The weird thing is it is coming into fruition at self serve buys at places like McDonalds in Australia. We DON’T tip in Australia. We never have, and why would I want to give a machine a tip for something a properly paid employee did without the tip?
I feel like the golden generation was the one before millennials because you could literally just sit down and not be bombarded with total bull shit.
I have never been asked to tip at any fast food restaurant in Australia. The closest is Maccas will ask if you want to round up and donate the extra to charity
It's because they know they're not keeping wages up with the market, so they're asking you to fill the gap, further obfuscating what your meal actually cost you. At the chain I work at, we hire new people on at $15/hr, which may seem good 10 years ago, but kinda sucks now. The nearest big city has a $15/hr minimum wage. So just 15 minutes away people can get the same money for easier work. But we tell potential hires they'll get on average $17/hr after tips are added in. Still not enough to entice the experienced adults my store manager wants to hire, and when I tell her this she says the market is all fucked up. Like that changes the fact that we need to offer more if we want better candidates.
I'm contemplating a bad google review every time I see it. I feel something needs to be done to stop tipping for random shit in its tracks. If people did this en mass I think it'd end.
More places are trying make a it
a thing down here though. Stuff 'em. Lots of the old " it comes with that pre loaded on the efpos machine". Bull. Pay your workers.
That and some bs made up charity donation screens. Mate, I'm buying a 45c stick of glue in a cheap shop, no I don't want to donate to the underprivileged eshays that carn't afford vapes. It's getting worse.
Many of the workers themselves also like tipping because their peers will pay them better than their bosses ever would. Waitstaff in the US can make very good money, and they'd never get an equivalent salary if it was switched.
This tipping of cashiers and other random employees started during COVID and needs to stop though. Constant begging for donations and tips like I'm not already giving them money
I would bet servers in the US make more than just about anywhere else in the world, so for them it’s a pretty good deal. I’m definitely for getting rid of the system, but it’s an uphill battle.
Well from a quick Google search, it would appear that perception is way off. From what I’m seeing take-home pay for American servers is roughly ＄30000 to ＄70000. Seems like the lower end is more or less commensurate with other countries, while having a much higher earning potential.
Interesting. So what dollar value do you apply to health coverage, time off, and all the other benefits that restaurant owners effectively skip taxation on by having their customers pay their employees directly?
Servers at high volume locations, or fine dining, can pull in >$500 in tips a night. If that price was included into the bill, comparing the place with tips and with out tips, the with tips will always be cheaper, significantly. So restaurant owners can either have a 20% discount on their prices (with the rest made up in tips), or have all their prices be 20% higher and not take tips.
With all of that said, I was in food service for over a decade. Good servers are cool and all, and can make the experience better, but relative to other jobs, they really don't deserve $50+ an hour (I was making avg $55/hr in 2014 as a server in a place without alcohol). Ofc everyone deserves $50 an hour, but I am a teacher now and make less money/hr and my job is way more difficult and has a much bigger impact on society.
If capital is the systems confidence in your ability to allocate resources, yes the default confidence level should be around that. The fact that we make the poors work hourly wages for survival, without a real way to access capital markets without multiple years of sacrifice is horribly inefficient.
Blind financial reasoning aside, if someone is dedicating their 1/3 of their entire life to supporting the economic system, yes they should be able to live comfortably and invest/participate in price discovery.
Waiting is hard work but it is surely not worth 50 an hour. If minimum wage was raised to a living wage, it has been calculated to be around 23 an hour. That‘s more than fair to a waiter who needs literally no experience to start.
I think … we place a disproportionate amount of the blame on people from certain demographics when, historically, they have faced discrimination as a part of every day life. They are genuinely offered lower wages and minuscule opportunities. It’s not a fair system, and it crosses over to many nations.
I’m not condemning anyone, I’m just saying I feel we have a flawed system.
A little more googling would tell you that the only source for that was a ceo trying to explain why A&W failed under him and you probably shouldnt just take his word on that.
20 seconds of googling would show you that the claim came from a single source: the person who took over A&W to try and rescue it and failed. He mentioned it in a memoir he wrote decades later. Of course he would want to blame the customer for that failure.
No, it wasn't. The only source for that claim came from the person who took over A&W to try and rescue the restaurant and failed to rescue it. In a memoir he wrote decades later, he made this claim without providing any proof for the claim. And since it was a cool headline, it took off.
There are 3 entities to consider regarding tipped culture.
The owner who set the hourly wages and makes the menu prices.
The staff that serve and get tips as a significant portion of their income.
The customer who can endorse/boycott with their wallet.
This is where the arguments are for each entity:
Passing off a portion of the employee's income onto the customer in the form of the expectation of tips, hidden behind the guise of "it encourages good treatment of the customer by the staff to get good tips," allows the owner to lower menu prices so they look more attractive.
The staff, even though they are, on paper, making an hourly wage that is less than the normal minimum wage, the tips they receive often bring them well over the normal minimum wage. And in the rare cases where they don't, the employer has to make up the difference so they always make an hourly rate that is no less than the normal minimum wage. With that said, you RARELY see these workers on the side of "get rid of tipping culture" because they do make very good money. In many cases, this entity would make less money overall if tipping culture was nixed, hence why they seem to be silent in these debates.
The customer. The customer likes to say a lot of things about tipping culture, but their wallets do most of the talking. When businesses try to take a stand against tipping culture, change the hourly wages to a normal wage rather than tipped minimum wage and raise menu prices accordingly, a couple of things happen. First, it makes it harder for them to keep good staff because the staff will make less money. Second, in raising menu prices accordingly, it makes the menu prices generally higher than other places. And this is where the customer comes in. The customer speaks with their wallet and due to the higher menu prices, the business is less attractive even if it is explicitly advertised why the prices are higher.
With everything you see above, it really explains why it is so difficult to fight against the system organically. It will have to come from laws/regulations to enforce the change on the industry as a whole, all at once, because not enough parts of the paradigm gain an economical benefit for being the one that takes a stand against the industry. Because the businesses that try always fail because they are less competitive, the servers would rather worked for tipped wages because they make more money than non-tipped-hourly-wage counterparts, and the customer speaks with their wallet by choosing to patron businesses that have tipped wages. To make the change away from tipping culture happen organically, the whole of any one of those entities could cause that change to happen. Either ALL businesses just stop the tipped wages altogether, or ALL customers stop going to businesses that pay tipped wages, or ALL servers stop applying/working for tipped wages. And neither of those will ever happen, which leaves it up to the lawmakers to force it to happen.
Edit: Something else to add, is that the restaurant industry is already operating on VERY slim margins. We're talking around 5% profit margins for most. If a restaurant is running on a 10% profit margin, that would be considered doing very well. So it is already a tight window for profitability, which makes it even more difficult to try and go against the system on principle alone.
My problem with it is prices will just go up by 20% across the board using the lack of tipping as justification but that money isn't going to go to the employees and they'll end up taking a pay cut overall
So we don't actually end up paying less and the employees end up in a worse spot
Plus I no longer get the option to skip the tip when ordering food to go
The way it’s “meant” to work is the workers wouldn’t apply at the place with shit pay and would instead apply for the one that paid well. Driving the person who paid poorly out of business unless they improved it.
Unfortunately the current status quo is so heavily entrenched in the US you’d need massive reform to make something like that work and I can’t see that changing anytime soon, people are struggling already
Because everyone it gets bring up it end up like this:
"It's American culture, deal with it"
"Don't eat out if you are poor"
"You want servers to starve?"
And my favourite "you can't stop tipping because that would make us less money and we would support, instead of oppose, all legalisation that would establish normal wage, we are rolling in money right now, don't you dare to take it away from us"
Anyone who thinks continuation of tipping will change anything is stupid. The only, and I really mean the only way out is to stop tipping. As long as servers benefit from tipping, they will never support its abolition, just more and more %.
There is literally no reason to increase %, none, besides being greedy bastard.
Ausse here too. That shit's started to creep into a few cafes I've been to this year. It's an automatic 0 from me. If we normalise that shit here, we won't see the end of it.
Aussie too. If a cafe puts the tip screen in front of me like they're expecting a tip i never go to that cafe again. You made this weird for both of us just for a lil tip? Get fucked hope you go out of business.
I can understand asking if you're at a fancy sit down restaurant and you know you did a decent job serving. Then asking is ok, don't be pissed if U get none though, it's Australia not America, if they aren't paying you your worth tell your boss to kick rocks. Don't get me wrong, in that case I probably want to give my server a tip if they've done well, can't expect all Aussies to do so though.
Can we keep a secret between us and like 11000000 people?
You can buy a milk frother and heater from House for $80
and then when i said I was buying lunch, someone chimes in with "you can make lunch at home too" - both of these comments attempt to nullify the tipping argument by saying "don't eat out - just eat at home"
I never Tip and if your Staff gets payed properly (not on the edge or beneath minimum wage), they do earn more on a years avarage than through tipping. Its Not even close. Maybe if you work in a special establishment. But not in a standard Restaurant. Its just illusion, because your staff gets underpayed from the beginning and surrender in this slave like workcontract. Hilarious.
Ok, if you are comparing student Jobs to a underpayd Fulltime Job, i can see your point. But that was not my intend, since you need to have a way more stable and steady income as an adult as when you are a normal student. Where it is way more logical to prefer a stable income over a fluctuating.
That should not be the case, the POS has a cashier login and those tips should be paid out to cashiers at the end of shift. If the cashier is seeing the tips come in and knows the owner is keeping them, they should report it.
A lot of American restaurants have tried this, but they have to raise menu prices to compensate. The American consumer is so brainwashed by the weird tip culture that they’d rather tip and see lower menu prices than dine at restaurants with 15-20% higher prices and no tipping. The places that try don’t last
I mean I think tipping as an exception is nice. Like if my waiter is super attentive, kind, patient, etc I’m happy to tip them. I just don’t like that it’s an expectation here.
This is a counter service coffee shop. Can't say what they make, obviously, but national average is somewhere around $15-17 per hour. Its not the "waiter salary" you'll hear about.
That’s not how it works. They want to get tips becasue they can make much much more. coffee shop tips are getting out of hand because they actually get paid (unlike the servers who gets paid 3 bucks an hour but makes it up with good tip).
In Germany it‘s (normally) like this:
The workers are getting paid enough and the tip is just a little bit extra money for them. The German word for Tip is „Trinkgeld“ and that could be translated in „Money for drinks“. I give between 1 and 2 Euros for delivery drivers as example.
They literally have tip options at the self-serve and self-checkout stations. So, even if you had no interaction with any human whatsoever and placed the order and collected it yourself and did everything yourself, they'd still ask you for a tip.
American here. In some cases, the tips aren't even going to the workers. It's what I'd describe as an elective fee in those instances. Companies know we have a tip culture and they're exploiting the social pressure of that button for their own gain. Always ask the employee if they retain the full tip any time you're tipping.
Has nothing to do with paying workers. These fast-casual places aren't using waitresses/waiters, so workers are all making at least minimum wage and in a lot of states more than federal minimum wage, anywhere from $10, $15 up to $20 an hour (depending on city and state). These fucking screens are still everywhere; it does not matter. I see them at gas stations now....
Numbers like that don't have a lot of meaning without context. In NYC, for example, $70k isn't that far above what counts as low wage. Individuals making less than $56k qualify for low income housing.
Search google for 'serverlife how much earn reddit' and get reading. I can't link on here it gets hidden I think for linking to other subreddits.
Here's some comments from first thread:
About $700-$1100 working 30-35 hours. serving 2 days bartending 3. Fast casual corporate chain. Could make more in fine dining, but I love my regulars and coworkers
So that's $31 a hour on high end.
$500-$600 a week, about 20 hours.
Again $30
Average $1200 a week. 40-45hrs
$26 a hour
Bare minimum $1300-$1500/week after taxes working 4-5 nights a week.
Can't do per hour, but that's $78,000 a year takehome. With taxes, what's that... $100k+?
The fuck waiter makes that in the UK or Aus? I've waited tables in the UK, we don't get anywhere near these wages.
1200ish a week working about 25/30 hours
$34 an hour.
Also noteworthy, I think all these are after tax figures.
I'm not pro tipping btw, I hate it. But it's undeniable it leads to better wages for these kinds of staff.
Also loads of people in the threads saying some form of 'Nice try IRS' which means odds are any official figures are going to be way off as underreporting earnings will be rife to evade tax (another reason tipping culture is bad).
Sure. Might make a lot, but imagine going for a hot dog that costs $22 (A HOT DOG), sincerely WTF? And then be asked to tip $10 on top of that so that the server gets compensated fairly. Owning a restaurant in the US must be such a good cash grab, holy fuck
Oh yeah, it sucks for consumers. No doubt about that.
It's the constant balancing act. Pay workers right, or get cheap products. You can't do both really. Labour is almost always the biggest business expense of any business.
Ask most wait staff and they would say they don't want a wage. They want tips. It usually pays better per hour than what they would get if they were making $15-$20 per hour.
As someone whose worked in tipped positions most of my life, the problem with that argument is that the average person is far more generous than an employer.
I guarantee if I lived off of what I could make doing the same jobs but without tips I'd probably make MAYBE 2/3rds what I do now and that's being extremely optimistic. In reality 50% is more likely.
3.8k
u/Impressive_Doctor_2 11d ago
As an Australian, tipping in general is wild.
Just pay your fucking workers!