In Austria often times they expect it because of “good behaviour”. Its not a fix percentage but more pocket chance. Still they are getting a full salary at the end of the month
That was a big change for me coming there from the Netherlands. Tipping is a bigger thing here, but salaries are also better and waiters seem to get some level of respect as well.
Scotland is a goner, last time I was there all the card terminals had it. Asked a waitress if she would get the tip if I have one and she flushed, mumbled something, looked at the boss and sheepishly said it gets shared. I bet none of the staff sees any of it.
I mean I’m not sure what you can do other than name and shame the restaurant, and/or boycott it
I’m against tipping culture so um not endorsing this but… you could give her a 5 dollars/ euros/ sheckles note and thank her for what she did to deserve that?
Tipping is pretty normal here in Germany but not required, no one depends on it. Probably because our minimum wage is actually high enough. Germany’s minimum wage of 12.50€/h is almost double that of the US, which is $7.25/h or 6.76€/h if you convert it.
Edit: I just found out in this thread that businesses don’t even have to pay minimum wage in the US, they just have to pay what’s left for the tips to cover the minimum wage. That’s so fucking stupid, holy shit.
It’s worse than you think – In most US States, you can pay people way under the minimum wage as long as their tips make up for it. So an average waiter might make 2 bucks and hour on paper. If they didn’t get enough tips to reach minimum wage, the restaurant would have to pay them out on top of that, but it’s just this fucked up cultural thing to give restaurant owners free labor that the customers pay for.
If you can’t afford to tip after getting a new car, you should probably get an older car.
fun fact: most people DO tip for new cars. Only the tip is factored in into the initial price, which already includes 50-100% markup, which gives the dealer room to abate.
Service industry employees have lowkey become the most entitled folks ever after COVID. “We were essential” the fuck you were. Every single god damn place has 18% as the MINIMUM tip. If I see that I legit don’t even tip, and then take my business elsewhere. Absolute height of disrespect.
Edit: Just had a hotel stay, my bed was turned over once. FOR SEVEN DAYS. Guess who didn’t get a single tip?
I don’t really get why the expected percentage went up. 15% was the standard for a LONG time. 20% meant you thought they were great. Now 15 is considered shitty, like an insult, and we’re supposed to do 18 or 25 or 30. Meanwhile prices also went up. Why am I supposed to tip 25% now? Service hasn’t changed.
Tipped wages cover about 35 cents of service per menu item, ie your time at a checkout stand. If you got more than that you need to tip or expect to be ignored.
Non American so bear with me.why the % would go up? Prives have gone up considerably, 10% now should be like or better than 10% then or am I missing something? Is there a point in the future where someone says 113% was okay in the 2040s but not now?
It’s basically an artifact of how pay is set. The USA has a system where pay for certain professions is adjusted only by a new law. Since in capitalism the capital class has power over policy and the working class does not, the tendency is to resist increasing salary.
Now for most workers this would simply be untenable, but for jobs that get part of their income through tips the workers can make up the difference by increasing the portion of their income they receive through tips.
So over time the tip rate has increased. It’s actually an interesting proxy for how fucked capitalism has become in the USA. The higher the percentage of cost that workers need to receive semi-formally through tipping, the more the imbalance between capital and labor.
Still doesn’t make any sense. We all know how the tipping system works, it’s fucked but that’s not the point here.
A fixed % of a restaurant bill in the 70s, 80s or 90s should give hospo workers the same amount of money adjusted to inflation so if 10% was good enough money then, it should be now too.
Hell, I could argue that prices have gone up at inflation rates (that’s pretty much the definition ofvinflation) while salaries have remained stagnant, so a fixed % of an inflated restaurant bill makes hospo workers the only ones that actually have their income adjusted to inflation. Everyone else (salaried) gets a well below merit increase year on year. And that’s even before you take the socially accepted tip from 10% to 25 or 30%
Imagine in 1979 that 30% of the cost of a meal went to server salaries. Imagine that now it is 15%. Either the server takes a 15% pay cut or that money gets paid directly by the customer as extra tip.
Honest question, are servers paid a fixed amount of the cost of a meal by their employer, or you are just implying that their fixed amount went down adjusted to inflation like it happened to all other industries?
Most people who get a tip are paid by the hour by their employers in the US (and everywhere else that I know). Tips are a portion of the cost of the meal, usually.
So where your saying, in your previous comment that the hour pay hasn’t gone up at all, or it has gone up bit not at the same rate as inflation? That sucks (but then again all workers seem to be impacted by that problem lately, agree that servers might be more impacted due to low wages)
Got it, it sucks. Really 35 million people need to fight to abolish tips, and get this mess fixed including having minimum wage indexed to inflation or at least reviewed periodically and adjusted. We all love to bash the capitalist here and blame the employer, but really tha change needs to be demanded by the people affected, the workers, or it will never happen.
Tipped min wage in the US is $2.35/hr, and less in other parts of the world that still tip. The menu price covers about 35 cents worth of service outside of really high end restaurants (and these will invite you not to return if you stiff on the tip). That doesn’t even cover the 4 mandatory visits from staff: seating, orders for 3 max, service, and billing. 15% is the rate for regulars, ie you are in 3+ times per month.
If you can’t afford to pay for service don’t go out to eat, get take out.
I don’t. I work for an engineering firm and can afford to pay for service so that when I walk into a restaurant I get seated and asked if I want my usual. That costs money and courtesy.
I also know that when someone else stands at the sign waiting to be seated for 2 hrs that happens for a reason. Typically the one I outlined above.
Hopefully your employer will introduce a new salary framework where you get paid what customers think you should be paid for your engineering services, or not. you seem to have good people skills so that shouldn’t be an issue.
I do too well, thanks, but that’s irrelevant. I don’t get what your point is. None of that is anything new. When I worked at a restaurant in the 90s servers made $2.17 an hour plus tips, and it was okay to do 15%. 10% was for below average service, but 20 was if you loved them. 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, always 15%. 25% was considered a really generous tip for great service. Now people expect to 25% though nothing has changed about the business or what waitstaff do.
You’ve been downvoted by people that clearly have never worked in a restaurant. People aren’t entitled to a night out. It’s a luxury. And your slave that brought you all these nice things to your table can’t pay their bills. If they hate it they should quit right? That’s sustainable.
People also aren’t entitled to tips. Regardless, I’d happily forego the “service” of bringing over a tray of food for a 15-25% discount, especially when “good service” is considered interrupting your meal to ask how it’s going or refilling your water (again, something I can do myself and it’s not like I’m drinking gallons of water).
I typically tip around 20% when I have to go for an occasion, but otherwise I don’t go to restaurants.
15% is standard, great even. It’s this one weird trick I do. See: how this works is I’m the one with the money which means I’m also the owner of the yardstick that measures average, good and great.
I’m baffled by comments like this. One ought to be empowered to decide if someone has met or exceeded your standards, and to what degree. Letting social pressure dictate that is nonsensical.
I’ve always tipped 20% for good service and 15% for average or below. I usually don’t tip less that 15% unless it’s just abysmal or I’m picking up a to go order in which case I usually do 8-10%. Several of the restaurants around me have changed from 15% / 20% on the suggested tip to 20% / 25% and a few have even added 30%. And I’ve also noticed the suggested tips are calculated on the after tax amount, and some restaurants that charge a credit card processing fee calculate the suggested tip on that amount. I tip on pretax and pre-fee totals and cap at 20%. If it get worse, my eating at restaurants will start becoming less and less.
Because minimum wage for servers stayed dirt cheap while inflation skyrocketed, and now businesses are fighting to keep servers employed (but still aren’t willing to pay a living wage).
It’s all fueled by cyclical logic where the business refuses to accept that they’re immoral for requiring tipping. Might be legal- it’s still a concious failure of responsibility to short your staff and expect someone else to make up that difference.
**Gosh I didn’t realize Lemmy was so full of broke assholes hell bent on taking money out of service employees pockets. Very working class of you guys!
Going anyway and just not tipping is also a completely acceptable and legally protected option. Sort of like saying ‘no thank you’ to the grocery store check out person asking for charity donations or if you would like to sign up for the store credit card.
Again, it’s optional. So people can also say ‘yes’ if they want and that’s cool too I guess. Although tipping is inherently harmful to the server’s baseline wage which is a bit problematic, if people want to tip they can and no one is stopping them. And I won’t give them shit about it unless they specifically inquire about it. Since the whole thing is ‘optional’ after all I let them make their own decisions and if tipping gives them a nice release of serotonin or dopamine or something that makes them feel better, who am I to take that from them.
I look at it as Actual price = menu price + lowest suggested tip + $5 tip awkwardness penalty. So a place near me has a $12 lunch-size sub sandwich that’s really good. But they ask for a 15% tip. So rather than just never eat at my favorite sandwich spot, I regard it as a $18.80 lunch and only buy it on rare occasions or when my company is paying.
This is a valid choice. What isn’t valid is still going out to restaurants, having a gay ol time, and then refusing to tip your server on principle while the owner did nothing and made a killing.
I’m not really a big fan of this rhetoric. People should be able to go to a restaurant and eat without being expected to pay more than what their food costs. They shouldn’t be shamed for not wanting to tip. This becomes an issue of personal morality which is why I just don’t eat out, but I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business except for the person spending the money since it is their money after all. It’s not a customer’s responsibility to make up the pay of a business’s employee. PERIOD. Basically what I’m saying is I don’t go places that expect me to tip but I 100% support people’s decisions to go to restaurants and not tip because that is their right.
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.
The whole damn system exists to place the burden of a living wage on the customer while the company paying peanuts can claim no wrongdoing. And the really sad part is: it has worked.
Edit: and there are many, many businesses that wouldn’t be in business if they actually had to pay competitive wages on their own. The invisible hand can fix nothing if tipping culture says to throw more and more arbitrary amounts of money at people to subsidize their wages yourself. At some point (I’d argue we’re past it already), the band-aid needs to get ripped off. Only then will we see self-correction. The almost immediate loss of many businesses will likely trigger other actions. It’s already a no-win scenario.
Yes, but one way is on the company first and one isn’t. Would prices go up if these places were paying living wages? Most likely. Many businesses would be insolvent because their business model was simply never designed to pay a living wage to employees. Others could remain solvent, but probably not if they continue to take so much off the top at higher positions.
And that’s exactly it: the market never self-corrects if we throw arbitrary money in excess of listed prices to solve was is ultimately an issue of business solvency and ethics. There is no economic theory that would support such an idea in any industry, but here we are.
The sheer number of businesses out of the space might even drive down rents. That’s the kind of thing I mean by “other actions”. But things cannot continue as they are.
None of this is even to mention the sheer number of people in the service industry who are also on government assistance programs. They have to be – none of the blame is on them. But my tax dollars go to that, plus I am expected to pay extra to subsidize their wages with tips. I effectively subsidize them twice while someone reaps the rewards on their yacht. All I’m saying is the yacht people should be taking the risks first. That’s part of being a business owner.
I don’t think a lot of Lemmy understands it doesn’t matter how you are subsidizing the wages, you’re doing it regardless. Like this clown who thinks food will be cheaper if more cash goes through the owner to the waiter instead of straight to the waiter. Regardless of system the customer is paying for everything, not the owner, unless of course his business is failing. Imagine the entitlement required to desire everyone change their model to make things cheaper for you, at a business that is completely a luxury. You could simply learn to cook instead of whining about tipping.
This is not true. I’ve visited the USA multiple times and I’ve gotten tipping wrong every time.
the market isn’t gonna correct if it goes away because you’ll still be paying the exact same amount.
This is also not really true. You look at a menu in Australia and the price you see is the exact amount you pay. $20 lunch is $20 on the bill. No added tips or taxes or anything.
For the customer, this system is better.
Saying that same lunch in the USA would ‘have been $14 on the menu in the USA’ would not match my experience. In fact, prices for most things were in the same rough ballpark once the exchange rate was factored in.
Caveat: my last visit was 10 years ago. My experience may be out of date. 15% was considered a normal tip, then.
I’m sorry you’re a moron, and I don’t take financial advice from people who can’t figure out something as simple as tipping protocol. And quit lying, food is definitely cheaper on average in the states, and greater quantity too.
The food is pumped with filler trash, so the quantity is definitely there, but the prices aren’t as cheap as you think, especially for what you’re getting.
Oh look, an Aussie that needs you know that. Yes yes, everything is better there, it has to be, why else would y’all spend so much time trying to convince everyone of it.
Tipping does still suck though, and the way it is in many states of the US, slow business literally means employees get paid less, which is pretty fucked.
Australia certainly isn’t perfect, and don’t let anyone tell you how great Medicare is here because it’s not what it uses to be and slowly but surely slipping into private health insurance hell due to its languishing, but heck, defensive much mate?
I am glad that I don’t have to deal with tipping. Tipping is trash and seemingly many Americans agree it’s trash.
Not defensive, I really don’t care for Australians, they’ve a way of conducting themselves that I find very fucking irritating. New Zealanders i can get along with.
Tipping is good bc you van pay the employee directly. What needs to change is that tips need to be mandatory and when tips fall short of a living wage the business must pay pay to make up.
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.
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.
Planet earth’s been on the verge of a recession since 4bya. Various economists have been able to predict a recession every year since the term was invented. Stay safe
Recession has a specific definition. Unless you’ve had however many quarters of negative growth or bad GDP or however the fuck economists define it then you’re not in recession.
Based on my quick search I’m assuming by “they” you mean the NBER and by “we” you mean the USA? It seems the rest of us have agreed on the definition being 2 quarters.
25% ??! Damn I remember when it was 10%, or maybe just the tax if you were cheap. The American public is way better at giving underpaid workers wages that keep up with inflation than the government!
If you can’t afford the bill then don’t eat there. That sucks to hear I know. However the only way we’re going to reign in costs is by sticking to what’s affordable. If restaurants can’t charge that price then food distributors have to lower prices too. We all benefit by sticking to affordability.
If you’re worried about money you absolutely should open up the restaurant’s menu on their website or before you order and figure out what you can afford with a 20% surcharge. That said tipping was created by the industry to externalize costs and it needs to go die in a fire.
I think the point isn’t about the bill but the expectation of massive tips. It’s too out of control to me, I used to tip 20% everywhere. Now I’ve gone back to 15% for regular service, and 20% if it’s really exceptional.
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.
Sure, but on the flip side, I’m paying for the service already. It’s not on us to subsidize the cost.
TIpping was meant and should only be done as a reward for job well done. Not a defacto standard expectation just because you did your job.
That’s what your pay is.
NOW, go fight for better wages. Unionize, promote higher minimum wages, be the change you want to see. But sitting here and bitching out customers because they don’t tip is a you problem.
Some states honor the state minimum wage which is higher than federal and the tips really are just extra. Just so you know, whatever it’s worth to you.
At what point did this minimum change from 10 to 15 to 18 and now 20? Restaurants increase the cost of food items and your tip is a proportion of that. Why would the cost of food increase AND the proportion of tip also increase? That’s double dipping and yeah, people should be pissed about it
What does covering more employees over the same period mean? I don’t follow. Also, you’re assuming that customers’ salaries increased with COL and inflation. They haven’t. These policies just squeeze value out of customers. Of course they’re offended
So tips used to just go to the worker who got them. But now they go to nearly everyone at the restaurant. Your server has to tip out quite a few other people.
And yeah we know the rising prices are squeezing value of customers, but those prices are largely disconnected from the staff’s wages. Which is why the percentage has to go up.
Is this not even worse double-dipping? Why would a server who makes $3/hr be expected to tip out the rest of the restaurant? That’s the point of being able to pay them $3/hr no?
Wages being disconnected from company earnings is an even bigger reason for us to insist the percentage NOT go up…
No, rising prices of menu items increases tips as a proportion. If menu prices stayed the same and you want larger tip %, then sure. But not both. That’s just greedy
In many places including Washington state servers are actually paid minimum wage of a bit over $16 an hour. We also have pervasive tip requests. I have gone to a restaurant where ordering and drinks was self serve, the employee makes you a hot sandwich which you take to go and the robot which takes your order requests a default 20% tip.
It’s highly unlikely that a POS terminal software directs tip money directly to the software company. Hopefully tips are shared by staff. Pessemistically they could be stolen by the company. In either case it doesn’t match the normal expectation of tipped service.
Maybe Square is the odd one out, but a quick trip around Google search says yes it’s generally the default. It can be turned off but why would a business owner do that?
I don’t eat out at resturants ever - and guess what! When that happens, they bitch and moan about my not supporting local businesses, and steal millions in PPP loans!
You’ll hate to hear this, but restaurants struggling to fill positions and having to offer more benefits and pay to attract wait staff is the only way to end tipping culture. Tipping will never end itself.
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