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 DogofWar1 wrote:
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On the issue of tipping, restaurants should simply do away with tipping en masse and raise food prices to provide decent wages. Sure, some servers suck and don't deserve good tips, but most bust their rears all day and often have little to show for it. They also have to be the middle man between the cooks and the customers, which means when either gets pissed (usually the cooks at the customers or vice versa) waiters are stuck dealing with it. I really feel for them.
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You understand this would most probably hurt business and in turn cost them even more money, right?

Then how do other resturants, In other countries, do it??

They pay minimum wage and tips are optional , also i think food is way more expensive to buy.

I've been a waiter, waiters deserve tips just for dealing with the public , normal everyday people seem to turn into demanding freaks upon entering a restaurant. I thing the best thing to remember when eating out that the rule of judging how someone is by their treatment of waiters is a really good rule of thumb to judge people by.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Then how do other resturants, In other countries, do it??

They don't just indiscriminately raise prices to provide higher wages. The wages for servers already have a precedent that doesn't include tips, and the food is already priced accordingly. Changing the economics of how server wages are paid by the employer by simply raising food prices will absolutely affect business.

When your outback special goes from $12.99 to $19.99 your purchasing demographic is going to be affected.

Bullockist wrote:
They pay minimum wage and tips are optional , also i think food is way more expensive to buy.

I've been a waiter, waiters deserve tips just for dealing with the public , normal everyday people seem to turn into demanding freaks upon entering a restaurant. I thing the best thing to remember when eating out that the rule of judging how someone is by their treatment of waiters is a really good rule of thumb to judge people by.

My family is so critical of waiters it disgusts me. they give the sprite to the kid and not to the adult "No tip"

 sebster wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
It's because someone said something so hateful as "I don't agree with you".

Except the statement was 'I don't agree with your lifestyle'... which is totally fething different.

It's incredible, this inability of people to understand this isn't just an abstract political position, but actual people's lives.

Social justice warriors, assemble!

Faux internet outrage has been monetized. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I'm assuming the social justice warriors are similar to the Avengers but never leave HQ as they are too busy sitting in a committee discussing who has the greater privilege.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Bullockist wrote:
They pay minimum wage and tips are optional , also i think food is way more expensive to buy.

I've been a waiter, waiters deserve tips just for dealing with the public , normal everyday people seem to turn into demanding freaks upon entering a restaurant. I thing the best thing to remember when eating out that the rule of judging how someone is by their treatment of waiters is a really good rule of thumb to judge people by.

My family is so critical of waiters it disgusts me. they give the sprite to the kid and not to the adult "No tip"

If the kid orders the sprite shouldn't the kid receive the sprite?

Thy look like not this

 cincydooley wrote:


You understand this would most probably hurt business and in turn cost them even more money, right?

I doubt it would hurt business too much if at all. Most people at least briefly calculate tip cost into restaurant trips, or, if they don't they probably don't worry too much about cost in the first place. Changing something like a burger from $10 to $12 isn't a huge, paradigm shattering change, especially once you do away with tipping. The mental "things cost more so I'm going to eat out less" thing will wear off as soon as people realize they don't have to tip that $2 they used to and that it's six of one, half-dozen of another.

Heck, there's pressure involved in tipping too. Sitting there having to calculate it, deciding if it's enough, etc. Taking that out of the customers' hands is probably something they'd appreciate. No one doing math after dinner.

Actually, Many resturants account tips, pool them, then distribute them evenly.
And what do you mean? I love me some algorithms after a good steak.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Actually, Many resturants account tips, pool them, then distribute them evenly.
And what do you mean? I love me some algorithms after a good steak.

Personally I don't care for that system of pooling tips. If you're building a system designed around creating an incentive to perform good work to make more money, why would you then set up a system that removes the incentive?

I can understand the pros of having a pooling system, after all, tall attractive woman server with the bubbly personality is almost certainly getting much better tips than others who provide equally good service, but at the same time, if someone is really putting in the effort, and they're rewarded, they deserve to not have their effort made less important.

And while I don't mind the math, it's an extra step, usually one that stands between me finishing food/drink there and moving to the next bar/club/whatever, so just adding tip makes things that much quicker.

So we know the price increase to account for higher wages is going to be less than 20%? Because if it is, those prices are now more than I would have had to pay had i purchased the $10 burger and left the $2 tip.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Thy look like not this

Spoiler:

But white people aren't a minority (at least in Canada and the US) that comic doesn't make any sense.

 cincydooley wrote:
So we know the price increase to account for higher wages is going to be less than 20%? Because if it is, those prices are now more than I would have had to pay had i purchased the $10 burger and left the $2 tip.

More than likely. I can't say with 100% certainty, but consider that if everyone who walked into a restaurant tipped 20%, waiters in restaurants with enough volume to stay open in the first place would almost certainly be making a livable wage. I mean, a family of four with a $40 bill, tipping 20%, puts down $8, which, with their $2 salary, results in them getting $10 for that hour, not including any other tables. I seriously doubt food prices would have to increase by more than 20% to accommodate for getting to minimum, or possibly even a livable wage.

The problems with wages come in when you have slow times, and waiters have to compete for the good hours, or you have a poorly planned seating arrangement, or get a string of bad tippers.

Sticking it into the food prices solves a lot of those problems. No longer to waiters have to fight over the good hours, or fret over when a family that's supposed to sit in their section asks to be sat somewhere else.

Heck, at restaurants that do a high volume of business, prices might not need to rise 20% for them to break even. A lot of busy restaurants get enough people over the course of a week that if you added 20% to the total they spent on food, it'd likely be well over what was necessary to get waiters to a decent wage.

You're missing the point. It isn't about the restaurant. It's about the customer. As a good tipper, I plan on giving a 20% tip unless service is bad or exceptional, where I adjust accordingly. As such, my $10 meal in my mind costs me $12 already. If prices raise 30% due to the wage being fully funded by the restaurant, I'm now paying $13 for that meal instead of the $12 I planned. And now there's no guarantee that my service will have warranted that additional $1 I'm paying. So now, I'm rethinking if I even want to go out at all.

 Cheesecat wrote:
Tipping is in Canada too.

Well you're just America's hat.

They're trying to bring it in here as well. In some more upmarket places it's now expected.


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Bullockist wrote:
I read this as " The industry and it's gay, have evolved to match the custom of tipping". ....

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 cincydooley wrote:
You understand this would most probably hurt business and in turn cost them even more money, right?

This how most of the rest of the world does it, and we still have restaurants and stuff.

The impact would likely be to service, through incentive and all that. But against that you'd have people that could rely on a regular wage, and not just the good fortune of whether they had generous customers that night. And you'd get rid of the tax weirdness where waitstaff are taxed on what they probably earned in tips.

 Cheesecat wrote:
But white people aren't a minority (at least in Canada and the US) that comic doesn't make any sense.

It is mocking people that act, and sometimes think, that they are.

 cincydooley wrote:
They don't just indiscriminately raise prices to provide higher wages. The wages for servers already have a precedent that doesn't include tips, and the food is already priced accordingly. Changing the economics of how server wages are paid by the employer by simply raising food prices will absolutely affect business.

When your outback special goes from $12.99 to $19.99 your purchasing demographic is going to be affected.

No, absolutely not. Just think it through.

You have an outback special on the menu, with an expected 15% tip. This means that person goes in to that restaurant expecting to pay $14.94 in total for his meal.

Now let's say there's no tipping, but the waitstaff is paid more. We know from the above that the income received from waiting on a guy eating a steak is $1.95. So now instead of receiving say 6 tips of $1.95 an hour, he's instead receiving about $11.70 in increased wages and no tips. To cover the expense of that $11.70, the restaurant increases the cost of the steak by the increase in wages, per outback special served. Which works out to, you guessed it, $1.95 for each meal. So now the upfront price is $14.94... the exact same as what it was before.

This is just maths, mate.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:
But white people aren't a minority (at least in Canada and the US) that comic doesn't make any sense.

It is mocking people that act, and sometimes think, that they are.

Yeah, I couldn't tell if it was sarcastic or not as there are some people who literally have that mentality described in the comic.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Social justice warriors, assemble!

Faux internet outrage has been monetized. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yeah, pointing out that it isn't just a difference of opinion, but a thing that actually impacts how some people live is faux outrage. For feth's sake.

 cincydooley wrote:
You're missing the point. It isn't about the restaurant. It's about the customer. As a good tipper, I plan on giving a 20% tip unless service is bad or exceptional, where I adjust accordingly. As such, my $10 meal in my mind costs me $12 already. If prices raise 30% due to the wage being fully funded by the restaurant, I'm now paying $13 for that meal instead of the $12 I planned. And now there's no guarantee that my service will have warranted that additional $1 I'm paying. So now, I'm rethinking if I even want to go out at all.

And I was saying that it's unlikely you'll end up paying $13 in that scenario. If everyone tipped 20%, all waitstaff would make minimum wage, and probably above that by a fair amount, provided they didn't get shafted on shifts and seating arrangements.

So if 20% tipping covers minimum wage and then some, why would food prices suddenly increase 30%? There has to be some part of the chain that raises prices more than 20%.

As it stands, you'd be raising wages by maybe $8ish dollars an hour per server from $2 to $10. So, week to week, how much do food prices have to go up for that to work? Well, at a minimum, a server has to put through the system an average of $48, which equates to $40 meal + $8 tip in the current system, as that gives them the $8 extra. The question is, can a restaurant, across all servers, hit that minimum average? I think most can, once you've averaged out busy times like Weekends with slower times like weekdays. Only if a restaurant couldn't hit that minimum average, would food prices need to increase more than 20%. That's why it might actually decrease total price as busier places, most of them likely are way over the $48 per server per hour minimum average amount, and the more you go over that, the less price needs to increase; consider a busy place, like an IHOP in a city or something, maybe they move an average of $80 per server per hour across the week currently, meaning they need only increase food prices 10% to make up that $8 difference.

Sebster hit pretty much the same point with his math.

Without tipping the level of customer service would be the same as retail stores or fast food: Non-existent.

Good servers make good money because they take damn good care of people. gakky servers make less and should move on to a job they don't have to care about.

Seb, not approving of someone's lifestyle only affects that person's life if they let it happen. Or if they just make up the entire scenario.

Let's pretend that the person who perpetrated an internet hoax is some sort of civil rights martyr and laud the contrived outrage over it as a sign of progress.

 sebster wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
They don't just indiscriminately raise prices to provide higher wages. The wages for servers already have a precedent that doesn't include tips, and the food is already priced accordingly. Changing the economics of how server wages are paid by the employer by simply raising food prices will absolutely affect business.

When your outback special goes from $12.99 to $19.99 your purchasing demographic is going to be affected.

No, absolutely not. Just think it through.

You have an outback special on the menu, with an expected 15% tip. This means that person goes in to that restaurant expecting to pay $14.94 in total for his meal.

Now let's say there's no tipping, but the waitstaff is paid more. We know from the above that the income received from waiting on a guy eating a steak is $1.95. So now instead of receiving say 6 tips of $1.95 an hour, he's instead receiving about $11.70 in increased wages and no tips. To cover the expense of that $11.70, the restaurant increases the cost of the steak by the increase in wages, per outback special served. Which works out to, you guessed it, $1.95 for each meal. So now the upfront price is $14.94... the exact same as what it was before.

This is just maths, mate.

But that makes the presumption that that's all they raise wages, which I'm not sure is an accurate assumption. Remember people gravitate towards serving jobs for the potential to make $30-40 bucks an hour on a solid serving night. They aren't doing it for $13.00 an hour.

 sebster wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I know I still hope against hope that media (especially online) will start being first with the facts, and not just first

I guess they'll change when we start demanding it of them. So not any time soon


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 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
That's what I'm curious about. Why not change the laws so that they are on an even playing field with every other job? Why do restaurants get this special system?

The industry, and it's pay, have evolved to match the custom of tipping. Why that happened I don't know. Why did it become such a fixture of the US system and nowhere else, I don't know.

I can tell you that restaurant service is so much better in the US than anywhere else I've been, so it's a system that has at least something pretty significant going for it.

Go to Japan.

Excellent service and no tipping.

Yeah I was about to bring up Japan as well. Incredible service in Japanese restaurants and not a tip in sight. I believe it's actually insulting, but I knew better then to offer one.

But Maj. Shawn Haney, a spokesman for the Marines, said in an email to The Journal News that while Morales did serve in the Marines Corps reserve from July 2009 to May 2013, there’s no indication in her record of combat service in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Also, Haney said, “while (Morales) did not fulfill her reserve obligation, per the Privacy Act, administrative actions are not releasable. The same applies to character of service and type of discharge.”

Ms. Morales sounds like a real winner in general though.

In germant they get the difference of the bill and the cahs used to pay it. Typically

 cincydooley wrote:
But that makes the presumption that that's all they raise wages, which I'm not sure is an accurate assumption. Remember people gravitate towards serving jobs for the potential to make $30-40 bucks an hour on a solid serving night. They aren't doing it for $13.00 an hour.

It works on the assumption that what was once paid in tips is now paid in wages. In order for prices to increase above what the tip used to be, you'd have to figure out a way of claiming that people who once collected $20 an hour in tips somehow secured a payrise in excess of $20.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Without tipping the level of customer service would be the same as retail stores or fast food: Non-existent.

Having experienced the difference in service standards in non-tipping countries and tipping countries, I think this is the big advantage of tipping. Service in US restaurants is incredible... and it isn't just a cultural thing, because service in non-tipping situations is the same or perhaps worse than what you'd get here.

Whether that higher standard of service is worth the costs of tipping, in terms of waitstaff having really unreliable pay, and the hassle of having to figure out how much extra you have to leave at the end of the night, I'm not so sure. But it certainly has a dramatic effect on the quality of service.

Seb, not approving of someone's lifestyle only affects that person's life if they let it happen. Or if they just make up the entire scenario.

Or if there are laws involved, such as marriage laws. Or if a disapproving person ever holds power over them, such as in a job interview or loan application.

I was unimpressed by the service in the USA, after the stories I had heard about it being fantastic. It wasn't generally any better than normally good English service, and in some cases -- not cheap places either -- it was worse.

Service everywhere in Japan is much better than the USA or UK, except sometimes when it isn't.

It's nothing to do with tipping. It is the overall culture and the individual's personality.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Yeah I was about to bring up Japan as well. Incredible service in Japanese restaurants and not a tip in sight. I believe it's actually insulting, but I knew better then to offer one.

But Maj. Shawn Haney, a spokesman for the Marines, said in an email to The Journal News that while Morales did serve in the Marines Corps reserve from July 2009 to May 2013, there’s no indication in her record of combat service in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Also, Haney said, “while (Morales) did not fulfill her reserve obligation, per the Privacy Act, administrative actions are not releasable. The same applies to character of service and type of discharge.”

Ms. Morales sounds like a real winner in general though.

www.nbcnews.com/id/53683016#.Upgr_OJAd82

According to NBC Morales has a DHD (Dishonorable Discharge) on her record. So that makes her an "Ex-marine" (because she's no longer fit to hold the title) ...and it's kinda shocking she can hold down work.