It’s only eating out if it’s 69%, otherwise it’s just sparkling oral.

While getting fucked! What a meal!

The cost is literally the same... Restaurants would just be upfront about it then.

Eek! They eke out a living on so little!

Chasing a windmill would be really easy tho.

I have no easy solutions.

There's an easy one that could be legislated tomorrow by any states.

Raise minimum wages and enforce it throughout ALL workplaces, including wait staff. Nobody should be earning less than a living wage just because they're restaraunt staff.

I think the $20 vs $200 was a per person price. Like, if I order the steak for $50 and you order a grilled cheese sandwich for $8, we both got the same amount and quality of service, why do we tip differently?

Make what right? They're just bringing it to my table. If the food or service sucks I'm also told that you should tip anyway, so it seems like tipping isn't based on quality (and really, it isn't).

You're not wrong, that's the logic behind it. It's not like you're defending it so idk why you're getting down voted! What you also didn't mention is that at these restaurants is that it is a much more leisurely meal and experience, so there isn't high table turnover which lessens the tips. I suspect they also have smaller sections.

You're the only one who gets it.

Everything is probably a la carte. You gotta know what is in every dish, what pairs with it from appetizers to sides to wine to dessert. You don't walk out and ask "who had the cheeseburger?" because the expectation on the experience is higher. You're controlling the timing at the table as well. When do you fire the main after they get the appetizer? Salad? Bread? Drinks? Which SIDE of the person do you give or remove plates? And yeah you gotta tip the bartender, the bussers, the expediters sometimes, and who knows who else.

It is still horseshit, but it's not as easy as dropping a rib basket on the table.

Be mad about the tip line on the sandwich shop menu, be mad about 20% tip on the burger joint that has a modern industrial interior and a $22 burger, don't be mad about paying out the Friday Saturday night white tablecloth servers with a tough fucking job of conducting your whole anniversary meal. You get to have a good experience once a year, they've got 15 other once a year meals to solve and it's just a regular dinner shift.

What difference is there between serving a $200 meal and a $50 one?

That's insane. It's literally the job. Imagine applying this logic to any service industry job.

It mostly bothers me when I just order 1 entree and a water. At one place that might cost $10, and at another place it might cost $30, and all the wait staff did was carry a plate from the kitchen to me in both cases.

It doesn't seem fair that the wait staff at the more expensive place gets tipped more than the less expensive place just because of an arbitrary custom.

The extra cost of the expensive meal is mostly due to ingredients, the cooking process, the location, and maaay slightly more complicated table setting.

Waffle House: feed a family of 4 for $20 Tip: $4 "Fancy" Restaurant: microwaved appetizer $20 Tip: $5

A percentage scales within an establishment, but not really across them.

The difference is that on slow nights, staff get paid less, which is fucked up.

The business needs to wear the cost, because they reap the rewards, which is the narrative capitalism supposedly is about.

Tipping sucks, I'm glad we don't have it in Australia.

I agree wholeheartedly! Let's make tipping mandatory. In fact, let's add it on to the price of your bill automatically. Better still, let's just add it onto the menu price. Oh hey, we've come full circle.

What difference is there to you, then, between "employer pays a reasonable living wage to their employees but raises the prices of the food a bit to accommodate" and "employer pays poverty wages, forcing the customers to pay their employees for them and forcing tax payers to pay up when people earning poverty wages inevitably rely on government programs to simply survive?" If tipping is mandatory, the only people that benefit is the employer since they can simply double dip - spend less money on payroll AND force the customer to make up for your lack of willingness to pay competitive wages. Yes, under current law, employers are supposed to make the difference if tips can't cover at least minimum wage, but that's not enforced nearly as much as it should be, which puts the onus on the workers being exploited in the first place, and even then minimum wage in this country is embarrassingly unfit for supporting anybody.

The more important question to ask is "why am I expected to pay an employee when the money I already give to a business should cover wages in the first place?"

I'm a tipped employee for my day job. I make a decent base pay, but the tips make up for that in spades during busy seasons. I've bought my current car with tip money. Despite this, I fully support getting rid of tips if it meant my livelihood wouldn't be a gamble depending on factors outside my control, and especially if it meant fewer people had to rely on government assistance and could better provide a livelihood for themselves.

A business is free to offer mandatory tipping and they do have to make up the difference if its not the minimum wage. The minimum wage could be higher of course.

Or....and hear me out.....RESTAURANTS SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO PAY THEIR STAFF LESS THAN $3/HR!

How can it be a recession when the .01% is richer than ever before?

Well, are we in a recession? Because it does not seem like it for many people, not just 1%.

Michael Burry has successfully predicted 92 of the last 3 recessions.

They've changed the definition of recession like 5 times in the past 3 years. We've had numerous consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth.

LMFAO. I love people like you... If you demand everyone stay home... You know what will happen? You won't have customers in the restaurant. Which leads to less tables, which leads to less wait staff needed. You will simply lose your job. So not only do you not get tips... but you won't even get your minimum wages.

Congrats you're ruining it yourself!

Order take-out, all the food, none of the worries

taking money out of service employees pockets

Doesn't your employer pay your wage?

You can reprogram it to not do that.

Who do you think programs it?

A sandwich shop that is only every a pick up counter (not even seating if you wanted to) that has not only a point of sale equipment declaring expected tip (no, point of sale equipment doesn't lock the operator into demand a tip mode, the operator chooses it), but also a tip jar.

Even if, somehow, it were the case that operators were locked into nagging for tip for some bizarre reason, it would still be a problem.

Maybe one day we have the technology for a second button. You should've tipped the programmer

Or should the customer get the tip for doing the work running around with an order? That's a question for the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK98YADi7FU

Right? Like why is people's STANDARD giving money away.

I had one do that (well, even higher, 25, 30, 35, Other) for a retailer recently. Like, it took them under 10 seconds to ring me up and they should automatically get 25%? I chose zero.

The standard tip at a POS is 0. Generally the same for carry out.

If you're not getting personal service by a human, you don't need to tip.

They do it because they can get away with it and it makes money off of suckers.

I just keep reading this as Piece of Shit machine, and I don't think I'm too off the mark here.

Point of Sale.

But you're correct in that most of these Point of Sale systems are also Pieces of Shit.

POS in normal talk means piece of shit. POS in business talk means point of sale.

Often it means that but in this case it means "Point Of Sale"

Point of Sale.

Point of Service (?) aka the machine that handles the transaction

Biden should be talking up the soft landing every time he answers a question, imho. Uncle Joe saved us all a lot of pain with that.

I just tip based on the service I get: If you are shitty, you do not get a tip.

We can also straight up ban it. But yeah I know businesses aren't just going to willingly stop it.

I've never had anyone say anything about a 15-20% tip.

20% minimum unless the service is horrible. It's not your fault the servers are paid BELOW minimum wage because the employer expects you to tip. But it nonetheless is the expectation and is the right thing to do. If you can't afford to tip correctly you can't afford to eat out.

To be clear, i think we should get rid of tipping economy, but while it is the norm, you absolutely have to tip.

Yes, that would be ideal. Since that's not currently the case at all establishments, we can take other steps.

Yep! The people directly serving us deserve to get paid more, and while we can't raise their wage, we can at least make sure they're getting paid well while they serve us.

I aim for 25-30% tip when I get standard service and when there aren't any comped apps/drinks/desserts. If the server is amazing or if they're giving us free stuff, I give more. 50% is very rare for me to hit, but I did leave 50% at a family dinner a few weeks ago.

Why did you ask about 50% specifically?

It's the last bit. His first paragraph is a good outlook. Encouraging everyone to tip 25-50% is insane and stupid.

People tend to vote based on the worst part of a comment.

Right!? If you're lucky enough to be financially secure right now, tipping can even be seen as a form of mutual aid!

you are proposing that if we all stop tipping, companies will be motivated to pay their workers; you are correct, this is what would happen if we all stopped tipping at the same time.

this process is known as collective action. it is incredibly important to remember that collective action only works when it actually happens. in other words, your individual action of not tipping your waiter is ONLY beneficial to your waiter if you can make sure one else tips either.

do you have this power? (i think you don’t; if you do i beg of you to exercise it lol.)

now consider who actually holds the power here. at any point, your restaurant’s owner could institute a no-tip policy, thereby ensuring that no one has to tip, ever. several restaurants already have done this, and it works. now, you might (correctly) note that this may gives an unfair advantage to other competing restaurants who do not implement no-tip policy. this is where local and regional policy can come in to help coordinate transitioning to a more helpful model of compensating employees.

so there’s kind of this imbalance, where yeah technically it’s possible for us as eaters of food to “fix” the tipping problem, but its way way easier for the people in charge (whether that’s government or owners) to fix it, because they have the power of coordination on their side.

tldr, tip your waiters and advocate for anti-tipping policies if you want to maximize long term benefits for everyone.

I agree with you, actually. If you don't want to tip, fine, don't tip. But don't go to a restaurant and then not tip, either, because not only are you still giving the company money, you're shortchanging the actual person you want to help.

If we don’t tip, where is the motivation to make companies actually pay their workers?

Visiting Japan was incredible, every price was transparent and you paid exactly what the menu said. Wish we could get that going here.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks.

“You should just make more money!”

Maybe I should've worded my original comment better, because I never said we should just accept it. I explicitly think we shouldn't accept it by refusing to do business at places that push tipping instead of paying their staff proper wages.

Probably should've led with that.

Eating out is luxury and not necessity and that makes tiping a necessity?

OP is right, and the users on Lemmy are salty. Waiters make $2.13 / hour they survive off tips. If you don't tip, the system doesn't change, you're just an asshole

Presumably because you're guzzling it as fast as he can brew more and refill.

Why is your problem here that people don’t want to have to pay additional above the expected posted fee for their food?

Its clearly more your problem than mine. I'm not the one getting nasty stares and bad service because I've stiffed the help.

Why does everyone always assume that if minimum wage went up or if tipping went away that the customer would absorb the cost?

There’s no technical reason for why, just based on current evidence where 100% of the time producers shove any increase in cost to consumers.

You’re correct that there’s nothing technically preventing producers from eating the increase, it’s just that they’ve never done so, at least in the US.

Only real example where that has happen was with Nintendo and the WiiU. I’m sure there’s more but the fact I’m drawing blank past that but could name you over a thousand times when the cost was shoved off to consumers kind of is my point in a nutshell.

So that said, that’s why a lot of people just assume increase in cost of production equals increase in cost to consumers.

Currently servers are currently paid minimum $2.13/hour. If they don't make enough after tips to equal minimum wage over a pay period ($7.25/hour), then the restaurant is required to pay them up to that minimum wage.

Labor costs for servers, bartenders, and others caught in this legal loophole would have to increase by 7-fold to get up to $15/hour. Many restaurants and bars wouldn't be able to afford that large of an increase without raising prices, given that many have a profit margin between 3-6% per several sources.

There have been some restaurants that have raised wages closer to $15/hour with varying success, but that hasn't caught on widely yet.

Nah, I hate tipping because of the fact that it is on a percentage.

I just order to go, food quality is a little lower than straight from the kitchen, the company is better though