Definitely. In my country, tipping aren't expected but it's a pleasant thing to receive in service industry, in US of A, tipping is expected and people will vehemently defend the status quo.
It's expected because waiters can't make minimum wage without it. It's not defended because people like that waiters are paid so little, it's defended because they're paid so little and politicians, until now, have seemed to have no interest in changing that. Like so many things in this country, the people have to come up with a patchwork solution just to keep others alive because the politicians don't care.
So yes, I will defend tipping until this is fixed everywhere in the U.S. And I doubt it will be fixed any time soon. I'll be surprised if it's even fixed in these five states.
Tipping is still expected here in Washington where the minimum wage for tipped employees is the same.
Sure, because it's easier to have the same policy everywhere than to not know whether or not you should be tipping depending on the state you're in. I think that makes sense. Do you really want people from Washington going to Oregon and not tipping because they think they don't have to?
It has already become your culture, like it or not. Whether you tip or not, employer has to make up the different if the tip doesn't add up to the minimum wage, so you're essentially subsidising the employer as of now. Fixing the minimum wage will not get rid of tipping culture either, and exploitative employer knows that, so they will continue to pay the bare minimum and expect the customer to foot the bill.
I wonder if everyone reaction will change if we change "Tipping" to "Subsidising", because that's what the current status quo are.
This hits the nail on the head. Exploitative employers will always only pay the absolute minimum they can get away with. If you’re going to have a federally mandated minimum wage, then that wage will need to be adjusted frequently.
Has it been adjusted frequently?
In my country we don’t have a minimum wage. Wage ranges are determined by the market and negotiations with unions. It gets really easy to figure out which employers do the bare minimum and which don’t.
Yeah, I've always thought of it that way too: abhor the underpaying bosses and the politicians who allow it and advocate for change, but until then keep tipping generously no matter the level of service.
If you get bad service, your server might be having a rough day and/or the place might be busy or otherwise make their job of serving you more difficult. That doesn't mean that you have a right to deny them rent and food money.
Pretty much where I'm at. Not going to protest a shitty system by taking it out on a waiter, but will vote to abolish the whole thing and put the burden on the employer where it should be.
That doesn't mean that you have a right to deny them rent and food money.
That's the insane part - you do have the right to deny them rent or for food money. You shouldn't, but under the tipping model you absolutely do.
I mean yeah, you LEGALLY have the right, I meant that you morally and ethically absolutely don't.
Which is why I'm opposed to tipping as a system. It's predatory. It transfers a moral responsibility to customers that should be on the employer, which provides the foundation for guilt-based social engineering targeting the customer, and a reliance of the employee on the success of that social engineering - the alternative being not getting paid because some asshole didn't think you refilled his drink fast enough.
Imagine if a hospital or something was run like that. Your insurance covered the doctors' and admins' pay, but the nurses, techs, and support staff all just rely on tips! *shoves an iPad with a credit card reader onto your lap*
It's insane that that model is legal for any business.
I beg to differ. I think morally an ethically not letting society dictate. What you do with your own money is the correct stance. If you go to your job and you get paid that is your money and you should absolutely under no circumstances be obligated to tip because society has made you think that they need it to live. That's your money that you need to live it's absolutely ridiculous that people make statements trying to guilt trip you into thinking that you owe it to someone else to give your hard-earned money to them because their employer decides not to do it. Screw that. And no I'm not saying don't tip, what I'm saying is don't support businesses that expect you to pay their employees wages. I significantly cut down eating at restaurants because I don't think that I should be obligated to pay employees wages, especially with the ridiculous prices. The restaurants charge for food nowadays. I absolutely hate the narrative of people guilt tripping other people because they choose not to tip. That is their obligation in right and they should absolutely not feel bad about it whatsoever.
morally an ethically not letting society dictate. What you do with your own money is the correct stance
Eww, sounds like some anti-tax libertarian filth 🤢
it's absolutely ridiculous that people make statements trying to guilt trip you into thinking that you owe it to someone else to give your hard-earned money to them because their employer decides not to do it.
Answered your own rhetorical question. If the employer was forced to pay them a living wage (or did so voluntarily, but that's as rare as an ethical bank), you wouldn't need to tip, but until then, you're gonna have to pay so that the person who just performed a service for you doesn't go hungry or homeless.
And no I'm not saying don't tip
Could have fooled me!
what I'm saying is don't support businesses that expect you to pay their employees wages.
You should have led with that, then, rather than sounding like a deranged libertarian (but I repeat myself) for the first half of your reply
what I'm saying is don't support businesses that expect you to pay their employees wages.
I agree in principle, but in reality they're as like a politician that doesn't accept any form of bribes: extremely rare and in many areas they don't exist at all
I significantly cut down eating at restaurants
Good for you, but if everyone did that, servers would all get fired rather than just underpaid.
absolutely hate the narrative of people guilt tripping other people because they choose not to tip. That is their obligation in right and they should absolutely not feel bad about it whatsoever.
Aaand we're back to the libertarian tantrum of focusing on "-I- shouldn't have to" rather than "their bosses should have to" 🙄
So I'm going to be really honest with you. I have no idea what a libertarian is so I liked it up. I don't know if I would consider myself a libertarian but after reading about it I don't really see what's bad about it. Can you explain to me in your own words why you think it's bad? I genuinely would like to hear your opinion about it.
The definition of libertarian I was referring to is the American right wing libertarian.
Basically it's a childishly selfish belief that you owe nothing to the society that supports you and everything would be better if people were left alone to neglect and abuse each other.
That's an unfair exaggeration, of course, but not by much. It's basically rebranded anarcho-capitalism and idealised selfishness disguised in rhetoric about liberty and self-determination.
Ok well with that definition I would no. I'm nowhere close to those ideals. I don't think that people deserve things for free. I also believe that everyone should contribute to society because that's how a society is ran. With that being said though I also am a firm believer that people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't affect others. Maybe I should reword I'm saying. What I'm saying is as a customer I should not be expected to tip as in pay the restaurants, employees or whatever. And because this is expected of me, I do not go to restaurants and I encourage others to do the same. I'm saying that this is not how things should be.
Not going to protest a shitty system by taking it out on a waiter, but will vote to abolish the whole thing and put the burden on the employer where it should be.
That vote / change will never happen if you don't push back on tipping, that's just the human nature of the situation.
You’re assuming you owe the server rent and food money. Where are you the employer? How does that server deserve special benefits over the person at the drive through, the busser, the stocker at the grocery, etc? You’re an enabler, keeping an abusive system alive to benefit one small category at the expense of everyone else
Granted, I tip generously as well, but that’s because I’m a pussy who doesn’t stand behind my beliefs
but that’s because I’m a pussy who doesn’t stand behind my beliefs
Hey, at least you're honest about it. :)
The cost of paying those people at the very least minimum wage is factored into the price of your purchase, except for the busser, who shares tips with the servers.
Because that's not the case with servers, you tip in order for the server to get paid for performing a service for you.
You’re an enabler, keeping an abusive system alive to benefit one small category at the expense of everyone else
No. I've been clear from the start that tipping is a thing we have to do temporarily so that servers don't starve or become homeless before we finally fix the system.
Maybe the only way to finally fix the system is to stop tipping, so servers will go elsewhere until pay comes up. Normally I disagree with this line of thinking because it’s not easy to change careers, but serving is usually a “job” not a career. If we’re worried about minimum wage, I claim that many minimum wage jobs are easier to switch among. If a job requires special skills and knowledge, it deserves pay as such.
Maybe the only way to finally fix the system is to stop tipping
No. The livelihood of servers is not an acceptable sacrifice to help servers. Defeats the point completely and there's no guarantee that it'll work.
so servers will go elsewhere until pay comes up
Go where? It's not like they all live in areas that have even a single place that pays servers a living wage or can afford to mo.
serving is usually a “job” not a career.
To paraphrase Matthew Perry (RIP): could you BE anymore condescending towards people with a career in the service industry?
I claim that many minimum wage jobs are easier to switch among
And you'd be wrong. People work minimum wage because it was the least bad job available. Unless you're part of a union, employers have all the power and afford none to workers.
If a job requires special skills and knowledge, it deserves pay as such.
That doesn’t mean that you have a right to deny them rent and food money.
Their bosses and/or their lack of wherewithal in obtaining a job that pays enough to meet their standard of living is responsible, not the customer of the company.
Can't defend the status quo and expect things to be fixed, they're mutually exclusive of each other. Human nature demands that.
You absolutely can defend the status quo until things are fixed and work for things to be fixed. Maybe you think a change should come at the expense of waiters feeding themselves or their families. I do not.
You absolutely can defend the status quo until things are fixed and work for things to be fixed.
It hasn't so far, and human nature being what it is, makes it a safe bet that it won't. Having said that, I hope I'm wrong.
Also, its ethically wrong to put the onus on the customer to support the status quo, that's the employer responsibility to take care of their employees in all ways, and an employees responsibility to not work for any boss that won't do that.
Maybe you think a change should come at the expense of waiters feeding themselves or their families. I do not.
YES! Tortuuure them, make them SUUUFFEERRRRR!!1!!11!!!!! /s
If the guy in the next stall asks me for a roll of toilet paper (because he's out), I'm going to give him a roll, as a civic duty to take care of each other.
If the guy in the next stall asks me to come over and wipe his ass for him, he's on his own.
That's a lot of words to say you don't give a shit if a waiter can't afford to feed their kids as long as you don't have to give them any of your money. I hope you don't go to restaurants if you feel that way.
That’s a lot of words to say you don’t give a shit if a waiter can’t afford to feed their kids as long as you don’t have to give them any of your money. I hope you don’t go to restaurants if you feel that way.
You're being intellectually dishonest in asigning motive to me, via a strawman or otherwise, without knowing me.
For the record, I do care, truly, but I also won't be held hostage by corporations via my caring. Its ethically wrong.
Fine. Then don't go to restaurants.
Just did one yesterday as a matter of fact.
I see, so what you're essentially saying is that it is okay for you to exploit underpaid labor even though it is not okay for them to be underpaid. Interesting.
Not only that, but there's a very strong case to be made that from a purely economic perspective, a tipless system is better for everyone.
and people will vehemently defend the status quo.
Well, server employees will, because they don't want to deal with the loss of pay and/or the upheaval in their salary intake. No one likes a negative change to how they make a living and pay the bills.
Having said that, generally speaking, is it people, or ""people"" (aka corpo shills/bots) that are defending the status quo? Certain corporations have a big interest in maintaining the status quo and shaping the narrative towards that end.
Unless "we" change it via legislation, that's never going to happen. Let's explore how it would play out as an individual restaurant initiative:
Restaurant raises staff wages, raises prices to cover the increase. Even if you disclose it on the menu, customers don't care: they see prices 20% higher, they choose to eat somewhere with cheaper menu prices. This is frequently what happens when restaurants try to do that.
If the restaurant increases server wages less than what they would make in tips, the servers will leave for another restaurant. The benefit of tips is that the harder you work, and more tables you take, the more money you make. Good servers can make $50+ an hour if they hustle.
Source: 8 years experience in the industry.
The benefit of tips is that the harder you work, and more tables you take, the more money you make. Good servers can make $50+ an hour if they hustle.
I shouldn’t be paying my server’s wage; the restaurant should.
Name one other job (that isn’t in the food service industry) where the buyers subsidize the worker’s salary voluntarily.
Literally every other contractor. But that's irrelevant to the point.
This is the way it is. Whether or not it's a good system, it's the system which exists. Changing the system will require a transition. If that transition comes from individual restaurants changing their policy, they will have 1) staffing issues as no server will stay when they could make more elsewhere, 2) customer issues as customers will prefer restaurants with lower menu prices, even if the total is the same.
This isn't a value judgement, or a defense, this is a statement of fact. The only change that will stock would have to come from legislation. Societal systems have considerable inertia.
Again, name one other industry.
It's entirely irrelevant.
Name one industry with security theater like air travel. Name one industry with lobbying like politics. Name one industry with subsidization like agriculture.
The tipping situation is a product of a problematic history, but it is what it is. The entire system is based on it. Saying something is unique has nothing to do with the process to change it.
Security Theatre is an overreaction to a single event. Most of it can also be trashed. Also, the air travel industry didn't have security theatre for nearly a century.
Lobbying? Very similar to shareholders and boards of directors. Other governments also have varying amounts of lobbying, so it's definitely not intrisic to the system.
Lots of industries get massive subsidies: Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Healthcare, Nuclear, Research, Energy, Automotive, Semiconductors, Real Estate, IT, many big corporation have squeezed a subsidy out just by threatening to leave a state! To some extent, every public service is a subsidy, just where the government owns the 'company'. Some governments (probably) don't do subsidies, but lots do, and one could argue that some system like subsidies is necessary for a well functioning government & country.
However, I agree that the uniqueness of a practice says very little about how good it ultimately is for anything.
My point has nothing to do with whether a practice is good or not. It's about how deeply entrenched the practice is, and the practical complexities of uprooting the practice. Bad practices still require significant consideration in undoing.
My point is that "we should do away with ___" is an impotent sentiment by itself. Who is we? How are "we" going to actually do it? What does the transition period look like? What are the consequences? These are questions that, pragmatically, must be taken into consideration when implementing any large change, totally independent of any value judgement of that change.
I'm starting to think people on this website are detached from reality
Most websites, I've found. Lots of strong opinions about nebulous ideals, without a much experience, context, or practical rationality to support them
They are.
Name one industry with security theater like air travel.
The events industry. Do you really think those bag checks do anything with how quickly they “look” in your bag before going into a venue?
I did one; now you do yours.
Again, this "argument" is totally irrelevant, but:
If that counts the same as TSA, then hair/nail stylists, massage therapists, valets, Uber (and taxi and limo) drivers, hotel housekeepers and concierges are all traditionally tipped.
But again, that doesn't matter. The system is what it is. Changing it is an option, but that does have practical considerations associated with it.
They are tipped, yes, but no NOT rely on tips for their wages. No other industry pays under minimum wage and expects me, the consumer, to subsidize employee’s wages.
Try again.
Then no, venue security is not the same as TSA. Stop moving your goalposts. It's one or the other: either degree matters and venue security isn't the same as TSA so uniqueness of a scenario isn't important, or degree doesn't matter and every traditionally tipped worker is the same so it's not unique in the first place. Either way your position crumbles.
And for at least the third time: your entire argument is pointless and irrelevant in the first place. Things are as they are. Saying "It shouldn't be this way!" doesn't change how it is.
Restaurants that eliminate tipping will go out of business in competition with those that don't. This is not a problem that can be solved by individual restaurant initiative. Stomping your feet and shouting that you shouldn't have to and it's not fair, without offering any actual effective course of action, is just embarrassing.
Answer the question then.
Name one other job (that isn’t in the food service industry) where the buyers subsidize the worker’s salary voluntarily. To the point where, without tips, the worker would NOT make minimum wage.
Name one even prime number other than 2. Name one flying mammal other than a bat. Name one Western country that doesn't use metric other than the US.
What point are you trying to make? This isn't some gotcha, you are making pointless statements. 2 is still prime, bats still fly, the US still doesn't use metric. Calling out a situation as being unique doesn't make it stop being what it is.
The only people who have the power to eliminate tipping are the customers. Even if employers randomly started paying servers $50 an hour, people could still tip...and many probably would to get that feeling of moral superiority. And that is sort of irrelevant anyway because how the fuck are the customers supposed to know the servers wage anyway? I literally have no idea what my server (or hostess or line cook or after hours cleaning crew staff) makes at the last place I ate at. Do you?
It's really not complicated. If customers stopped tipping, and servers can't support themselves and therefore they are forced to quit and move towards literally any other industry with a higher/stable wage. Then employers either go out of business altogether or, more realistically, raise wages to replace those workers who quit since the employer would like to keep making money instead of not making money. And thus, menu prices go up to account for the lack of tipping.
No one has ever been able to provide me a scenario where tipping ends without servers quitting due to inadequate/unstable income. But I'm certainly open to suggestions!
Thing is, no one would accept to pay what's written on the menu if they charged enough to cover what people pay in tip, it's all psychological manipulation.
Prices would need to increase by about 20% and you wouldn't have a choice to pay it anymore, contrary to tips. Or you accept that servers now only make minimum wage.
That’s interesting. In It works all across the world exactly how you say it wouldn’t work.
To be fair, in the rest of the world there aren't tipped establishments competing with next door no-tipping establishments. People are bad at math, a menu of $13 + tip options seems cheaper at a glance than a menu of $15 no tip options. We are talking about the country where the 1/3rd pounder burger failed after all
This is actually true and raises the most important practical point about it, in my view. Convincing people to give up tipping isn’t too difficult; I think we’re getting there. But transitioning to a tip-free culture is very difficult.
So tipping is a byproduct of Americans being idiots?
Service expectations across the world are drastically lower than in the US.
Bullshit.
I drew my conclusion from training servers who served in other countries and listening to their comparisons. I've eaten in other countries. How exactly did you come to your conclusion?
Do servers make over 70k/year everywhere in the world?
That's something people don't realize in North America, restaurant servers make fucking bank! If they complain about not having money it's because of the restaurant culture of going out after every shift.
Some restaurant servers make bank. Some don't even make enough with tips to bring them up to minimum wage. Yes, the employer is supposed to top them up to minimum wage when that happens, but if I had a nickel for every labor violation in the US, well I'd be making a lot more than minimum wage.
This lack of fairness even within the industry, is yet another reason to end tipping culture. Some servers make excellent money but all too many make little. This is yet another institution benefitting a few well off at the expense of everyone else
What's your experience in the restaurant industry?
Good servers make about half of what you think they make. Your number is reserved for senior sommeliers and chefs; the only way FOH hits that is by selling drugs to BOH or working 80hr weeks.
If it paid that well there'd be no staffing issues at all, think about it.
At my last job servers are making 300+ in tip every 8h shift and get their salary that's way above minimum plus they have full benefits including a pension fund and the business still has a hard time finding staff because the restaurant industry in general is a mess including the people working in it that think grass is always greener elsewhere.
Edit: Forgot, they're unionized too
most of your country is nothing like your extremely privileged little bubble.
I'm just pointing out that saying "If they were paid that much we wouldn't have trouble finding staff!" is bullshit. With even better conditions my previous employer has trouble finding staff.
There is a lot more to economy than some number in some currency. There are servers in many first world countries making wages where they are able to pay for their homes and have social services like healthcare, all while customers at their places of employment pay the listed price.
70k USD means nothing in isolation, without respect for local economy and cost of living.
That's the thing though, they already charge enough to cover what people pay in tip but guess what? That doesn't make them enough money. Next time they raise prices. They won't take responsibility for it, they'll blame it on the economy, but never the owners and shareholders that are making more profit than ever.
As a person who's been in the restaurant business, no, the vast majority of restaurants in North America don't make a large enough cut to pay their servers 35$/h. Most are always a couple of bad months away from closing. There's a reason why it's the type of business with the highest "turnover" rate for the business itself.
Now if you want restaurants to give servers the same wage they're making now it means all prices need to be marked up about 20% (since people tip based on price after taxes) and in the end the customers pay the same thing, they just don't have a choice about it.
Yes, just like everywhere else I have to spend money, why can’t I know how much I pay by looking at the prices? Why can’t we all be honest here?
If your business can’t pay a living wage, you shouldn’t be in business.
Lot of people in this thread know nothing about the restaurant industry, but feel entitled to strong opinions about it.
Couriers (DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc.) are not employees. They are contractors.
There is no minimum wage for contractors. The base pay for these services don't quite cover the $0.655 per mile that the IRS allows drivers to claim in travel expenses. The only money these drivers actually take home is customer tips.
If you, as a customer, do not believe in tipping couriers directly, that's perfectly fine, so long as you DO NOT use these services. As these drivers operate almost exclusively on tips, using these services without tipping is socially equivalent to begging in the streets.
False. If drivers don't make enough, they stop driving. Enough stop driving the business has to change their model to entice new drivers. That's how you bring about change. Not sitting online complaining, hoping that the government will get off their asses and fix it
They're employees being exploited by a loophole. DoorDash n' friends are predatory businesses, and are a great example of why we need better regulations on this kind of shit.
It's not a loophole or predatory, it's just something the people doing these one-off job knowingly agreed to. I myself certainly agreed to it years back each and every time I accepted another order. The key was to not agree to orders that don't make any fucking sense. It was all optional.
I don't know how we could ever regulate away the issue of people who decide not to act in their own best interest. Probably best to focus on education or something?
I refuse to use these services for three reasons. One, I think they’re unnecessary. Two, I think they’re unreliable. Three, I think they’re exploitative.
I don't see how it's my responsibility to give my money that I earned doing my job to someone else for doing their job and I shouldn't have to avoid the service because of that. If I want to use the service I should be able to because, why not, I want to. I shouldn't give that up just because someone wants me to pay their wages.
A kid comes to your door, asks you what you would be willing to pay for his older brother to shovel your driveway. The older brother is going to be doing the job; the kid is asking you what you are willing to pay. Is it your "responsibility" to "give your money that you earned doing your job" to the older brother for shoveling your drive?
DoorDash is not a courier service. DoorDash is not shoveling your driveway. DoorDash owns and operates neither a shovel nor a delivery vehicle. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash is the little kid, asking you what you're willing to pay. The drivers are the older brother actually doing the work.
Paying DoorDash's delivery fees and not offering a tip is the equivalent of paying that little kid $3, offering nothing to the older brother who will actually be doing the work. and still expecting your driveway to be shoveled.
The older brother is forced to honor the agreement the kid made with you. If he doesn't, the kid will have to give back the $3 he got from you. The kid will then pout and refuse to line up any additional work for the older brother. The brother "tolerates" this, because most customers are reasonable people and either offer a reasonable amount for the older brother, or decline the service entirely. The older brother makes all kinds of money from reasonable people.
If the "reasonable people will pay the older brother" argument isn't enough, continue the analogy: the kid got money from you. The kid is going to keep trying to get your business so he keeps getting money from you. But the older brother isn't getting paid for his work.
You've found a loophole where you can get your driveway shoveled without paying the guy doing the shoveling. The kid wants to keep doing business with you, but it would be far better for the older brother if you never talked to the kid again. So, you're going to get your driveway shoveled for a pittance, but all that snow is going to end up in front of your door, or burying your car.
Lol the older brother is just an idiot. He isn't 'forced' to do anything at all. The business arrangement makes no sense unless the little brother being the salesman adds value somehow.
I am an older brother and I assure you if long ago my younger brother was like "hey you need to shovel the neighbors driveway for $3'' I'd be like "lol, no, go give that nice man back his money. If you want to be my salesman, I need the guarantee of $10 in my pocket minimum. If you can find a guy who pays $11, by all means keep the dollar. Oh, also I get any tips provided after the job."
Do you actually think any older brother is going to just keep shoveling driveways for $3 when he thinks he deserves $10?
This is why I don’t use those services. They are both predatory, and taking advantage of regulatory loopholes
They do need to be fixed somehow though. I have elderly relatives with mobility issues who can really benefit from these services. Beyond more transparency and fixing the regulatory gaps, I don’t k ow how to make it both more fair to the gig worker and more affordable to those who need it though.
Maybe a subscription model? I’d pay Uber Eats a fixed price for my Mom to get as much delivery as she needs, assuming an even playing field we’re established
The "contractor" model is valid. When you hire a kid to shovel your driveway, for example, you are not "employing" that kid; you are contracting him to perform a specific task. Landscapers, builders, roofers, plumbers, lawyers, accountants, DJs, wedding planners... Most small businesses operate on a contractor basis.
The real issue with these services is one of semantics. DoorDash gives drivers a few pieces of information. They are told where the pickup location will be, where the dropoff location will be, the total distance they will have to drive, and, critically, the total amount of money they can expect to receive for performing that task. The driver is (ostensibly) free to accept or reject that offer. DoorDash may bundle ("stack") your delivery task with other delivery tasks and offer the entire bundle as a single task.
In a contractual arrangement, the money offered in compensation for performance of a task is the "consideration". The offering of money in exchange for a service is a "bid". That's the semantic issue: most of the money being offered to the driver is being called a "tip". It does meet the IRS definition of a "tip", but it does not meet the colloquial use of that term.
DoorDash is not actually a courier service. DoorDash does not operate a single vehicle used for package delivery to customers. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash connect customers to vendors and drivers. DoorDash takes the customer's task and offer of compensation and offers it to contract drivers. If they find a match, the customer gets their food. If they can't find a match, it sits on the vendor's shelf until closing, then gets thrown away.
You and your elderly relatives are free to use the service. You can use it ethically, simply by understanding that what they are calling a "tip" is actually a "bid" to the driver. So long as you are placing a reasonable "bid", your use of the service is fair and ethical.
What do you suppose would happen if everyone all at once just stopped tipping and kept using the service? Like I'm serious, what do you actually think would happen?
I think DoorDash would convert it's drivers to employees. I think those employees would earn less than they did as contractors. I think DD would be forced to offer healthcare and similar benefits, which would be contingent on continued employment, making them extortion rather than benefits. I think they would use those benefits as a bargaining chip to secure non-compete clauses. I think employed workers would be strictly limited to 40-hour weeks at lower pay, with rigid schedules. I think they would enact quotas, and strict deadlines.
I think employee drivers will be pissing in bottles to meet quotas and deadlines. I think instead of stacks of 2-3 orders, they will be stacking 5-8 orders, and delivery times will be longer and longer. I think employee DoorDash drivers will be treated as employee Amazon drivers.
I think that switching to an employment model would hurt drivers and customers, and benefit DoorDash and vendors.
That all seems a bit much compared to doordash just raising their service fee in order to pay their contractors enough to be willing to deliver orders in this new tipless world, but ok. I appreciate your attempt at answering the question nonetheless. Although it is pretty odd you consider a stable wage, hours and healthcare benefits to be a bad thing. And I still don't understand why employees are willing to piss in bottles to meet quotas and stuff. I wouldn't agree to a job like that. You probably wouldn't either. Especially for the lower pay you described. Unless of course the stability and healthcare benefits made up for it all...in which case it would be a better deal than before.
That all seems a bit much compared to doordash just raising their service fee in order to pay their contractors enough to be willing to deliver orders in this new tipless world,
DoorDash already has a "earn by time" option, where drivers earn an hourly wage, but only while they are engaged. DoorDash sets an hourly rate of $12 in my area. They still pass through tips, but they also (effectively) require drivers to take every order assigned, no matter where it is from or where it is going. 8-floor walkup in a sketchy neighborhood, giving the local meth heads 12 minutes to steal your catalytic converter? Yeah, you don't get to skip that order, sorry.
We already know what DoorDash will do if they get to set the rates, because they are already doing it. I would much rather the negotiation happen between me and the customer rather than me and DoorDash.
Healthcare should be a government function, not an employment function. The idea that I should only have coverage while I am well enough to work is truly barbaric. Employer-sponsored healthcare is extortion. It is a tool to make it harder for you to detangle yourself from the company when they do something shitty. I know healthcare was the primary reason why I stayed at a job that forced me to work 60-hour weeks for 13 months straight.
Healthcare should be a birthright, not a benefit.
Which is the more stable job:
A: you have to wake up at the same time every day, clock in at the same time, clock out for lunch, clock back in exactly 30 minutes later, clock out again after exactly 8 hours of work.
B: you show up whenever you want. 8am. 11pm. Noon. Three days a week, seven days a week. Skip town for two weeks straight, clock back in and nobody says a word.
The first is not "stable". The first has an attendance policy that punishes you for any instability you might experience in your life. Kid gets sick? Attendance point. 6 points, and you're written up. 9 points in 12 months, and you're fired.
The second job is completely tolerant of any instability in your life. You can show up whenever you like, leave whenever you like, and the job just adapts around you.
And I still don't understand why employees are willing to piss in bottles to meet quotas and stuff.
I don't understand either, but I don't need to understand. Quotas are a function of hourly (employee) labor. Piecework laborers (contractors) don't face quotas. Drop the hourly labor, offer a piecework rate that will earn an entry level worker minimum wage, and your most proficient workers will be earning what they are actually worth.
I hate tipping! As the consumer I should not be responsible for proving a living wage for someone else's employees!
as a European I have to say both the Tipping culture and the not showing the full price in stores with VAT included is just mindblowing.
It's literally a culture of hiding true costs, weird af.
Hotels too. The advertised price is never accurate because their stupid resort fees.
What now? First I'm hearing of this. How much extra?
Again, it's prevalent in the US market, not sure about others. They advertise say $199 / night, but when you go to check out, there's something like a ~$35- $50 /night resort fee to "pay for amenities like WiFi/ gym /pool". You can't reject paying the fee, so your hotel room is actually like 25% higher than advertised.
Yeah, that'd be quite illegal down here.
I spent basically half a year living in hotels straight due to work all across the UK and primarily London then continued for a few years after. So we're likely talking +300 nights. I have never seen an additional charge.
It’s literally a culture of hiding true costs, weird af.
Makes me happy though in this day and age that people are waking up to this fact, and are starting to push back on it.
In the past corporations/governments thought people were a lot more unaware, than they are today.
It's a culture of trying to get away with whatever makes the most profits. We also have that, but there are some reasonable laws working against that. One of my favourites is the duty to display per kg or per litre price. Before that, shops made the package sizes deliberately confusing.
We actually do have that in the US as well, but it's typically in very fine print and a lot of people don't even know about it.
I don't think there's any law like that in the US. If there were, 2 out of 4 national supermarket chains local to me are breaking the law and have been for years
It's really not that weird at all. It's a simple consequence of the EU having better consumer protection laws. Unfortunately the far right in the US is a lot stronger than in most of Europe and has been since the post-war era.
We also, in the US, have an old and antiquated system that was deliberately designed to be difficult to change because the founders had to convince the slave-owning class that abolition couldn't be forced on them if they agreed to join the newly-formed union. How did they do that? You guessed it! By making the Constitution almost impossible to change, which is one reason why it required the bloodiest war in our history to end slavery.
Again, there's nothing especially "weird" about it. As is true of a lot of contemporary reality, it's largely a consequence of history.
Interestingly, tipping culture is also at least tangentially a product of slavery as well, but that's a bit more complicated so I'll save it for another comment.
And if you're starting to suspect that a ton of what ails the US can be traced directly back to slavery, here's a hint; you may be on to something!
That said, it was the European colonial powers who brought slavery to North America in the first place, which kind of brings us full circle.
Have lived in both eu and us.
Agree, but the challenge on tax is that it's not harmonized across municipalities. This means that stores that are across the street from each other may have identical prices/profit margin and a different net price to the consumer. This would lead to consumer preferences biased by physical location and have lots of other weird side effects. You can see this in areas that border state lines when the tax is appreciably different.
Step one is a harmonized tax rate, but that's easier said than done.
The true cost is different no matter how it's advertised, no? Harmonized tax is great and all, but lying about price is still bad, irrelevant of the actual price.
I was going to say this but fear of mass downvotes kept me quiet. Glad I'm not the only one. I've worked for tips but I'd rather just work for a reasonable wage instead, remove the guesswork and chances for abuse.
One way or another, you're paying those employees wage. One of them doesn't get taxed or advertised is all.
Yes and no. All tips are supposed to be reported to the IRS. Whether they are or not is not really relevant. What really matters is that the customers aren’t forced to do an owners job. If an owner needs their customers to prop up their employees then the owners shouldn’t be in business.
I used to make $2.35/h when I was in the service industry. Without my customers I would’ve been fucked. What’s worse is on a slow night, I really did get fucked.
I used to make $2.35/h when I was in the service industry. Without my customers I would’ve been fucked. What’s worse is on a slow night, I really did get fucked.
I think that should be the point, employees should not be taking on the risk of a business doing poorly. That's the business owner's responsibility and risk, to be mitigated by them. Not screwing over a waiter because it was a slow night. Or because they were unlucky to work a tuesday night over a busy Saturday night.
You dont have to tip bro its okay
It's not okay. I can hear some of my customers' anxiety when they struggle to tip me. Some people lord it over me like I should revere them for their blessing. There is an unnecessary layer of stress to the customer service routine for everyone involved except the owner who benefits from this system. Not to mention some businesses pool their tips and share it with everyone, sometimes redirecting these funds into unscrupulous items like snacks without consent. >:(
Tips don't motivate me to provide great customer service to my customers. Tips serve to maintain cheap labor, but more important to me is how they erect social barriers. I can't blame someone for wanting or being motivated by tips when they're stuck near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. I'm there too so I understand, but there's just no reason for tips when we can get/provide great service without adding layers of paranoia; When we can provide a satisfying quality of life for everyone in the process with a not-so-simple wage increase (and God forbid, better budgeting and management from business owners).
They also in general make my job harder, especially when an old person who's basically blind can't find any of the buttons or follow simple directions (PRESS 3 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MARIANNE)
I'd like to supplement that I've had access to my various employer's records multiple times... because why lock the admin computer.
With my current employer, my entire wages for the month are paid for with net profits in a single day thanks to the skeleton crew we operate. I get to work knowing every other day is going straight to my boss's luxurious life-style because it's certainly not coming back here.
Don't be surprised when you hear of another staff walk-out~
Fuck tips, support good living standards for everyone!
No. I actually kinda do. Like if I'm out with friends I literally get judged if I tip poorly let alone if I don't tip at all which is social suicide.
And if I have a coupon for a meal, say 50% or something like that I still have to tip on the original amount before the discount was applied.
Moreover, and most importantly in some restaurants tipping is the only source of income the server gets. Regardless of how I feel about it I am still responsible for this person's wage.
I hate tipping culture.
You have friends? Wow that must be nice
It's not socially acceptable to not tip servers in a full service restaurant in the USA. It's becoming a required social norm to tip fast casual.
The pandemic really changed the tipping norms in the USA.
As a german the whole tip system in the US is both redicilous and hilarious to me.
We have tipping here, too (we literally call it "drinking money"). With the difference, that it's pretty much voluntary and if you don't have much money (e.g. as a student) noone will expect you to tip.
Having tips be part of the actual wage totally defeats the point of them...
Are you a true American if you don't shaft your employees for every penny that you can though?
This is actually a great reason for ending tipping. I used to feel like I was on the server’s side, slipping them cash the business couldn’t steal, but I never use cash anymore so have no idea who it’s going to. Also, businesses are getting more sleazy with required “tips” and fees, and it’s all one giant tax fraud no matter which way you put it.
Actual prices on the menu are better for the customer, actual pay is better for the server, accounting for everything is better for the business and accurate reporting is better for all of us who depend on services paid for by taxes
I totally agree with you and my comment was sarcasm.
The price should be upfront and the only thing you have to pay.
I totally agree with you and my comment was sarcasm.
Might want to add a "/s" to your comment next time, just to same everyone a little bit of time.
How about no, Scott.
Its the violence inherited in the system.
Are you a true American if you don’t shaft your employees for every penny that you can though?
No, but a true Capitalist, yes.
(Sad of me to write that, as there used to be a time where companies made good products and accepted reasonable profit margins, going for the win-win scenarios. Today's Capitalism seems all about the win-lose scenarios.)
Bro just said he was German
Sarcasm
Germans are professionals at telling other people what they're doing wrong
Exactly. Here in my country we just have amateurs doing it (badly), we need more Germans.
I was so confused the first time I went to Germany. I asked someone there about tipping and they said, “you can, but you don’t have to.”
That didn’t really clarify it enough for me so I just tipped like I do in the US. Didn’t want anyone thinking I was a jerk.
As an American and former tipped employee, living in a country without tips is so much better. However, there are some groups trying to make tips happen here in Japan. If you get good service, tell the manager or corporate. If you're a regular, give them an actual small gift (this happens anyway because people exchange gifts when they go on vacation and such). If it's a bar employee, buy them a drink. I like this much better.
"Ballot measures pending in Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Massachusetts, and a bill being reintroduced in Connecticut". There.
MVP
So that should cover everyone in this day and age since everyone asks for a tip now /s
IT’S ABOUT TIME.
Greedy employers leverage tipping to pay their employees the least amount possible. It's fucking disgusting.
And too many people who receive tips don't realize that it's their employer fucking them over rather.
It's worse than that, most of the time, employers are skimming from the tips. Don't tip for things that were previously non-tipped and give the person cash if you can.
The scummiest thing I've seen is restaurants adding a percent service fee before asking for an extra tip on top. Not a delivery service or 3rd party, the restaurant itself. Basically it makes customers tip less because they see the service fee so it's just flat out stealing the tip from workers.
most of the time
Citation needed. When I worked for tips, my tips never got skimmed.
Not them, but every tipped job I've had has been skimmed.
Whether to pay the cooks, dishwasher, or just straight pocketed by the owner, I only ever got 50-75% of the tip.
I've had my manager take our tip pool for snacks. The justification being that the snacks are for everyone even though half of us didn't eat the snacks. >:( I don't want chips, especially when it's my customer's good will directed towards me.
Surely you've got a source on this highly illegal activity. Or is it more likely you're making stuff up?
That's great, but minimum wage needs a huge overhaul.
20 bucks minimum wage
How is it a minimum wage if you dont have to pay it in full?
There's a loop hole where companies don't have to pay minimum wage if tips amount to the minimum wage that would have been earned by the employee.
It's a shitty way for companies to not pay their employees and expect customers to pay them.
While I abhor the whole concept of tipping, the thing that really grinds my gears is that we are expected to pay a percentage of the bill for service. If I order a basic cheese pizza or a 16 ounce tomahawk steak with a big chunk of foie gras and all the trimmings the server does not have to do much extra work for the latter. But if I have to tip $5 on a $20 pizza, why the fuck do I have to tip $100 for almost the same amount of service for the steak? Sure it weighs more and you might need to make an extra trip to serve the trimmings, but WTF, the server is not providing any more value by serving an expensive dish.
If I order an expensive bottle of wine it takes no extra effort to serve, why should I pay a shit ton more service charge?
USA, get your shit together, this is so not right. Land of the free? My arse.
Because restaurants decided to enforce tipping by percentage after world war 2 in order to keep payroll down. They lobbied for laws around it and ran advertisements to the public. Corporate governance is a huge problem in the US and tipping is just one facet.
While I do tip. It does suck that eating out pretty much requires a donation because we all agree that food workers don't make enough to live on. And I live in a State where they get full minimum. Just give the workers food and boarding and we can call it a deal, oh wait..... Let's not.
Since Lemmy is trying to be better than Reddit, can we agree that titles should be like '5 US states...'? Not every person that reads news here lives in the United States 🕊️
Americans are so self centered that they think anything in English is automatically based in the US unless said otherwise.
Are there other countries that have"states" and not provinces?
many federal countries have states. Examples: Mexico, Brazil
Oh shit I didn't know Mexico had states o.o I assumed a lesser known country would have states. Thanks
Reminder that a "living wage", and what most servers make, is at least 3x minimum wage, so tipping is still going to be required.
Why? I hope this is just the first step toward the end of tipping culture. Why should servers be held out as a special category deserving higher pay? They deserve a decent wage at least minimum, just like everyone else. If businesses need to pay them more to attract employees, then that’s the free market at work. That’s more predictable, transparent, honest toward all of the business, the employee, and the customer
Servers shouldn't be special, obviously. The obligatory tipping system we have is an complete dumpster fire. But this is taking employees who currently make $30/hr in tips and changing their minimum wage from $2/hr to $7/hr. It's not going to change anything. How could it? Would you give up a $30/hr job to take a $7/hr job on principle? Unless you're independently wealthy, you couldn't even if you wanted to.
But this is taking employees who currently make $30/hr in tips and changing their minimum wage from $2/hr to $7/hr. It’s not going to change anything.
Well at that point then the employers will need to raise how much they're offering the employees, or the employees will look for other work. Normal capitalistic market scenario.
Bottom line is for the employees to keep making the same kind of money, but having that be done out of the employer's pocket, and not the customer's pocket.
And if the employer refuses to give up some of their profits to the employee to do that, and instead just tries to raise the prices of their products to offset, then they'll find themselves going out of business right quick like, again, normal capitalistic market scenario.
Would you actually just put your head down and keep working there if that happened to you? Like...why?
Especially when Joe's Tavern down the road is starting people off at $40/hour! It's like the only place left in town after everyone quit and all the restaurants went under, so they got away with charging $18 a beer and $29 a burger! The owner must be making a killing...
Tipping is, by definition, not required.
Tipping is "not required" the way that not cheating on an SO is "not required". No, you're not going to get arrested for it, but that doesn't make it okay.
This is more like someone I barely know and never agreed to be in a relationship with getting upset about me seeing other people.
If you agree to monogamy, it's cheating and unethical for sure. If you don't agree to monogamy, cheating isn't even possible lol.
So if I agree to pay the listed price of an item and then I pay for it in full...
Tipping is supposed to be done for extraordinary service, above the call of what the employee is normally required to do for the customer.
If the employee is not earning enough then that's a matter for between the employer and the employee to resolve, not the customer.
Unfortunately that's not the reality in full service restaurants in the US, where I live. Servers are reliant on tips to live. The practice is pervasive. I don't know of a single non-tipped full service restaurant in my city.
Unfortunately that’s not the reality in full service restaurants in the US
As someone who lives in the US and was actually at a full service restaurant just last night, I can't agree, just depends on the place/region.
Also, if you are basing your existence on just the goodwill of others, that's not a smart or healthy way to live.
Really get tired of repeating the same points over and over again, so I'll just leave it as "everyone is the captain of their own ship", metaphorically speaking.
It’s okay to not to tip for normal service.
Tipping is supposed to be done for extraordinary service, above the call of what the employee is normally required to do for the customer.
If the employee is not earning enough then that’s a matter for between the employer and the employee to resolve, not the customer.
From all I've heard, wait staff actually like tipping because, if you're good, you can make a decent amount of money that way.
I personally would love to get rid of the tipping culture in the US, as I think we've passed a point where tips are just being asked for in far too many places, but the idea that tipping is bad for waitstaff is something I think they might, on a whole, disagree with.
And where are you in the US where tipping at a full service restaurant is not customary?
The state of Texas is committed to ending slavery in the coming decade. As a first step they are proposing that minimum wage should cover an entire cardboard box living quarters. And we're not talking shoebox size Amazon hand me downs that still have the return address tag! They will remove the tag and provide enough duct tape to seal that portion of the box. Under article 17 of the 2024 end of slavery pact, they propose that men and women under the age of 27 shall not be responsible for sealing and or weather proofing their cardboard boxes. Older people are not covered yet, but may be covered as soon as two or three more migrant babies are sold back to their respective Mexican families. Indeed, Texas is making strides to accommodate the world's demands for fair treatment of human rights and the people who should have them.
It's also bullshit that tipped workers rarely pay taxes on the vast majority of their earnings. We're subsiding their wages, access to infrastructure, and social services.
Lmao this has got to be the most misplaced anger ever. You're mad at people that don't even make minimum wage aren't paying taxes on the maybe $35k a year? How about the billionaires that basically don't pay taxes? Maybe we should deal with that first.
It's been a long time since ither of you've been a server, huh? They're doing better than that unless they are part-time.
Your point stands, that taxing billionairs is good, but a full-time server is probably doing 50k+ in all but the lowest cost of living areas. Because a tipped employee earns a % of goods sold, they are hurt less by inflation. The rising prices people pay result in higher tips. But since most places aren't cash, only the vast majority of their tips are via card and thus recorded and reported.
TLDR, they aren't as bad off as people think, and they are mostly taxed correctly.
50k ain't shit these days
That's at the minimum. My friend clears 100k working fine dining, but I know that's an exception.
Considering a 4 top will be guaranteed, get a bill over $100 their averages have risen. And since I am in California, they get their county's minimum, which is $17/hour plus tips. So my friends who serve part-time make about 60k annually here. Not bad for part-time work.
This is why I think most states should be moving our direction, as the article states.
Servers aren't getting a constant influx of people every day that they work, it varies from day to day except for the most popular places, even then tips aren't consistent amongst different groups of guests at popular places.
It's not their fault that their income comes from untaxed tips because their boss isn't paying them a taxable wage.
All business is like this, which is why we average our earnings in these discussions.
When I managed a grocery store where tips were super rare and never % based, the slow days were about $36k earnings, and the busy days were about $92k. Unfortunately, a server still has to be present on slow days, which may be low earning days, but often that's balanced with another preferred shift.
Did they take the job? Who's fault is it that they're showing themselves to be 'taken advantage' of?
Not everyone takes a job because they want to, a lot of people wait tables because they need some source of income. They're being taken advantage of because they're willing to work for anything.
For reference, Musk paid 8.3 billion in federal taxes in 2021, after all the evasion tricks. So even if the servers are being taxed correctly, who cares, it doesn't actually impact the economy.
It does. That's how taxes work. Musk's taxes don't benefit everyone equally. The server's taxes will be split, and the portion that goes to their state may be one that a billionaire doesn't pay into.
But it doesn't matter since you've created a straw man argument. I don't disagree with anything you've said about taxing the rich. You just take exception to me stating that servers also pay taxes for some baffling reason.
How much is that expressed as percentage of his total wealth?
A quick search revealed $185b, which is probably his net worth and not his total wealth, but we'll go with it:
8.3 / 185 * 100 = ~4.49%
For reference, I paid over 20% of my total wealth last year.
So I actually paid more than 4x as much tax as Musk did, relative to the amount of wealth we have.
If he paid 37 billion dollars in taxes, you would be satisfied? I find "wealth tax" to be completely separate from income tax discussions.
I'll be satisfied when the quality of life for average citizens starts going up again.
I feel like this was true when cash was more widely used, however, anytime recently I’ve been out it’s always a tip on the card (which they can’t “hide” from the govt).
Restaurants lobby US government to pay their staff less than minimum wage
Restaurants tell customers if they want better service, they should tip their server
Customers begrudgingly begin tipping their servers
Sexually attractive female servers in their early 20s absolutely destroy, making people think there's a scam at work (seriously, I've seen girls I've worked with go on back to back WEEKEND vacations to Cancun on their tips, and I live in Canada, but it's not a scam, it's just horny dudes simping for their server)
People start to complain about tipping culture, seemingly blaming the server for just working a job and not the restaurant owner for paying their staff starvation wages (we are here right now)
States mandate minimum wage for service industry staff
Restaurant prices go up to pay for wages but tip culture begins to go away
Servers are making less money so they go get easier jobs that pay the same (working in a restaurant can be fucking BRUTAL)
Restaurants hire more and more Indian immigrants, while hard working, are indicative of an even larger societal problem
Restaurant owners continue to make out like bandits, while customers and staff get shafted.
How's the customer getting Shafter in this scenario?
I hope this becomes a more popular idea, I fucking hate tipping so much that I stopped going to restaurants.
I wish NC was one of them
In this thread: hot takes from people who have never worked in a restaurant
Most of us against tipping have absolutely worked in restaurants, which is exactly why we are against it. The only people in favour of tipping (which also have reasoning that makes any sense) are those who don't tip and end up being subsidized by everyone else.
You either worked at a shitty place or you were bad at your job.
I used to walk with $2-300 a night a decade ago. That industry allowed me to pursue other things and I have fond memories of it. It just brings your body down and the hours absolutely suck so as to be unsustainable.
I think people who make tips like them because they get a bunch of money randomly on nights they work. But the problem with it is that it's random. If they are required to pay you more money then your pay check will just always have a bunch of money in it so that's better. People can still tip if they feel you did a good job. You shouldn't be dependent on that to live. You should be guaranteed a living wage for showing up and doing your job.
I don't disagree, but who makes that decision? These are the areas servers swim in
You're not taking a stand or making any statement besides "I'm an asshole" if you go to a sit down restaurant and don't tip
I wasn't even really talking about people who don't tip. What if the people don't ever come in? Then you wouldn't get paid hardly at all if you only rely on tips. The owner of the restaurant has you there to clean and babysit their business in case a customer decides to show up and all you get is like $3 an hour for it because maybe you might get a tip if the customer is nice? That's a shit deal. It's not fair to restaurant employees. Also making them pay minimum wage doesn't mean people won't still tip. They totally will because the expectation is still there.
Hot takes coming from all over the world with sane labor law and sane culture 🤷
Yeah. I'm sure everything about your country is perfect
yay another failed campaign promise by biden that he has left to be a state's rights issue and not all in the US will benefit
Abso-fucking-lutely, but good luck getting all the self-deceiving conservatives, I mean "centrists", to admit it.
Ah, how modern commercialism loves to forget that the minimum wage was intended to be a shameful thing...
edit: a shameful thing for employers to stoop to, ffs 🤦🏽♂️
Confidently incorrect
Almost half of US states still have a $7 minimum wage.
In a year or two nearly half will have criminalized abortion.
These headlines are not positive. They're indicative that the Do-Nothing Democrats have shirked their duty whenever we give them control of the Federal Government.
A) When have Democrats been able to pass legislation on their own?
B) What extreme-right concessions do you want them to make to get enough votes for mildly left policy to pass today? Jail all trans to get a federal minimum wage bump? Is that worth it?
A) When have Democrats been able to pass legislation on their own?
--When they controlled two branches of government.
B) What extreme-right concessions do you want them to make to get enough votes for mildly left policy to pass today? Jail all trans to get a federal minimum wage bump? Is that worth it?
--lol
I love that your counter to this is: They're just oh so powerless, when they controlled two branches of government twice in the last sixteen years AND had a supermajority for a portion of that time. They had all the power they needed. They were just more concerned with adding to their own pocketbooks than doing right by their constituents.
They did not have a super majority. This is well documented if you actually paid attention.
I love the idea that having Joe Manchin elected as a Democrat means they should have been able to pass every single thing. You clearly were not paying attention to the Herculean efforts put in to sway Manchin that failed. I'd love to hear what you would have done differently to get legislation past Manchin. But I'm guessing you'll just ignore that, along with my ask as to what extreme right concessions you'd make today.
And, it should be noted that thanks to you and yours swallowing Democrats' excuses, we're getting a far-right country anyway, or do you think the outright criminalization of abortion is going to stop with Idaho?
Once again: what's your proposal to pass federal legislation? It's far easier to halt all progress than to make any, and Republicans have made the former their entire platform, and are seeing great success.
Republicans have made the former their entire platform, and are seeing great success.
Which is why it's kind of ironic that you don't expect Democrats to do the same when they have power.
On second thought, it's not ironic. You don't expect Democrats to fight for anything, whether they have power or not.
Would fucking love it if we just got rid of tipping all together. Employers -not customers- should be responsible for providing employees good pay.
Factor the difference into up front price of the food/service and be done with it.
Tipping was never the problem, subsidizing owner profits out of worker pay was.
Tipping is freedom of expression for the customer. Wage is the obligation of the employer.
If it isn't a living wage the company shouldn't exist. Full stop.
But it should be a hard opt-in, no "decline tip" bullshit, social engineering is still at issue
If Businesses don't get a share of tips Square's model dies and SE with it.
That said their model dies if you grow a pair to hit zero tip and backcharge on poisoned delivery.
Social engineering only works in this situation if you are a bitch.
Not my problem to figure out their business model.
If their business model doesn’t work and they go out of business, isn’t that the point of capitalism?
Pure capitalism? Yes.
Definitely. In my country, tipping aren't expected but it's a pleasant thing to receive in service industry, in US of A, tipping is expected and people will vehemently defend the status quo.
It's expected because waiters can't make minimum wage without it. It's not defended because people like that waiters are paid so little, it's defended because they're paid so little and politicians, until now, have seemed to have no interest in changing that. Like so many things in this country, the people have to come up with a patchwork solution just to keep others alive because the politicians don't care.
So yes, I will defend tipping until this is fixed everywhere in the U.S. And I doubt it will be fixed any time soon. I'll be surprised if it's even fixed in these five states.
Tipping is still expected here in Washington where the minimum wage for tipped employees is the same.
Sure, because it's easier to have the same policy everywhere than to not know whether or not you should be tipping depending on the state you're in. I think that makes sense. Do you really want people from Washington going to Oregon and not tipping because they think they don't have to?
It has already become your culture, like it or not. Whether you tip or not, employer has to make up the different if the tip doesn't add up to the minimum wage, so you're essentially subsidising the employer as of now. Fixing the minimum wage will not get rid of tipping culture either, and exploitative employer knows that, so they will continue to pay the bare minimum and expect the customer to foot the bill.
I wonder if everyone reaction will change if we change "Tipping" to "Subsidising", because that's what the current status quo are.
This hits the nail on the head. Exploitative employers will always only pay the absolute minimum they can get away with. If you’re going to have a federally mandated minimum wage, then that wage will need to be adjusted frequently.
Has it been adjusted frequently?
In my country we don’t have a minimum wage. Wage ranges are determined by the market and negotiations with unions. It gets really easy to figure out which employers do the bare minimum and which don’t.
Yeah, I've always thought of it that way too: abhor the underpaying bosses and the politicians who allow it and advocate for change, but until then keep tipping generously no matter the level of service.
If you get bad service, your server might be having a rough day and/or the place might be busy or otherwise make their job of serving you more difficult. That doesn't mean that you have a right to deny them rent and food money.
Pretty much where I'm at. Not going to protest a shitty system by taking it out on a waiter, but will vote to abolish the whole thing and put the burden on the employer where it should be.
That's the insane part - you do have the right to deny them rent or for food money. You shouldn't, but under the tipping model you absolutely do.
I mean yeah, you LEGALLY have the right, I meant that you morally and ethically absolutely don't.
Which is why I'm opposed to tipping as a system. It's predatory. It transfers a moral responsibility to customers that should be on the employer, which provides the foundation for guilt-based social engineering targeting the customer, and a reliance of the employee on the success of that social engineering - the alternative being not getting paid because some asshole didn't think you refilled his drink fast enough.
Imagine if a hospital or something was run like that. Your insurance covered the doctors' and admins' pay, but the nurses, techs, and support staff all just rely on tips! *shoves an iPad with a credit card reader onto your lap*
It's insane that that model is legal for any business.
I beg to differ. I think morally an ethically not letting society dictate. What you do with your own money is the correct stance. If you go to your job and you get paid that is your money and you should absolutely under no circumstances be obligated to tip because society has made you think that they need it to live. That's your money that you need to live it's absolutely ridiculous that people make statements trying to guilt trip you into thinking that you owe it to someone else to give your hard-earned money to them because their employer decides not to do it. Screw that. And no I'm not saying don't tip, what I'm saying is don't support businesses that expect you to pay their employees wages. I significantly cut down eating at restaurants because I don't think that I should be obligated to pay employees wages, especially with the ridiculous prices. The restaurants charge for food nowadays. I absolutely hate the narrative of people guilt tripping other people because they choose not to tip. That is their obligation in right and they should absolutely not feel bad about it whatsoever.
Eww, sounds like some anti-tax libertarian filth 🤢
Answered your own rhetorical question. If the employer was forced to pay them a living wage (or did so voluntarily, but that's as rare as an ethical bank), you wouldn't need to tip, but until then, you're gonna have to pay so that the person who just performed a service for you doesn't go hungry or homeless.
Could have fooled me!
You should have led with that, then, rather than sounding like a deranged libertarian (but I repeat myself) for the first half of your reply
I agree in principle, but in reality they're as like a politician that doesn't accept any form of bribes: extremely rare and in many areas they don't exist at all
Good for you, but if everyone did that, servers would all get fired rather than just underpaid.
Aaand we're back to the libertarian tantrum of focusing on "-I- shouldn't have to" rather than "their bosses should have to" 🙄
So I'm going to be really honest with you. I have no idea what a libertarian is so I liked it up. I don't know if I would consider myself a libertarian but after reading about it I don't really see what's bad about it. Can you explain to me in your own words why you think it's bad? I genuinely would like to hear your opinion about it.
The definition of libertarian I was referring to is the American right wing libertarian.
Basically it's a childishly selfish belief that you owe nothing to the society that supports you and everything would be better if people were left alone to neglect and abuse each other.
That's an unfair exaggeration, of course, but not by much. It's basically rebranded anarcho-capitalism and idealised selfishness disguised in rhetoric about liberty and self-determination.
If you're going to be part of society, you should pay your part and if not, you should watch out for bears.
Ok well with that definition I would no. I'm nowhere close to those ideals. I don't think that people deserve things for free. I also believe that everyone should contribute to society because that's how a society is ran. With that being said though I also am a firm believer that people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't affect others. Maybe I should reword I'm saying. What I'm saying is as a customer I should not be expected to tip as in pay the restaurants, employees or whatever. And because this is expected of me, I do not go to restaurants and I encourage others to do the same. I'm saying that this is not how things should be.
You're not being fair in how you judge his comments, instead you're judging them a certain way that fits your narrative.
That vote / change will never happen if you don't push back on tipping, that's just the human nature of the situation.
You’re assuming you owe the server rent and food money. Where are you the employer? How does that server deserve special benefits over the person at the drive through, the busser, the stocker at the grocery, etc? You’re an enabler, keeping an abusive system alive to benefit one small category at the expense of everyone else
Granted, I tip generously as well, but that’s because I’m a pussy who doesn’t stand behind my beliefs
Hey, at least you're honest about it. :)
The cost of paying those people at the very least minimum wage is factored into the price of your purchase, except for the busser, who shares tips with the servers.
Because that's not the case with servers, you tip in order for the server to get paid for performing a service for you.
No. I've been clear from the start that tipping is a thing we have to do temporarily so that servers don't starve or become homeless before we finally fix the system.
Maybe the only way to finally fix the system is to stop tipping, so servers will go elsewhere until pay comes up. Normally I disagree with this line of thinking because it’s not easy to change careers, but serving is usually a “job” not a career. If we’re worried about minimum wage, I claim that many minimum wage jobs are easier to switch among. If a job requires special skills and knowledge, it deserves pay as such.
No. The livelihood of servers is not an acceptable sacrifice to help servers. Defeats the point completely and there's no guarantee that it'll work.
Go where? It's not like they all live in areas that have even a single place that pays servers a living wage or can afford to mo.
To paraphrase Matthew Perry (RIP): could you BE anymore condescending towards people with a career in the service industry?
And you'd be wrong. People work minimum wage because it was the least bad job available. Unless you're part of a union, employers have all the power and afford none to workers.
Every job does. There's no such thing as unskilled labor.
Their bosses and/or their lack of wherewithal in obtaining a job that pays enough to meet their standard of living is responsible, not the customer of the company.
Can't defend the status quo and expect things to be fixed, they're mutually exclusive of each other. Human nature demands that.
You absolutely can defend the status quo until things are fixed and work for things to be fixed. Maybe you think a change should come at the expense of waiters feeding themselves or their families. I do not.
It hasn't so far, and human nature being what it is, makes it a safe bet that it won't. Having said that, I hope I'm wrong.
Also, its ethically wrong to put the onus on the customer to support the status quo, that's the employer responsibility to take care of their employees in all ways, and an employees responsibility to not work for any boss that won't do that.
YES! Tortuuure them, make them SUUUFFEERRRRR!!1!!11!!!!! /s
If the guy in the next stall asks me for a roll of toilet paper (because he's out), I'm going to give him a roll, as a civic duty to take care of each other.
If the guy in the next stall asks me to come over and wipe his ass for him, he's on his own.
That's a lot of words to say you don't give a shit if a waiter can't afford to feed their kids as long as you don't have to give them any of your money. I hope you don't go to restaurants if you feel that way.
You're being intellectually dishonest in asigning motive to me, via a strawman or otherwise, without knowing me.
For the record, I do care, truly, but I also won't be held hostage by corporations via my caring. Its ethically wrong.
Fine. Then don't go to restaurants.
Just did one yesterday as a matter of fact.
I see, so what you're essentially saying is that it is okay for you to exploit underpaid labor even though it is not okay for them to be underpaid. Interesting.
Not only that, but there's a very strong case to be made that from a purely economic perspective, a tipless system is better for everyone.
Well, server employees will, because they don't want to deal with the loss of pay and/or the upheaval in their salary intake. No one likes a negative change to how they make a living and pay the bills.
Having said that, generally speaking, is it people, or ""people"" (aka corpo shills/bots) that are defending the status quo? Certain corporations have a big interest in maintaining the status quo and shaping the narrative towards that end.
Unless "we" change it via legislation, that's never going to happen. Let's explore how it would play out as an individual restaurant initiative:
Restaurant raises staff wages, raises prices to cover the increase. Even if you disclose it on the menu, customers don't care: they see prices 20% higher, they choose to eat somewhere with cheaper menu prices. This is frequently what happens when restaurants try to do that.
If the restaurant increases server wages less than what they would make in tips, the servers will leave for another restaurant. The benefit of tips is that the harder you work, and more tables you take, the more money you make. Good servers can make $50+ an hour if they hustle.
Source: 8 years experience in the industry.
I shouldn’t be paying my server’s wage; the restaurant should.
Name one other job (that isn’t in the food service industry) where the buyers subsidize the worker’s salary voluntarily.
Literally every other contractor. But that's irrelevant to the point.
This is the way it is. Whether or not it's a good system, it's the system which exists. Changing the system will require a transition. If that transition comes from individual restaurants changing their policy, they will have 1) staffing issues as no server will stay when they could make more elsewhere, 2) customer issues as customers will prefer restaurants with lower menu prices, even if the total is the same.
This isn't a value judgement, or a defense, this is a statement of fact. The only change that will stock would have to come from legislation. Societal systems have considerable inertia.
Again, name one other industry.
It's entirely irrelevant.
Name one industry with security theater like air travel. Name one industry with lobbying like politics. Name one industry with subsidization like agriculture.
The tipping situation is a product of a problematic history, but it is what it is. The entire system is based on it. Saying something is unique has nothing to do with the process to change it.
Security Theatre is an overreaction to a single event. Most of it can also be trashed. Also, the air travel industry didn't have security theatre for nearly a century.
Lobbying? Very similar to shareholders and boards of directors. Other governments also have varying amounts of lobbying, so it's definitely not intrisic to the system.
Lots of industries get massive subsidies: Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Healthcare, Nuclear, Research, Energy, Automotive, Semiconductors, Real Estate, IT, many big corporation have squeezed a subsidy out just by threatening to leave a state! To some extent, every public service is a subsidy, just where the government owns the 'company'. Some governments (probably) don't do subsidies, but lots do, and one could argue that some system like subsidies is necessary for a well functioning government & country.
However, I agree that the uniqueness of a practice says very little about how good it ultimately is for anything.
My point has nothing to do with whether a practice is good or not. It's about how deeply entrenched the practice is, and the practical complexities of uprooting the practice. Bad practices still require significant consideration in undoing.
My point is that "we should do away with ___" is an impotent sentiment by itself. Who is we? How are "we" going to actually do it? What does the transition period look like? What are the consequences? These are questions that, pragmatically, must be taken into consideration when implementing any large change, totally independent of any value judgement of that change.
I'm starting to think people on this website are detached from reality
Most websites, I've found. Lots of strong opinions about nebulous ideals, without a much experience, context, or practical rationality to support them
They are.
The events industry. Do you really think those bag checks do anything with how quickly they “look” in your bag before going into a venue?
I did one; now you do yours.
Again, this "argument" is totally irrelevant, but:
If that counts the same as TSA, then hair/nail stylists, massage therapists, valets, Uber (and taxi and limo) drivers, hotel housekeepers and concierges are all traditionally tipped.
But again, that doesn't matter. The system is what it is. Changing it is an option, but that does have practical considerations associated with it.
They are tipped, yes, but no NOT rely on tips for their wages. No other industry pays under minimum wage and expects me, the consumer, to subsidize employee’s wages.
Try again.
Then no, venue security is not the same as TSA. Stop moving your goalposts. It's one or the other: either degree matters and venue security isn't the same as TSA so uniqueness of a scenario isn't important, or degree doesn't matter and every traditionally tipped worker is the same so it's not unique in the first place. Either way your position crumbles.
And for at least the third time: your entire argument is pointless and irrelevant in the first place. Things are as they are. Saying "It shouldn't be this way!" doesn't change how it is.
Restaurants that eliminate tipping will go out of business in competition with those that don't. This is not a problem that can be solved by individual restaurant initiative. Stomping your feet and shouting that you shouldn't have to and it's not fair, without offering any actual effective course of action, is just embarrassing.
Answer the question then.
Name one other job (that isn’t in the food service industry) where the buyers subsidize the worker’s salary voluntarily. To the point where, without tips, the worker would NOT make minimum wage.
Name one even prime number other than 2. Name one flying mammal other than a bat. Name one Western country that doesn't use metric other than the US.
What point are you trying to make? This isn't some gotcha, you are making pointless statements. 2 is still prime, bats still fly, the US still doesn't use metric. Calling out a situation as being unique doesn't make it stop being what it is.
The only people who have the power to eliminate tipping are the customers. Even if employers randomly started paying servers $50 an hour, people could still tip...and many probably would to get that feeling of moral superiority. And that is sort of irrelevant anyway because how the fuck are the customers supposed to know the servers wage anyway? I literally have no idea what my server (or hostess or line cook or after hours cleaning crew staff) makes at the last place I ate at. Do you?
It's really not complicated. If customers stopped tipping, and servers can't support themselves and therefore they are forced to quit and move towards literally any other industry with a higher/stable wage. Then employers either go out of business altogether or, more realistically, raise wages to replace those workers who quit since the employer would like to keep making money instead of not making money. And thus, menu prices go up to account for the lack of tipping.
No one has ever been able to provide me a scenario where tipping ends without servers quitting due to inadequate/unstable income. But I'm certainly open to suggestions!
Thing is, no one would accept to pay what's written on the menu if they charged enough to cover what people pay in tip, it's all psychological manipulation.
Prices would need to increase by about 20% and you wouldn't have a choice to pay it anymore, contrary to tips. Or you accept that servers now only make minimum wage.
That’s interesting.
InIt works all across the world exactly how you say it wouldn’t work.To be fair, in the rest of the world there aren't tipped establishments competing with next door no-tipping establishments. People are bad at math, a menu of $13 + tip options seems cheaper at a glance than a menu of $15 no tip options. We are talking about the country where the 1/3rd pounder burger failed after all
This is actually true and raises the most important practical point about it, in my view. Convincing people to give up tipping isn’t too difficult; I think we’re getting there. But transitioning to a tip-free culture is very difficult.
So tipping is a byproduct of Americans being idiots?
Service expectations across the world are drastically lower than in the US.
Bullshit.
I drew my conclusion from training servers who served in other countries and listening to their comparisons. I've eaten in other countries. How exactly did you come to your conclusion?
Do servers make over 70k/year everywhere in the world?
That's something people don't realize in North America, restaurant servers make fucking bank! If they complain about not having money it's because of the restaurant culture of going out after every shift.
Some restaurant servers make bank. Some don't even make enough with tips to bring them up to minimum wage. Yes, the employer is supposed to top them up to minimum wage when that happens, but if I had a nickel for every labor violation in the US, well I'd be making a lot more than minimum wage.
This lack of fairness even within the industry, is yet another reason to end tipping culture. Some servers make excellent money but all too many make little. This is yet another institution benefitting a few well off at the expense of everyone else
What's your experience in the restaurant industry?
Good servers make about half of what you think they make. Your number is reserved for senior sommeliers and chefs; the only way FOH hits that is by selling drugs to BOH or working 80hr weeks.
If it paid that well there'd be no staffing issues at all, think about it.
At my last job servers are making 300+ in tip every 8h shift and get their salary that's way above minimum plus they have full benefits including a pension fund and the business still has a hard time finding staff because the restaurant industry in general is a mess including the people working in it that think grass is always greener elsewhere.
Edit: Forgot, they're unionized too
most of your country is nothing like your extremely privileged little bubble.
I'm just pointing out that saying "If they were paid that much we wouldn't have trouble finding staff!" is bullshit. With even better conditions my previous employer has trouble finding staff.
There is a lot more to economy than some number in some currency. There are servers in many first world countries making wages where they are able to pay for their homes and have social services like healthcare, all while customers at their places of employment pay the listed price.
70k USD means nothing in isolation, without respect for local economy and cost of living.
That's the thing though, they already charge enough to cover what people pay in tip but guess what? That doesn't make them enough money. Next time they raise prices. They won't take responsibility for it, they'll blame it on the economy, but never the owners and shareholders that are making more profit than ever.
As a person who's been in the restaurant business, no, the vast majority of restaurants in North America don't make a large enough cut to pay their servers 35$/h. Most are always a couple of bad months away from closing. There's a reason why it's the type of business with the highest "turnover" rate for the business itself.
Now if you want restaurants to give servers the same wage they're making now it means all prices need to be marked up about 20% (since people tip based on price after taxes) and in the end the customers pay the same thing, they just don't have a choice about it.
Yes, just like everywhere else I have to spend money, why can’t I know how much I pay by looking at the prices? Why can’t we all be honest here?
If your business can’t pay a living wage, you shouldn’t be in business.
Lot of people in this thread know nothing about the restaurant industry, but feel entitled to strong opinions about it.
Couriers (DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc.) are not employees. They are contractors.
There is no minimum wage for contractors. The base pay for these services don't quite cover the $0.655 per mile that the IRS allows drivers to claim in travel expenses. The only money these drivers actually take home is customer tips.
If you, as a customer, do not believe in tipping couriers directly, that's perfectly fine, so long as you DO NOT use these services. As these drivers operate almost exclusively on tips, using these services without tipping is socially equivalent to begging in the streets.
False. If drivers don't make enough, they stop driving. Enough stop driving the business has to change their model to entice new drivers. That's how you bring about change. Not sitting online complaining, hoping that the government will get off their asses and fix it
They're employees being exploited by a loophole. DoorDash n' friends are predatory businesses, and are a great example of why we need better regulations on this kind of shit.
It's not a loophole or predatory, it's just something the people doing these one-off job knowingly agreed to. I myself certainly agreed to it years back each and every time I accepted another order. The key was to not agree to orders that don't make any fucking sense. It was all optional.
I don't know how we could ever regulate away the issue of people who decide not to act in their own best interest. Probably best to focus on education or something?
I refuse to use these services for three reasons. One, I think they’re unnecessary. Two, I think they’re unreliable. Three, I think they’re exploitative.
I don't see how it's my responsibility to give my money that I earned doing my job to someone else for doing their job and I shouldn't have to avoid the service because of that. If I want to use the service I should be able to because, why not, I want to. I shouldn't give that up just because someone wants me to pay their wages.
A kid comes to your door, asks you what you would be willing to pay for his older brother to shovel your driveway. The older brother is going to be doing the job; the kid is asking you what you are willing to pay. Is it your "responsibility" to "give your money that you earned doing your job" to the older brother for shoveling your drive?
DoorDash is not a courier service. DoorDash is not shoveling your driveway. DoorDash owns and operates neither a shovel nor a delivery vehicle. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash is the little kid, asking you what you're willing to pay. The drivers are the older brother actually doing the work.
Paying DoorDash's delivery fees and not offering a tip is the equivalent of paying that little kid $3, offering nothing to the older brother who will actually be doing the work. and still expecting your driveway to be shoveled.
The older brother is forced to honor the agreement the kid made with you. If he doesn't, the kid will have to give back the $3 he got from you. The kid will then pout and refuse to line up any additional work for the older brother. The brother "tolerates" this, because most customers are reasonable people and either offer a reasonable amount for the older brother, or decline the service entirely. The older brother makes all kinds of money from reasonable people.
If the "reasonable people will pay the older brother" argument isn't enough, continue the analogy: the kid got money from you. The kid is going to keep trying to get your business so he keeps getting money from you. But the older brother isn't getting paid for his work.
You've found a loophole where you can get your driveway shoveled without paying the guy doing the shoveling. The kid wants to keep doing business with you, but it would be far better for the older brother if you never talked to the kid again. So, you're going to get your driveway shoveled for a pittance, but all that snow is going to end up in front of your door, or burying your car.
Lol the older brother is just an idiot. He isn't 'forced' to do anything at all. The business arrangement makes no sense unless the little brother being the salesman adds value somehow.
I am an older brother and I assure you if long ago my younger brother was like "hey you need to shovel the neighbors driveway for $3'' I'd be like "lol, no, go give that nice man back his money. If you want to be my salesman, I need the guarantee of $10 in my pocket minimum. If you can find a guy who pays $11, by all means keep the dollar. Oh, also I get any tips provided after the job."
Do you actually think any older brother is going to just keep shoveling driveways for $3 when he thinks he deserves $10?
This is why I don’t use those services. They are both predatory, and taking advantage of regulatory loopholes
They do need to be fixed somehow though. I have elderly relatives with mobility issues who can really benefit from these services. Beyond more transparency and fixing the regulatory gaps, I don’t k ow how to make it both more fair to the gig worker and more affordable to those who need it though.
Maybe a subscription model? I’d pay Uber Eats a fixed price for my Mom to get as much delivery as she needs, assuming an even playing field we’re established
The "contractor" model is valid. When you hire a kid to shovel your driveway, for example, you are not "employing" that kid; you are contracting him to perform a specific task. Landscapers, builders, roofers, plumbers, lawyers, accountants, DJs, wedding planners... Most small businesses operate on a contractor basis.
The real issue with these services is one of semantics. DoorDash gives drivers a few pieces of information. They are told where the pickup location will be, where the dropoff location will be, the total distance they will have to drive, and, critically, the total amount of money they can expect to receive for performing that task. The driver is (ostensibly) free to accept or reject that offer. DoorDash may bundle ("stack") your delivery task with other delivery tasks and offer the entire bundle as a single task.
In a contractual arrangement, the money offered in compensation for performance of a task is the "consideration". The offering of money in exchange for a service is a "bid". That's the semantic issue: most of the money being offered to the driver is being called a "tip". It does meet the IRS definition of a "tip", but it does not meet the colloquial use of that term.
DoorDash is not actually a courier service. DoorDash does not operate a single vehicle used for package delivery to customers. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash connect customers to vendors and drivers. DoorDash takes the customer's task and offer of compensation and offers it to contract drivers. If they find a match, the customer gets their food. If they can't find a match, it sits on the vendor's shelf until closing, then gets thrown away.
You and your elderly relatives are free to use the service. You can use it ethically, simply by understanding that what they are calling a "tip" is actually a "bid" to the driver. So long as you are placing a reasonable "bid", your use of the service is fair and ethical.
What do you suppose would happen if everyone all at once just stopped tipping and kept using the service? Like I'm serious, what do you actually think would happen?
I think DoorDash would convert it's drivers to employees. I think those employees would earn less than they did as contractors. I think DD would be forced to offer healthcare and similar benefits, which would be contingent on continued employment, making them extortion rather than benefits. I think they would use those benefits as a bargaining chip to secure non-compete clauses. I think employed workers would be strictly limited to 40-hour weeks at lower pay, with rigid schedules. I think they would enact quotas, and strict deadlines.
I think employee drivers will be pissing in bottles to meet quotas and deadlines. I think instead of stacks of 2-3 orders, they will be stacking 5-8 orders, and delivery times will be longer and longer. I think employee DoorDash drivers will be treated as employee Amazon drivers.
I think that switching to an employment model would hurt drivers and customers, and benefit DoorDash and vendors.
That all seems a bit much compared to doordash just raising their service fee in order to pay their contractors enough to be willing to deliver orders in this new tipless world, but ok. I appreciate your attempt at answering the question nonetheless. Although it is pretty odd you consider a stable wage, hours and healthcare benefits to be a bad thing. And I still don't understand why employees are willing to piss in bottles to meet quotas and stuff. I wouldn't agree to a job like that. You probably wouldn't either. Especially for the lower pay you described. Unless of course the stability and healthcare benefits made up for it all...in which case it would be a better deal than before.
DoorDash already has a "earn by time" option, where drivers earn an hourly wage, but only while they are engaged. DoorDash sets an hourly rate of $12 in my area. They still pass through tips, but they also (effectively) require drivers to take every order assigned, no matter where it is from or where it is going. 8-floor walkup in a sketchy neighborhood, giving the local meth heads 12 minutes to steal your catalytic converter? Yeah, you don't get to skip that order, sorry.
We already know what DoorDash will do if they get to set the rates, because they are already doing it. I would much rather the negotiation happen between me and the customer rather than me and DoorDash.
Healthcare should be a government function, not an employment function. The idea that I should only have coverage while I am well enough to work is truly barbaric. Employer-sponsored healthcare is extortion. It is a tool to make it harder for you to detangle yourself from the company when they do something shitty. I know healthcare was the primary reason why I stayed at a job that forced me to work 60-hour weeks for 13 months straight.
Healthcare should be a birthright, not a benefit.
Which is the more stable job:
A: you have to wake up at the same time every day, clock in at the same time, clock out for lunch, clock back in exactly 30 minutes later, clock out again after exactly 8 hours of work.
B: you show up whenever you want. 8am. 11pm. Noon. Three days a week, seven days a week. Skip town for two weeks straight, clock back in and nobody says a word.
The first is not "stable". The first has an attendance policy that punishes you for any instability you might experience in your life. Kid gets sick? Attendance point. 6 points, and you're written up. 9 points in 12 months, and you're fired.
The second job is completely tolerant of any instability in your life. You can show up whenever you like, leave whenever you like, and the job just adapts around you.
I don't understand either, but I don't need to understand. Quotas are a function of hourly (employee) labor. Piecework laborers (contractors) don't face quotas. Drop the hourly labor, offer a piecework rate that will earn an entry level worker minimum wage, and your most proficient workers will be earning what they are actually worth.
Upvoted for the last line.
Please! For the love of God! Get rid of tipping!
I hate tipping! As the consumer I should not be responsible for proving a living wage for someone else's employees!
as a European I have to say both the Tipping culture and the not showing the full price in stores with VAT included is just mindblowing.
It's literally a culture of hiding true costs, weird af.
Hotels too. The advertised price is never accurate because their stupid resort fees.
What now? First I'm hearing of this. How much extra?
Again, it's prevalent in the US market, not sure about others. They advertise say $199 / night, but when you go to check out, there's something like a ~$35- $50 /night resort fee to "pay for amenities like WiFi/ gym /pool". You can't reject paying the fee, so your hotel room is actually like 25% higher than advertised.
Yeah, that'd be quite illegal down here. I spent basically half a year living in hotels straight due to work all across the UK and primarily London then continued for a few years after. So we're likely talking +300 nights. I have never seen an additional charge.
Makes me happy though in this day and age that people are waking up to this fact, and are starting to push back on it.
In the past corporations/governments thought people were a lot more unaware, than they are today.
It's a culture of trying to get away with whatever makes the most profits. We also have that, but there are some reasonable laws working against that. One of my favourites is the duty to display per kg or per litre price. Before that, shops made the package sizes deliberately confusing.
We actually do have that in the US as well, but it's typically in very fine print and a lot of people don't even know about it.
I don't think there's any law like that in the US. If there were, 2 out of 4 national supermarket chains local to me are breaking the law and have been for years
It's really not that weird at all. It's a simple consequence of the EU having better consumer protection laws. Unfortunately the far right in the US is a lot stronger than in most of Europe and has been since the post-war era.
We also, in the US, have an old and antiquated system that was deliberately designed to be difficult to change because the founders had to convince the slave-owning class that abolition couldn't be forced on them if they agreed to join the newly-formed union. How did they do that? You guessed it! By making the Constitution almost impossible to change, which is one reason why it required the bloodiest war in our history to end slavery.
Again, there's nothing especially "weird" about it. As is true of a lot of contemporary reality, it's largely a consequence of history.
Interestingly, tipping culture is also at least tangentially a product of slavery as well, but that's a bit more complicated so I'll save it for another comment.
And if you're starting to suspect that a ton of what ails the US can be traced directly back to slavery, here's a hint; you may be on to something!
That said, it was the European colonial powers who brought slavery to North America in the first place, which kind of brings us full circle.
Have lived in both eu and us.
Agree, but the challenge on tax is that it's not harmonized across municipalities. This means that stores that are across the street from each other may have identical prices/profit margin and a different net price to the consumer. This would lead to consumer preferences biased by physical location and have lots of other weird side effects. You can see this in areas that border state lines when the tax is appreciably different.
Step one is a harmonized tax rate, but that's easier said than done.
The true cost is different no matter how it's advertised, no? Harmonized tax is great and all, but lying about price is still bad, irrelevant of the actual price.
I was going to say this but fear of mass downvotes kept me quiet. Glad I'm not the only one. I've worked for tips but I'd rather just work for a reasonable wage instead, remove the guesswork and chances for abuse.
One way or another, you're paying those employees wage. One of them doesn't get taxed or advertised is all.
Yes and no. All tips are supposed to be reported to the IRS. Whether they are or not is not really relevant. What really matters is that the customers aren’t forced to do an owners job. If an owner needs their customers to prop up their employees then the owners shouldn’t be in business.
I used to make $2.35/h when I was in the service industry. Without my customers I would’ve been fucked. What’s worse is on a slow night, I really did get fucked.
I think that should be the point, employees should not be taking on the risk of a business doing poorly. That's the business owner's responsibility and risk, to be mitigated by them. Not screwing over a waiter because it was a slow night. Or because they were unlucky to work a tuesday night over a busy Saturday night.
You dont have to tip bro its okay
It's not okay. I can hear some of my customers' anxiety when they struggle to tip me. Some people lord it over me like I should revere them for their blessing. There is an unnecessary layer of stress to the customer service routine for everyone involved except the owner who benefits from this system. Not to mention some businesses pool their tips and share it with everyone, sometimes redirecting these funds into unscrupulous items like snacks without consent. >:(
Tips don't motivate me to provide great customer service to my customers. Tips serve to maintain cheap labor, but more important to me is how they erect social barriers. I can't blame someone for wanting or being motivated by tips when they're stuck near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. I'm there too so I understand, but there's just no reason for tips when we can get/provide great service without adding layers of paranoia; When we can provide a satisfying quality of life for everyone in the process with a
not-so-simple wage increase (and God forbid, better budgeting and management from business owners).They also in general make my job harder, especially when an old person who's basically blind can't find any of the buttons or follow simple directions (PRESS 3 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MARIANNE)
I'd like to supplement that I've had access to my various employer's records multiple times... because why lock the admin computer.
With my current employer, my entire wages for the month are paid for with net profits in a single day thanks to the skeleton crew we operate. I get to work knowing every other day is going straight to my boss's luxurious life-style because it's certainly not coming back here.
Don't be surprised when you hear of another staff walk-out~
Fuck tips, support good living standards for everyone!
No. I actually kinda do. Like if I'm out with friends I literally get judged if I tip poorly let alone if I don't tip at all which is social suicide.
And if I have a coupon for a meal, say 50% or something like that I still have to tip on the original amount before the discount was applied.
Moreover, and most importantly in some restaurants tipping is the only source of income the server gets. Regardless of how I feel about it I am still responsible for this person's wage.
I hate tipping culture.
You have friends? Wow that must be nice
It's not socially acceptable to not tip servers in a full service restaurant in the USA. It's becoming a required social norm to tip fast casual.
The pandemic really changed the tipping norms in the USA.
As a german the whole tip system in the US is both redicilous and hilarious to me.
We have tipping here, too (we literally call it "drinking money"). With the difference, that it's pretty much voluntary and if you don't have much money (e.g. as a student) noone will expect you to tip.
Having tips be part of the actual wage totally defeats the point of them...
Are you a true American if you don't shaft your employees for every penny that you can though?
This is actually a great reason for ending tipping. I used to feel like I was on the server’s side, slipping them cash the business couldn’t steal, but I never use cash anymore so have no idea who it’s going to. Also, businesses are getting more sleazy with required “tips” and fees, and it’s all one giant tax fraud no matter which way you put it.
Actual prices on the menu are better for the customer, actual pay is better for the server, accounting for everything is better for the business and accurate reporting is better for all of us who depend on services paid for by taxes
I totally agree with you and my comment was sarcasm.
The price should be upfront and the only thing you have to pay.
Might want to add a "/s" to your comment next time, just to same everyone a little bit of time.
How about no, Scott.
Its the violence inherited in the system.
No, but a true Capitalist, yes.
(Sad of me to write that, as there used to be a time where companies made good products and accepted reasonable profit margins, going for the win-win scenarios. Today's Capitalism seems all about the win-lose scenarios.)
Bro just said he was German
Sarcasm
Germans are professionals at telling other people what they're doing wrong
Exactly. Here in my country we just have amateurs doing it (badly), we need more Germans.
I was so confused the first time I went to Germany. I asked someone there about tipping and they said, “you can, but you don’t have to.”
That didn’t really clarify it enough for me so I just tipped like I do in the US. Didn’t want anyone thinking I was a jerk.
As an American and former tipped employee, living in a country without tips is so much better. However, there are some groups trying to make tips happen here in Japan. If you get good service, tell the manager or corporate. If you're a regular, give them an actual small gift (this happens anyway because people exchange gifts when they go on vacation and such). If it's a bar employee, buy them a drink. I like this much better.
"Ballot measures pending in Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Massachusetts, and a bill being reintroduced in Connecticut". There.
MVP
So that should cover everyone in this day and age since everyone asks for a tip now /s
IT’S ABOUT TIME.
Greedy employers leverage tipping to pay their employees the least amount possible. It's fucking disgusting.
And too many people who receive tips don't realize that it's their employer fucking them over rather.
It's worse than that, most of the time, employers are skimming from the tips. Don't tip for things that were previously non-tipped and give the person cash if you can.
The scummiest thing I've seen is restaurants adding a percent service fee before asking for an extra tip on top. Not a delivery service or 3rd party, the restaurant itself. Basically it makes customers tip less because they see the service fee so it's just flat out stealing the tip from workers.
Citation needed. When I worked for tips, my tips never got skimmed.
Not them, but every tipped job I've had has been skimmed.
Whether to pay the cooks, dishwasher, or just straight pocketed by the owner, I only ever got 50-75% of the tip.
I've had my manager take our tip pool for snacks. The justification being that the snacks are for everyone even though half of us didn't eat the snacks. >:( I don't want chips, especially when it's my customer's good will directed towards me.
Surely you've got a source on this highly illegal activity. Or is it more likely you're making stuff up?
That's great, but minimum wage needs a huge overhaul.
20 bucks minimum wage
How is it a minimum wage if you dont have to pay it in full?
There's a loop hole where companies don't have to pay minimum wage if tips amount to the minimum wage that would have been earned by the employee.
It's a shitty way for companies to not pay their employees and expect customers to pay them.
While I abhor the whole concept of tipping, the thing that really grinds my gears is that we are expected to pay a percentage of the bill for service. If I order a basic cheese pizza or a 16 ounce tomahawk steak with a big chunk of foie gras and all the trimmings the server does not have to do much extra work for the latter. But if I have to tip $5 on a $20 pizza, why the fuck do I have to tip $100 for almost the same amount of service for the steak? Sure it weighs more and you might need to make an extra trip to serve the trimmings, but WTF, the server is not providing any more value by serving an expensive dish.
If I order an expensive bottle of wine it takes no extra effort to serve, why should I pay a shit ton more service charge?
USA, get your shit together, this is so not right. Land of the free? My arse.
Because restaurants decided to enforce tipping by percentage after world war 2 in order to keep payroll down. They lobbied for laws around it and ran advertisements to the public. Corporate governance is a huge problem in the US and tipping is just one facet.
Thanks for the background.
While I do tip. It does suck that eating out pretty much requires a donation because we all agree that food workers don't make enough to live on. And I live in a State where they get full minimum. Just give the workers food and boarding and we can call it a deal, oh wait..... Let's not.
Since Lemmy is trying to be better than Reddit, can we agree that titles should be like '5 US states...'? Not every person that reads news here lives in the United States 🕊️
Americans are so self centered that they think anything in English is automatically based in the US unless said otherwise.
Are there other countries that have"states" and not provinces?
many federal countries have states. Examples: Mexico, Brazil
Oh shit I didn't know Mexico had states o.o I assumed a lesser known country would have states. Thanks
Reminder that a "living wage", and what most servers make, is at least 3x minimum wage, so tipping is still going to be required.
Why? I hope this is just the first step toward the end of tipping culture. Why should servers be held out as a special category deserving higher pay? They deserve a decent wage at least minimum, just like everyone else. If businesses need to pay them more to attract employees, then that’s the free market at work. That’s more predictable, transparent, honest toward all of the business, the employee, and the customer
Servers shouldn't be special, obviously. The obligatory tipping system we have is an complete dumpster fire. But this is taking employees who currently make $30/hr in tips and changing their minimum wage from $2/hr to $7/hr. It's not going to change anything. How could it? Would you give up a $30/hr job to take a $7/hr job on principle? Unless you're independently wealthy, you couldn't even if you wanted to.
Well at that point then the employers will need to raise how much they're offering the employees, or the employees will look for other work. Normal capitalistic market scenario.
Bottom line is for the employees to keep making the same kind of money, but having that be done out of the employer's pocket, and not the customer's pocket.
And if the employer refuses to give up some of their profits to the employee to do that, and instead just tries to raise the prices of their products to offset, then they'll find themselves going out of business right quick like, again, normal capitalistic market scenario.
Would you actually just put your head down and keep working there if that happened to you? Like...why?
Especially when Joe's Tavern down the road is starting people off at $40/hour! It's like the only place left in town after everyone quit and all the restaurants went under, so they got away with charging $18 a beer and $29 a burger! The owner must be making a killing...
Tipping is, by definition, not required.
Tipping is "not required" the way that not cheating on an SO is "not required". No, you're not going to get arrested for it, but that doesn't make it okay.
This is more like someone I barely know and never agreed to be in a relationship with getting upset about me seeing other people.
If you agree to monogamy, it's cheating and unethical for sure. If you don't agree to monogamy, cheating isn't even possible lol.
So if I agree to pay the listed price of an item and then I pay for it in full...
It's okay to not to tip for normal service.
Tipping is supposed to be done for extraordinary service, above the call of what the employee is normally required to do for the customer.
If the employee is not earning enough then that's a matter for between the employer and the employee to resolve, not the customer.
Unfortunately that's not the reality in full service restaurants in the US, where I live. Servers are reliant on tips to live. The practice is pervasive. I don't know of a single non-tipped full service restaurant in my city.
As someone who lives in the US and was actually at a full service restaurant just last night, I can't agree, just depends on the place/region.
Also, if you are basing your existence on just the goodwill of others, that's not a smart or healthy way to live.
Really get tired of repeating the same points over and over again, so I'll just leave it as "everyone is the captain of their own ship", metaphorically speaking.
From all I've heard, wait staff actually like tipping because, if you're good, you can make a decent amount of money that way.
I personally would love to get rid of the tipping culture in the US, as I think we've passed a point where tips are just being asked for in far too many places, but the idea that tipping is bad for waitstaff is something I think they might, on a whole, disagree with.
And where are you in the US where tipping at a full service restaurant is not customary?
Yup, servers often times make much more than other "minimum wage" jobs.
Nah, the shift has finally begun. It's gonna happen
I hope so. I hope something like this makes it to a ballot in my state.
It doesn't require any ballot lol. People are just tipping less and less over time and the practice is dying.
While true, legislation can wreck this predatory shit overnight as well.
The state of Texas is committed to ending slavery in the coming decade. As a first step they are proposing that minimum wage should cover an entire cardboard box living quarters. And we're not talking shoebox size Amazon hand me downs that still have the return address tag! They will remove the tag and provide enough duct tape to seal that portion of the box. Under article 17 of the 2024 end of slavery pact, they propose that men and women under the age of 27 shall not be responsible for sealing and or weather proofing their cardboard boxes. Older people are not covered yet, but may be covered as soon as two or three more migrant babies are sold back to their respective Mexican families. Indeed, Texas is making strides to accommodate the world's demands for fair treatment of human rights and the people who should have them.
It's also bullshit that tipped workers rarely pay taxes on the vast majority of their earnings. We're subsiding their wages, access to infrastructure, and social services.
Lmao this has got to be the most misplaced anger ever. You're mad at people that don't even make minimum wage aren't paying taxes on the maybe $35k a year? How about the billionaires that basically don't pay taxes? Maybe we should deal with that first.
It's been a long time since ither of you've been a server, huh? They're doing better than that unless they are part-time.
Your point stands, that taxing billionairs is good, but a full-time server is probably doing 50k+ in all but the lowest cost of living areas. Because a tipped employee earns a % of goods sold, they are hurt less by inflation. The rising prices people pay result in higher tips. But since most places aren't cash, only the vast majority of their tips are via card and thus recorded and reported.
TLDR, they aren't as bad off as people think, and they are mostly taxed correctly.
50k ain't shit these days
That's at the minimum. My friend clears 100k working fine dining, but I know that's an exception.
Considering a 4 top will be guaranteed, get a bill over $100 their averages have risen. And since I am in California, they get their county's minimum, which is $17/hour plus tips. So my friends who serve part-time make about 60k annually here. Not bad for part-time work.
This is why I think most states should be moving our direction, as the article states.
Servers aren't getting a constant influx of people every day that they work, it varies from day to day except for the most popular places, even then tips aren't consistent amongst different groups of guests at popular places.
It's not their fault that their income comes from untaxed tips because their boss isn't paying them a taxable wage.
All business is like this, which is why we average our earnings in these discussions.
When I managed a grocery store where tips were super rare and never % based, the slow days were about $36k earnings, and the busy days were about $92k. Unfortunately, a server still has to be present on slow days, which may be low earning days, but often that's balanced with another preferred shift.
Did they take the job? Who's fault is it that they're showing themselves to be 'taken advantage' of?
Not everyone takes a job because they want to, a lot of people wait tables because they need some source of income. They're being taken advantage of because they're willing to work for anything.
For reference, Musk paid 8.3 billion in federal taxes in 2021, after all the evasion tricks. So even if the servers are being taxed correctly, who cares, it doesn't actually impact the economy.
It does. That's how taxes work. Musk's taxes don't benefit everyone equally. The server's taxes will be split, and the portion that goes to their state may be one that a billionaire doesn't pay into.
But it doesn't matter since you've created a straw man argument. I don't disagree with anything you've said about taxing the rich. You just take exception to me stating that servers also pay taxes for some baffling reason.
How much is that expressed as percentage of his total wealth?
A quick search revealed $185b, which is probably his net worth and not his total wealth, but we'll go with it:
8.3 / 185 * 100 = ~4.49%
For reference, I paid over 20% of my total wealth last year.
So I actually paid more than 4x as much tax as Musk did, relative to the amount of wealth we have.
If he paid 37 billion dollars in taxes, you would be satisfied? I find "wealth tax" to be completely separate from income tax discussions.
I'll be satisfied when the quality of life for average citizens starts going up again.
I feel like this was true when cash was more widely used, however, anytime recently I’ve been out it’s always a tip on the card (which they can’t “hide” from the govt).
How's the customer getting Shafter in this scenario?
I hope this becomes a more popular idea, I fucking hate tipping so much that I stopped going to restaurants.
I wish NC was one of them
In this thread: hot takes from people who have never worked in a restaurant
Most of us against tipping have absolutely worked in restaurants, which is exactly why we are against it. The only people in favour of tipping (which also have reasoning that makes any sense) are those who don't tip and end up being subsidized by everyone else.
You either worked at a shitty place or you were bad at your job.
I used to walk with $2-300 a night a decade ago. That industry allowed me to pursue other things and I have fond memories of it. It just brings your body down and the hours absolutely suck so as to be unsustainable.
I think people who make tips like them because they get a bunch of money randomly on nights they work. But the problem with it is that it's random. If they are required to pay you more money then your pay check will just always have a bunch of money in it so that's better. People can still tip if they feel you did a good job. You shouldn't be dependent on that to live. You should be guaranteed a living wage for showing up and doing your job.
I don't disagree, but who makes that decision? These are the areas servers swim in
You're not taking a stand or making any statement besides "I'm an asshole" if you go to a sit down restaurant and don't tip
I wasn't even really talking about people who don't tip. What if the people don't ever come in? Then you wouldn't get paid hardly at all if you only rely on tips. The owner of the restaurant has you there to clean and babysit their business in case a customer decides to show up and all you get is like $3 an hour for it because maybe you might get a tip if the customer is nice? That's a shit deal. It's not fair to restaurant employees. Also making them pay minimum wage doesn't mean people won't still tip. They totally will because the expectation is still there.
Hot takes coming from all over the world with sane labor law and sane culture 🤷
Yeah. I'm sure everything about your country is perfect
yay another failed campaign promise by biden that he has left to be a state's rights issue and not all in the US will benefit
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker/promise/1575/increase-federal-minimum-wage-15hour/
Abso-fucking-lutely, but good luck getting all the self-deceiving conservatives, I mean "centrists", to admit it.
Ah, how modern commercialism loves to forget that the minimum wage was intended to be a shameful thing...
edit: a shameful thing for employers to stoop to, ffs 🤦🏽♂️
Confidently incorrect
Almost half of US states still have a $7 minimum wage.
In a year or two nearly half will have criminalized abortion.
These headlines are not positive. They're indicative that the Do-Nothing Democrats have shirked their duty whenever we give them control of the Federal Government.
A) When have Democrats been able to pass legislation on their own?
B) What extreme-right concessions do you want them to make to get enough votes for mildly left policy to pass today? Jail all trans to get a federal minimum wage bump? Is that worth it?
A) When have Democrats been able to pass legislation on their own?
--When they controlled two branches of government.
B) What extreme-right concessions do you want them to make to get enough votes for mildly left policy to pass today? Jail all trans to get a federal minimum wage bump? Is that worth it?
--lol
I love that your counter to this is: They're just oh so powerless, when they controlled two branches of government twice in the last sixteen years AND had a supermajority for a portion of that time. They had all the power they needed. They were just more concerned with adding to their own pocketbooks than doing right by their constituents.
They did not have a super majority. This is well documented if you actually paid attention.
I love the idea that having Joe Manchin elected as a Democrat means they should have been able to pass every single thing. You clearly were not paying attention to the Herculean efforts put in to sway Manchin that failed. I'd love to hear what you would have done differently to get legislation past Manchin. But I'm guessing you'll just ignore that, along with my ask as to what extreme right concessions you'd make today.
And, it should be noted that thanks to you and yours swallowing Democrats' excuses, we're getting a far-right country anyway, or do you think the outright criminalization of abortion is going to stop with Idaho?
Once again: what's your proposal to pass federal legislation? It's far easier to halt all progress than to make any, and Republicans have made the former their entire platform, and are seeing great success.
Which is why it's kind of ironic that you don't expect Democrats to do the same when they have power.
On second thought, it's not ironic. You don't expect Democrats to fight for anything, whether they have power or not.