> I consider this an abhorrent system, that should not be supported.
I agree it’s abhorrent. But we must support it by tipping. If you don’t tip, you’re not fighting the system you are harming the workers.
My approach is to tip and also advocate/vote for/support businesses that don’t allow tipping and instead just pay a higher wage and they factor that wage into the food price.
This is pretty rare though and even the restaurants that say “we pay our servers a wage so please don’t tip” still allow tipping so that’s not good.
I’m not sure how you break this in the US unless you pass some strict law disallowing tipping. Maybe something where the advertised price is all inclusive and no add-ons are allowed, so it must include tip, taxes, service charge, whatever. I don’t see that passing.
The most confusing part for me is not the restaurants, where I agree there is currently no choice but to tip unless you want to rip off the workers, but all these other places in-between that try to guilt you into tipping but the workers get paid a regular wage.
it's a weird cultural thing, i'm not sure when it started. No, you're not required to tip at all but it's frowned upon to not tip. How much to tip is another art form itself. Many people gauge how much to tip based on quality of service and others tip a flat rate. My tip algo is:
1. get the check
2. shift the decimal point to the left by one digit ( 10% )
3. double the amount from step 2 ( 20% )
4. round down to the nearest whole number ( makes it easier to add )
Of course you don’t understand it because neither do we Americans. You HAVE to tip or you feel horrible screwing someone out of their wage, even when they do a shit job. I’ve literally have waiters that take my order and disappear until food service time, then disappear again and needing to find another waiter or waitress to bring me the check. I’ve even seen managers step in when service is bad and they can’t get the tip money due to labor laws.
Tipping should be for exceptional service. I tip at my local sub shop because they know me and they know how I like my food made. I’d rather pay more per plate to cover an overall wage, and I think most Americans agree with me.
Not legally required, but in practice your decision to not tip is a decision that the staff should earn under minimum wage. It's just the current status quo. And in some cases you may end up in a confrontation with someone who assumed you knew you should've tipped. (Not tipping in a taxi may lead to uncomfortable situations)
> Why do restaurants not pay their staff enough to live?
> Not legally required, but in practice your decision to not tip is a decision that the staff should earn under minimum wage.
Not quite. The law is that for tipped workers the employer has to pay the "tipped minimum wage" ($2.13/hr) but if that plus tips is below the regular minimum wage ($7.25/hr) the employer has to pay the difference.
In effect it is equivalent to the minimum wage being $7.25 an hour for tipped works, same as for everyone else, but the employer gets the first $5.25 of your tips.
Not tipping is saying that you think the staff should earn exactly minimum wage.
I've heard though that in some states they are lax about enforcing this, so employers can get away with not making up the difference.
Basically we'd need laws enforcing a minimum wage for waitstaff, otherwise restaurants that allow tipping will always have an advantage over more expensive ones that don't. And no, you're not required to tip, but that only ends up hurting the waitstaff, not the restaurant.
It has a complex history but a lot of it started with the Prohibition historically, when alcohol sales ended some restaurants started allowing tips and it became more commonplace.
Some restaurants have also tried eliminating tips. The details of how tipping pools are distributed varies a bit but, in general, the servers (especially the young good looking women who research has shown get higher tips) revolt and go work something else if you disallow tips.
I'm not particularly a fan of tipping culture in the US but I would note that "optional" (but not really) 10% service charges for table service is pretty common in the UK these days as well.
It doesn't feel that endless any more though, does it? It's sort of like Amazon doing the math and realizing they're going to burn through all the "human capital" or whatever euphemism they might use for "humans" in the labor market in certain regions because of their labor practices.
