It is pretty common to be prompted to tip by the PoS system in any place you can buy made-to-order food. This includes stores that are normal retail stores but also have some sort of made-to-order food. Like a fancy wine shop or gourmet food store that also sells sandwiches. But this isn't really a new phenomenon either. It's just that there used to be a tip jar sitting by the register, but now the PoS system prompts you because nobody carries cash anymore.
We're going in the other direction. In Seattle it's common for restaurants to tack on an extra "service charge" that's not a tip, just because. It's supposed to be declared somewhere.
That’s also very common in the UK, and shows up elsewhere in Europe sometimes. In the UK, they are legally but not practically or socially discretionary. There are some tax advantages for the restaurant and in the ideal case for staff.
Touristy places in central London maybe. They wouldn't dare try sneaking an undeclared service charge onto a locals bill in Northern England or Scotland :-)
> In the UK, they are legally but not practically or socially discretionary.
Speak for yourself. When entertaining clients at touristy places in London, one routinely asks for this underhand charge to be removed from the bill.
Then is should be declared in advance on the menu.
Adding an undeclared "service charge" to the bill only when it is presented to you is what we are talking about here. It is an increasingly common underhand tactic in and around London and an charge which one should ALWAYS ask to be removed ("that wasn't on the menu mate").
Then, if you wish, tip the staff whatever amount you prefer. (Though at this point, any restaurant that tries sneakily adding an additional charge to my bill probably isn't getting anything).
Or a date would look at it as me being so cheap (or secretly broke) that I'm willing to make a production over something that isn't really that big of a deal, financially speaking.
But, date or not, it's not something I'm OK with doing. It's just not worth it when I can resolve the issue completely with much less bother.
I think you'd be very surprised to learn that in a lot of cases, tipping pays much better than whatever a "reasonable" hourly wage for taking an order and carrying food to a table would be. If you're serving three tables that each have $100 checks and you get at 15% tip, that's $45/hour... yes it may average out higher or lower but you're not gonna like how much eating out costs if employers are expected to pay the higher end of what a server can make (spoiler: waiters will demand that).
A famous recent example, the South Park guys bought a restaurant and eliminated tips with a very nice $30/hour wage. Seems pretty good, doesn't it?
Guess what? The waiters demanded a return to tipping[0]!
around 3 to 5 CHF, depending on the place, and what kind of coffee you want to drink.
remember, this is Europe - the coffee is not made the same nor looks or tastes the same as you get in the US. it's mind boggling to me that people get a 16oz "cup of coffee", black.
This would be at least €3 euro versus €1.60 in Spain (out of the touristic circuit, no tip expected). Tipping in Switzerland would add a surcharge to the surcharge.
These are reasonable prices for a place much cheaper than SFO. This is what people pay in Eastern Europe. 2500 CZK for a set - around $120 - won't be at all surprising or perceived as high in Prague, for instance. It can go up to 8000 or so.
Threatening assault on a paying customer for not knowing tipping norms is just one of the many reasons why American society is in the state it is. I've seen similar things like 'be glad I didn't spit in your food', 'next time they are getting trouser food'. This is despicable.
I'm not saying they're right to do so, but it sounds like their intuition was honed well if they pegged you correctly during your faux-pas era? Fascinating, wonder what the tell was.
To be honest they are paid a full salary. Tipped wage does not preclude the minimum wage. In addition there are many states like CA that do not have a tipped wage.
Actually not. In my state and others, when a business is designated as accepting tips, the workers can be paid less than minimum wage, while expecting that the tips they collect will make up for it.
So it’s really a way to extort good tips from customers, because it’s understood that our gratuities are the only way they can make minimum wage!
Likely depends on the state, but in many states, traditionally tipped positions have a different, lower, minimum wage than non-traditionally tipped positions.
You still have to pay federal minimum wage. Tipped wages does not get around that. If you do not make up the difference in tips your employer has to pay the difference.
> As a foreigner in the US, I've made the faux-pas of assuming waiters and waitresses were being paid a full salary by their employer.
This depends on the state. For example, in California, servers get minimum wage, at least. On the other hand, most "red" states use the federal minimums: $2.13/hour for servers (!) and $7.25/hour for non-tipped employees.
Level of service doesn't depend on the tip in the USA. Tip size may depend a little bit on level of service, but not the other way around. Basically the tip is how the customer pays the server and table clearers etc, because the restaurant owner does not. It's just a convention on how to split up the total charge that American culture has determined in the way to do it. And like every single weird thing in American culture, it's that way because of slavery.
Yeah but that's for restaurants. In restaurants, the tip is usually post-paid. Tipping in other industries may have a different dynamic.
For example, with Doordash and Uber Eats, tips are prepaid. The driver may also be made aware of their prospective tip during the bidding process. Therefore, tipping is gamified into enticing a driver into accepting the bid over other jobs.
I will not reduce a post-paid tip if I perceive that I got bad service. I usually won't increase it, either, without extenuating circumstances, for example, if the server overcame adversity somehow (especially if I was the adverse one). However, if a prepaid tip turns out to be unwarranted by horrendous service, I will go after that and require it to be reduced to $0. That is basically the only punishment that a customer can exact on a service worker. I don't like to do it, but if it was a prepaid thing, I consider that tip to be made under duress, and revocable.
I've completely forgot to tip many times while visiting the US. It's just not something that I ever do in my country. And then you learn it's not only restaurants, but bars and, for some reason, the person behind the cashier at a Wallgreen's is sometimes also tipped?
From old family stories, I figure the real reason for tipping service workers is that both employers and customers want there to be plenty of service workers available - but the demand for their labor (restaurant customers, whatever) is very unpredictable compared to factory, farm, or gov't work. And service industries can't afford to keep a lot of idle workers around at full pay. So tipping is a simple revenue-sharing scheme, wrapped in social niceties, that boosts/cuts the service workers' income based on whether business is currently fast or slow.
Even in the majority of states that have sales tax, services are exempt and voluntary tips are also not taxable. (Mandatory tips are often considered part of the sales price, which seems reasonable enough to me.)
I hate that some workers depend on tips and that creates an obligation on me, but I do like to tip because I know how great it feels to get one. At work I sometimes get a bonus and what’s that if not a tip?
I benefit too. It’s a way for me to express gratitude.
Exactly! Thank you for expressing this so consciley. The fact that some people can't imagine enjoying giving (and receiving) a nice tip is really gross.
We prefer paying proper price for the meals with all costs included, to see those prices upfront, knowing that workers are paid fairly already and they just do the job expected from them. It means they can have decent lives regardless of their physical attraction, race, if they are sick or any other reason disadvantaging them compared to others. It also means I don't need to ever worry if waiter spit in my burger just because I look like somebody who won't tip enough.
Do you also tip every single time bus driver, colleague, bureaucrat handling your request or your child because they did their work as expected? Because why stop at some imaginary border.
I think everybody (except maybe some unethical employers) want to see employees paid a fair and livable wage for their work.
Everybody has different ways of expressing gratitude. That bus driver may be well paid and just doing their job, but I'm still grateful they are doing it and will thank them as I get off the bus.
Most people I know are happy to leave a tip - especially to reward great service as part of a great night, or in cases where you have a long term relationship with an establishment and its staff.
I can only imagine the staff is likewise happy to see the nice tip from us at the end of the night.
If you can only imagine "unnecessary bad feelings" - I can only imagine the tip you leave and how the staff feels about you. If you are so poor, you won't enjoy the price hike either and if you are not poor then just tip properly and move on.
Is poverty the only reason to dislike tipping in your eyes?
I'm absolutely fascinated by how sheltered you are, and I'm desperately trying to be charitable here as that's one of the more cunty things I've read on this site.
Thank you for proving his point. This whole accusatory nonsense is why tipping sucks. If you have to pay it to not be an asshole its not a tip and should be included in the menu price.
I am against the popular opinion and I actually tip if the hotel is somewhat cheap (ie food does not cost a small fortune). I do it out of selfish reasons. When I order chicken, I want them to bring me a good piece. Or if I order Porotta, I want them to bring me the most fresh one.
Or sometimes when I get a very tasty meal, I just tip them to share them some of the happiness that they brought me. But totally depends on how strapped for cash I currently am...
In the US, it wouldn’t be customary to tip before receiving service.
In my opinion, the 15-20% tip is so expected and routine in the US that the supposed incentive of a tip doesn’t make your service any better. Everyone gets roughly the same service and everyone gives roughly the same tip. It might as well be abolished.
It’s also worth looking up tipping practices and its segregation history in the US. Essentially, it became popularized because it was an easy way to get around laws surrounding the end of slavery and integration. The employer isn’t allowed to discriminate based on race or other factors, but the customer is allowed to.
The biggest barrier to ending tipping in the USA is that restaurants are almost always over staffed there.
The owner wants the maximum ratio of servers to customers possible. In the typical USA system, being paid primarily in tips means the server is highly incentivized to upsell the customer as much as possible and do everything they can to increase the total bill, and therefor increase their tip. Essentially a commissioned sales person but the customer pays the commission.
This is the least efficient way to run a restaurant with regard to staffing.
European restaurants typically use a team service model, which greatly reduces the number of staff needed. Every front of house worker can take orders, make and serve drinks, run food to tables, etc. Instead of checking on the customer every few minutes they rely on the customer to ask if you need something. There is no pressure to run up the bill or clear out quickly in this model.
No. After you've ordered, it is rare to order anything else. You might ask for a refill of a beverage or something like ketchup, but the waiter is not expecting more ordering.
It's simply expected by diners that their waiter is there and will help with whatever they need. In Europe you'll wait 20 minutes to get the attention of a waiter for salt or ketchup until your food is cold. Also in Europe this will be described not as dead time waiting for a small thing, but as culture. European culture.
> Also Europeans are not, I think, accustomed to asking for salt, or ketchup, on already seasoned food.
I would expect to find salt, pepper and mustard on the table in a decent restaurant, in my corner of Europe. Not ketchup, though, except in a cheap burger place.
You would in the UK but we are a condiments culture. Quite normal to find two kinds of tomato relish, two kinds of mustard, and if the café is satanic, salad cream or piccalilli. But I don’t think I would dream of asking for salt or pepper or ketchup if they were not already on the table.
So after you ordered the main meal, after you finished it, is it uncommon in the US to order something afterwards? Like coffee, dessert, an ice cream cup?
Most waitstaff attempt to be observant enough to watch their tables for empty plates, approach the table and clear them off, and ask at that moment if they would like to see a dessert menu.
I always get asked (and don't mind), but I rarely actually order anything. Usually, when I do, it's because I'm enjoying the dinner conversation and want to extend it.
So why do waiters in the USA keep pestering me every 5 minutes asking if I need something else? It's part of the culture, and it gets plenty annoying when I'm trying to enjoy a meal but have to stop mid-bite to say "no, thank you" when I'm clearly not in need of anything else.
The feeling I get from those experiences is that I'm being rushed to clear the table, not that the service is great and always there to help me.
Ah yes the homogenous European culture. Can't say I've ever really experienced this anywhere other than when its obvious a restuarant is slammed. Spain is probably the worst place I've been for service but the standard is still generally very high, you just need to actually get someones attention they're not going to ask if you're ok all the time. Maybe this is a reflection of the standrd of the places you go or how you treat people?
It seems like the universal standard in my area is that the server plunks down my food dishes and immediately asks if I would like anything else with that. And I don't know about neurotypical patrons, but in my mind it is impossible for me to process whether I will need anything else while the server is standing right there, staring at me and waiting for me to answer. So invariably I am forced to say "no" and then, more often than not, I belatedly discover what it is that my meal also needed, and so I wait to flag them down again (this necessarily involves not picking up utensils and not eating anything, so that they notice there is something amiss.)
I really haven't been smothered by checkups every few minutes. When the servers are really good, they can anticipate when you need something by simply looking at you and your table. They know when your drink is empty and when you want it filled. A server should rarely need to ask that stuff verbally. If they are continually checking up, they are inexperienced or insecure.
After I make my order, the server will usually try and take my menu. Lately I've said "I'd like to hold on to this" and they love when you do that! I don't always follow-up with another order, but sometimes I just need an extra side dish, or a dessert.
I've had that overstaffed experience, too. There are one or two small chains around here that employ 3x as many servers as they need. And their rooms are always 1/5th full or less. So the moment I walk in, there are 3-4 people greeting me and escorting me to a table, before I can even pull off my hat and gloves. In the same place, while they don't appear to do "team service" I would meet one waitress, and then get fobbed off on another guy for no stated reason. If they are sharing tips, a lot of slices to that pie.
> Nearly 16 million people worked in restaurants last year, representing about 10% of the national workforce, and 62% of operators said recruiting and keeping employees is a real headache. “The reasons for staffing shortages are both cyclical and structural,” Milos Eric, co-founder and general manager of OysterLink, told FI, noting government statistics showed 44,000 hospitality jobs were added in March alone, but 167,000 openings remained unfilled nationwide.
> “The reasons for staffing shortages are both cyclical and structural,” Milos Eric, co-founder and general manager of OysterLink, told FI, noting government statistics showed 44,000 hospitality jobs were added in March alone, but 167,000 openings remained unfilled nationwide. Eric said deportation is compounding the problem, considering government data shows 37% of cooks and 5% of dishwashers are foreign-born.
>European restaurants typically use a team service model,
American chain restaurants also use the team model. The server that writes down the order often isn't the same person bringing out the hot food. Maybe less of team than Europe because the waitress taking the order will typically be the same one refilling the drinks.
It's the white tablecloth high-end restaurants where the one waiter is the only person handling all interactions with the table.
What you are describing is not team service because the server "owns" the customer and are the one who will collect the tip from that table.
What you are noticing is that many chains have a "full hands" rule: if any server with free hands walks past a table with dirty dishes on the way to the kitchen, they are expected to pick them up no mater who's section it is. Also, if they are heading out from the kitchen with free hands they are expected to run out some dishes no matter what table they are for.
>What you are noticing is that many chains have a "full hands" rule:
But that contradicts the idea that "USA restaurants almost always over staffed there." The chain restaurant could just "overstaff" with dedicated table runners with no need for a "full hands" rule.
It doesn't seem like USA restaurants are overstaffed nor do owners have the incentive to overstaff. The very common scenario is the hostess seats you at the table and the waiter doesn't even show up for 10 or 20 minutes to take the order and patrons are frustrated and wondering why it's taking so long. That's a symptom of understaffing where the waiter is handling too many simultaneous tables.
> In many USA restaurants, the waitstaff tips are also shared into a pool
This doesn't change anything because the incentive is still to drive up the bill to drive up the tips. This is caused by the staff being primarily paid in tips.
> The chain restaurant could just "overstaff" with dedicated table runners with no need for a "full hands" rule.
Unlike servers, bussers and runners are generally paid minimum wage or close. Only over staffing servers helps make more income. Over staffing support staff runs up costs.
USA restaurant staffing is widely studied and your personal anecdotes don't change the conclusion: compared to most anywhere else, restaurants in the USA are over staffed with servers.
>Only over staffing servers helps make more income.
There are several gaps in your assertion about USA restaurants being overstaffed with servers.
#1 the mathematical relationship between servers and income is questionable: Servers acting as quasi commissioned salespeople by upselling patrons on "another beer?" or "anyone here want to order desert?" ... can be time-staggered interactions across multiple customers as the server rotates among their assigned tables.
Let's say, a restaurant has 20 tables and initially has 5 servers. For a single turnover of 1 set of diners, the diners have been asked(upsell) "Do you want desert?" 20 times. Let's say the owner wants to "overstaff the # servers" to be 1-for-1 and have 20 servers to 20 tables. The # of upsell events is still the same at 20. In what scenarios do overstaffing servers increase restaurant's income? (On the other hand, understaffing servers causes diners to twiddle their thumbs for half an hour after they finished eating because the overbusy server hasn't gotten them the final bill yet which causes less turnover of the table which leads to less restaurant income.)
It's also not clear why you need tipped servers to upsell. Fast food places like McDonalds have trained minimum wage workers to constantly upsell... "Do you want fries with that? Do you want to upsize that drink?"
#2 the economics equilibrium of what servers want to be paid and whatever staffing levels the restaurant owners want. Trying to overstaff the restaurant means waitstaff notice they don't work as many tables which means their total income is lower. This causes them to quit, which then causes the restaurant to keep trying to hire new waitstaff. Many restaurants chronically run "shorthanded" because of this negative feedback loop. (Which is one of the causes of extra delays between the hostess seating the diners and the time the waiter finally shows up.) Therefore, adding more servers to increase restaurant income isn't going to work.
>USA restaurant staffing is widely studied
The only studies I found analyzed restaurants not being able to hire staff including the servers. No study talked about restaurants having overstaffed servers in the USA as a proven driver of extra income.
> Let's say, a restaurant has 20 tables and initially has 5 servers.
This is already overstaffed and you are doing the math backwards. The place with 5 servers in the USA almost always has runners as well making total floor staff 8-10.
The comparison is not a mythical restaurant with 20 servers for 20 tables. In Europe a typical place with 20 tables will have 2-3 servers and no runners. We go from 8-10 floor staff down to 2-3.
Hopefully it is clear how 5 servers dedicated to 4 tables each and backed up by runners can do a lot more upselling than 2-3 staff doing team service. And they don't need to because their salary isn't dependent on it.
Locking down 1 server to a strict set of 4 tables is very inefficient as well especially when one section is slammed and another is half empty.
You will find plenty of study of tipped wages and restaurant economics but they generally don't use words like "overstaffed" instead they say things like analysis found that owners systematically offload slow day risk to tipped employees.
> The owner wants the maximum ratio of servers to customers possible. In the typical USA system, being paid primarily in tips means the server is highly incentivized to upsell the customer as much as possible and do everything they can to increase the total bill, and therefor increase their tip.
I don't think so. The biggest upsell of a US-style tipping culture is that restaurant owners have a no-downside free pass in exploiting workers. They literally are allowed to have people working for them for barely paid and performing a role aimed at increasing throughout and demand. Therefore there is no incentive whatsoever for a restaurant owner to stop exploiting their staff.
Also, many Europeans have the "equal work, equal pay" mantra drilled into them. Tip-based salaries are the complete anti-thesis to that. It is obvious that better-looking younger women get more tips than those without those characteristics. It rubs me and many others the wrong way; hence, I never tip because that is always fair. As a customer I 100% prefer "worse" service over having to deal with the tipping BS. Americans don't care and don't think about fairness at all in the same way.
At restaurants at least, most people I know just default tip 20% and only adjust up or down in pretty rare circumstances. Maybe it’s different in other parts of the US or for other generations, but I recall studies supporting that people generally have a set percent they always tip.
You recall wrong. :) The evidence that tipping is inherently unjust is overwhelming: https://freakonomics.com/2008/03/the-racial-tipping-point/ The post about race but the results very obviously apply to other characteristics too. Though I very well understand that most people don't care much for evidence when it contradicts their anecdata.
FWIW it comes off as pretty snarky to provide evidence and then pre-emptively insult the reader by assuming they won’t respond to it, or assume that disagreement will be a result of rejecting evidence in general and not having some more specific objection (e.g., cab vs restaurant tipping culture being different)
As far as I understand this is broken incentive system. Waiter can rarely make restaurant experience better - food is dependent on the kitchen - and it only worse make it worse - bad attitude, spitting in food etc. So from customer PoV, it makes no sense to pay percentage of the good as a compensation for the good. This model works where there is some risk associated - like if you sell a house, or do some legal counselling. But tips as a percentage of the bill makes no sense to me - waiter has no contribution in me ordering steak or salad. The offer, from waiter, to order something cheaper could be more tip-worthy service than alternative. Therefore, compensation as % of turnover should be Restaurant managers' concern and not the customers' problem.
> Instead of checking on the customer every few minutes
This is likely one of the absolute worst features of the US dining system.
So many times I have been sitting in deep conversation with friends or colleagues just for a waiter to claim all attention to ask if we want to have refilled water.
That they can even push themselves to such rude behavior is entirely insane to me.
I agree it's super annoying, but I can say for sure it's not limited to the US. Has also happened to me many times over here in Ireland/the UK. Usually by waiting staff that are a little inexperienced. Of course the people I'm in conversation with at the time are probably relieved to have a break from me rabbiting on...
Experienced servers will usually try to 'feel out' a table to understand if they are in a rush, demanding, want to converse, etc. The same behavior that feels rude when you're catching up with old friends is often welcomed by a table that might have limited time to eat or that prefer to have things done without waiting or flagging someone down.
You do realize that it's perfectly acceptable and commonplace to explain your group's preferences to the server upon first being introduced? You're really telling them exactly what would make you happiest while also reducing the effort they need to spend on your group, a mutually beneficial setup.
Of course, incentives may not align in certain scenarios. On a busy night/time or at restaurants that don't have lots of seating, having a table that they can't 'turn over' quickly may be undesirable, especially if purchases (another round of drinks) aren't being made occasionally.
As an American, I couldn't agree more. The server frequently stopping by to check on things is incredibly disruptive and annoying and I wish they'd just stop.
I'm fine with checking one time early enough in the meal that conversations haven't gone deep yet, but outside of that, I'm perfectly capable of signalling if we need anything.
Seems like poor training and professionalism. Well run establishments typically train staff in silent service for this very reason, to not interrupt guest conversations.
Korea has an amazing system for getting help. Every table has a little doorbell on it. If you need something, you click the button and a server comes. Otherwise, no one bugs you. I wish that sort of system would take off here.
Used to have a lot of American workers here on some projects here, and mind you - these are very travelled and well-versed ones. The contractors that travel around the world for a solid chunk of their careers.
They didn't really mind the the typical service here, where you'll have to wait a bit before a waiter sees you. You get used to it.
On the other hand, you have the first time tourists, that will go "excuuuse meee" after 5 minutes in a restaurant if the waiter hasn't showed up to take a order, and become pissy when they discover that free refills isn't really a thing.
Most Americans traveling abroad are in my experience polite and patient. But there are always the bad apples that will keep tabs on how many times the waiter comes by to offer something, and demand immediate service.
As a European, I expect the waiter to show their face within 5 minutes, at least to ask if we want anything to drink while still determining what to eat.
> USA is that restaurants are almost always over staffed there.
> European restaurants typically use a team service model, which greatly reduces the number of staff needed
100% this.
US restaurants have a "zone" model and always seem to need 3x the staff of European restaurants.
If you went the Euro model, you could have less staff and pay them more per head and therefore not need tipping.
> There is no pressure to run up the bill or clear out quickly in this model.
I think this is more a function of "need to turn over tables at some multiple per night to cover costs" but costs aren't just labor e.g. rent and food are also big line items.
They're not just incentivized to upsell, but also to get you out of the door as quickly as possible so they can get the next customers in. It makes for a much less pleasant dining experience than, say, France where waiters are generally hands-off.
It is kind of a culture shock between France and the US:
- French visiting the US: why is the waiter coming at us, does he want us out?
- American visiting France: what is the waiter waiting for, didn't he notice we are finished?
If France, if the waiter comes after you have finished your meal and asks you if you are done, it is usually a polite way of asking you to leave, usually because the restaurant is about to close. You are supposed to call the waiter when you are done, or, more commonly in casual restaurants, go pay at the cash register.
We need to at least normalize not tipping for counter service. Given the current wage structures and labor laws in the US and Canada, if I sit down at a table and I receive table service, I'm going to tip 15% unless the service was abhorrent.
I am not going to tip if I order and take my food from a counter and serve myself (and then almost certainly clear my own table as well), or I buy any other form of product standing up. Basically, if I'm standing for the entire customer service transaction, it's not tippable.
Using the example of my local chipotle as a typical stand up and order and pay at counter arrangement, the food is made before I get to the POS terminal.
Is that really typical though? IME there are more places where you order and pay and then wait for your food to be made than there are places where your food gets put together while you are ordering and you pay afterwards.
I guess it depends? Subway, Chipotle, lots of other places (poke bowls?) you choose your stuff and the food is made and then you pay. Taco Time as a randomly chosen fast food example, you pay at the time you order and then someone in the kitchen (not the cashier) makes the food. Both seem common.
> Of course, the staff also see how you tio before they prep your food...
Lol. Yeah, that's where the game theory breaks down for me.
I'm all for not tipping people that don't interact with you directly until I start thinking about how the 17-year-old making my pizza feels about tipping on pick-up orders...
Too late to edit my own comment but one obvious exception to the "don't tip if paying standing up" is of course at a bar. I'm not going to fail to tip my bartender. Very different thing than a POS terminal prompting me for a tip at Subway.
What are the Canadian labor laws you're referencing?
To my knowledge, the only province which still has the "liquor server" minimum wage is Quebec - everywhere else gets the same minimum wage as other workers.
To be clear, a server in Ontario is not legally allowed to be paid any less than $17.60/h _plus_ their tips.
One example would be that BC minimum wage does not pay anywhere near enough to live in Vancouver, it's culturally expected that servers in sit-down dining restaurants, bartenders and similar are still tipped. It's true that the servers don't make some ridiculously low "hourly wage" like tipped jobs in some US states but it's still not a lot.
> the problem of going tip-free is that customers struggle to get their heads around the maths.
Maybe they should show the price "without tip" next to the full price, so people can compare.
Paying employees with tips is an insane concept, fundamentally abusive. If it wasn't, then the owner would also get paid from tips. "The meals are all free, and we count on you to pay them through tips". Obviously no owner would take that risk, because it is insane. They make their employees take that risk because they can abuse them, that's all.
The entire point of tips is that they are the workers', 100%. It's also a variable cost based on the willingness to pay, so it creates a form of price discrimination, where those willing to spend more, spend more, those wanting to spend less, spend less.
Those two factors lead to the inescapable conclusion that tipped staff make more money. Price discrimination captures surplus value that simply is not available to schemes that don't use price discrimination, and any new price discrimination scheme would almost certainly benefit the employer at least in addition to the employees, if not be entirely captured by the owners.
Combined with the, let's say "extra judicial tax incentives", non-tipping restaurants simply cannot compete with tipping-norm restaurants for service staff. In an environment where tipping exists everywhere else, you then get an adverse selection pressure for shitty waitstaff, because if they were competent they would be working somewhere that competency would earn them tips. Which piles on top of the dealignment of incentives to create substantially lower quality service.
You sound a lot more like an owner than an employee. Have you ever been relying on tips to survive? I mean someone who does not benefit from the system, I'm sure some employees benefit from it, in some cases.
> Those two factors lead to the inescapable conclusion that tipped staff make more money
Or have you ever... talked with someone who relied on tips to survive, in an environment where they don't benefit from it?
> Price discrimination captures surplus value that simply is not available to schemes that don't use price discrimination, and any new price discrimination scheme would almost certainly benefit the employer at least in addition to the employees, if not be entirely captured by the owners.
Would you mind formulating that in a simpler way? Sounds like "price discrimination captures more value, which benefits the owners". Which is kind of confirming my point that tips are a way for owners to abuse the employees.
> Combined with the, let's say "extra judicial tax incentives"
Sure, the law incentivises the owners to abuse the employees. That is insane, too.
> because if they were competent they would be working somewhere that competency would earn them tips
"If I am rich that's because I am better, because why would I be rich otherwise?". Again it sounds a lot more like an owner than an employee.
Don't get me wrong: I understand why an owner may want to abuse employees in order to make more profit. Humans suck, that's old news. I'm just saying that the whole point of regulations is to counter the fact that humans suck.
Yes, I have both been a server, and regularly spend time with people who still work as servers. My whole point is that we did benefit from it, by making much fatter paychecks than we would otherwise.
My price discrimination comment was admittedly unclear, since I tangled up two chains of reasoning. Restaurants make some amount of money from customers. Some of that money goes to the owners, some of that goes to labor. Price discrimination schemes (i.e., charging people willing to pay more, more, and people willing to pay less, less), by their nature, extract more money from customers. So restaurants with price discrimination schemes have more money total to split between labor and the owners.
Thus, we'd expect that labor makes more money at a restaurant with a price discrimination scheme than at one with flat pricing.
Culturally expected tipping is a specific price discrimination scheme, that has the cultural and legal rules to disproportionately benefit the labor. Other price discrimination schemes lack these rules, so we'd expect some of the excess value extracted from customers to be taken by the owners, rather than labor.
Thus, Labor at restaurants with tipping get paid more than labor at restaurants with other price discrimination schemes, which get paid more than labor at restaurants with flat rate pricing.
Tipping culture is not an exploitation of the servers. If you're morally opposed to (even voluntary) price discrimination, you might be able to frame it as being exploitative against the customers. But of all the ways to structure a restaurant, tipping is one of the most effective at inflating servers' pay checks, which I struggle to imagine how you can frame as exploiting said servers.
Doesn't it ever happen that tipped staff end up having a "shitty" shift (say hours of the day where fewer customers are here) and end up working for nothing? I have heard that, it doesn't sound like a "much fatter paycheck".
Or would you say that all tipped staff makes much fatter paychecks?
IMHO, tipping is a totally irrational way to compensate employees, but at least the places I have lived in the US, it is not disputable: tipped jobs like bartenders, baristas, or restaurants server make significantly more money than untipped jobs doing similar work, like fast food workers.
Does tiping make any sense? Not to me. Does it (strangely) result in higher wages? Yes, and it's not even remotely close (unless there is some argument that being a barista is markedly more skilled than working at McDonald's, an argument I am somewhat skeptical of).
Good service is mostly invisible. Courses paced to how you're eating, not fired all at once or giving you 20 minute gaps between mains. Drinks refilled, plates cleared without asking. Reading the room and knowing when I want to chat or be left alone. Staff that know what their serving, whats in it, how it's cooked, what wine pairs well, etc.
That also includes accomodating guest preferences and allergies, and the staff being empowered to act.
For example, let's say you're allergic to nuts. Not only should the menu list all allergens, but also you should be able to say "I'm allergic to nuts. Can I have the beef cheek without the walnut garnish?" and the waiter should know if that's possible or not, and if there are any other nuts hidden in there, without having to ask the chef. They can say "let me check with the chef", but if they don't need to check because they already know the dishes well enough, that's great service.
It goes without saying:
- if you can and do order it nut-free, the dish served to you should be nut-free
- the waiter shouldn't freak out like this is the first guest with allergies they've ever had to accomodate
- they shouldn't refuse to serve you anything at all because "there are nuts in the kitchen", even if you explain that you're ok with the presence of nuts in an area provided they're not deliberately part of the food
- they shouldn't hand you a binder of laminated pages marked "ALLERGENS" and make you find the menu entry yourself
Also, if you're doing a tasting menu with a party of six and the restaurant has already agreed to accommodate your allergies, but you sit at a different seat at the table, they shouldn't reliably serve the nut-free dishes to the wrong person, sitting in the seat they decided the allergic customer would be sitting at, for every course.
It means nothing. Whoever writes this has no idea about American restaurant protocol. The "tip for good service" thing comes from the UK (perhaps elsewhere in Europe too, not sure since I don't know those cultures well). There (obviously it's changing as US cultural virus propagates) the idea was: default is no tip, a tip only exists as a token to denote thanks for something -- friendly service, quick service, and so on. Most service is slow and surly so -- no tips.
By contrast in the US the tip is mandatory. The server doesn't make any money and goes broke if you don't tip. So everyone does. Service would have to be astonishingly bad (waiter threw up on the customer?) to receive no tip. On the other end, one might give a somewhat higher tip if the server was particularly friendly, helpful, is related to you, is a friend of your kids, seems like they could use the money, and so on. There's no metric of "I was well served" that correlates to the tip.
There's a one star restaurant in my hometown. Not even expensive, it's about 60€ for a three-courses menu, so we try to go at least a few times a year.
It's really about reading the room. A good waiter won't bring the main of you're still finishing the wine that paired with your entrée. Won't come to pick the empty plates right in the middle of a lively conversation.
Things will land on and leave your table at the right time.
I think you might be missing a couple words because it’s not clear what you grievance is. Not tipping a waiter in the USA is poor form regardless of your individual opinion on tipping culture.
He probably looked at you strangely because you don’t seem to know much about beer. Do you think all beer called a pilsner is imported from Czech Republic or all Vienna Lager is from Austria?
Tipping is a weird phenomenon that's only an issue in the Americas. I have traveled extensively all over Asia and even the same chain/restaurants which are US based don't actually have the concept of tipping. Sure, you can always tip if you want. However, the issue with tipping culture is the blatant entitlement. I always tell rude waiters who literally demand tips for shitty services this:
A tip is a token of gratitude, should the customer choose to offer. It is not an entitlement.
I get it, their wages aren't great. However, that is a discussion to be had with their employer, not me.
Of course, I want them to get paid a fair wage too - the only way to fight against this culture is taking a stand against tipping. If enough people don't tip, hopefully the restaurant will struggle to find staff and eventually - either close down or increase the wages. But, don't try to run a restaurant when you clearly can't afford to pay your staff a decent wage. That's just running a business on hopes and dreams. It's not my job to subsidize your poor financial and business planning.
I grew up in a restaurant in the US. Tipping is a counterintuitive evolution in wages, I’ll probably dig in more.
Anecdotally, a waitress could easily earn more than minimum wage during a shift. Sometimes easy clearing $100 when minimum wage was $7/hr (it was $2.15/hr for wait staff). Add to that the tip reporting was lax and no there’s no tax on tips, waiting is on par with minimum wage.
An interesting side effect is that adding waitstaff is marginal cost to an operator.
> The people breaking their backs and minds in the kitchen - often the least visible and the least celebrated - were taking home a fraction of what the front staff made on tips for the same hours
Why not put all tips into a pool and just share it out between everyone?
This is what many restaurants do in my country. It's fair but it creates many issues. How you split it, who decides that, and there is always someone that is suspect of stealing.
Another issue is that if Americans tip, then you start to expect tipping from everyone make the experience more expensive and worst from anyone else.
PS. I don't own a restaurant or work at one, but I have friends that do both.I live in Greece, that counts also as "Europe" I guess
The POS handles it automatically. The workers know how the tips are split. Remember that tip income is offset by a lower base wage. They do expect tipping.
The thing that bugs me about tips is the fact they are a percentage. Why am I supposed to tip more if I ordered something more expensive but the service is equally good?
In general a higher bill is a proxy for a larger meal of more people in a more high-end establishment so it tracks well.
I agree if you had the $200 sea food tower by yourself it deviates from that otherwise perfect proxy. But that's already a weird situation so just pay the tip and move on.
A massive price difference would be the drinks (also the most of the profit) - realistically opening a bottle of expensive wine vs the bog standard cabernet serves as no proxy to anything.
It's not a good enough proxy for more people. If you compare the least and most costly items on a menu, even adjusting for size, you'll find that there's often a 2x to 4x difference between them. If I pick one over the other I will also have to pay 2x to 4x in tip. That just doesn't checkout.
Also, why do you need a proxy for the number of people when you can just count them? In Europe a service charge is relatively common and it's a per-person fixed charge.
it's time for a worldwide reset on tipping culture / assumptions.
america was always weird - the tipping practice leads to over-the-top fake service, is abusive to staff and only benefits restaurant owners. and they turned all that up to 11 over the last few years. how americans can cherish and even defend this, i can't get my mind around it.
meanwhile in europe, american practices are imported by way of POS terminals asking in outrageous use cases for outrageous amounts of tips. no, im not tipping 30% for an item i pick from a shelf in a store. add to that the awkward interaction at a bar or so when you have to select a tip under the watchful eye of the server.
people are shamed into tipping in all manners of ways and let those abusive practices plow over them.
it's a disgrace.
i wish for a world where all prices, including tips & taxes, are on the label / menu when i buy them and asking / giving anything on top is illegal. we would all be better off, even though americans for some reasons can't accept it - i have little trust in the headline of the linked article becoming a bigger phenomena.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 7.4 ms ] threadWith tip your bill can easily end up 40% higher.
Touristy places in central London maybe. They wouldn't dare try sneaking an undeclared service charge onto a locals bill in Northern England or Scotland :-)
> In the UK, they are legally but not practically or socially discretionary.
Speak for yourself. When entertaining clients at touristy places in London, one routinely asks for this underhand charge to be removed from the bill.
Adding an undeclared "service charge" to the bill only when it is presented to you is what we are talking about here. It is an increasingly common underhand tactic in and around London and an charge which one should ALWAYS ask to be removed ("that wasn't on the menu mate").
Then, if you wish, tip the staff whatever amount you prefer. (Though at this point, any restaurant that tries sneakily adding an additional charge to my bill probably isn't getting anything).
No, that's too unpleasant and would put a dour note on the evening. Particularly if I'm there with a date. I'm OK with simply not returning.
Granted, we all vary in our outlook :-)
But, date or not, it's not something I'm OK with doing. It's just not worth it when I can resolve the issue completely with much less bother.
A famous recent example, the South Park guys bought a restaurant and eliminated tips with a very nice $30/hour wage. Seems pretty good, doesn't it?
Guess what? The waiters demanded a return to tipping[0]!
0: https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/workforce/casa-boni...
remember, this is Europe - the coffee is not made the same nor looks or tastes the same as you get in the US. it's mind boggling to me that people get a 16oz "cup of coffee", black.
I even suspect that I received sub-par service from some of them, who may have identified me as a "no-tip risk" from the first moment.
So it’s really a way to extort good tips from customers, because it’s understood that our gratuities are the only way they can make minimum wage!
Likely depends on the state, but in many states, traditionally tipped positions have a different, lower, minimum wage than non-traditionally tipped positions.
This depends on the state. For example, in California, servers get minimum wage, at least. On the other hand, most "red" states use the federal minimums: $2.13/hour for servers (!) and $7.25/hour for non-tipped employees.
For example, with Doordash and Uber Eats, tips are prepaid. The driver may also be made aware of their prospective tip during the bidding process. Therefore, tipping is gamified into enticing a driver into accepting the bid over other jobs.
I will not reduce a post-paid tip if I perceive that I got bad service. I usually won't increase it, either, without extenuating circumstances, for example, if the server overcame adversity somehow (especially if I was the adverse one). However, if a prepaid tip turns out to be unwarranted by horrendous service, I will go after that and require it to be reduced to $0. That is basically the only punishment that a customer can exact on a service worker. I don't like to do it, but if it was a prepaid thing, I consider that tip to be made under duress, and revocable.
The actual history of tipping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping#History
And a bit on Sales Taxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_tax#In_the_United_States
From old family stories, I figure the real reason for tipping service workers is that both employers and customers want there to be plenty of service workers available - but the demand for their labor (restaurant customers, whatever) is very unpredictable compared to factory, farm, or gov't work. And service industries can't afford to keep a lot of idle workers around at full pay. So tipping is a simple revenue-sharing scheme, wrapped in social niceties, that boosts/cuts the service workers' income based on whether business is currently fast or slow.
I benefit too. It’s a way for me to express gratitude.
Do you also tip every single time bus driver, colleague, bureaucrat handling your request or your child because they did their work as expected? Because why stop at some imaginary border.
Everybody has different ways of expressing gratitude. That bus driver may be well paid and just doing their job, but I'm still grateful they are doing it and will thank them as I get off the bus.
Most people I know are happy to leave a tip - especially to reward great service as part of a great night, or in cases where you have a long term relationship with an establishment and its staff.
I can only imagine the staff is likewise happy to see the nice tip from us at the end of the night.
If you can only imagine "unnecessary bad feelings" - I can only imagine the tip you leave and how the staff feels about you. If you are so poor, you won't enjoy the price hike either and if you are not poor then just tip properly and move on.
Is poverty the only reason to dislike tipping in your eyes?
I'm absolutely fascinated by how sheltered you are, and I'm desperately trying to be charitable here as that's one of the more cunty things I've read on this site.
Thank you for proving his point. This whole accusatory nonsense is why tipping sucks. If you have to pay it to not be an asshole its not a tip and should be included in the menu price.
20% tip when all you do is pour my beers, which I have to order at the bar and bring to my table myself? Insane.
Or sometimes when I get a very tasty meal, I just tip them to share them some of the happiness that they brought me. But totally depends on how strapped for cash I currently am...
This is India, and not US, by the way..
In the US, it wouldn’t be customary to tip before receiving service.
In my opinion, the 15-20% tip is so expected and routine in the US that the supposed incentive of a tip doesn’t make your service any better. Everyone gets roughly the same service and everyone gives roughly the same tip. It might as well be abolished.
It’s also worth looking up tipping practices and its segregation history in the US. Essentially, it became popularized because it was an easy way to get around laws surrounding the end of slavery and integration. The employer isn’t allowed to discriminate based on race or other factors, but the customer is allowed to.
https://youtu.be/M4sTSIYzDIk?si=VkoIHgKpIFz-eMOJ
The owner wants the maximum ratio of servers to customers possible. In the typical USA system, being paid primarily in tips means the server is highly incentivized to upsell the customer as much as possible and do everything they can to increase the total bill, and therefor increase their tip. Essentially a commissioned sales person but the customer pays the commission.
This is the least efficient way to run a restaurant with regard to staffing.
European restaurants typically use a team service model, which greatly reduces the number of staff needed. Every front of house worker can take orders, make and serve drinks, run food to tables, etc. Instead of checking on the customer every few minutes they rely on the customer to ask if you need something. There is no pressure to run up the bill or clear out quickly in this model.
You could ask for the salt or ketchup when the meal arrives.
Also Europeans are not, I think, accustomed to asking for salt, or ketchup, on already seasoned food. So your request is actually unusual.
I would expect to find salt, pepper and mustard on the table in a decent restaurant, in my corner of Europe. Not ketchup, though, except in a cheap burger place.
Not all us Americans are, either. The only time I can remember asking for such things is when the server forgot to provide ketchup for some fries.
If a restaurant doesn't season the food properly, I'm not going to fix it at the table. I'll just factor that in the next time I decide where to eat.
The feeling I get from those experiences is that I'm being rushed to clear the table, not that the service is great and always there to help me.
I really haven't been smothered by checkups every few minutes. When the servers are really good, they can anticipate when you need something by simply looking at you and your table. They know when your drink is empty and when you want it filled. A server should rarely need to ask that stuff verbally. If they are continually checking up, they are inexperienced or insecure.
After I make my order, the server will usually try and take my menu. Lately I've said "I'd like to hold on to this" and they love when you do that! I don't always follow-up with another order, but sometimes I just need an extra side dish, or a dessert.
I've had that overstaffed experience, too. There are one or two small chains around here that employ 3x as many servers as they need. And their rooms are always 1/5th full or less. So the moment I walk in, there are 3-4 people greeting me and escorting me to a table, before I can even pull off my hat and gloves. In the same place, while they don't appear to do "team service" I would meet one waitress, and then get fobbed off on another guy for no stated reason. If they are sharing tips, a lot of slices to that pie.
Are you sure? I've seen way more staff shortages in real life restaurants over the past 5-6 years than any other time in my life.
https://foodinstitute.com/focus/labor-shortages-costly-probl...
> Nearly 16 million people worked in restaurants last year, representing about 10% of the national workforce, and 62% of operators said recruiting and keeping employees is a real headache. “The reasons for staffing shortages are both cyclical and structural,” Milos Eric, co-founder and general manager of OysterLink, told FI, noting government statistics showed 44,000 hospitality jobs were added in March alone, but 167,000 openings remained unfilled nationwide.
> “The reasons for staffing shortages are both cyclical and structural,” Milos Eric, co-founder and general manager of OysterLink, told FI, noting government statistics showed 44,000 hospitality jobs were added in March alone, but 167,000 openings remained unfilled nationwide. Eric said deportation is compounding the problem, considering government data shows 37% of cooks and 5% of dishwashers are foreign-born.
https://restaurant.org/research-and-media/research/restauran...
These jobs can be filled with domestic US workers, simply pay living wages.
American chain restaurants also use the team model. The server that writes down the order often isn't the same person bringing out the hot food. Maybe less of team than Europe because the waitress taking the order will typically be the same one refilling the drinks.
It's the white tablecloth high-end restaurants where the one waiter is the only person handling all interactions with the table.
What you are noticing is that many chains have a "full hands" rule: if any server with free hands walks past a table with dirty dishes on the way to the kitchen, they are expected to pick them up no mater who's section it is. Also, if they are heading out from the kitchen with free hands they are expected to run out some dishes no matter what table they are for.
But that contradicts the idea that "USA restaurants almost always over staffed there." The chain restaurant could just "overstaff" with dedicated table runners with no need for a "full hands" rule.
It doesn't seem like USA restaurants are overstaffed nor do owners have the incentive to overstaff. The very common scenario is the hostess seats you at the table and the waiter doesn't even show up for 10 or 20 minutes to take the order and patrons are frustrated and wondering why it's taking so long. That's a symptom of understaffing where the waiter is handling too many simultaneous tables.
This doesn't change anything because the incentive is still to drive up the bill to drive up the tips. This is caused by the staff being primarily paid in tips.
> The chain restaurant could just "overstaff" with dedicated table runners with no need for a "full hands" rule.
Unlike servers, bussers and runners are generally paid minimum wage or close. Only over staffing servers helps make more income. Over staffing support staff runs up costs.
USA restaurant staffing is widely studied and your personal anecdotes don't change the conclusion: compared to most anywhere else, restaurants in the USA are over staffed with servers.
There are several gaps in your assertion about USA restaurants being overstaffed with servers.
#1 the mathematical relationship between servers and income is questionable: Servers acting as quasi commissioned salespeople by upselling patrons on "another beer?" or "anyone here want to order desert?" ... can be time-staggered interactions across multiple customers as the server rotates among their assigned tables.
Let's say, a restaurant has 20 tables and initially has 5 servers. For a single turnover of 1 set of diners, the diners have been asked(upsell) "Do you want desert?" 20 times. Let's say the owner wants to "overstaff the # servers" to be 1-for-1 and have 20 servers to 20 tables. The # of upsell events is still the same at 20. In what scenarios do overstaffing servers increase restaurant's income? (On the other hand, understaffing servers causes diners to twiddle their thumbs for half an hour after they finished eating because the overbusy server hasn't gotten them the final bill yet which causes less turnover of the table which leads to less restaurant income.)
It's also not clear why you need tipped servers to upsell. Fast food places like McDonalds have trained minimum wage workers to constantly upsell... "Do you want fries with that? Do you want to upsize that drink?"
#2 the economics equilibrium of what servers want to be paid and whatever staffing levels the restaurant owners want. Trying to overstaff the restaurant means waitstaff notice they don't work as many tables which means their total income is lower. This causes them to quit, which then causes the restaurant to keep trying to hire new waitstaff. Many restaurants chronically run "shorthanded" because of this negative feedback loop. (Which is one of the causes of extra delays between the hostess seating the diners and the time the waiter finally shows up.) Therefore, adding more servers to increase restaurant income isn't going to work.
>USA restaurant staffing is widely studied
The only studies I found analyzed restaurants not being able to hire staff including the servers. No study talked about restaurants having overstaffed servers in the USA as a proven driver of extra income.
This is already overstaffed and you are doing the math backwards. The place with 5 servers in the USA almost always has runners as well making total floor staff 8-10.
The comparison is not a mythical restaurant with 20 servers for 20 tables. In Europe a typical place with 20 tables will have 2-3 servers and no runners. We go from 8-10 floor staff down to 2-3.
Hopefully it is clear how 5 servers dedicated to 4 tables each and backed up by runners can do a lot more upselling than 2-3 staff doing team service. And they don't need to because their salary isn't dependent on it.
Locking down 1 server to a strict set of 4 tables is very inefficient as well especially when one section is slammed and another is half empty.
You will find plenty of study of tipped wages and restaurant economics but they generally don't use words like "overstaffed" instead they say things like analysis found that owners systematically offload slow day risk to tipped employees.
Especially because most payments are by card (where I live), the tip first ends up with the restaurant itself anyway, not individual waiters.
I don't think so. The biggest upsell of a US-style tipping culture is that restaurant owners have a no-downside free pass in exploiting workers. They literally are allowed to have people working for them for barely paid and performing a role aimed at increasing throughout and demand. Therefore there is no incentive whatsoever for a restaurant owner to stop exploiting their staff.
Why? It sounds very weird. In every kind of business the owner has strong incentive to cut labor.
This is the study I was recalling: https://www.academia.edu/51293325/Restaurant_Tipping_and_Ser...
Though in looking for that I did find this other study that found racial bias: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/soin.12056
FWIW it comes off as pretty snarky to provide evidence and then pre-emptively insult the reader by assuming they won’t respond to it, or assume that disagreement will be a result of rejecting evidence in general and not having some more specific objection (e.g., cab vs restaurant tipping culture being different)
This is likely one of the absolute worst features of the US dining system.
So many times I have been sitting in deep conversation with friends or colleagues just for a waiter to claim all attention to ask if we want to have refilled water.
That they can even push themselves to such rude behavior is entirely insane to me.
You do realize that it's perfectly acceptable and commonplace to explain your group's preferences to the server upon first being introduced? You're really telling them exactly what would make you happiest while also reducing the effort they need to spend on your group, a mutually beneficial setup.
Of course, incentives may not align in certain scenarios. On a busy night/time or at restaurants that don't have lots of seating, having a table that they can't 'turn over' quickly may be undesirable, especially if purchases (another round of drinks) aren't being made occasionally.
And say what? "Please don't come and check on us, and instead keep an eye for our signal" seems more rude than I'd be comfortable with doing.
The answer is always yes. I'd come get you if it weren't.
I'm fine with checking one time early enough in the meal that conversations haven't gone deep yet, but outside of that, I'm perfectly capable of signalling if we need anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjfQ6soLSAU&t=12s
They didn't really mind the the typical service here, where you'll have to wait a bit before a waiter sees you. You get used to it.
On the other hand, you have the first time tourists, that will go "excuuuse meee" after 5 minutes in a restaurant if the waiter hasn't showed up to take a order, and become pissy when they discover that free refills isn't really a thing.
Most Americans traveling abroad are in my experience polite and patient. But there are always the bad apples that will keep tabs on how many times the waiter comes by to offer something, and demand immediate service.
> European restaurants typically use a team service model, which greatly reduces the number of staff needed
100% this.
US restaurants have a "zone" model and always seem to need 3x the staff of European restaurants.
If you went the Euro model, you could have less staff and pay them more per head and therefore not need tipping.
> There is no pressure to run up the bill or clear out quickly in this model.
I think this is more a function of "need to turn over tables at some multiple per night to cover costs" but costs aren't just labor e.g. rent and food are also big line items.
- French visiting the US: why is the waiter coming at us, does he want us out?
- American visiting France: what is the waiter waiting for, didn't he notice we are finished?
If France, if the waiter comes after you have finished your meal and asks you if you are done, it is usually a polite way of asking you to leave, usually because the restaurant is about to close. You are supposed to call the waiter when you are done, or, more commonly in casual restaurants, go pay at the cash register.
I am not going to tip if I order and take my food from a counter and serve myself (and then almost certainly clear my own table as well), or I buy any other form of product standing up. Basically, if I'm standing for the entire customer service transaction, it's not tippable.
Lol. Yeah, that's where the game theory breaks down for me.
I'm all for not tipping people that don't interact with you directly until I start thinking about how the 17-year-old making my pizza feels about tipping on pick-up orders...
Most people get 4-5% credit card cash back at restaurants (Amex, Chase, Cap1).
I prefer getting 18-25% cash back by leaving $0.01 tip.
I leave 1¢ so they know I didn’t forget. It saves a lot of back and forth.
That is one of the rudest things you can do. Not leaving a tip at all is far more acceptable.
To my knowledge, the only province which still has the "liquor server" minimum wage is Quebec - everywhere else gets the same minimum wage as other workers.
To be clear, a server in Ontario is not legally allowed to be paid any less than $17.60/h _plus_ their tips.
Maybe they should show the price "without tip" next to the full price, so people can compare.
Paying employees with tips is an insane concept, fundamentally abusive. If it wasn't, then the owner would also get paid from tips. "The meals are all free, and we count on you to pay them through tips". Obviously no owner would take that risk, because it is insane. They make their employees take that risk because they can abuse them, that's all.
Those two factors lead to the inescapable conclusion that tipped staff make more money. Price discrimination captures surplus value that simply is not available to schemes that don't use price discrimination, and any new price discrimination scheme would almost certainly benefit the employer at least in addition to the employees, if not be entirely captured by the owners.
Combined with the, let's say "extra judicial tax incentives", non-tipping restaurants simply cannot compete with tipping-norm restaurants for service staff. In an environment where tipping exists everywhere else, you then get an adverse selection pressure for shitty waitstaff, because if they were competent they would be working somewhere that competency would earn them tips. Which piles on top of the dealignment of incentives to create substantially lower quality service.
> Those two factors lead to the inescapable conclusion that tipped staff make more money
Or have you ever... talked with someone who relied on tips to survive, in an environment where they don't benefit from it?
> Price discrimination captures surplus value that simply is not available to schemes that don't use price discrimination, and any new price discrimination scheme would almost certainly benefit the employer at least in addition to the employees, if not be entirely captured by the owners.
Would you mind formulating that in a simpler way? Sounds like "price discrimination captures more value, which benefits the owners". Which is kind of confirming my point that tips are a way for owners to abuse the employees.
> Combined with the, let's say "extra judicial tax incentives"
Sure, the law incentivises the owners to abuse the employees. That is insane, too.
> because if they were competent they would be working somewhere that competency would earn them tips
"If I am rich that's because I am better, because why would I be rich otherwise?". Again it sounds a lot more like an owner than an employee.
Don't get me wrong: I understand why an owner may want to abuse employees in order to make more profit. Humans suck, that's old news. I'm just saying that the whole point of regulations is to counter the fact that humans suck.
My price discrimination comment was admittedly unclear, since I tangled up two chains of reasoning. Restaurants make some amount of money from customers. Some of that money goes to the owners, some of that goes to labor. Price discrimination schemes (i.e., charging people willing to pay more, more, and people willing to pay less, less), by their nature, extract more money from customers. So restaurants with price discrimination schemes have more money total to split between labor and the owners.
Thus, we'd expect that labor makes more money at a restaurant with a price discrimination scheme than at one with flat pricing.
Culturally expected tipping is a specific price discrimination scheme, that has the cultural and legal rules to disproportionately benefit the labor. Other price discrimination schemes lack these rules, so we'd expect some of the excess value extracted from customers to be taken by the owners, rather than labor.
Thus, Labor at restaurants with tipping get paid more than labor at restaurants with other price discrimination schemes, which get paid more than labor at restaurants with flat rate pricing.
Tipping culture is not an exploitation of the servers. If you're morally opposed to (even voluntary) price discrimination, you might be able to frame it as being exploitative against the customers. But of all the ways to structure a restaurant, tipping is one of the most effective at inflating servers' pay checks, which I struggle to imagine how you can frame as exploiting said servers.
Or would you say that all tipped staff makes much fatter paychecks?
Does tiping make any sense? Not to me. Does it (strangely) result in higher wages? Yes, and it's not even remotely close (unless there is some argument that being a barista is markedly more skilled than working at McDonald's, an argument I am somewhat skeptical of).
+1 reason not to travel to USA
- may I ask: What does this actually mean?
I have never been to a "high class" or "fine dining" location, so maybe my expectations are in general not high.
My expectations are just simple: Give me the menu quickly, let me order quickly, let me eat and let me pay quickly.
Thats it. What do I miss?
EDIT: Im located in EU.
For example, let's say you're allergic to nuts. Not only should the menu list all allergens, but also you should be able to say "I'm allergic to nuts. Can I have the beef cheek without the walnut garnish?" and the waiter should know if that's possible or not, and if there are any other nuts hidden in there, without having to ask the chef. They can say "let me check with the chef", but if they don't need to check because they already know the dishes well enough, that's great service.
It goes without saying:
- if you can and do order it nut-free, the dish served to you should be nut-free
- the waiter shouldn't freak out like this is the first guest with allergies they've ever had to accomodate
- they shouldn't refuse to serve you anything at all because "there are nuts in the kitchen", even if you explain that you're ok with the presence of nuts in an area provided they're not deliberately part of the food
- they shouldn't hand you a binder of laminated pages marked "ALLERGENS" and make you find the menu entry yourself
Also, if you're doing a tasting menu with a party of six and the restaurant has already agreed to accommodate your allergies, but you sit at a different seat at the table, they shouldn't reliably serve the nut-free dishes to the wrong person, sitting in the seat they decided the allergic customer would be sitting at, for every course.
By contrast in the US the tip is mandatory. The server doesn't make any money and goes broke if you don't tip. So everyone does. Service would have to be astonishingly bad (waiter threw up on the customer?) to receive no tip. On the other end, one might give a somewhat higher tip if the server was particularly friendly, helpful, is related to you, is a friend of your kids, seems like they could use the money, and so on. There's no metric of "I was well served" that correlates to the tip.
It's really about reading the room. A good waiter won't bring the main of you're still finishing the wine that paired with your entrée. Won't come to pick the empty plates right in the middle of a lively conversation.
Things will land on and leave your table at the right time.
Mostly yes, there's not much extra they can deliver besides a better staff to customer ratio.
They had 'Brussels IPA' and 'Belgian IPA', I ordered those beers coming from Brussels and did not knew those beers.
The waiter looked at me strangely. I did not gave any tips.
Of course, I want them to get paid a fair wage too - the only way to fight against this culture is taking a stand against tipping. If enough people don't tip, hopefully the restaurant will struggle to find staff and eventually - either close down or increase the wages. But, don't try to run a restaurant when you clearly can't afford to pay your staff a decent wage. That's just running a business on hopes and dreams. It's not my job to subsidize your poor financial and business planning.
Yes, the staff are supposed to declare all their untraceable cash income, but...yeah.
So at least some of that income is untaxed, meaning higher net for same gross, meaning total prices even including tip can be lower.
That could explain this move away from tipping described in the article: the economic incentive has disappeared, leaving all the cultural negatives.
Anecdotally, a waitress could easily earn more than minimum wage during a shift. Sometimes easy clearing $100 when minimum wage was $7/hr (it was $2.15/hr for wait staff). Add to that the tip reporting was lax and no there’s no tax on tips, waiting is on par with minimum wage.
An interesting side effect is that adding waitstaff is marginal cost to an operator.
Why not put all tips into a pool and just share it out between everyone?
Another issue is that if Americans tip, then you start to expect tipping from everyone make the experience more expensive and worst from anyone else.
PS. I don't own a restaurant or work at one, but I have friends that do both.I live in Greece, that counts also as "Europe" I guess
One place is a very popular restaurant with counter service. The other is a bar.
I also earn tips playing music on the side.
I agree if you had the $200 sea food tower by yourself it deviates from that otherwise perfect proxy. But that's already a weird situation so just pay the tip and move on.
Likely certain single malts vs jim beam.
Also, why do you need a proxy for the number of people when you can just count them? In Europe a service charge is relatively common and it's a per-person fixed charge.
america was always weird - the tipping practice leads to over-the-top fake service, is abusive to staff and only benefits restaurant owners. and they turned all that up to 11 over the last few years. how americans can cherish and even defend this, i can't get my mind around it.
meanwhile in europe, american practices are imported by way of POS terminals asking in outrageous use cases for outrageous amounts of tips. no, im not tipping 30% for an item i pick from a shelf in a store. add to that the awkward interaction at a bar or so when you have to select a tip under the watchful eye of the server.
people are shamed into tipping in all manners of ways and let those abusive practices plow over them.
it's a disgrace.
i wish for a world where all prices, including tips & taxes, are on the label / menu when i buy them and asking / giving anything on top is illegal. we would all be better off, even though americans for some reasons can't accept it - i have little trust in the headline of the linked article becoming a bigger phenomena.
..and the most hilarious example of how the capitalist overlords keep the peasants fighting over pennies amongst themselves
No. The customer pays your boss → your boss pays you. Stop being bitches and demand your bosses to pay you a proper salary.