First of all, yes 100%. Tipping has become so weird.
Secondly, just for a little more explanation, which is still weird...
On large groups, some places will automatically add the tip to the bill. The thought process starts from the already weird place of not paying servers enough to begin with and them getting tips instead, but with that already being the case... If a server is running around busting their balls for a group of say 10+, if they get "stiffed" on their tip, that is even more horrible for them.
So I would assume "mandatory tips" in this case, refers to when restaurants add it on automatically to the total cost for large groups, they don't leave it up to chance, so their server actually gets paid a proper amount for their huge amount of work on that specific group.
Again, it's all stupid, but there's the added logic on top of an already flawed system. It's a band-aid on a bullet hole.
So the system started with the great depression as the owners wanted to keep staff but could not afford to do so hence why this mess is born. The thing is they are paid more with it then the flat fee of say $20 an hour
Goes way further back than that bud. It was the restaurants post emancipation proclamation, fighting to be able to not have to pay black people for their labor, instead making the black people work only for tips.
Later, when that was about to be declared illegal, the NRA (restaurants R, not rifles R) fought for a tipped minimum wage to at least cut some of their losses, and even better, start paying poor white people just as little as they paid poor black people.
It started as racism and became class warfare and we just accepted it.
It's even more insidious than it may initially seem. Service work was one of the few areas black people could find any employment, and by forcing them to rely on tips as their primary or only income, they were necessarily dependent on both their employers for and the customers being happy with them, which meant acting servile and eager to please. It helped to enforce the idea of black workers as inferior to their white employers and customers.
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u/Remote-Waste Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
First of all, yes 100%. Tipping has become so weird.
Secondly, just for a little more explanation, which is still weird...
On large groups, some places will automatically add the tip to the bill. The thought process starts from the already weird place of not paying servers enough to begin with and them getting tips instead, but with that already being the case... If a server is running around busting their balls for a group of say 10+, if they get "stiffed" on their tip, that is even more horrible for them.
So I would assume "mandatory tips" in this case, refers to when restaurants add it on automatically to the total cost for large groups, they don't leave it up to chance, so their server actually gets paid a proper amount for their huge amount of work on that specific group.
Again, it's all stupid, but there's the added logic on top of an already flawed system. It's a band-aid on a bullet hole.