4 ms·

Why? I'm not sure I see how that follows.

by Gormo 2y ago

bastawhiz 2y ago
Because the employee tips are effectively taken by the restaurant up to the point where they make "normal" minimum wage. If tipped employee compensation was actually about compensating those folks for their effort, they should received the tips they earn. (Tipped minimum wage gets increased to standard minimum wage if you earn fewer than the difference in tips—which is functionally identical to having $5 and a bit of your tips withheld every hour) As it stands today, if you're tipped and you work a shift where there are fewer customers, you implicitly get paid less (and have more of your tips soaked up by your employer) for exactly the same amount of effort. If you work a graveyard shift for eight hours and see $40 in tips from eight customers, you effectively worked minimum wage with $0 in tips, not minimum wage plus $40. For the people working those jobs, that's multiple meals or tank of gas. There's no practical reason for having a lower minimum wage for tipped employees, it's literally just an excuse for employers to pay their tipped employees less. If we as a society actually believed that some professions should be compensated based on effort, there would be a different minimum wage for people compensated by commission. But that doesn't exist. So to answer your question, you're not necessarily "directly compensating" the employee, because a non-trivial percentage of your tip goes towards subsidizing their employer.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  This varies by state, though.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
You don't seem to see a lot of things. If anyone ever tried to tip me when I was on-site I don't know what I'd do. Whatever your job is or was, are you not a professional who already gets paid well for your work? You're at my office as a consultant already getting paid a good salary by your company, and I try to flip you a 50, you just take it? Oh right, that's why you laughed at all my jokes. Well good boy. I like that. Tipping reduces the tip receiver to a prostitute. The only people who are ok with that are people who like the feeling of being on the top side of that power dynamic.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > You don't seem to see a lot of things. I don't recall mentioning anything else. What your basis for making this claim? > Tipping reduces the tip receiver to a prostitute. At the end of the day, a prostitute is also a service provider engaged in a fee-for-service transaction. Scrape away the emotion-laden woo-woo here, and I don't see that there's anything much of a substantive argument -- it seems completely proper for a portion of a service provider's compensation to come directly from the party who the service is being provided to, regardless of whether there's some other middleman in the transaction. You're trying to project your own prejudices onto others here, but I doubt the people who are happy to make higher income via tips than they otherwise would are going to agree with you.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    I said prostitute, not sex worker or service provider. We all trade our time and even our bodies for money ultimately.

Why? I'm not sure I see how that follows.

by Gormo 2y ago

Why? I'm not sure I see how that follows.

Because the employee tips are effectively taken by the restaurant up to the point where they make "normal" minimum wage. If tipped employee compensation was actually about compensating those folks for their effort, they should received the tips they earn. (Tipped minimum wage gets increased to standard minimum wage if you earn fewer than the difference in tips—which is functionally identical to having $5 and a bit of your tips withheld every hour) As it stands today, if you're tipped and you work a shift where there are fewer customers, you implicitly get paid less (and have more of your tips soaked up by your employer) for exactly the same amount of effort. If you work a graveyard shift for eight hours and see $40 in tips from eight customers, you effectively worked minimum wage with $0 in tips, not minimum wage plus $40. For the people working those jobs, that's multiple meals or tank of gas. There's no practical reason for having a lower minimum wage for tipped employees, it's literally just an excuse for employers to pay their tipped employees less. If we as a society actually believed that some professions should be compensated based on effort, there would be a different minimum wage for people compensated by commission. But that doesn't exist. So to answer your question, you're not necessarily "directly compensating" the employee, because a non-trivial percentage of your tip goes towards subsidizing their employer.

CalRobert 2y ago
This varies by state, though.

Brian_K_White 2y ago

You don't seem to see a lot of things. If anyone ever tried to tip me when I was on-site I don't know what I'd do. Whatever your job is or was, are you not a professional who already gets paid well for your work? You're at my office as a consultant already getting paid a good salary by your company, and I try to flip you a 50, you just take it? Oh right, that's why you laughed at all my jokes. Well good boy. I like that. Tipping reduces the tip receiver to a prostitute. The only people who are ok with that are people who like the feeling of being on the top side of that power dynamic.

Gormo 2y ago
> You don't seem to see a lot of things. I don't recall mentioning anything else. What your basis for making this claim? > Tipping reduces the tip receiver to a prostitute. At the end of the day, a prostitute is also a service provider engaged in a fee-for-service transaction. Scrape away the emotion-laden woo-woo here, and I don't see that there's anything much of a substantive argument -- it seems completely proper for a portion of a service provider's compensation to come directly from the party who the service is being provided to, regardless of whether there's some other middleman in the transaction. You're trying to project your own prejudices onto others here, but I doubt the people who are happy to make higher income via tips than they otherwise would are going to agree with you.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  I said prostitute, not sex worker or service provider. We all trade our time and even our bodies for money ultimately.