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‘Pure greed:’ Etiquette expert explains why tipping has gotten out of control
(www.clickorlando.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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We aren't anywhere near a "tipping point" with regard to tipping. This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they'd still pay the same fucking total cost.
If your server makes a living by your 15% then the actual service you're being charged for costs 15% more than your menu price. You're just paying part later.
Your alternative to tipping is just servers being paid out X% of food sold, which means that food is going to cost more.
Being bad at math is no basis for an argument.
Tipping is bad culture because we as customers should not need to directly subsidize the employees paychecks. There is too much variability in that. I’ve worked in restaurants where there is a slow day. I’ve seen servers on busy nights leave with $10 in tips because tables just refuse to tip anyone.
The restaurant should raise their prices and pay all employees a livable wage regardless of position. It’s not about being bad at math. It’s about some people not wanting to tip and the only one getting fucked over is the person on the very bottom with no control. It’s about that same person having to spend 8 hours on a slow Wednesday morning with maybe 2 customers all day just not getting the tips to feed their family. It shouldn’t matter how many customers a server gets. They should get paid for the hours worked, not the customers served
Then get a job that isn’t tip based. Folks take those jobs because “I usually make more in tips” but that’s literally the gamble you sign up for with that mentality. I don’t want to take that gamble, so I work a job that isn’t reliant on tips. I don’t have good days where some rich dude gives me 100 bucks for no reason, but I also don’t have bad days where I make less than I expect and don’t know how to pay my bills. Tipping culture is bullshit and it’s the owning class exploiting us all, but workers who sign up to work for tipped based jobs know what they are getting into and don’t get my sympathy any more than some dude working at Best Buy hating his life does
ThEN get a job ThaT ISnT tIp baSED
Yes, but not in mixed caps and in all seriousness
This is literally what all business transactions are.
Right, so the discussion is about how you want the pay to work, and there are lots of opinions on that. As a person who served for a long time, I would have not wanted to go by percent of food order at one restaurant but would have vastly preferred that at another, literally in the same chain of restaurants.
I think the concept of ending tipping and paying more works, but I think there will be some sticker shock for a lot of goods. This is really baked into the system.
It won't actually cost more but it'll seem like it does, and perception is everything.
I simply don't tip, it's not my responsibility. How the workers and owners figure out how to deal with it, isn't my problem.
Well then honestly, you're way better off by encouraging tipping culture, and still continuing not to tip.
You're effectively getting a discount on labor across the board, of 15-20% of total purchase cost. Not a bad deal.
But I’m not an asshole and I want society to improve, so I’ll shit all over tipping culture every chance I get and only tip when I actually get good service, as it should be
And yet people pay significantly more tipping than they would if prices just increased to cover actual wages. Tipped workers make a lot of fuckin money.
Tipped workers will still need that same income or you lose the tipped workers for worse workers (at best).
The price increase will need to be roughly the average percentage made in tips, at minimum.
What do you suppose that price increase would be, across the board?
Like 18-22%
Unlikely. Around 15% is the generally recommended tip, and many people don't tip even that. Plus basically no restaurant is going to pay them what they would used to earn in tips.
They will if they want employees. It's crazy to me people think servers would just work for free so you get a small discount lol
... For free? What? Who said work for free? What a fuckin leap you made there, man.
No, they don't, actually. Workers in other countries don't make nearly as much as tipped workers in the same job here, and they manage perfectly fine.
What happens in other countries is irrelevant. No one is going to accept the same job for less pay because people in France make dog shit money
I don't think this is about servers. I think it's about tipping in places that used to not require tipping. Like I went to a concert and bought a t-shirt and the kiosk asked me if I'd like to tip.
Right, it's a hidden cost. That's what people don't like. There's a real discussion to have, but at least have that discussion.
If people are pursuing those jobs because they make more because of tipping (which is definitely happening, and why it is spreading) then the market for labor is saying pay us more. To pay them more, you need to charge more. This is where people like to pretend you can just take money from the rich owner and boom you don't need to raise prices. This math never works.
Thus, their argument is based on being bad at math. The price is the price, and we just aren't being honest with ourselves about it. If we value laborers, and advocate for them, we should be honest about our willingness to pay the price of their labor.
Have the discussion be about that - do we want the price fixed and up-front or variable and based on societal pressure, essentially? Is guilt preferable to higher pricing?
Like I said, a discussion worth having, but it's never the one people have.
I disagree, the math you mentioned that "never works" can work, if put into practice. The greedy bourgeoisie could absolutely stand to lose a few bucks in profit to give that money to the bottom line. Sure, they miss out on another yacht, but their bottom line workers get to have a decent standard of living. What is the math that never works? Please explain in detail.
Sure. Take every penny the CEO of GM makes. Divide it by GM employees. You have less money than they got in raises due to the strike.
Prices will go up instead.
7 Billion divided by 4.5 is right around 1.55 billion dollars. $29 million is significantly closer to $0 than it is to $1.55 billion. Strip all of the pay from every senior leader and you're still nowhere close.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/gm-reaches-tentative-deal-with-uaw-source-says-2023-10-30/
So no, the math doesn't work.
What is the math you're referring to? If you wouldn't mind re-explaing your point? Full disclosure, I responded to the last comment while very drunk and I don't recall the crux of the discussion. However, passing the cost of the raises onto the consumer is still greed in my opinion. Also wasn't this thread originally about tipping? How'd we get to automakers? Do we have to tip factory workers now? I haven't bought a car in a while.
All costs of raises are always passed onto the consumer. All business costs are.
You asked for math on how employee pay cannot be cannibalized from internal budgets, so I linked you a very in-the-spotlight example with clear math attached.
Is it your belief that restaurants would somehow be fundamentally different in terms of how labor costs work?
I appreciate the sum up. I think that workers for the restaurant shouldn't have to beg the public to make a living wage and wages should be covered by the employer. If they company can't afford to give their employees a living wage while the CEO is buying multiple homes and yachts, then it's a moral failure on the company and the government that allows that to happen. It's wrong that costs are always passed onto the customers, but those dragons need their hoards to sleep on it seems.
Nothing you state here applies to the discussion at hand.
Also rich people aren't rich because they hoard money. The exact opposite is true. Most wealth is in stock.
The discussion about tipping? How is my comment not relevant?
Instead of the CEO and other upper management, try stock buybacks and dividends, which enrich the actual owners. GM spent $21 billion on stock buybacks in the past 12 years, and around $18 billion in stock dividends. That averages to over $3 billion a year, which is over twice the worker raise from the strike — and a lot of that raise is going toward correcting the 19.3% pay cut they took after 2008.
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How about the CEO, upper management, and stock buybacks? If all of those aforementioned are contributing to directing value created by the workers away from those who generate it, and those who generate the wealth are struggling to live, then that wealth needs to be refocused back to the workers.
well yeah, fuck the CEO and upper management. This was my response to /u/SCB telling you there's no wealth to redistribute. I tagged you so you would also see it.
Ah word, I appreciate it. Their name is familiar to me so I'm pretty sure they're a troll.
Why would the total price to the customer be more? I mean, the customer is already paying 20% on the total in tips.
I'm not saying it would necessarily be more, I'm saying it wouldn't be hidden.
I do think it would be slightly higher than 20%
I'm fine with that
Same. I just think a lot of people don't take it into account.
That's far better than my tips subsidizing the people who don't tip. Tipping creates a perverse incentive to fuck people over.