When Did "Tips" (Gratuities) Become So High?

[Ian Keldon]

You still do not understand that tips are about creating incentives.

Complete and utter BS. Tipping is about allowing resteraunt owners to cheap out on wages.

Crawl back under your bed if you think that conditioning wages upon productivity is an asshole-ish thing to do and let me assure you that there are far nastier things out there that than the notion that hard work shall be rewarded and laziness shall be punished.

Oh really? I know from personal experience that it is entirely possible to bust one's a** on a huge order and have the ungrateful SoBs walk off w/o leaving a single penny in tips.

 

[Ian Keldon]

Get me a violin.

Ok, harsh, but don't try to pull the guilt thing. I come in and I pay for my meal, and I tip based on the service I receive. If tips are so important to someone's income, then they need to make sure that they earn them. Being belligerent, or lazy does not make me want to reward them.

Being treated like a dog by a dozen loud-mouthed, overly-demanding, fussy and otherwise ill-mannered a-holes for the better part of an hour as they run up a big bill then getting stiffed on the tip doesn't exactly make wait staff want to give the next customer their best either.

Again, I've seen it happen.

 

[Captain_Nick]

You sound a bit bitter mate

I enjoy tip threads. They degenerate into petty bickering so much quicker than politics or religeon.

All you people whining about 'having to pay tips', you sure do go quiet when you're away from your keyboards. It's rare for me and my boys not to take home a stackload of loose change every night ... and we're in Australia, where tipping is a courtesy not a 'requirement'.

I can't imagine what it must be like getting paid $2 an hour or whatever it is. Poor bastards. That's what you get if you insist on cheap and plentiful food I guess. There must be too much competition in the fast food market in America.

 

[Ian Keldon]

Indeed. Restaurants are small companies and not giant corporations with market power on the labour market. If you get decent folks for the minimum wage the productivity of waiters simply isn't higher than that.
It is not your job or the job of the customers to care about the poor waiters. There are plenty of welfare state instruments that can ease the lives of the working poor.

What weird alternate reality do you call home?

 

[Ian Keldon]

You sound a bit bitter mate

...

I can't imagine what it must be like getting paid $2 an hour or whatever it is. Poor bastards. That's what you get if you insist on cheap and plentiful food I guess. There must be too much competition in the fast food market in America.

I find it darkly amusing that the Right in America is always talking about how poor people are "free loaders" on society when it's inevitably those same Right-wingers who demand the cheapest possible price for goods and services, even if that price isn't enough for the supplier of the good or service to make a decent living off of the proceeds.

They'll tell the poor "no 'free lunch' for you" on social services, but have no qualms about buying sweatshop/prison labor/slave labor goods from China, etc. In fact they DEMAND to be able to do so. All they're doing is making working people the world over make do with less so they can save a lousy 10% on a pack of socks (or a lunch check).

 

[Thestral]

I'd take you out to eat, my dear evil twin.

This is why it's nice to have a good twin.

 

[beamMe]

I don't owe my servers a god damn thing. Period. I am obligated to pay what is on the bill. That is all.

Now, that being said, I tip, and try to tip well when it is deserved. If you keep my glass filled, get my food out to me quickly, and give me generally good service, you're getting a decent tip. If you neglect me, if I sit with an empty glass for a very long time, if you act rude or indifferent, then you are getting very little or jack squat. That's the way it works. Tips are a reward for good service. They are not an obligation.

This. ^

 

[Ian Keldon]

I don't owe my servers a god damn thing. Period. I am obligated to pay what is on the bill. That is all.

Now, that being said, I tip, and try to tip well when it is deserved. If you keep my glass filled, get my food out to me quickly, and give me generally good service, you're getting a decent tip. If you neglect me, if I sit with an empty glass for a very long time, if you act rude or indifferent, then you are getting very little or jack squat. That's the way it works. Tips are a reward for good service. They are not an obligation.

This. ^

At a bare minimum, you owe the waitstaff sufficient compensation for their time and labor. "Sufficient" meaning paying a price for the food and service that allows them to be paid a living wage. Either that amount comes from the current price (which includes a SUB-living wage) plus "tip" or an up front price to pay the living wage.

The following actually happened: I know because I was there when it did:

During a very busy lunch rush (which we were running short-handed to begin with), a large party came in (7-10 people IIRC). They proceeded to order a proverbial ton of food. Each and every last order was a "special order" (required non-standard preparation). We were already backed up, and they were told up front it would be a few minutes.

They proceeded to make the servers' life a living nightmare. Every minute or two they wanted something else (refills, more condiments, etc). And all they did was complain complain complain. It was taking too long. They were "being ignored". Where was the food? They kept at it even when it put the servers behind on other tables' requests (which in turn set them off). Somehow, we managed to get it out to them.

They kept this up for the better part of an hour (and several additional orders). One of the servers told me later that by the end even some of the other patrons were getting pissed at this bunch.

When they finally paid and left, can you guess how much they left as a tip for making our lives H*ll?

Not. A. Single. Penny.

So don't talk to me about how tips are an "incentive for good work". Don't talk to anyone who has worked a tipped job.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I don't owe my servers a god damn thing. Period. I am obligated to pay what is on the bill. That is all.

Now, that being said, I tip, and try to tip well when it is deserved. If you keep my glass filled, get my food out to me quickly, and give me generally good service, you're getting a decent tip. If you neglect me, if I sit with an empty glass for a very long time, if you act rude or indifferent, then you are getting very little or jack squat. That's the way it works. Tips are a reward for good service. They are not an obligation.

This. ^

At a bare minimum, you owe the waitstaff sufficient compensation for their time and labor. "Sufficient" meaning paying a price for the food and service that allows them to be paid a living wage. Either that amount comes from the current price (which includes a SUB-living wage) plus "tip" or an up front price to pay the living wage.

The following actually happened: I know because I was there when it did:

During a very busy lunch rush (which we were running short-handed to begin with), a large party came in (7-10 people IIRC). They proceeded to order a proverbial ton of food. Each and every last order was a "special order" (required non-standard preparation). We were already backed up, and they were told up front it would be a few minutes.

They proceeded to make the servers' life a living nightmare. Every minute or two they wanted something else (refills, more condiments, etc). And all they did was complain complain complain. It was taking too long. They were "being ignored". Where was the food? They kept at it even when it put the servers behind on other tables' requests (which in turn set them off). Somehow, we managed to get it out to them.

They kept this up for the better part of an hour (and several additional orders). One of the servers told me later that by the end even some of the other patrons were getting pissed at this bunch.

When they finally paid and left, can you guess how much they left as a tip for making our lives H*ll?

Not. A. Single. Penny.

So don't talk to me about how tips are an "incentive for good work". Don't talk to anyone who has worked a tipped job.

No, get a different job.

 

[Ian Keldon]

No, get a different job.

So you're perfectly all right with customers stiffing waitstaff on tips on top of being utter a-holes to them...good to know.

And by the way, I did. I wouldn't work a tipped job today short of any condition involving utter starvation if I had any other option.

 

[Gov Kodos]

No, get a different job.

So you're perfectly all right with customers stiffing waitstaff on tips on top of being utter a-holes to them...good to know.

I'm against the sense of entitlement implied towards a job that amounts to carry stuff between point a and point b.

 

[Pingfah]

I have always tipped well and always will, but reading these threads makes me not want to.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I have always tipped well and always will, but reading these threads makes me not want to.

I'd be far happier to give my money to the cook.

 

[horatio83]

You still do not understand that tips are about creating incentives.

Complete and utter BS. Tipping is about allowing resteraunt owners to cheap out on wages.

You might wanna go easy on using the word bullshit when you reveal your lack of basic economic knowledge. "Cheap out on wages" is only possible is restaurants had some form of market power in the labour market (if a waiter has a productivity of $10 and his chef pay him merely $8 another restaurant has an incentive to pay him a bit more, thus driving up the wages to productivity). As they are usually small companies this is not the case.
You do not need to be a Marxist to see that capital has gained in the last decades and labour has lost. But restaurant owners have little to do with the corporate undermining of democracy.

But if you still think that your employer exploits you you might wanna do what the working class has done back in the days, form a union, raise your fist and stands united against (perceived) injustice. Certainly beats whining.

When they finally paid and left, can you guess how much they left as a tip for making our lives H*ll?

Not. A. Single. Penny.

So don't talk to me about how tips are an "incentive for good work". Don't talk to anyone who has worked a tipped job.

If expecting high tips does not make you work hard it is not surprising that you often receive no tips.
Seriously, why do you not fight for another system with higher wages and smaller tips if you do not like the "customer can cheat" problem of the tipping system? For example on this side of the big pond tips are far smaller.

 

[Stephen!]

You must remember, waiters and waitresses usually don't make anything near minimum wage if they get wages at all:

How is the employer not obliged to pay them at least minimum wage?

 

[TheBrew]

I always tip 20% or round up. The only time tipping annoyed me was when I ordered pizza, went to pick it up, put my bank card in the machine and it had an option for tipping on the display. I didn't want to look bad, so I punched in a tip. I'm used to tipping at restaurants, but I wasn't used to this. Whenever I went back, I made sure to bring cash.

Yikes, what a socially awkward penguin you are. I have no problem writing in a 0.

 

[Misfit Toy]

I'd take you out to eat, my dear evil twin.

This is why it's nice to have a good twin.

I thought you were the good twin...



Would it help if people thought of the menu price as the cost of the food, and the tip as the price of the service?

 

[Ryan8bit]

The thing is the price of the food wouldn't go up the 15-20% you're "expected to tip" it'd more than likely double as the restaurant's wages have now almost quadrupled (going from a ~$2.50 rate to the ~$8/$9 min. wage now is.) So the restaurants wages have gone up by that much and all of that money needs to be made up somewhere.

This is like the worst math I've ever seen. Just wow.

 

[BillJ]

I think that it would be better if we quit calling it a gratuity and started calling it what it is, a service charge. Make it clear that there is a mandatory charge for service above the cost of the food.

But then the restaurants would probably lose business because they'd take the customer opinion of service out of the equation.

 

[thestrangequark]

You must remember, waiters and waitresses usually don't make anything near minimum wage if they get wages at all:

How is the employer not obliged to pay them at least minimum wage?

They're often exempt, the specific idea being that their tips will make up for it.