Anon doesn't tip

How does this form of protest translate into a change of the tipping system?

Thats one way of looking at it... but if everyone would stop tipping, they would be forced to pay them a living wage or go out of business when all the staff quit. Its actually in the consumers power to effect that change, but only on a mass scale. Unfortunately its an awkward social coercion tactic at play now, which just continues to perpetuate the problem pitting us against each other just as capitalism intends to.

Honestly, in these debates more often than not I find that the waiters don't want tipping culture changed either. A lot (not all, I understand) of waiters make bank on tips and then don't accurately report them as income so it's not even taxed correctly. They don't want that to change.

Fuck that, there's federal mandated minimum wage if waiters don't make enough through tips. You're a misinformation spreading lunatic. Probably right wing too.

Except that I’m fine if the cost of my meal increases if they paid their servers what they deserve.

Are you suggesting that food prices will go up by more than the cost of the tip tacked on?

Because if not it’s really just more honest pricing, and the same (or reduced) impact on customers, but without having to do math or having the option of being a leech.

Here's another part of the equation, the owner gets enough of a share of the business profit where they can buy a new house, expand to multiple locations, buy new cars, etc.

The extra couple bucks an hour per employee is a tiny drop in the cost pool per business operational hour compared to that. They could perfectly well keep prices the same without paying sub-minimum wages by taking a smaller cut themselves.

So by not tipping, you are benefiting from the low cost of food while screwing over the person that has no control over the situation. YTA

Customers aren't the assholes for the failures of the restaurant industry, just as customers aren't the assholes for the refusal of the federal government to ensure restaurant workers are paid a living wage.

Customers who don't tip are not the enemy.

Here's a tip: that waiter should unionize.

Why stop at waiters? I've had several jobs that didn't pay a livable wage, only in restaurants did my customers feel obligated to tip me.

As someone who works in the service industry, this is the argument that I see all the time. "We aren't going to subsidize your wage because your owner is an asshole." Weird, you have no problem being a patron of his establishment. Do you think that your refusal to tip somehow hurts him? Because it doesn't. It only hurts the staff. My argument always has and always will be that we increase the cost of menu items by 18% and then split that additional 18% with the staff. However, that idea always falls flat with the owner because, "We'll be the most expensive restaurant in town. No one will come here." Which is a valid concern. And so, we are at an impasse. He can't afford to pay me what I'm worth, and he can't increase the cost of the menu or he'll outprice his customers, and I can't quit because it's not better at any other restaurant. In the end, in any direction, the customer is going to pay more, either as a tip, or just for the cost of the food, or they'll pay with worse service because the experienced staff can't afford to work there anymore. Refusing to tip isn't a protest, it's just being cheap and making yourself feel better about it. If tipping went away, prices would have to increase, and either way, the buck stops with the consumer. Want to eat cheaper? Cook at home. I'm sure you'll be just as good as any of your favorite restaurants with their specialized equipment and cooks with a decade of experience.

I hope all you downvoters have something of value to contribute... Oh, no, you're just downvoting to show your solidarity with the rest of the cheap-os? Ok, enjoy your meal.

Sorry for the downvotes. Lemmy users can be remarkably shitty

And the company owners do not walk or have to deal with customers.

It must be hard not knowing even the most basic math. How is this CEO getting more money than I pay for the meal?

Yeah. Co-ops of sufficient size have CEOs it’s just that the workers are the board

While I agree with you - who can say which workers exert the majority of effort?

By the amount of physical effort - sure, blue collar workers do the most. But this effort is also easy to find from others - everyone can do unskilled labor. So should they receive a lion's share of the company profits just because, what? They managed to get hired?

By the amount of admin, maybe it should be IT or HR or some similar department. Without them, you wouldn't be efficient. Without them you'd never be able to expand. But they don't work on the actual product, they're just there for the ride and would be doing the same thing for any other business.

Should it be sales? Engineers? Security? All these categories have the same pluses and minuses going for them.

And now let's say I start a small business. I go through the trouble of being good enough in my field to come up with a product or service that people will like. I invest my own money into this small business, and I sometimes don't get paid so I can afford to pay my suppliers. I have months where I cut electricity at home so I can keep it on in the office. I fight the beaurocracy of the state, with its million forms I have to fill in and it's million hoops I have to jump through. And this business takes off, and I finally make enough to have it be worth it. And you're telling me I should share with the others? With everyone else who hasn't put as much as me on the line, but now wants to be part of the success? Motherfucker I will cut you.

Or let's say I don't keep the company, I sell it. It goes to some conglomerate who keeps it functioning but installs a new CEO to cut costs and streamline processes. Are you telling me they paid me tens of millions of dollars for the company just so that they can share the profit with the workers? So that they can take directions from them? From the workers, who paid nothing? Who offered nothing in exchange for the rights to the business? Fuck, I'm taking you to the parking lot and breaking your kneecaps with a baseball bat, where the fuck do you even get the balls?

Or let's say I go public. I sell shares, and people buy them. A lot of people invest a lot of money into the company, and want to get their money back. You're telling me that when I turn a profit and decide to share it, I shouldn't give dividends and reward the shareholders who believed in me - instead I should reward the workers who've been getting paid all this time, who've been risk-free in this enterprise, who've been profiting whether I go up or go under? Eat shit and die.

There is no universe where workers, who are staking nothing in a company, should get rewarded over those who have a financial stake in it.

Presumably, your country pays its servers a living wage so they don't have to scrape by on tips. This has been the state of the US labor market in most non-fast food restaurants for decades:

A tipped employee engages in an occupation in which he or she customarily and regularly receives more than $30 per month in tips. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages if that amount combined with the tips received at least equals the federal minimum wage [$7.25 per hour]. If the employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. Many states, however, require higher direct wage amounts for tipped employees.

Well yeah, if you live in a country where they make a decent amount so that tipping isn’t necessary for them to be able to eat that day then of course you shouldn’t have to tip. That’s the way it should be everywhere. But in many countries like the US this isn’t the case, and tipping has been used as a way for restaurants to pay next to nothing to employ people and the servers are at the mercy of kindness from the people serving them. Lots of these people think that they should just be slaves that serve them for free and justify it by blaming the restaurant, which is just shifting responsibility and making weak excuses for being entitled and cheap.

where does drag live?

No, I hate the people who say they want it abolished and use that as an excuse to not pay their waiters. I made it plainly clear in my explanation, I honestly don’t know how to dumb it down for you anymore man.

I HATE EVERYONE

Like not tipping is going to abolish anything. You walk in, pay the owner and leave the worker hanging. Why would the owner care?

It's not like all the waiters can stay home waiting for something to change, people gotta live. Stop going to restaurants if you don't want to tip

I don’t live in the US bro. But this post is obviously about tipping culture in the US. This is not an issue in other parts of the world where tipping isn’t expected so that the servers aren’t getting starvation wages.

He is the one to blame lol, we all agree.

When you go to the restaurant, pay the food (owner) but not the waiter, you are playing right into the owners game (who is to blame).

So congrats on supporting the assholes creating this economic problem (they can't run a profitable business). Next youre going to tell me human traffickers are the assholes buuut people should just stopped getting trafficked and leave, so that human trafficking stops being a thing. Because power dynamics have nothing to do with this of course.

This place is just as toxic as reddit lol, it was a valid question.

Edit: and before people get confused by my username, I haven't been back to reddit since the day RIF stopped working.

my guess is cuz the server in the Reservoir Dogs clip this is referencing is a she

I waited tables for years. (I was good at it, and even helped train everyone at a new restaurant.) Hourly pay would have definitely lowered my wage, but it's still better than tipping. It'd be cool to get hourly wage, or even commission, so that your pay isn't based on people's whims.

servers who were bad at their jobs would get paid just as well as servers that offer good service.

(Note: I use the general "you" a lot. You're just repeating what someone else said, I assume you don't have any wait staff working for you personally.) You can fire people for being bad at their jobs. Why do you have bad staff working for you, tips or no? How about: Unattractive people will get paid just as well as traditionally attractive people. Minorities will get paid just as well as whites. Your salary doesn't hinge on whether you can sneak extra stuff to your tables without your boss finding out or putting up with sexual harassment. Salary means that my paycheck comes from the restaurant and I don't have to try to balance the interests of the people paying me against the restaurant.

Yeah all of that is what is known in the business as propaganda. The more money you have the more propaganda you can put out and restaurant businesses have a lot of spare money because they don't pay their workers shit.

servers who were bad at their jobs would get paid just as well as servers that offer good service.

Black servers would be paid as well as white servers, servers whose chefs fucked up would be paid as well as lucky servers, mice would chase cats and the world would turn inside out!

Reminds me of when I worked at Wal-Mart and everyone was horrified at the idea of getting raises because it meant prices would go up...

Fellow mass-hole! Felt the same way, even our allegedly liberal Governor came out against both. I talked to servers and bartenders who thought they'd make a lot less money, or their restaurant would go out of business if it passed. Presumably because the owners told them so.

What about dine and dash, while leaving a cash tip?

Why would you tip those?

Totally. Everyone being different is the reason we're okay with unnecessary poverty in this country.

Almost 70 million people voted against him, myself included. We’re not a monolith. Also, only 11 states tax groceries.

Americans are dumb af. Source: am American

Tipping doesn’t exist here BTW, because it’s idiotic

Idk where "here" is, but I've seen plenty of foreign countries's restaurants adopting tipping, particularly at higher end establishments, as business owners realize they can just ask for extra and get it.

Exactly.

The reason, from my understanding, is that taxes on products can vary from region to region, so it's impractical to expect the store to have the price listed with the sales tax included, especially on advertisements. The sales tax in my state can vary by 1% or so between cities/counties, and advertisements are frequently at the state level, if not national level. My next door city has a 0.10% lower sales tax rate vs my city, and the resort area in the county has 1.5% higher sales tax than the rest of the county.

Food is taxed at a different rate, and the tax is split about 50/50 between state and local. Our state has been discussing ending the tax on food, but that would only end the state portion (1.75%), so the local tax (1.25% pretty much everywhere) would remain.

AFAIK, Europe includes it because it's imposed at the government level (I think EU?), not the local level.

I still think it's dumb, and it should at least be on the price stickers in the store so I can have a chance at estimating the final bill before I get to the register.

Really? Holy shit... I'm in Czechia. And we have both living wages for waiters (it's been driving our restaurant prices unusually high lately) and a minimum wage. Altho the minimum wage is quite low. Roughly 650€ of full-time when converted. Thankfully I haven't seen jobs listed that low, I only know it because I managed to negotiate a payed internship and that's what they gave me before my raise.

Their (livable) wage is supposed to be payed by their employer. The customer is not their employer.

hey the waiter doesnt carry the food, the runner does that

the waiter asks me how im doing every 5 minutes and upsells me drinks and excess food. now that is special

Cooks wages are integrated into the price of the food, and the waiter's are not. But some times cooks are tipped out too.

You undervalue good service. Good service, like good cooks, keep people with allergies from dying. Who exactly do you think passes on the allergy information? In a more general manner, good service makes sure that your order is presented the the kitchen staff correctly and matches expectations when they say it's ready. It's not just about whether or not they have a pleasant demeanor.

And you think the best way to do that is by stopping waitresses from being able to feed their kids? Because that's the only thing that will happen if you don't tip

Yep, gimme the food and a kind word, then leave me alone and let me read.

She just walked by and checked. We were not the only table getting that kind of service. She only stopped when she saw a glass getting empty or when she saw we had finished the meal.

this would be cool info to have. do you think there is a state by state or municipality breakdown that shows the degree to which me not tipping is a burden to the staff? /gen would be slay to have in my bookmarks!

oof another internet user who thinks two things can’t be true at once 💔

“yeah i know i slashed your tires but at least i’m not as bad as the oil and motor lobbies that make it so you’re reliant on your car to fucking commute to work and not starve, you should be grateful next time” — that’s how you sound 🫶

Do you imagine that the people refusing to pay tips aren't fucking over the workers, or do you believe that because customers are fucking over workers, the restaurant owners can't be fucking over the workers too?

It doesn't matter - either take is transparently stupid.

If you don't think restaurant managers deal with customers than all I can say is I'm so happy for you for never having to work in that industry lol. All of the other people you named also have customers they deal with except maybe the cook. Logistics company is the farmer's customer, restaurant owner is logistics company's customer, etc. All of said customers can also be arseholes.

Me too - though I've lived in both.

Choosing to frequent a business that you know underpays their workers, where you know those workers rely on tips to survive, then choosing to take their labour and not pay for that labour isn't an arsehole tax - it's an arsehole subsidy, and it's the workers footing the bill.

I think workers should be paid enough to live comfortably without relying on tips, and that they should be a nice, but entirely unnecessary option - but you don't get to steal workers' labour just because you disagree with tipping.

An arsehole tax that you don't need to pay if you are an arsehole?

How would that work?

One of the characters even mentions something like that in the movie.

If you reread my comment, I mentioned the movie was made BEFORE everyone expected tips like they do TODAY. I was a server in the 2000s myself, and today there are tips asked at every register, sports games or entertainment show concession stands for example.

When we stop making money we’ll quit. And then there won’t be restaurants since they can barely staff them as it is. Getting ‘waited on’ by another human being is degrading to them and expensive for you. Tough tits for everyone if they don’t want to cough up. We’ll be getting paid or your service will suck. That’s how it is. Or cook and clean for yourselves. And no minimum wage in this damned country is a living wage.