No one thinks wages for restaurant workers are fair but you aren't changing that by not tipping. Many people have tried to operate restaurants in the US that do not accept tips and they always fail.
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Are you cheap if you don’t tip? (American tipping culture)
- Thread starter DongBeetle
- Start date
I'd advise you to read the entire quote chain between me and Kirblar, because that isn't what happened, and I'm not talking about myself either.
I agree. No matter how poor you are, you have to budget for the meal you're about to eat, including tax, so I think saving up an extra 10% of the cost before going out is reasonable and not classist. The difference of course is that stuff like tax is mandatory and tipping is still optional, but in American society it's a reasonable expectation of going to a restaurant. That extra amount isn't going to prevent someone from celebrating a birthday.
Having said that, I fully understand someone who is poor not tipping. That seems like a side discussion, though, because the OP is talking about "people who don't tip for moral reasons" and not "people who don't tip because they absolutely can't afford to."
I grew up in a poor family. When we wanted to go to a restaurant my folks would save up until they had enough money to pay for everything they were obligated to pay. Most of the time McDonalds was seen as a "treat" (cause we couldn't afford a restaurant), and when we did go to a restaurant my folks made sure they still had enough money for the tip. If you cant afford it, don't go.
I didn't pick it. No one was talking about this until Mist came into the thread with a bizarre "you are being so mean to the poor people and this is classism" take that no one else was talking about prior.
I don't understand why the tip should depend on the amount payed for food. Since this is seemingly a unpreventable labour issue in America, how about if the servers have cost per minute worked, and you tip them based on the time they spend serving you?
I do all of these whilst gulping down my free-refills of insulin and not worrying about idiots with guns.
Get with the times, old man.
Only time I ever refused to tip was when our waiter, obviously coming to the end of his shift, just stood next to our table rudely interrupting us ("are you finished with that?" - half a plate still there) eating and conversing so he could close the bill. No politeness to it whatsoever. If he's just said "I'm really sorry to bother you, but..." and was straight up about it, we'd have had no problem.
Then there was some shit with the card machine that he blamed on my colleague's card until he tried mine and it also failed, so had to dig around for enough cash (didn't apologise).
The food was merely passable for the price, as well.
Maybe it was a bit harsh, and there was some red mist, but my attitude was "well if you're going to rush us, then I'll save you some time by not working out the tip".
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Keep moving those goalposts.
Queue systems are a social convention, and cutting in queue makes you a dick.
Politeness is a social convention, and yelling at a teller for doing their job makes you a dick.
Having a blinker on for a parking spot is a social convention, and stealing that parking spot makes you a dick.
"Oh, but how can I deal with all these complicated social conventions!?"
That's not what I said at all.
Also not tipping isn't "not technically illegal", it's not in the slightest illegal. Do you think people should face criminal charges for not tipping?
My argument would be in favour of legally enforced reasonable minimum salaries that are not contingent on tips, so that people can decide whether or not they want to tip based on the quality of service provided without putting serving staff into financial difficulty.
I personally hate tipping: I feel uncomfortably set between "is this enough?" and "I'm not nearly well-off enough to be tipping like that". So much so that I prefer when the 10% tip is embedded on the tip and non-optional, like here in Brazil.
The title of the thread is literally "are you cheap if you don't tip."
It's the core premise: is everyone who doesn't tip a cheap asshole? The answer is, no, some of them are just trying to make due and can't afford it.
Can't argue with those points! For the record, I am not saying tipping here in America is perfect, but it is far from easy to change the culture and mentality here as it's often made out to be.
Now... basically everything else America does, I am totally on board with changing those ideas immediately. Starting from president and working towards unit of measure
If you can't pay your server, you should not have them bring you a meal. Not being able to afford the portion of the bill that pays your server properly is absolutely a reason you should not be going to that restaurant and accepting service and not paying in full. It is an asshole move to take service without paying the server with a proper tip.
Charging something like that is standard practice for parties of 7 or more. The problem with just implementing something like that is that business owners can pocket the whole amount without increasing what they pay their workers. No one in the industry wants something like that to be standard on all bills because it allows for that kind of abuse
Right, the mental gymnastics people are doing to justify this crap would be hysterical if it didn't hurt the exact "poor people" that they are supposedly advocating/justifying for.
it is like, just not enough alike.
Also you don't have legal standing to tell people to otherwise and doing so is a waste of time.
I don't agree with it but guess like life and it's dynamics I deal with it. I pay good servers and I pay my tip most of the time but I'll be damned if I act like nothing is wrong or that someone who might not have what I have should pick up the slack on a meal when they paid.
You live in america and that's just an opinion no one is legally obligated to give a fuck about it.
I'm going to stop tipping now. I'm also going to use the I'm too poor excuse and why I don't tip and when the server calls me a cheap asshole, I'll pull this thread out on my phone and show them and tell them I'm actually helping them change the system and they should be thanking me.
I don't agree with tipping at all. However, if you don't tip serving staff you're screwing them over to make your point. Instead, I try not to frequent anywhere with tipping involved. This means I eat out fewer times but it's a bullshit concept and I don't want anything to do with it
As was previously suggested, there should be protections in place so that servers (and anyone on one of those "loophole" salaries) so that they earn a livable wage, regardless of tips. I think you'd find that tipping wouldn't disappear as it is so culturally ingrained in American society, though it might be reduced somewhat. Employees shouldn't have to rely on the kindness of strangers to make ends meet!
The discussion had spun into different places by the time that happened.
Being accused of "taking the side of the corporations" is f'ing ridiculous here as well, as though the corporations just love having a big chunk of their revenue mandated to go to FOH instead of being under their discretionary control. They would vastly prefer a no-tipping situation too if everyone else were participating! There's a fundamental disconnect about who the winners and losers from the US tipping situation are because so many are coming from it from a "but I dont want to have to tip!" situation where they don't like it that assumes the waitstaff are net losers in the situation and must be victims in need of saving, where that isn't the case at all!
Like, "don't dine and dash on your servers" shouldn't be a hard position to understand. Not tipping is just dine and dashing, but only on the labor.
Someone who finds it amusing when people dine out only to begin pinching pennies when it's time to consider gratuity. Call me sensible or logical, but when waiters are busting their asses for me, I like to make sure they're accordingly compensated for their effort.
Cool that Europe figured it out, though.
I got pulled over for going the wrong way up an exit ramp onto the interstate, and when the state troopers hauled me out of my car by gunpoint, I said, " But Europe!" and they let me go.
It's kg's , the symbol is lower g for the measurement grams, the k is just a denouement for kilo I.e by 10^3. Using these systems is clearly superior (duh, keep your filthy Fahrenheit away from me America) but I still think people are allowed to complain about tipping culture and not correctly spell or use superior measurement systems. The rest of the world has accepted Americans have a few peculiarities but having a living wage should be a pretty universally wanted system
LMAO
I think it's funny: I've never engaged in more than 1 minute of a substantive tipping discussion with anyone in my life. I've never even HEARD anyone ever discussing tipping substantively in my life. It's always online where I hear actual "discussions" and "debates" about tipping.
The more food ordered, the more service required. Drinks, apps, soups, salads...these are runs to the kitchen, attentiveness to the meal. This is why it is a factor of the food/drinks ordered.
It's a high intensity, high stress industry with the only payoff being that we control how our tips go. The better service, the better the tips, usually. I can perform really well, ask for first cut, and could go back to uni and do homework, making 60-100 bucks in 4-5 hours in a three table section.
Or, bartending, I would work from 4pm to 3/4/5am and pull bank but then had to quit to re-prioritize my school and 8 am classes.
There are two variables that should come into the decision making process: How much did I order and what was the server's performance. If you had issues with your server, you should have asked for a manager and most likely, they will remove the items from your bill.
But please don't stiff your server/bartender because of the "tipping culture" as a) they will wonder where they went wrong and b) it is immoral as fuck.
Shockingly, when you have a system built on the premise thst everybody should be an asshole if they want to succeed, you're often left with situations where people have to act like assholes to make it through the day.
As I see it, a poor person not paying the tip because they can't afford it doesn't rate much of a talk, and we should make an effort to carve out that understanding.
No. i shouldn't feel obligated to help crowdfund paying your employee a liveable wage after I already paid you for a meal.
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Yeah exactly. The servers are making bank from the tipping system for what is low-skilled, easy work. Therefore don't feel bad if you can't afford the full 15%
I don't think tipping is the problem with living wage. Our minimum wage is the problem to start with. Employers are allowed to have customers offset the employee's salary basically to hit the state or federal min wage. But that min wage is still way too low.
That being said, minimum wage increasing, would mean menu prices increase, which means your average customer still is paying more anyway
If you don't agree with tipping culture, then speak out and demand people be paid more. Don't support places that require tips. If you go to a place that supports a tipping culture then choosing not to tip is cheap. Cook for yourself.
If you don't tip then don't eat at places where people need those tips. Eat at places where people are paid fairly.
If you don't tip then don't eat at places where people need those tips. Eat at places where people are paid fairly.
Yes, if you cant afford the services you are inquiring, you shouldn't be accepting them. Simple as that, its has nothing to do with how well off you are. Just because your poor doesn't mean you should expect others (who are almost surely also not well off) to give you free services.
This is just ridiculous, the hyperbole is crazy. I got an idea how about we think about the less fortunate and the servers who may also be less fortunate at the same time. The privilege is crazy with this post.
I have a sliding scale that factors in service and food quality. If the service is great and the food is terrible I have to leave the entire meal because the value of all the food is only fifteen percent of the bill.
There's a flawed premise here that suggests most servers don't like their tipping wages in America, but many articles suggest that the servers generally prefer that opportunity they get to make money from tips. Many restaurants have tried to be tip free and many of them went back to tipping.
Yes, I would prefer that system too, but until that is the system in the US, you are a asshole if you don't tip and your taking services rendered by the staff and not paying for it.
I tip but this is insanely stupid. No one is stealing if you don't tip.
Did you not repeatedly quote me with stuff like this (well before I even interacted with you)?
How is it inaccurate then for me to characterise your position as the corporations not being the villains, but poor people who can't afford to tip sometimes are?
Tipping is a complicated subject where I feel a lot of people are myopic and limited to their regional worldview.
In North America (US and Canada), tipping is not legally mandatory, but it's so ingrained that everyone, including poor customers, is expected to tip. Waiters make wages so low that they rely entirely on tips. Poor customers are entitled to the occasional treats, but should it be at the cost of a waiter possibly being stiffed? I wouldn't think so, but I can see disagreements there. That said, in NA, since tipping is so ubiquitous, customers are basically trained to include tip as part of the cost. I can scarcely imagine someone looking at a menu and going "hmm I can afford this, but only if I leave out the tip". I don't think this scenario is very common, and I think most people who don't tip do so because they're jerks/penny pinchers rather than poor, but maybe I'm wrong. If studies are done that show differently I'd revisit my views.
But then you have waiters who will defend the tipping NA status quo, because they happen to thrive in that system, and make better money than they would under a regular minimum wage system. And frankly, it's true, in my experience, that service is overall better in NA. That's very likely because waiters have to "earn" their tips and are forced to be nice, whereas in Europe they are "getting paid anyway, don't care if you're mad" (slightly exaggerating and generalizing, but you know what I mean).
But, on the flipside, another aspect of tipping that is often overlooked is how PoC waiters get the shaft the most under tipping culture. I remember reading articles showing that black and brown waitresses get fewer and cheaper tips than white ones, which is really awful.
So, is tipping culture in NA fucked up? Massively, yes. Is it the fault of the waiters? No. Are you a moral crusader sticking it to the man by refusing to participate in this system? Fuck no. You're fucking over the waiter, doubly so if that waiter is a PoC. Are you an asshole if you don't tip in NA? Yes, very likely so.
In North America (US and Canada), tipping is not legally mandatory, but it's so ingrained that everyone, including poor customers, is expected to tip. Waiters make wages so low that they rely entirely on tips. Poor customers are entitled to the occasional treats, but should it be at the cost of a waiter possibly being stiffed? I wouldn't think so, but I can see disagreements there. That said, in NA, since tipping is so ubiquitous, customers are basically trained to include tip as part of the cost. I can scarcely imagine someone looking at a menu and going "hmm I can afford this, but only if I leave out the tip". I don't think this scenario is very common, and I think most people who don't tip do so because they're jerks/penny pinchers rather than poor, but maybe I'm wrong. If studies are done that show differently I'd revisit my views.
But then you have waiters who will defend the tipping NA status quo, because they happen to thrive in that system, and make better money than they would under a regular minimum wage system. And frankly, it's true, in my experience, that service is overall better in NA. That's very likely because waiters have to "earn" their tips and are forced to be nice, whereas in Europe they are "getting paid anyway, don't care if you're mad" (slightly exaggerating and generalizing, but you know what I mean).
But, on the flipside, another aspect of tipping that is often overlooked is how PoC waiters get the shaft the most under tipping culture. I remember reading articles showing that black and brown waitresses get fewer and cheaper tips than white ones, which is really awful.
So, is tipping culture in NA fucked up? Massively, yes. Is it the fault of the waiters? No. Are you a moral crusader sticking it to the man by refusing to participate in this system? Fuck no. You're fucking over the waiter, doubly so if that waiter is a PoC. Are you an asshole if you don't tip in NA? Yes, very likely so.
People in this thread aren't thinking of the less fortunate though. People in this thread are using the less fortunate as a gotcha to justify the notion of not tipping by trying to think up fringe cases to justify a shitty behavior.
Unless, you're the low-income single-parent trying to have a last meal with your terminally-ill child, I don't really want to hear the "BUT THINK OF THE POOR" in a thread asking about your value system on exploiting workers and participating in that exploitation by not tipping.
These are just arguments for ending the tipped wage system though. Some waiters would fight it but plenty would not because the current system isn't great for them. Why have mandatory baseline tips when you can just eliminate tipped wages altogether and let people tip if they want for exceptional service or something?
That's because if you say you don't tip out loud you would be rightly chastized
