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"Would you like to leave a tip for your server?" "20%." "And the cook?" "What?" "The cook wants in on the no-tax-on-tips so we're asking how much you'

• sebtron 1y ago
  If you think this is absurd, this is how I feel, coming from a non-tipping country, when I read about the tipping culture in the US.
  • epolanski 1y ago
    The toxic tipping culture is spilling abroad too. Several restaurant owners are advocating in Italy to make 20% tips mandatory so they can reduce their costs.
    • robertlagrant 1y ago
      It's not "spilling abroad". Italy had tips built into their bills when I went there over 20 years ago.
      • mystifyingpoi 1y ago
        That's just paying with extra steps.
      • epolanski 1y ago
        Nonsense. What you're referring to as "tip", is the coperto. It's a minimal, fixed, optional fee that includes service, bread and table setting. Not every place makes you pay it, it's more common in more expensive restaurants, but still, it ranges from 0 to an average 2 euros per person. Comparing it to %-based mandatory tips in US is nonsense.
      • kamma4434 1y ago
        In Italy tips are never required as are a part of what you pay for. You leave a tip for outstanding service if you want, but it’s neither mandated nor customary.
        • robertlagrant 1y ago
          No one's saying they're required. When you say it's not customary, how do you reconcile that with it being printed as part of the bill?
          • sebtron 1y ago
            If it is printed on the bill it is not a tip. You must be talking about "coperto", i.e. servics costs. This money does goes to the waiter.
      • stefantalpalaru 1y ago
        [dead]
  • tirant 1y ago
    Tipping has a powerful advantage: it aligns the incentives of customers and servers almost perfectly. Because tips aren’t capped, waiters are motivated to go above and beyond to satisfy each guest. Without tipping, the server’s motivation often drops to providing only adequate service—more in line with the restaurant’s interests than with each individual diner’s needs. You can see this difference in customer experience worldwide. Nowhere delivers consistently attentive service quite like the US. By contrast, many European countries, especially those where tipping is uncommon (such as the Netherlands), often provide service that feels efficient but impersonal.
    • malnourish 1y ago
      Personally, I could do without hyper-attentive wait staff. Dining out in Italy is phenomenal for many reasons, a laid back serving culture is just one of them.
      • Yeul 1y ago
        As a Dutch person I despise fake smiles and servile attitude.Especially when it is bought with money.
        • goodpoint 1y ago
          In US I got exaggerated smiles with *winks* from waitresses. No, they were not genuinely flirting with me.
    • mxfh 1y ago
      That's anectdotal. There is literally zero alignment or correlation between tipping and good service. You want to have a stress free experience the waiters tries to upsell you at every corner. If you mistake upselling for attention then you're part of the tipping complex already. Good service comes from good training and experience not the assumed money left over in your wallet. That's the businesses goal of not leaving any money on the table. So the alignment is between the business owner and the employee if anything, not between employee and customer. I would make an exception for bars, but that's about it.
  • gchamonlive 1y ago
    Yeah, it's optional but if you don't tip everybody loses their minds. I've experienced this once abroad, I was with a group of exchange students that didn't want to pay the tip because students are always broke, and the cashier was mad to the point of being aggressive. In Brazil we have 10% tip which you can opt out, and we usually do it when there is a problem with the service, but I wouldn't think twice to ask for the tip to be excluded if I was undergoing financial hardships, and I'm sure nobody would bat an eye. I think it's not just the tip culture that is toxic. I feel like the entire American culture is plagued by toxic masculinity, the gun culture and hyper individuality.
    • brookst 1y ago
      I don’t disagree with your diagnosis of American culture, but the tip thing is just shifting wages from employer to customer. It’s no different from VAT versus sales tax: same result, different math. Opting not to tip when it is part of the economic transaction is no different from walking out with the silverware; not expressly forbidden, just a breach of social contract.
      • gchamonlive 1y ago
        Then why call it a tip? It's just cynical then, which I don't know what's worse.
        • brookst 1y ago
          Plenty of customs don’t make logical sense, and plenty of words have dramatically changed meaning over time. Don’t read too much into the word. A “fine” used to mean a voluntary settlement.
          • gchamonlive 1y ago
            You are right, I wasn't really thinking about how customs evolve organically. Outrage kinda blinded me because that experience was such a culture clash that clouded my understanding. Thanks. I mean, I still feel like using the word "tip" for something that is culturally not optional, even though you can opt out, is unnecessarily confusing and hostile, but that's what respecting foreign culture is all about.
• gommm 1y ago
  To be fair, tipping the cook makes more sense to me than the waiter. I come to a restaurant for the food, I don't particularly care about the service beyond a certain baseline. It never makes sense to me that waiters can earn more with tips than kitchen staff.
  • dbbk 1y ago
    Yes it seems totally arbitrary. When I first visited the US I paid for our group, and didn't tip the waiter because he got our order wrong, and was met with aghast faces. I didn't realise you're supposed to tip EVEN when the service is bad!
    • rogueparitybit 1y ago
      The employer is shifting the responsibility of wages to the customer (you). It is customary in business to pay a wage even if an employee makes a mistake. The tipout structure of most restaurants, where the server tips out the kitchen and support staff, also collects a percentage of all *sales* from the server's tips, so not tipping results in a server paying your tipout from their tips just for the privilege of serving you, hence the agast faces. Tipping should be illegal to substitute for pay. Majority-tipped restaurants are almost always predatory and take advantage of both customers and employees in order to further enrich the owners.
  • brookst 1y ago
    That’s a very engineering viewpoint. But much of the world values the whole package, including clean and neatly set tables and place settings, advice on the menu, timing of courses, QA of prep and fixing issues without customer intervention, help with any mishaps like spilled drinks or dropped silverware, boxing of food to go, etc. A utilitarian only interested in pure food quality is much better off cooking at home. You can do better at a quarter the price. Food/software is only about 25% of the cost and value in these businesses, though perceptions on value differ of course.
  • elygre 1y ago
    «Tip-pooling» is common many places. This implies that tips is shared between employees, for example including the kitchen staff.
• dugmartin 1y ago
  In the US, the cook and busboys and other support staff normally also receive tips as part of the "tipping out" system where the servers split part of their tips. It is voluntary but not really - if you, as a server, don't tip out your tables start not getting their food as fast and the table isn't turned as fast.
• Folcon 1y ago
  I have a question for the American's in the audience here. There's always this narrative about tipping allowing for exceptional service and I wanted to know what meta advantages or options have you been given or seen as a result of this? I'm reminded by Charlie Sheen's character in two and a half men consistently tipping the pizza delivery driver who brings him a champagne bottle with his pizza. As a comparison elsewhere, I've had French wait staff bring me bread at the table whenever I visit Paris and even if the restaurant is out they source it from nearby restaurants unprompted with no expectation of a tip even though I would perceive that as being above and beyond service. I'm trying to understand if we're all on the same page about great and even exceptional service :)
  • thinkharderdev 1y ago
    I'm not a fan of tipping in general, but as an American who has spent a lot of time in Europe, my experience is that the level of service in American restaurants is quite a bit higher than in European ones on average. That's not to say that in Europe it's bad service per se, and in certain ways I actually prefer it in Europe where the server isn't constantly "checking in" on me while I'm trying to have dinner.
    • VBprogrammer 1y ago
      I can't speak for the rest of Europe but, as a Brit, I find this kind of overbearing and inauthentic type of service somewhere between cringe and outright annoying. Especially when it's accompanied by a lack of competency, for example missing items or not doing what they said they'd do.
      • Fade_Dance 1y ago
        A lot of people feel this way, but as someone with experience here, it's also not just about trying to be overbearing. Remember, servers are dealing with the average American. A decent portion of the people that come in are extremely demanding. /Three rounds of sauce on the side in different configurations... Can I have the sauce from that dish on the other table on the side of my dish? Oh it's part of the cooking process? Can you ask the chef if he can put it in a little ramekin? Oh it's a sickly sweet glaze that needs to be cooked? I think I'll try a little bit of it anyway. Ewww this is disgusting take this back! Dealing with this day in and day out will default you to that service state after a while, especially because the "average working class Americans" often tip the best. Every server knows screwing up the actual food nukes their tip (and it often does). If they're working in that context and still messing that up, well, they probably can't be helped.