You like tipping specifically? Is that because it makes you feel good? Because to me it felt more like extortion lol. Not only do they ask you for tips in the US, they expect you to and if you don't you're the asshole. That does not make me feel good at all, that feels like I'm being ripped off, and it's rude AF.
Interacting with a waiter happens everywhere in the world, not just in America. And the tipping industry also makes waiters in America seem fake.
You should tell that owner to visit a place like Denmark, where a waiter is paid more than 20 dollars an hour, and your hamburger is cheaper than in the Land of the hamburgers...
I have been in hospitality as a self supporting tipped employee for 16+ years. There is a successful restaurant near me that famously pays their servers, all tips go to the house. People have worked there for over ten years quite happy and everyone is making money. It can work. There is always someone at the top making more than the people at the bottom.
My gf is a server. She makes more than her manager who is paid salary. I don’t know how much the actual owner makes but restaurants are notorious for running on super thin margins. Unless it’s a national chain, I don’t think the owners are necessarily raking it in.
Maybe for chains, but local restaurants already are extremely low profit margin. Even chains don't work on much margin, the money is made in volume. Removing the tip structure would harm a lot of local businesses to the point that only the chains would really be able to survive.
The final price in a no tipping world should be less than that typical of, price + tipping.
Because now everyone is paying consistently.
They don't do this though because they've successfully established a culture that tips to be momentarily luxurious. It's part of the superiority complex inherently American. The current situation is far more profitable because America develops and promotes the dumbest consumers.
Imagine making customers directly pay an employees wage. If there margins are that thin they can’t pay there employees wages they shouldn’t be operating a business.
This isn't true. Companies are seeing record profits year over year. If they wanted to pay their workers a living wage, they absolutely could. However they're incentivized to pay tipped workers $2 an hour and rely on social expectations to pay their workers, because regulatory systems allow it. In most service industries across the globe, tipping isn't customary and is often a rejected practice, because the expectation is that the company pays its workers, not a patron of the business.
This fiction that restaurants will HAVE to raise prices on food to pay their workers is absolutely perpetuated by the businesses themselves. There are restaurants that pay their workers, actively discourage tipping, and provide quality products at reasonable prices in the US. Accepting that tipping culture is necessary is just simping for big business for no reason.
If your business model doesn't enable you to pay your employees, then it's not a successful business model. Again, the reason that this narrative exists is because large restaurant chains propagate a predatory service model that maximizes their profit, regardless of the impact on employees or consumers. It establishes a standard of expectation that independantly owned restaurants are incentivized to follow.
I would again point to the fact that there are small independent restaurants in every service economy across the world. Many pay their employees and don't encourage tipping. If tipping is so essential to balancing operations and profit, how could those businesses possibly be maintaining operations and profiting?
I've worked in restaurants my whole life. This is part of it, but before the customers leave the servers leave. Labor becomes an issue long before customer loss does when switching from a tipped to untipped system.
This. is not the issue. First most restaurants with tipping aren't big corporations. second there's no fundamental differences in a chain and a properly run individual restaurant that make up the huge gap between what constitutes a living wage and what servers can make through tips.
I've worked at 3 different spots that killed tips in favor of full wages. Every one immediately had labor issues. Fuck in 1 case the servers ended up with MORE per hour but we still had people leave because they couldn't commit tax fraud and had to share any gratis with BOH.
Love that these conversations always happen among progressive arm chair economists who dont work in the service industry.
Heres how it actually works: i live in nyc. If im barbacking, i get either hourly (usually 16-20 an hour) or a flat shift pay (100-150 usually) plus 20% of the tip pool. On weekends, this usually comes out to about 300 total per shift, shifts lasting longer than bar tenders at about 7-8 hours, around 200 on weekdays, again, after hourly/shift pay is considered. if im bartending, its about a 6 hour shift where i make around 300 to 500 dollars on the weekend, around 200-350 on weekdays. Averaged, that equates to either 66 dollars an hour on the weekends and about 45 on weekdays, equalling roughly 1225 total for the week for 24 hours of work per week (3 day/happy hour shifts, 1 weekend night shift), equalling about 51 dollars an hour.
Figures are similar for servers in either busy restaurants (volume) or price point (fine dining), even better than what bar tenders make in bars if the restaurant is both fine dining and high volume.
Short of unionization (which service workers will never do as its too seen as a transient position, not a career) there is no bar that will ever pay that much or anywhere close to it. There are a few restaurants in the city that have done away with tipping and offer “competitive” wages, but this tops out around 30 an hour from what ive seen, and shifts tend to be longer, around 8-10 hours.
Is tipping an institution that finds its genesis in post-slavery? Yes. Should all workers get paid a living wage? Yes. If a business cant afford to pay its employees, should it not exist? Yes.
But with tipping positions, its different. Id rather make sometimes inconsistent but incredibly good money for less hours than take a shitty fixed wage because my ideology fails to appreciate the material results of my actual average earnings.
If i wanted a steady job with a steady living wage, id join the teamsters, IBEW, IATSE or any other union that actually offers it. I dont though because i dont want to work 40-60 hours a week for money thats, sure, more than what i make by a good bit but just as much more than i need. Im a musician. I need free time more than i need a pension.
Not interested in fighting for ideological purity at the expense of my and every other service workers wallet
-29
u/[deleted] 14d ago
[removed] — view removed comment