10 ms·

10%? 20%? Apps Are Changing How We Tip

25 points by Libertatea 12y ago

izolate 12y ago
I've thought about this too. Instead of "tip creep", I hoped technology would have enabled us to emerge from this nonsensical tipping culture (the US is in dire need of change in this regard).
- edgyswingset 12y ago
  Until we can legislate that servers make at least $7.25/hr nationwide, no amount of technology is going to move us in that regard.
  - zo1 12y ago
    Most states have laws for tipped employees to make sure they take at least that much home. Some are slightly higher, others a bit lower. Here is a link to the Department of Labor site with more info, if you're curious. http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm #Note. The left-most column is the important one.
  - Bjartr 12y ago
    Which states don't enforce that employers have to make up the difference if tips aren't enough to bring a server up to at least minimum wage?
    - minot 12y ago
      If they have to make up the difference often enough, they'll just let you go.
      - zo1 12y ago
        Perhaps, but the owners still have to pay-up. Otherwise, the failing is in the enforcement of the laws.
    - maxsilver 12y ago
      All of them. If your just trying to be pedantic, then yes it's technically required for employers to make up the difference. But in practice, restaurants typically fire anyone who presses the issue. So in practice, all states don't enforce employers making up the difference.
  - Shivetya 12y ago
    It would be better to simply mandate that tips cannot be used in determining total compensation. However I am more along the lines of eliminating tips, raising the menu prices to represent the cost of paying the service staff the market wage, and then looking at the whole experience when deciding on coming back. I never bother with restaurants that have mandatory tips on their checks, its a flat out markup and does not let me decide if the service is good or not. I do think many people suffer tip fatigue as the use of tip jars has become offensive to many, especially in the quick serve food industries.
  - borgia 12y ago
    >Until we can legislate that servers make at least $7.25/hr nationwide, no amount of technology is going to move us in that regard. Even with generous minimum wages, tip culture has crept into Western Europe pretty rapidly. It's more than just a wage technicality that has to change to overcome or dismantle the established tipping culture. I really, really like the idea of being able to just get up and walk out of a restaurant or bar without having to deal with money though. That said, so long as tips remain expected you're going to come across as a jerk if you don't leave something and it'll likely be remembered for the next time you visit.
  - corey 12y ago
    Or just let the market handle it. If people stop tipping, restaurants would be forced to increase wages, because nobody is going to work for $3/hour.
    - edgyswingset 12y ago
      This solution will cause suffering for a great number of people as they have the choice of either making money on the low end of poverty or become unemployed altogether. It's simply not a realistic option.
- mgkimsal 12y ago
  It definitely needs to change. There are very few other industries that have 'tipping' as a core part, and food service is (I think) rather unique in that the server's tips are dependent on loads of other folks who aren't subject to tipping "below min wage" pay, yet typically still get a cut of the tips. I'm thinking of the rest of the staff - managers, busboys, cooks, cleaners, etc. All of those other roles have an impact on the service, yet, AFAIK, only the server has to deal with $2/hr-please-i'm-begging-for-a-tip situation. Tipping has generally no effect on the quality of the rest of the service - food quality, cleanliness, speed, etc. Those are all outside the control of the server, but they're going to bear the brunt of the bad output from those other workers.
  - pdx 12y ago
    When I was a waiter, at the end of the night, I tipped approximately 40% of my tips received, back to the dishwashers, cooks, bartender, and of course, my bus person. The other waiters did this too, so the cooks, might end up with more money than I did, on top of their higher hourly salary. This is as it should be, since their skill level is higher. You tip the waiter, but they should be distributing that tip to the others. If they fail to do so, the cooks will deprioritize their food, the bartender will deprioritize their drinks, the buss person will deprioritize their tables, and they won't be making very good tips anymore. As a customer, I tip 20% if the service is good, 10% if it is average, and I will leave a penny on the table for those who completely screwed up. I have walked a mile in their shoes, so I get to judge them. Was the kitchen slow with the food? Maybe that's because this waiter never shares the wealth with the back of the house. Leave him a penny if you think it's warranted. Don't forgive him for the inadequacy of the rest of the staff. He may have earned their slow down, so why should you reward him? As for tipping vs non-tipping in general. When I go to Paris, I can feel that the staff doesn't care that much about how well they serve me, since they'll get theirs anyway. The incentives are different. In a non-tipping restaurant, it's to the staff's advantage to get you in and get you out, as quickly as possible, to turn over that table, regardless of the happiness level of the customers.
    - mgkimsal 12y ago
      It's definitely not like that in all restaurants - as a dishwasher at a restaurant I never got pooled tips. Some places do it, some don't. This whole "we'll deprioritize your drinks if you don't give me a lot of money" is just... INSANE. It's really bizarre. "He may have earned their slow down, so why should you reward him?" You have no way of knowing why in the first place. And giving him a penny ensures that if this sort of blackmail is going on, this server has now even less leverage in order to try to buy decent service from coworkers. The restaurant owners that let this go on get hurt too. I don't particularly care if my service was bad because the cook was slow because he wasn't getting tipped enough to warrant cooking my food the way I asked for it. I don't care if the service was bad because the server wasn't able to curry favor with the bar staff. I just care the service was shitty, and I won't be back. Even less money for the bar staff, cooks, dishwashers and ultimately owners. In tipping restaurants, the incentive is still for turnover as fast as possible. The extra $5 they might get from me is less overall than the extra $30 they'll get from packing in 3 more tables that night. And if everyone is sharing tips, they all have even more incentive for faster turnover, regardless of my happiness. EDIT: if restaurants were transparent with everything up front - detailing where tips go, showing me a scoreboard of which servers had favor with bar staff and line cooks, and let me choose the 'best' staff, great. I don't get any of that advantage. I get a random server who may just have pissed someone off last week, and nothing I can do about it.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  This is discussed in the article. Do you not agree with the methods presented?
zkhalique 12y ago
Just off the top of my head ... why not precalculate the tip for the majority of people who don't to fiddle with it, and simply let people change the tip if they really want, for those times when the service was atrocious?
- jonlucc 12y ago
  I thought Square did this, but it must be one of the other systems. There are buttons for 15%, 18%, and 20% and a custom button that allows you to enter an arbitrary amount.
  - zkhalique 12y ago
    Right, but instead of those buttons, making you choose, the default would just be 15% (or whatever is standard for that type of service) and the other choice would be to "tweak it"
Huud1e 12y ago
Very interesting indeed, Libertatea.
- smt88 12y ago
  In case you're wondering, you're being downvoted because you're not supposed to say things like "this is interesting" or "I agree" on HN. Comments are supposed to have content to them. Otherwise they should just be in the form of upvotes.
ryannevius 12y ago
I'm a native Californian who has been abroad in Vietnam and Italy for the past year and a half (where tipping is very, very uncommon). Tipping was just second-nature before I left the states. However, when I visited over the summer, I couldn't believe how wrong tipping felt. Wrong to feel social pressure to tip. Wrong to feel an internal obligation to tip, due to the (often) low wages paid to restaurant employees. Wrong to feel "cheated" by the menu price (which is 15-25% below the actual cost of the meal). I can only hope that tipping ceases to exist in the States someday. Not only for my own benefit; but for the benefit of most employees who rely on tips to get through their lives.
- madsravn 12y ago
  I am from Denmark. 10 years ago tipping was only something you saw in movies. Today some places are trying it and they ask upfront "Do you want to leave a tip?". It seems so forced and wrong. It just makes the whole experience end in on weird note. Needless to say, I dislike tipping and I feel it should be a part of the salary. The servers need to be able to just focus on their jobs.
  - jonlucc 12y ago
    Upfront as in before the service? I have a problem with automated gas pumps asking if I need a receipt before I finish the transaction just in case they use that as a cue to skim from my transaction. I would be very uncomfortable deciding whether to tip before the service is provided.
  - borgia 12y ago
    >I am from Denmark. 10 years ago tipping was only something you saw in movies. Today some places are trying it and they ask upfront "Do you want to leave a tip?". It seems so forced and wrong. It just makes the whole experience end in on weird note. This is so weird. I'm European and last lived in Ireland for quite a few years. When I first got there tipping was basically not a done thing, at all, and then it started to creep in. When I left last year it had somehow become the standard in restaurants, etc. It has crept into Europe from the US but without the conditions that made tipping necessary in the US and the customer service experience you get in Europe, despite the tipping culture having now been seemingly normalised, you do not get anything near the level of customer service experience you get in the US. I'm a software engineer, people don't tip me for making good software, it's what is expected of me. When I was in college I worked in various retail positions. People did not tip me there because providing good customer service was expected of me. So why, when there is a decent minimum wage in place, are waiting staff somehow different? It's incredibly frustrating.
zo1 12y ago
Interesting, hope this topic/discussion picks up steam here on HN. I'm really curious to see what people have to say about tipping in general. #Edit. More info why I'd like this to be discussed on HN. I say this, as I've discussed this topic many times with many individuals online. Frankly, most of them are very very hostile. I've received death threats from servers for suggesting the remove of the tipping culture. To be fair, it was on Facebook, but at the same time that is a bit disturbing. These are individuals making credible, violent, disgusting threats because they can't consider alternate views on something they are single-minded on. I do generally find that HN discussion is quite a bit better. If not for the fact that downvoting is much more strict, then for the quality of ideas/insights that people here have. Sometimes, quite different to what I've been exposed to before. +1 for that.
- smt88 12y ago
  In case you're wondering, you're being downvoted because you're not supposed to say things like "this is interesting" or "I agree" on HN. Comments are supposed to have content to them. Otherwise they should just be in the form of upvotes. Check out the link I posted elsewhere to the Planet Money episode on tipping.
  - collyw 12y ago
    got to love HN's unwritten rules.
    - fennecfoxen 12y ago
      who's unwritten? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - smt88 12y ago
        If this is a rule, it actually is unwritten. There's nothing in the guidelines that says to upvote instead of writing "I agree" comments. However, this is a de facto rule because people will downvote such comments, so I thought it was worth warning people about.
smt88 12y ago
There's a very interesting episode of Planet Money about tipping[1]. I was neutral on tipping before listening, and now I'm staunchly against it. Not only is it discriminatory, it has no effect on the quality of service. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/24/137346289/why-we-tip http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/24/137346289/why-we-t...
microcolonel 12y ago
(I live in Canada) They can do whatever they want. I go to a variety of places for lunch. Some places have tips, some places don't. When they have tips, I tend to tip based on extent and quality of service(I never tip with percentage). My average tip for a lunch service is about four dollars, when they go above and beyond, are especially prompt and helpful, or respond to my emotional condition, I tend to tip higher. Lunch is my only daily meal, and service at lunch is just as important as the food in my opinion, whether I'm taking somebody along and want to be taken care of, or just trying to eat something that will relieve stress from work. I don't experience any pressure while tipping; I just add my few bucks, and if something special has happened, I add a couple more; I don't bother myself with percentages, except maybe to keep above the bare minimum 20% gratuity so I don't get any funny looks out the door.
geoelectric 12y ago
Like a lot of Americans, I never went out of the country, so really had never given tipping a second thought besides laughing at Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs. Having been to Europe and Asia a few times in last few years, I've seen the other side now. And yeah, what we do is just strange, and I don't think it's helpful at all. The service still has the usual variation of suck vs. fine. The thing is that I feel like part of a problem. The truth is that even here I probably overtip (15-20% on -any- service, taxi, hair, whatever) mostly because I can't remember our tipping rules on all the various things you're supposed to tip for, and because trying to do calculations on the fly are a burden. It's either "the couple of bucks in my pocket" for stuff like carrying bags or "20% on the final bill" for almost anything else because that's what's easy to figure out quickly in my head. Further, I don't carry cash anymore for the most part, so I'm constantly shorting delivery people, service professionals, all that, because I can't add the tip to the final bill but don't have currency. So really wish we'd back off of it. I'd happily just bump up the portion of my payment on a number of things by 15%+ if that's what it took to compensate people fairly without my having to try to remember what's right. Then I could tip for actual exemplary service instead of just feeling mildly confused (or screwed) all the time.
marak830 12y ago
To me it sounds (from comments, not article), that the reliance on tips is because ibstead of paying the wait staff a proper wage, they can set their menu/advertised price lower and make assumptions. Now as someone who not obly worked in hospitality but also ran a few restaurants, this is an insane premise. How the hell could you rely in professional wait staff (not students but actual trained and comitted staff), if you cant guarantee them a good wage to vegin with. Tipping is supposeto show your appreciated for exceptional service, to force your staff to assume its a guaranteed alotment is bullshit. Also, im in japan now (out of hospitality yay), i get exceptional service everywhrre with no expectation of tips, and damned if i dont tip a hell of a lot more here.

25 points by Libertatea 12y ago

I've thought about this too. Instead of "tip creep", I hoped technology would have enabled us to emerge from this nonsensical tipping culture (the US is in dire need of change in this regard).

edgyswingset 12y ago
Until we can legislate that servers make at least $7.25/hr nationwide, no amount of technology is going to move us in that regard.
- zo1 12y ago
  Most states have laws for tipped employees to make sure they take at least that much home. Some are slightly higher, others a bit lower. Here is a link to the Department of Labor site with more info, if you're curious. http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm #Note. The left-most column is the important one.
- Bjartr 12y ago
  Which states don't enforce that employers have to make up the difference if tips aren't enough to bring a server up to at least minimum wage?
  - minot 12y ago
    If they have to make up the difference often enough, they'll just let you go.
    - zo1 12y ago
      Perhaps, but the owners still have to pay-up. Otherwise, the failing is in the enforcement of the laws.
  - maxsilver 12y ago
    All of them. If your just trying to be pedantic, then yes it's technically required for employers to make up the difference. But in practice, restaurants typically fire anyone who presses the issue. So in practice, all states don't enforce employers making up the difference.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  It would be better to simply mandate that tips cannot be used in determining total compensation. However I am more along the lines of eliminating tips, raising the menu prices to represent the cost of paying the service staff the market wage, and then looking at the whole experience when deciding on coming back. I never bother with restaurants that have mandatory tips on their checks, its a flat out markup and does not let me decide if the service is good or not. I do think many people suffer tip fatigue as the use of tip jars has become offensive to many, especially in the quick serve food industries.
- borgia 12y ago
  >Until we can legislate that servers make at least $7.25/hr nationwide, no amount of technology is going to move us in that regard. Even with generous minimum wages, tip culture has crept into Western Europe pretty rapidly. It's more than just a wage technicality that has to change to overcome or dismantle the established tipping culture. I really, really like the idea of being able to just get up and walk out of a restaurant or bar without having to deal with money though. That said, so long as tips remain expected you're going to come across as a jerk if you don't leave something and it'll likely be remembered for the next time you visit.
- corey 12y ago
  Or just let the market handle it. If people stop tipping, restaurants would be forced to increase wages, because nobody is going to work for $3/hour.
  - edgyswingset 12y ago
    This solution will cause suffering for a great number of people as they have the choice of either making money on the low end of poverty or become unemployed altogether. It's simply not a realistic option.
mgkimsal 12y ago
It definitely needs to change. There are very few other industries that have 'tipping' as a core part, and food service is (I think) rather unique in that the server's tips are dependent on loads of other folks who aren't subject to tipping "below min wage" pay, yet typically still get a cut of the tips. I'm thinking of the rest of the staff - managers, busboys, cooks, cleaners, etc. All of those other roles have an impact on the service, yet, AFAIK, only the server has to deal with $2/hr-please-i'm-begging-for-a-tip situation. Tipping has generally no effect on the quality of the rest of the service - food quality, cleanliness, speed, etc. Those are all outside the control of the server, but they're going to bear the brunt of the bad output from those other workers.
- pdx 12y ago
  When I was a waiter, at the end of the night, I tipped approximately 40% of my tips received, back to the dishwashers, cooks, bartender, and of course, my bus person. The other waiters did this too, so the cooks, might end up with more money than I did, on top of their higher hourly salary. This is as it should be, since their skill level is higher. You tip the waiter, but they should be distributing that tip to the others. If they fail to do so, the cooks will deprioritize their food, the bartender will deprioritize their drinks, the buss person will deprioritize their tables, and they won't be making very good tips anymore. As a customer, I tip 20% if the service is good, 10% if it is average, and I will leave a penny on the table for those who completely screwed up. I have walked a mile in their shoes, so I get to judge them. Was the kitchen slow with the food? Maybe that's because this waiter never shares the wealth with the back of the house. Leave him a penny if you think it's warranted. Don't forgive him for the inadequacy of the rest of the staff. He may have earned their slow down, so why should you reward him? As for tipping vs non-tipping in general. When I go to Paris, I can feel that the staff doesn't care that much about how well they serve me, since they'll get theirs anyway. The incentives are different. In a non-tipping restaurant, it's to the staff's advantage to get you in and get you out, as quickly as possible, to turn over that table, regardless of the happiness level of the customers.
  - mgkimsal 12y ago
    It's definitely not like that in all restaurants - as a dishwasher at a restaurant I never got pooled tips. Some places do it, some don't. This whole "we'll deprioritize your drinks if you don't give me a lot of money" is just... INSANE. It's really bizarre. "He may have earned their slow down, so why should you reward him?" You have no way of knowing why in the first place. And giving him a penny ensures that if this sort of blackmail is going on, this server has now even less leverage in order to try to buy decent service from coworkers. The restaurant owners that let this go on get hurt too. I don't particularly care if my service was bad because the cook was slow because he wasn't getting tipped enough to warrant cooking my food the way I asked for it. I don't care if the service was bad because the server wasn't able to curry favor with the bar staff. I just care the service was shitty, and I won't be back. Even less money for the bar staff, cooks, dishwashers and ultimately owners. In tipping restaurants, the incentive is still for turnover as fast as possible. The extra $5 they might get from me is less overall than the extra $30 they'll get from packing in 3 more tables that night. And if everyone is sharing tips, they all have even more incentive for faster turnover, regardless of my happiness. EDIT: if restaurants were transparent with everything up front - detailing where tips go, showing me a scoreboard of which servers had favor with bar staff and line cooks, and let me choose the 'best' staff, great. I don't get any of that advantage. I get a random server who may just have pissed someone off last week, and nothing I can do about it.
jasonlotito 12y ago
This is discussed in the article. Do you not agree with the methods presented?

zkhalique 12y ago

Just off the top of my head ... why not precalculate the tip for the majority of people who don't to fiddle with it, and simply let people change the tip if they really want, for those times when the service was atrocious?

jonlucc 12y ago
I thought Square did this, but it must be one of the other systems. There are buttons for 15%, 18%, and 20% and a custom button that allows you to enter an arbitrary amount.
- zkhalique 12y ago
  Right, but instead of those buttons, making you choose, the default would just be 15% (or whatever is standard for that type of service) and the other choice would be to "tweak it"

Huud1e 12y ago

Very interesting indeed, Libertatea.

smt88 12y ago
In case you're wondering, you're being downvoted because you're not supposed to say things like "this is interesting" or "I agree" on HN. Comments are supposed to have content to them. Otherwise they should just be in the form of upvotes.

ryannevius 12y ago

I'm a native Californian who has been abroad in Vietnam and Italy for the past year and a half (where tipping is very, very uncommon). Tipping was just second-nature before I left the states. However, when I visited over the summer, I couldn't believe how wrong tipping felt. Wrong to feel social pressure to tip. Wrong to feel an internal obligation to tip, due to the (often) low wages paid to restaurant employees. Wrong to feel "cheated" by the menu price (which is 15-25% below the actual cost of the meal). I can only hope that tipping ceases to exist in the States someday. Not only for my own benefit; but for the benefit of most employees who rely on tips to get through their lives.

madsravn 12y ago
I am from Denmark. 10 years ago tipping was only something you saw in movies. Today some places are trying it and they ask upfront "Do you want to leave a tip?". It seems so forced and wrong. It just makes the whole experience end in on weird note. Needless to say, I dislike tipping and I feel it should be a part of the salary. The servers need to be able to just focus on their jobs.
- jonlucc 12y ago
  Upfront as in before the service? I have a problem with automated gas pumps asking if I need a receipt before I finish the transaction just in case they use that as a cue to skim from my transaction. I would be very uncomfortable deciding whether to tip before the service is provided.
- borgia 12y ago
  >I am from Denmark. 10 years ago tipping was only something you saw in movies. Today some places are trying it and they ask upfront "Do you want to leave a tip?". It seems so forced and wrong. It just makes the whole experience end in on weird note. This is so weird. I'm European and last lived in Ireland for quite a few years. When I first got there tipping was basically not a done thing, at all, and then it started to creep in. When I left last year it had somehow become the standard in restaurants, etc. It has crept into Europe from the US but without the conditions that made tipping necessary in the US and the customer service experience you get in Europe, despite the tipping culture having now been seemingly normalised, you do not get anything near the level of customer service experience you get in the US. I'm a software engineer, people don't tip me for making good software, it's what is expected of me. When I was in college I worked in various retail positions. People did not tip me there because providing good customer service was expected of me. So why, when there is a decent minimum wage in place, are waiting staff somehow different? It's incredibly frustrating.

zo1 12y ago

Interesting, hope this topic/discussion picks up steam here on HN. I'm really curious to see what people have to say about tipping in general. #Edit. More info why I'd like this to be discussed on HN. I say this, as I've discussed this topic many times with many individuals online. Frankly, most of them are very very hostile. I've received death threats from servers for suggesting the remove of the tipping culture. To be fair, it was on Facebook, but at the same time that is a bit disturbing. These are individuals making credible, violent, disgusting threats because they can't consider alternate views on something they are single-minded on. I do generally find that HN discussion is quite a bit better. If not for the fact that downvoting is much more strict, then for the quality of ideas/insights that people here have. Sometimes, quite different to what I've been exposed to before. +1 for that.

smt88 12y ago
In case you're wondering, you're being downvoted because you're not supposed to say things like "this is interesting" or "I agree" on HN. Comments are supposed to have content to them. Otherwise they should just be in the form of upvotes. Check out the link I posted elsewhere to the Planet Money episode on tipping.
- collyw 12y ago
  got to love HN's unwritten rules.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    who's unwritten? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - smt88 12y ago
      If this is a rule, it actually is unwritten. There's nothing in the guidelines that says to upvote instead of writing "I agree" comments. However, this is a de facto rule because people will downvote such comments, so I thought it was worth warning people about.

smt88 12y ago

There's a very interesting episode of Planet Money about tipping[1]. I was neutral on tipping before listening, and now I'm staunchly against it. Not only is it discriminatory, it has no effect on the quality of service. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/24/137346289/why-we-tip http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/24/137346289/why-we-t...

microcolonel 12y ago

(I live in Canada) They can do whatever they want. I go to a variety of places for lunch. Some places have tips, some places don't. When they have tips, I tend to tip based on extent and quality of service(I never tip with percentage). My average tip for a lunch service is about four dollars, when they go above and beyond, are especially prompt and helpful, or respond to my emotional condition, I tend to tip higher. Lunch is my only daily meal, and service at lunch is just as important as the food in my opinion, whether I'm taking somebody along and want to be taken care of, or just trying to eat something that will relieve stress from work. I don't experience any pressure while tipping; I just add my few bucks, and if something special has happened, I add a couple more; I don't bother myself with percentages, except maybe to keep above the bare minimum 20% gratuity so I don't get any funny looks out the door.

geoelectric 12y ago

Like a lot of Americans, I never went out of the country, so really had never given tipping a second thought besides laughing at Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs. Having been to Europe and Asia a few times in last few years, I've seen the other side now. And yeah, what we do is just strange, and I don't think it's helpful at all. The service still has the usual variation of suck vs. fine. The thing is that I feel like part of a problem. The truth is that even here I probably overtip (15-20% on -any- service, taxi, hair, whatever) mostly because I can't remember our tipping rules on all the various things you're supposed to tip for, and because trying to do calculations on the fly are a burden. It's either "the couple of bucks in my pocket" for stuff like carrying bags or "20% on the final bill" for almost anything else because that's what's easy to figure out quickly in my head. Further, I don't carry cash anymore for the most part, so I'm constantly shorting delivery people, service professionals, all that, because I can't add the tip to the final bill but don't have currency. So really wish we'd back off of it. I'd happily just bump up the portion of my payment on a number of things by 15%+ if that's what it took to compensate people fairly without my having to try to remember what's right. Then I could tip for actual exemplary service instead of just feeling mildly confused (or screwed) all the time.

marak830 12y ago

To me it sounds (from comments, not article), that the reliance on tips is because ibstead of paying the wait staff a proper wage, they can set their menu/advertised price lower and make assumptions. Now as someone who not obly worked in hospitality but also ran a few restaurants, this is an insane premise. How the hell could you rely in professional wait staff (not students but actual trained and comitted staff), if you cant guarantee them a good wage to vegin with. Tipping is supposeto show your appreciated for exceptional service, to force your staff to assume its a guaranteed alotment is bullshit. Also, im in japan now (out of hospitality yay), i get exceptional service everywhrre with no expectation of tips, and damned if i dont tip a hell of a lot more here.