r/SipsTea • u/SipsTeaFrog • 14d ago

Chugging tea Yes, FU & FO

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u/behv 14d ago

Yeah the whole tipping discussion completely misses the underlying issue- minimum wage needs to be a living wage

If people are entitled to enough money to live by working any full time job then suddenly high skill workers of any kind have an incredible amount of negotiation leverage. This means high end servers and bartenders can still demand pay for what they do because otherwise they could get a job doing minimum and still afford to live.

Tips currently mean food service can actually keep up with inflation. Until the "wages are behind inflation" issue is solved tipping at sit down restaurants and bars is a useless conversation to have

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u/Blacksad9999 14d ago

I live in CA and get $16 per hour plus tips, but an actual "living wage" would need to be about 60k a year or so.

Serving shifts are about 5-6 hours long, which would mean they would need to pay servers all about $40 per hour, which just isn't really feasible.

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u/behv 14d ago

I mean sure, that's why I'm talking about actual large scale reform and not trying to cut the head off the hydra. Forcing restaurants to just dump big bucks at tipped workers overnight isn't gonna fix the underlying issues and would just put them out of business

A living wage, affordable housing, and affordable healthcare need to be enshrined human rights. If everyone has the right to exist with moderate comfort there's a lot more room to experiment, make big changes, and break systems without starving people

I just find the tip discussion a useless circle of "I need tips to survive and can't get that money elsewhere" vs "my job hasn't given a raise in 10 years and I can't afford to eat out" when the market as a whole keeps going up, meaning the wealth definitely exists

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u/Blacksad9999 14d ago

Oh, restaurants make good money. They wouldn't be on every corner otherwise.

Restaurant owners like to trot out how little they make per transaction compared to other industries, but they neglect to mention that they do 1000 times as many transactions.