Perhaps you’ve noticed. We have reached a tipping point in the country over tipping.
To tip or not to tip has led to Shakespearean soliloquies by customers explaining why they refuse to tip for certain things.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers were grateful for those who seemingly risked their safety so we could get groceries, order dinner or anything that made our lives feel normal. A nice tip was the least we could do to show gratitude.
But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained; and customers are upset.
A new study from Pew Research shows most American adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.
We aren’t anywhere near a “tipping point” with regard to tipping. This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they’d still pay the same fucking total cost.
If your server makes a living by your 15% then the actual service you’re being charged for costs 15% more than your menu price. You’re just paying part later.
Your alternative to tipping is just servers being paid out X% of food sold, which means that food is going to cost more.
Being bad at math is no basis for an argument.
Tipping is bad culture because we as customers should not need to directly subsidize the employees paychecks. There is too much variability in that. I’ve worked in restaurants where there is a slow day. I’ve seen servers on busy nights leave with $10 in tips because tables just refuse to tip anyone.
The restaurant should raise their prices and pay all employees a livable wage regardless of position. It’s not about being bad at math. It’s about some people not wanting to tip and the only one getting fucked over is the person on the very bottom with no control. It’s about that same person having to spend 8 hours on a slow Wednesday morning with maybe 2 customers all day just not getting the tips to feed their family. It shouldn’t matter how many customers a server gets. They should get paid for the hours worked, not the customers served
Then get a job that isn’t tip based. Folks take those jobs because “I usually make more in tips” but that’s literally the gamble you sign up for with that mentality. I don’t want to take that gamble, so I work a job that isn’t reliant on tips. I don’t have good days where some rich dude gives me 100 bucks for no reason, but I also don’t have bad days where I make less than I expect and don’t know how to pay my bills. Tipping culture is bullshit and it’s the owning class exploiting us all, but workers who sign up to work for tipped based jobs know what they are getting into and don’t get my sympathy any more than some dude working at Best Buy hating his life does
Tipping is bad culture because we as customers should not need to directly subsidize the employees paycheck
This is literally what all business transactions are.
The restaurant should raise their prices and pay all employees a livable wage regardless of position
Right, so the discussion is about how you want the pay to work, and there are lots of opinions on that. As a person who served for a long time, I would have not wanted to go by percent of food order at one restaurant but would have vastly preferred that at another, literally in the same chain of restaurants.
I think the concept of ending tipping and paying more works, but I think there will be some sticker shock for a lot of goods. This is really baked into the system.
It won’t actually cost more but it’ll seem like it does, and perception is everything.
I simply don’t tip, it’s not my responsibility. How the workers and owners figure out how to deal with it, isn’t my problem.
And yet people pay significantly more tipping than they would if prices just increased to cover actual wages. Tipped workers make a lot of fuckin money.
I don’t think this is about servers. I think it’s about tipping in places that used to not require tipping. Like I went to a concert and bought a t-shirt and the kiosk asked me if I’d like to tip.
Right, it’s a hidden cost. That’s what people don’t like. There’s a real discussion to have, but at least have that discussion.
If people are pursuing those jobs because they make more because of tipping (which is definitely happening, and why it is spreading) then the market for labor is saying pay us more. To pay them more, you need to charge more. This is where people like to pretend you can just take money from the rich owner and boom you don’t need to raise prices. This math never works.
Thus, their argument is based on being bad at math. The price is the price, and we just aren’t being honest with ourselves about it. If we value laborers, and advocate for them, we should be honest about our willingness to pay the price of their labor.
Have the discussion be about that - do we want the price fixed and up-front or variable and based on societal pressure, essentially? Is guilt preferable to higher pricing?
Like I said, a discussion worth having, but it’s never the one people have.
I disagree, the math you mentioned that “never works” can work, if put into practice. The greedy bourgeoisie could absolutely stand to lose a few bucks in profit to give that money to the bottom line. Sure, they miss out on another yacht, but their bottom line workers get to have a decent standard of living. What is the math that never works? Please explain in detail.
Why would the total price to the customer be more? I mean, the customer is already paying 20% on the total in tips.
I’m not saying it would necessarily be more, I’m saying it wouldn’t be hidden.
I do think it would be slightly higher than 20%
This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they’d still pay the same fucking total cost.
That’s far better than my tips subsidizing the people who don’t tip. Tipping creates a perverse incentive to fuck people over.
