directly to the flow of money, but while not perfect it's much more empowering. The workers are agents. What if instead of tips the law mandated that businesses could opt into a model where yes they can pay a somewhat lower basic wage, but then 25% of all sales themselves went to the workers. Nothing for customers to think about, it's built into the price, but pay also then gets tied very closely to output and revenue. Business employment costs would naturally rise and fall with the revenue flow. There'd still be lots of work for this, America's very broken health model ties in, other complaints as well. But I think that "certain industries would benefit from formalized protected dynamic pay while others are best with static pay" might have something to it, if more fair and empowering methods can be found. Though I'm no expert so there may be holes here!
doublescoop 3y ago
This is a theater that has waitstaff that take orders and bring food and drinks to your seat as you watch the show. Don't want to tip, even though it's baked into the wage calculation? That's fine. The author is just pointing out that market forces means that folks aren't going to stay in those jobs.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > even though it's baked into the wage calculation? Then it should be next to the price on the menu: $x + minimum $y tip.
  - Erratic6576 3y ago
    Shouldn’t they have to pay taxes if they printed it like that?
    - mynameishere 3y ago
      You can't avoid taxes by not printing something.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I don't believe retail sales tax applies to tips in most (any?) states.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Why not? Why shouldn't sales tax or whatever tax also be fully paid for each received tip? It is not like other business gets to avoid taxes.
        woodruffw 3y ago
        In principle: the money goes completely to the employee(s) being tipped, so it doesn’t make sense to tax the business for money it doesn’t receive.
woodruffw 3y ago
I think it's an understandable focus: as a service worker, his most immediate recourse is to the people whose money he's handling. (That doesn't make your point about corporate profits wrong.)
- 1000100_1000101 3y ago
  Whose money is he handling? The 1000 people whose $20 he's handling, many of which he likely won't see again for months, or the 1 boss whose $20,000 he's handling daily and sees daily. I think it would be easier to reason with one consistent boss than 1000 new strangers daily... but the boss punts it up to "corporate" and they say no. Instead of pleading with the public to tip more, everyone should just leave. See how "corporate" enjoys paying rent and movie screening fees on a theatre that brings in $0 due to having no staff. Either they shut it down, which is fine, none of the workers were happy there anyway, or they start paying a decent wage, allowing breaks, allowing meal breaks, and allowing vacation like any reasonably humane job.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I don't think this guy sees his "boss." He sees a general manager who makes roughly the same amount as he does. The point you're making is essentially correct (in terms of where the actual wealth and power is), but he still has no recourse against that power.
m463 3y ago
I think the tipping system is kind of a scam that the employer benefits from, then gradually feels entitled to as theirs.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Most people feel entitled to the value of their labor; tipping is merely the incidental mechanism that yields that value. Put another way: we don't have any reason to believe that the author is abstractly "pro" tipping, only that he (shrewdly, like most people) recognizes tipping as a local optima that he has no real control over as a service worker.
  - changoplatanero 3y ago
    The only way to reach the global optimum of no tipping and higher wages would be for customers to start to refuse to give tips.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. Tipping is pernicious precisely because it doesn't have a real disincentive in a culture that's already normalized it. The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change.
      - jstarfish 3y ago
        > Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. [...] The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change. The day unilateral legislation gets enacted will be the day restaurants replace most of the wait staff with ordering kiosks and automated drink dispensers. Waiting on government to fix your problems is a fool's errand.
      - changoplatanero 3y ago
        It indirectly punishes the business because it raises the minimum salary that workers will accept to work there
Glyptodon 3y ago
I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. So is tipping if you get food brought out to you by a server... with the caveat that usually this goes along with paying after you eat, which maybe isn't the case here and might lead to no tipping. I do agree a movie theater is an unusual place to complain about tips, and even though distributing them via prepaid card is complete scumfuckery, it's not the central problem.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  > I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. Actually, this kind of relates to the example in the article -- spending $100+ on tickets and food/drinks and only tipping $2. If the drinks only made up, say $20 of that, then a $2 tip is not unreasonable. That works out to 10% tip, which I think is acceptable for the amount of service provided.
  - Glyptodon 3y ago
    Yep, agree with you.
abeppu 3y ago
I get the frustration with tips for things that are low-touch. When you go to a place that doesn't have waiter service, or you get a prepared item to go and the cashier who you interacted with for 5 seconds turns around tablet that asks for a tip, I'm annoyed -- but this is a place that lets you order an customized cocktail, and have a waiter bring food to your seat. If you think the food is overpriced, don't order it.
jkestner 3y ago
This is probably why Alamo Drafthouse (that theater) now just automatically adds an 18% service fee. The point of the article is to engender empathy for the worker's situation, not necessarily to diagnose or solve the problem. But you might as well go back to "Why do we have this stupid system in the US?" and the answer is Emancipation. https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants-civil-war/ https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  This is better, but I still don't like these %-based fees, because they're still hiding the total fee. How many people are going to sit there, calculate how much the things they ordered will cost total, and then calculate what the service fee is going to be for their order? Few if any. So while this does eliminate the uncomfortable interaction of tipping the staff directly, it doesn't solve the 'hidden fee' aspect of it. Just raise your prices 18%. If you're terribly concerned that people are going to balk at the raised prices, you can put a little explanation in your menu: "You may have noticed our higher prices since the last time you visited. We have raised our prices and eliminated our service fee. Now the price you see on the menu is the price you pay, no tips or additional fees!"
Tangurena2 3y ago
The theatre gets no part of the ticket sales. For the first few weeks that the movie plays, all the proceeds from ticket sales goes to the movie studio. Every dollar to keep the doors open (and pay the staff) comes from sales at the concession stand. The last movie where theatres made a profit from the ticket sales was The Full Monty.

xoa 3y ago

So this is actually a reply to @huytersd post which I think had sort of an interesting potential angle on this I hadn't considered before and I want to steelman a bit more then the replies so far: >Meh I hate tipping culture as much as the next person but you really can’t run, for instance a dive bar, and pay the bartender $15 an hour. The foot traffic doesn’t bring in nearly enough most of the time. So I'm reading this as essentially observing that certain work roles are vastly more dynamic then others. If someone is, as the article describes, working flat out on their feet for weeks straight 8+ hours, maybe that should be $40/hour or more, many multiples of minimum wage. Conversely if it's an absolute dead period where mostly people are just sitting around (and free, and perhaps even should be encouraged, to do other enjoyable/productive stuff on their phones/tablets/computers), and the business is effectively paying for warm bodies to be there just in case, minimum wage would be fine. Tipping kind of, in a hacky way, could sort of capture this, where ideally if business is booming people get paid more (potentially lots more) and if not the wage automatically decreases. However, for all the excellent reasons everyone has pointed out in this thread and others, tipping is a pretty poor way to do it prone to abuse and failures. But a completely flat wage might not reflect the work well enough either in practice. However I think we have a better model for this: sales commissions (be it direct, real estate or the like). There pay is also tied directly to the flow of money, but while not perfect it's much more empowering. The workers are agents. What if instead of tips the law mandated that businesses could opt into a model where yes they can pay a somewhat lower basic wage, but then 25% of all sales themselves went to the workers. Nothing for customers to think about, it's built into the price, but pay also then gets tied very closely to output and revenue. Business employment costs would naturally rise and fall with the revenue flow. There'd still be lots of work for this, America's very broken health model ties in, other complaints as well. But I think that "certain industries would benefit from formalized protected dynamic pay while others are best with static pay" might have something to it, if more fair and empowering methods can be found. Though I'm no expert so there may be holes here!

doublescoop 3y ago

This is a theater that has waitstaff that take orders and bring food and drinks to your seat as you watch the show. Don't want to tip, even though it's baked into the wage calculation? That's fine. The author is just pointing out that market forces means that folks aren't going to stay in those jobs.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> even though it's baked into the wage calculation? Then it should be next to the price on the menu: $x + minimum $y tip.
- Erratic6576 3y ago
  Shouldn’t they have to pay taxes if they printed it like that?
  - mynameishere 3y ago
    You can't avoid taxes by not printing something.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I don't believe retail sales tax applies to tips in most (any?) states.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Why not? Why shouldn't sales tax or whatever tax also be fully paid for each received tip? It is not like other business gets to avoid taxes.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        In principle: the money goes completely to the employee(s) being tipped, so it doesn’t make sense to tax the business for money it doesn’t receive.

woodruffw 3y ago

I think it's an understandable focus: as a service worker, his most immediate recourse is to the people whose money he's handling. (That doesn't make your point about corporate profits wrong.)

1000100_1000101 3y ago
Whose money is he handling? The 1000 people whose $20 he's handling, many of which he likely won't see again for months, or the 1 boss whose $20,000 he's handling daily and sees daily. I think it would be easier to reason with one consistent boss than 1000 new strangers daily... but the boss punts it up to "corporate" and they say no. Instead of pleading with the public to tip more, everyone should just leave. See how "corporate" enjoys paying rent and movie screening fees on a theatre that brings in $0 due to having no staff. Either they shut it down, which is fine, none of the workers were happy there anyway, or they start paying a decent wage, allowing breaks, allowing meal breaks, and allowing vacation like any reasonably humane job.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I don't think this guy sees his "boss." He sees a general manager who makes roughly the same amount as he does. The point you're making is essentially correct (in terms of where the actual wealth and power is), but he still has no recourse against that power.

m463 3y ago

I think the tipping system is kind of a scam that the employer benefits from, then gradually feels entitled to as theirs.

woodruffw 3y ago
Most people feel entitled to the value of their labor; tipping is merely the incidental mechanism that yields that value. Put another way: we don't have any reason to believe that the author is abstractly "pro" tipping, only that he (shrewdly, like most people) recognizes tipping as a local optima that he has no real control over as a service worker.
- changoplatanero 3y ago
  The only way to reach the global optimum of no tipping and higher wages would be for customers to start to refuse to give tips.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. Tipping is pernicious precisely because it doesn't have a real disincentive in a culture that's already normalized it. The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change.
    - jstarfish 3y ago
      > Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. [...] The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change. The day unilateral legislation gets enacted will be the day restaurants replace most of the wait staff with ordering kiosks and automated drink dispensers. Waiting on government to fix your problems is a fool's errand.
    - changoplatanero 3y ago
      It indirectly punishes the business because it raises the minimum salary that workers will accept to work there

Glyptodon 3y ago

I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. So is tipping if you get food brought out to you by a server... with the caveat that usually this goes along with paying after you eat, which maybe isn't the case here and might lead to no tipping. I do agree a movie theater is an unusual place to complain about tips, and even though distributing them via prepaid card is complete scumfuckery, it's not the central problem.

genocidicbunny 3y ago
> I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. Actually, this kind of relates to the example in the article -- spending $100+ on tickets and food/drinks and only tipping $2. If the drinks only made up, say $20 of that, then a $2 tip is not unreasonable. That works out to 10% tip, which I think is acceptable for the amount of service provided.
- Glyptodon 3y ago
  Yep, agree with you.

abeppu 3y ago

I get the frustration with tips for things that are low-touch. When you go to a place that doesn't have waiter service, or you get a prepared item to go and the cashier who you interacted with for 5 seconds turns around tablet that asks for a tip, I'm annoyed -- but this is a place that lets you order an customized cocktail, and have a waiter bring food to your seat. If you think the food is overpriced, don't order it.

jkestner 3y ago

This is probably why Alamo Drafthouse (that theater) now just automatically adds an 18% service fee. The point of the article is to engender empathy for the worker's situation, not necessarily to diagnose or solve the problem. But you might as well go back to "Why do we have this stupid system in the US?" and the answer is Emancipation. https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants-civil-war/ https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...

genocidicbunny 3y ago
This is better, but I still don't like these %-based fees, because they're still hiding the total fee. How many people are going to sit there, calculate how much the things they ordered will cost total, and then calculate what the service fee is going to be for their order? Few if any. So while this does eliminate the uncomfortable interaction of tipping the staff directly, it doesn't solve the 'hidden fee' aspect of it. Just raise your prices 18%. If you're terribly concerned that people are going to balk at the raised prices, you can put a little explanation in your menu: "You may have noticed our higher prices since the last time you visited. We have raised our prices and eliminated our service fee. Now the price you see on the menu is the price you pay, no tips or additional fees!"

Tangurena2 3y ago

The theatre gets no part of the ticket sales. For the first few weeks that the movie plays, all the proceeds from ticket sales goes to the movie studio. Every dollar to keep the doors open (and pay the staff) comes from sales at the concession stand. The last movie where theatres made a profit from the ticket sales was The Full Monty.