Tipping is an abomination!

[Syt]

Says this article.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/abolish_tipping_it_s_bad_for_servers_customers_and_restaurants.html

Tipping Is an Abomination

Here's how to get rid of it.

When wealthy Americans brought home the practice of tipping from their European vacations in the late 19th century, their countrymen considered it bribery. State legislatures quickly banned the practice. But restaurateurs, giddy at the prospect of passing labor costs directly to customers, eventually convinced Americans to accept tipping.

We had it right the first time. Tipping is a repugnant custom. It's bad for consumers and terrible for workers. It perpetuates racism. Tipping isn't even good for restaurants, because the legal morass surrounding gratuities results in scores of expensive lawsuits.

Tipping does not incentivize hard work. The factors that correlate most strongly to tip size have virtually nothing to do with the quality of service. Credit card tips are larger than cash tips. Large parties with sizable bills leave disproportionately small tips. We tip servers more if they tell us their names, touch us on the arm, or draw smiley faces on our checks. Quality of service has a laughably small impact on tip size. According to a 2000 study, a customer's assessment of the server's work only accounts for between 1 and 5 percent of the variation in tips at a restaurant.
Tipping also creates a racially charged feedback loop, based around the widely held assumption—explored in an episode of Louie, in the Oscar-winning film Crash, and elsewhere—that African-Americans tend to be subpar tippers. There seems to be some truth to this stereotype: African-Americans, on average, tip 3 percentage points less than white customers. The tipping gap between Hispanics and whites is smaller, but still discernible in studies. This creates an excuse for restaurant servers to prioritize the needs of certain ethnic groups over others.

Irrelevant or insidious factors will dominate the tipping equation until quality of work becomes the main driver of tip size, but that's unlikely to happen. And tip size isn't the real problem anyway. The real problem is that restaurants don't pay their employees a living wage. The federal "tip credit" allows restaurants to pay their tipped employees as little as $2.13 per hour, as long as tips make up the shortfall—which turns a customer into a co-employer. Although federal and state law requires restaurants to ensure that tips bring employees up to minimum wage, few diners know that. (Hosts/hostesses, bussers, and food runners, who receive a small fraction of the servers' tips, often fall short of minimum wage on some nights.) The tip credit has turned the gratuity into a moral obligation, and we ought to cut it from our statute books with a steak knife.

The only real beneficiary of the preposterously complicated tip credit is lawyers. Imagine what it's like for a company running restaurants in multiple states. There's no tip credit in some states, like California and Washington, where tipped employees must be paid the full minimum wage. Hawaii allows the tip credit only if the combined tip and cash wage surpass the statewide minimum hourly wage by 50 cents. New York and Connecticut have different minimum wages for servers, hotel employees, and bartenders.

Then you have to consider time that employees spend on activities not likely to yield tips. Applebee's, for example, has suffered a series of legal setbacks in lawsuits brought by tipped employees seeking back pay for time spent cleaning toilets and washing glassware.

The laws regarding tip sharing and tip pooling, which occur in virtually every restaurant, are even more complicated. Federal law allows mandatory tip sharing, but only among employees who customarily receive either direct or indirect tips. That means servers, bussers, food runners, and hosts and hostesses can be required to pool their tips with each other, but not with managers. Unfortunately, the line between service and management is fuzzy in many restaurants, and differences between state laws further complicate matters. A California judge ordered Starbucks to pay $105 million in 2008 for forcing 100,000 baristas to share tips with supervisors. Last week, the New York Court of Appeals reached the opposite conclusion, ruling that New York law allows the arrangement. Chili's has also lost a multimillion dollar judgment over tip sharing.

The entire mess is begging for some certainty and predictability. Restaurants need a clear set of rules to follow. Servers should have a steadier income stream. Hosts and bussers, who have relatively little interaction with customers, ought not to be involved in tipping at all. Customers need more clarity as well, instead of worrying at the end of a meal if the waiter, or your guests, approve of your 17 percent tip.

I'd like to propose a solution. First, ask your state and federal representatives to abolish the tip credit, which would turn tips back into actual gratuities: something given free of obligation. Second, announce your tipping practice to your server as soon as you sit down. Virtually every other employee in America knows how much they'll be paid up front, and somehow the man who sells me shoes and the woman who does my dry cleaning still manage to provide adequate service. I have no doubt waiters and waitresses are the same. Finally, tip a flat, but reasonably generous, dollar amount per person in your party. Around 20 percent of Americans, mostly older people, tip a flat amount already, so it's not exactly revolutionary. A server's pay shouldn't be linked to whether or not you have room for dessert.

[DGuller]

Agreed.  It really has a lot in common with bribery, except for the feel-good aspect of it.

[Josephus]

I didn't read all that. But I agree. Add $2 to my meal, pay the watiress well, and get that over with.

[Eddie Teach]

A server's pay shouldn't be linked to whether or not you have room for dessert.

That takes up more of their time.

And a server who's on top of the refills and such probably has less tables at the moment, so is getting less tips. Tipping him better for these times makes sense. Why should a server's pay be linked to how much business the restaurant is doing?

[garbon]

God I hate slate.

[crazy canuck]

I didn't read all that. But I agree. Add $2 to my meal, pay the watiress well, and get that over with.

Even when I am eating at a place where the tip is included I still give my server a tip they can keep for themselves.

[11B4V]

The person that wrote that article should be beaten profusely about the head.

and you fucking snobs on the forum.

[Syt]

I didn't read all that. But I agree. Add $2 to my meal, pay the watiress well, and get that over with.

Even when I am eating at a place where the tip is included I still give my server a tip they can keep for themselves.

Sure, but over here it would be between 5 and 10 percent depending on price of the meal and quality of service.

[garbon]

I didn't read all that. But I agree. Add $2 to my meal, pay the watiress well, and get that over with.

Even when I am eating at a place where the tip is included I still give my server a tip they can keep for themselves.

Sure, but over here it would be between 5 and 10 percent depending on price of the meal and quality of service.

20% baby!

[crazy canuck]

I didn't read all that. But I agree. Add $2 to my meal, pay the watiress well, and get that over with.

Even when I am eating at a place where the tip is included I still give my server a tip they can keep for themselves.

Sure, but over here it would be between 5 and 10 percent depending on price of the meal and quality of service.

I am not sure which you are referring to.  Here an included tip usually runs about 15% and generally speaking when I tip where there is no included tip, I tip between 10-20% depending on service levels.

If I am tipping in addition to an included tip it will usually be about 5% - I carry cash for that purpose so they can just pocket it.

[Malthus]

Here, the normal custom is to tip 15% for ordinary service and 20% for really good service.

I agree that tipping in restaurants is a strange custom, but once ingrained it really can't be eliminated easily; people feel it is a moral imperative to tip regardless of what they are told about the fee structure.

[Razgovory]

God I hate slate.

[Siege]

Amanda Tapping was cool in SG-1.

[Josephus]

I didn't read all that. But I agree. Add $2 to my meal, pay the watiress well, and get that over with.

Even when I am eating at a place where the tip is included I still give my server a tip they can keep for themselves.

I do too, most of the time. I just have an issue with the whole tipping concept. Pay the waiters more, for instance, and charge me more.
I remember a time in a Montreal bar and I bought a beer for me and a friend and it came to $8.50 I paid for the round at the bar with a ten, and turned to go. The bartender called me back. i thought he was going to say "thanks" or "Merci" whatever, but instead he says, "that's not enough! I have to make a living."
Like, fuck you.

I have a huge hate-on for tipping. And because the custom is here, I do tip, and normally tip well. Minimum 15 per cent, often 20. Depending on various things.

But then I wonder how do I know whom to tip. I tip my hairdresser but not my massage therapist. Why?

Just abolish the concept. Raise prices, I'm cool with that.

[fhdz]

Montreal

I've discovered your first problem.