Posted on 07/06/2014 2:10:26 PM PDT by Ben Mugged
OK, here is my rant about tipping. Not the kind where folks in Frisco are standing little cars on end or the practice of pushing sleeping cows over but the kind that takes place in restaurants.
I worked in food service and as a bartender for many years while in the Air Force. When I started out the business would pay me to serve the customers. If my service was good, the customers would reward me with a gratuity. Over time the businesses noticed their servers were making a lot of money in tips so they reduced their pay to minimum wage. The difference between that and what you should have been paid was made up by tipping. In other words the burden of paying the server moved from the business to the customer. Instead of working for the business, servers were now working for the customer.
It is still that way today with some businesses adding the "gratuity" to the bill automatically. Folks it is no longer a "gratuity" if it is mandatory and the only way the server gets paid. Let's call it what it is, a service fee.
I do think it sucks that a restaurant assumes I will pay their workers. They certainly can do so, but I mention it to them from time to time that it makes me less pleased eating out knowing how little they compensate their workers.
Cool. Let’s mark up the prices on the menu by about 30%. You won’t be expected to tip.
Is everything perfect in your world, now?
If a waitress really takes extra steps to make sure we have what we want, refills drinks even before they are empty, and checks in a few times I tip them higher and generously than one who shows up to take the order and the next time you see her is to get the bill. To them I tip but very minimal. I also never leave a tip on the table I tip the waitress in person.
First of all, you don’t understand a thing about free enterprise. You are paying the workers, and paying for the food, and paying the rent - like all customers do for all businesses. This is how it works.
Second, your niece and nephew either stink at waiting (maybe they get it from your DNA about service) or they work at bad locations - which does happen.
I don’t have to worry about it here. If I go stateside, or anywhere else where it’s customary, I do it, but I don’t have to like it, and I don’t.
For poor service, I tip a tiny bit - just so they know I did not forget…..
If you understood it, you would probably like it.
“I see on checks now....”minimum tip suggested”.”
That’s more because so few people can do arithmetic.
It’s not that she’s just using canned liberal phrases….she has outed herself as a liberal. She may not think so, and she may not want to admit it….but read all her posts. SHES A LIB!!!!!! AT least with respect to economics and free enterprise and liberty…..which is all pretty important.
Her robes have gone to her head.
It’s all the same one way or another, right?
You have to know what the restaurant pays the worker so you can determine what a reasonable tip is to properly compensate them.
And the restaurant makes you feel bad if you don’t tip, by a policy that expects you to randomly be paying their wait staff.
On the other hand nobody has to take the job if they don’t like it. Sadly though, they can’t refuse to wait on the people the know won’t pay them. Think about that — they pretty much know that their next 20 minutes will be uncompensated because their employer expects the customer to pay, and the customer is likely not going to pay.
So yes, I would prefer to go to a restaurant where I know the waiters and waitresses are well-paid. If for no other reason than they won’t be looking for ways to stick it to their boss by punishing me.
But let’s explore the “mark up prices”. We were always expected to tip, the socialized thing, like 15% of the bill. If the boss now takes away wages equal to a 10% tip, a customer tipping 15% is now really only tipping 5%, while “paying the restaurant” the other 10% by paying the wages.
Now, does the restaurant have to pay their half of FICA and Medicare tax on tips? Or does the worker have to pay both sides (sure, get rid of them, but for now they exist).
People certainly have some pretty strongly held feelings about compensation for waitstaff.
I happen to think that part of the problem is the minimum wage, which has skewed the market for the low-skill end of this job market.
THE MARKET DOES set the wage: it has decided that tipping on a merit system will be the wage. I know in your cloistered academic world of being a gummint employee…you have zero concept of the free market. Your wage isn't set by the market. It's no doubt too damned high. You don't understand anything about the market…..or as txhurl said, how tipping infuses "the DNA of capitalism" into the food/bev industry. And it does, at every level.
tx, what is so unnerving is how many (so called) conservatives don’t understand how the wait staff/bartender pay situation is one of the best functioning and most merit based parts of our entire economy. It is working just great.
Good people can find jobs at good places. Good places can find good people. And they do find each other in the food/bev world. If you want to work at a good place, you become a good waiter/waitress/bartender etc.
Meanwhile, customers gladly patronize these places and gladly tip the servers. Many come back, not only for the food, but also for the service. Everyone is happy. Everyone is winning. And not a single damned judge was needed to make any of these decisions. And yet, Cry wants to impose her view of the world in a system that is working great.
Not really correcting you per se, just giving you the latest info. Luckily we have yet to experience a restaurant that has added 18 - 25% to the bill just because they could. The only time we’ve had that experience was when we had a large group, except when we lived in Europe.
You missed about twenty things in your explanation of free enterprise, but I suspect that wasn’t really your point, . Seriously, my check pays for the food the rent and the workers? Did you seriously think that added to the discussion?
I thought some of it was going for the utilities, the taxes, the pension plan, the health insurance, and to bribe the county inspector. I was sure at least of little of it goes to pay the person who owns the business, because he probably isn’t running a non-profit organization.
BTW, I realize as I imagine most everyone here does, that there are businesses that use commission payment. I tend to like those that pay workers directly, but others like the commission model, and that’s why it is nice that there are choices.
Seriously, can’t we discuss ANYTHING at FR anymore without people acting like childish liberals? I just spent two days wading through the cesspool over at Mother Jones, and it frankly your conduct here is barely better. Can’t you make a real argument without ignorant insults?
That doesn’t make sense. As I said above, tipping is not a universal custom. It is simply not done in Japan, yet the service is good, the food is good, and the restaurant makes money. Why? Because the restaurants pay a reasonable wage to the people who work there and charge accordingly. I can’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work everywhere.
I’ve seen two places we usually about once a month eat at put a place on the bill for a tip. However I think it is to accommodate customers who use plastic to pay and want a tax record and are on an expense account. I put $0 on the bill and use my debit card. I pay the waitress personally in cash.
In such situations, I do as well. Sort of a minimum tip approach. You are never going to get less than a $1 tip from me, and if you brought me breakfast and refilled my coffee, you aren't likely to get less than $2, even if the bill is $5.
I see that you really love the current arrangement.
But why doesn’t free enterprise allow people who don’t like the arrangement to push restaurants in a different direction? I mean, the restaurants are free to do whatever they want, right? And they can choose to take input from customers or not, right?
Is it unfathomable to you that some restaurants might choose a slightly different method of compensation, and appeal to the clientelle that likes that?
You seem to think that anybody saying that they prefer something else is asking the government to change it.
Do you run a restaurant? You seem very passionate about it, passionate enough to be quickly insulting to anybody who doesn’t like it as much as you do.
I also wonder if you have missed the near-daily reports here of how freeloaders are now taking advantage of the system to stiff workers and get their meals cheaper. Don’t you see how that can upset the balance you find so favorable?
Would you want to be a plumber if the way you got paid was that you showed up, did your best, and the customer paid you whatever they felt like?
But maybe I don’t understand what you are actually defending here. Do you think the restaurant should have the right to add a required tip to a bill? IT IS JUST A QUESTION. Isn’t that just like raising the price and eliminating the first 15% of the tip?
You really think this is working great. Do you think it is great that two waiters both work their butts off, do great service, and one makes $15 an hour, the other makes $2.50 because the second one served a table of minorities?
Maybe where you live there hasn’t been a rising problem of waiters getting stiffed. Do you know waiters and waitresses? AGAIN, IT IS A REAL QUESTION. Are they saying the love the current system? Are they having trouble with non-paying customers?
My position is that I prefer restaurants where while you still tip, the waitstaff have a higher hourly wage. I find them to be more pleasant. I don’t know why you think this is somehow “anti-free-enterprise”, I think it is exactly what the free market gives us — businesses that cater to the differing desires of different customers.
There was a post on FR a couple weeks back about a restaurant that abolished tipping. Servers could opt for a $10/hr flat wage or 20% of the gross take from their tables during their shift. All opted for the 20%. Everybody wins! Servers push desserts, wines, appetizers and move people along to turn the table over to a new group. The owner is happy. He’s making more money and has a stable and experienced work force. The servers are very happy.
I don’t know why different restaurants can’t adopt different methods to service different customers. I don’t know why just because some people think the current system is great, nobody can say they’d like a different system.
But then, I’m apparently so ignorant that my DNA has infected my neices and nephews, even the ones that have no blood relation to me. I’m just that stupid, that I didn’t even know that when I pay for something, the money I pay actually goes to pay for the something, and to pay for the people who serve me, and to pay for the building. And apparently that is about it. What did I know.
:-)
People are really wound up way too tight here. I seriously thought I’d have some fun chatting with fellow conservatives after wasting two days with people who insisted that not paying for someone’s birth control infringed on THEIR religious beliefs.
I just want to see tipping go away. That’s all.
There’s someone with a pen and a phone who shares your dream of fundamentally changing the way we do things.
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