Crazy idea: pay them both more so the public doesn't have to
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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The public is going to pay them regardless. The money for wages has to come from what customer's spend. Being said, I agree with you wholeheartedly because tipping is a leverage point that enables a lot of racism, sexism and sexual harassment.
I think the lost nuance is that the previous guy means that with tips, the public pays for tips directly.
You're technically correct, the public, by buying food and service, is paying the company, creating a pool of money from which the costs of business are to be paid, ideally including staff in full. And currently, wait staff has to be paid by the customer directly.
(This mostly holds for most of the US, in many places, it does work according to the more ideal model)
You wanna know what's even more lost nuanced? the fact that a customer paying your salary via tip is after they've paid taxes. So let's say they tip $1 - in my country that means they had to earn $2 before tax (assuming the customer is a billy big bollocks higher-rate tax payer).
But what about if the employer pays the server instead? well now we're talking...when the emplopyer pays the server, it does so PRE-TAX. That is to say they can pay the server $1 and in order to do so they only had to earn $1. While if they banked that $1 as profit, they would pay tax on the $1 first and so see less of it (let's call it $0.80). Mind you, that does mean that the service worker now needs to pay $1 on that income...but surely they would declare their tips anyway and pay the tax either way? right? riiiiight?
Long and the short of it is - the cheapest way for the server to get $1 is for the employer to pay it to them and pass the cost on to the customer. The cost to the employer is what the company would have received post-tax for that $1 which as we said earlier was $0.80. The server got the $1, the employer is not gaining or losing anything, and the customer is only paying $0.80 which means they only had to earn $1.60 instead of $2. Everyone wins, except the tax man doesn't win quite as much as he was winning before. Cry me a river.
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This should really be the norm.
Tip culture was developed so the restaurant owner didn’t have to pay (mostly black) waiters as much.
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In some countries, it is!
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I used to work as a line cook. The waitresses would give us a percentage of their tips which was nice. But really, we understood that it was much better to cook the food than be the one dealing with the idiot customers and rude Karens, so they deserved that tip. The girls would be all smiles, and as soon as they'd walk in the kitchen they'd let out all the rage. Then back to smiling once they go back on the floor, whereas the cooks could just behave like the animals we were, and nobody would see us.
No, they deserved to be paid appropriately by their employer and the customers deserve to have a predictable bill, not one based on the quality of the service they received or the pity they have for the employee.
I've worked for tip for 10 years, tipped jobs shouldn't exist.
Until some asshole went and invented the "open kitchen" concept
Cries in an open kitchen
dealing with the idiot customers and rude Karens
Of course the customers behave as entitled brats because they're paying for the entitlement with a tip that can be withheld for any reason. It creates a rage inducing power dynamic.
As someone who has worked in customer service, customers don't need to tip to act like entitled brats.
So, is that basically why Americans like tipping culture? Because it lets you feel the rush of being in control of someone for money? The rush of being the abusive partner in an abusive relationship?
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Exactly! I mean just watch the movie "Waiting". It is such an accurate portrayal that it should be classified as a documentary.
18 years in restaurants checking in. I was a bartender when waiting came out. The only thing they got wrong was that we didn't do The Game, but we started to after we saw the movie.
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There's a separate level of unfairness here:
Right side is making $16-$25 per hour.
Left side has an hourly rate that's almost always less than minimum wage. This is allowed because of the assumed tip income.
Depends on what state you live in. For example, CA requires wait staff to be paid at least minimum wage. Also, many cooks are also receiving minimum wage.
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Plus, waiters have to deal with client bullshit directly.
Plenty of low paying jobs make you deal with clients and not receive tip.
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Left side has an hourly rate that’s almost always less than minimum wage. This is allowed because of the assumed tip income.
This part depends on the state, thankfully. Seems phased out on most of the West coast, to my knowledge. I know it's still pretty widespread in the south.
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Here in Ontario everyone has to be paid minimum wage but, tips are still very expected. Kinda bugs me since they prob make more than I do lol
Kinda bugs me since they prob make more than I do lol
No idea what it's like up north but the highest hourly job I've ever had was serving tables in college. Over a week it averaged out to $25-45/hr depending on the season and some other factors. Did it for about a year before the stress and irregular hours made it not even worth that much money. But it definitely changed how I perceived wait staff.
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And depending on where you are left side has to pay a portion of their tip to the kitchen and runners as well.
Is this a USA-thing? In Europe tips are most usually split between front and back of the house.
In the USA there is a "minimum" wage, and a tip wage. The tip wage means your employer pays you $2.17/hr and you make nearly all of your income from the kindness of strangers. It's mindnumbinly aweful.
To be clear, if you don't make enough in tips to reach minimum wage, your employer pays the difference
Some places do pool a percentage of tips and pay them out to the kitchen and/or bar. Usually kitchen is paid more than waitstaff, and waitstaff is also likely to be cut if it’s slow, so may get less hours. Some states allow employers to pay tip based workers below minimum wage.
The fact that there are laws about "tip based workers" is insane to me.
Also to clarify, the rationale for tip based workers having a lower default minimum wage is that if they do not come up to the regular minimum wage with their tips+salary, then employer has to make up the difference. But usually they end up making more than minimum wage with the tips.
And you won the lotto if an employer actually supplements your tips. When you go a day with no customers.
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I see the corollary to this as the actual injustice, i.e. “the dish was bad so you get a low tip”, because the server can’t control the quality of the cooking and yet depends on the tip, whereas the cook actually gets a full wage no matter what.
I see the injustice there as the employer not paying the server enough.
Well you’re 100% correct that that’s the injustice that we actually ought to do something about.
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I’m starting this off with I hate tipping culture, but it’s required as an American, so I tip based on the service I receive from the server, not the food I eat. I rationally know they don’t control that. I assume most people do this, except OP who apparently tips waiters based on the food quality for some reason.
Yeah, I'll give good tips for good service of mediocre food. The Alamo has some of the hardest working servers in the industry. I don't care how good or bad the food is (usually good, but the overall amazing buffalo cauliflower can be inconsistent) if you crawl on the floor to give me my bill without blocking the movie for the person next to me, you get a good tip.
I don't get this meme. The phone has a back light and the book doesn't.
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Every reputable place I ever served at had front of house tip out the service staff.
Can we leave these shit memes by people who've never worked in the food industry (but get butthurt social conventions suggest you tip) and the resulting awful cavalcade of tired, predictable responses back on reddit?
That's your experience.
I have worked in very reputable places and none of that tip would reach the cooks. If we were lucky they would pay us a beer at the club later. I think it's regional though. I know in Quebec waiters won't share because the government assume they get 15% tip from everything bill and taxes them accordingly.
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The jobs we tip and the jobs we don't really don't make a whole lot of sense, honestly.
Fifteen years ago, working master control at a small local television station, someone called in just furious that a baseball game their TV schedule said would be on was not on. It was a TV station, ads paid the bills, but the person felt really entitled to baseball over free over-the-air television. This wasn't the only time this happened, but this has always been the one I've remembered most vividly, because the guy was just so angry, like he'd had his whole day planned around this.
I remember thinking about tipping jobs at the time, and how I was earning federal minimum wage to do this relatively skilled job (edit: not saying waiting/chefing are unskilled), and people were harassing me because the wrong thing was on the TV. With all due respect, I was master control, I literally had the finalized schedule in front of me. Nobody was tipping me when the thing they wanted on TV was on. I mean, I didn't expect it since ads paid for everything, but the entitlement of some people for something they essentially didn't pay for was so weird to me, and made me think of the disparity.
Agreed. Tipping is stupid. Abolish it and charge what the service costs.
Correction: Left guy is the boss because most food service companies will (usually illegally) skim tips. Tipping culture is fucking awful.
Hm. I see what this is pointing at, but I find it odd that the guy in the shade has a phone, not a paper book. He doesn't need the light to begin with.
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