Tipping is an abomination!

[jimmy olsen]

Tipping does not incentivize hard work.

I disagree. Service in Korea is abysmal. I blame the lack of tips.

[Grey Fox]

Fuck tipping.

[Ideologue]

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

$2, eh?  I bet you're beloved at your local eateries.

[Ed Anger]

You better have some nice hooters to get a large tip from me.

[fhdz]

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

$2, eh?  I bet you're beloved at your local eateries.

Dude. Read it again. He doesn't say he tips $2. He said raise the price of the meal $2 AND pay the waitress a living wage.

[Ideologue]

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!

You're not all bad, garbo.  Though I do like to tip at least $5 if I'm eating by myself or if 20% would not be equal to $5, which I consider a minimum table fee.

Anyway, I agree with the philosophical thrust of the article, that servers should be paid a normal wage, but I'm not very sanguine about the prospect in practice.  If you take away the direct moral obligation upon guests to tip 20%, then what you'll see, immediately, is declining wages in the service industry, because as difficult as restaurant work really, really is, most servers have only one skill (if that).  Food prices will rise, but not enough to make up for, let alone exceed, what they were getting in tips, because we know to the point of ontological certainty that Americans do not value whatsoever the treatment of workers when it comes to choosing where to consume.  The closest they come is upper middle-class snobs and wannabes shopping at Target instead of Wal-Mart, because the higher prices keep riff-raff away, not because higher prices translate into significantly, or any, better wages or working conditions.  Therefore, custom will fly to the cheaper restaurant of equal quality and sit-down restaurant servers will become as impoverished as their fast food counterparts.

However, at least the state solutions proffered would be leveling, and in theory could establish a high minwage, even a living wage, in the food service labor market.  But that horseshit about "flat tipping" and other individual action?  Just excuses for cheap cunts to fuck their servers out of earned money, or a living wage, in the name of some nebulous, and condescending, "point."

[derspiess]

Fuck tipping.

Tip fucking

[fhdz]

I always tip 20%, sometimes more if a) it's a place I go to a lot or b) the service was really out of this world.

[Ideologue]

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

$2, eh?  I bet you're beloved at your local eateries.

Dude. Read it again. He doesn't say he tips $2. He said raise the price of the meal $2 AND pay the waitress a living wage.

Really?  I wasn't aware that restaurants, like the Treasury, were permitted to print money.  That changes everything.

I'd say you need about $3-5 a head for a living wage, depending upon volume and efficiency.

That said, I was mainly funning, Joe.  No offense meant, I hope none taken.

[fhdz]

Really?  I wasn't aware that restaurants, like the Treasury, were permitted to print money.

Now you're just being a meathead.

[Josquius]

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.

You have to do it at bars too? 
Shit...that sucks.
And what an arse hole. He should be thankful for any tip.

I disagree. Service in Korea is abysmal. I blame the lack of tips.

Service in Japan is the best of the world. Tipping is utterly culturally forbidden.

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.

I asolutely hate this side of things. Whenever non-americans complain about tipping you always seem to get Americans jumping to its defence as waiters couldn't survive without it. Um no. Its the entire reason they're in such a dodgy situation.

[Eddie Teach]

The closest they come is upper middle-class snobs and wannabes shopping at Target instead of Wal-Mart,

I only shop there because it's right across the street.

[CountDeMoney]

I always tip 20%, sometimes more if a) it's a place I go to a lot or b) the service was really out of this world.

I always tip 20% because--
1) it's easier to figure out that 15% or 18% bullshit, and
2) regardless of the service, I realize it's a shitty fucking job to have and, if I were in their place I'd be lovingly tonguing the barrel of my .357 each night dreading the fact that I have to do it again the next day. 

So I tip them anyway.

[HVC]

1) it's easier to figure out that 15%

10% then half of that. You're welcome

[Admiral Yi]

You have to do it at bars too? 
Shit...that sucks.

Bars, any restaurant with table service, taxis, valet parking, food delivered to your home, anybody who carries your baggage (skycap, bellman), the kids who clean your golf clubs.

And what an arse hole. He should be thankful for any tip.

Nope.  In a tipping system you're entitled to get pissed off if someone stiffs you on a tip.

However $1.50 on a 8.50 tab is not stiffing by any stretch of the imaginiation.