Tipping is an abomination!

[jimmy olsen]

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

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.

While vastly superior to service in Korea, I wouldn't say that they were quite up to American standards. Close though.

If you passed a law against tips tomorrow, waitresses would be paid minimum wage and make less than they did with the previous system.

[Ideologue]

This thread, like any tipping thread on an international forum, really underlines the one demographic that really sucks isn't blacks or Hispanics or even poor whites, but fucking foreigners.  God, they're all terrible, whether polite German travelers, drunken Japanese businessmen, or Desi engineers with annoyingly-specific caste-based dietary needs.  If they haven't been in country a year, the legislation we should push for is for them to be barred from restaurants.

[Josquius]

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.

Maybe American bars are very different to ones I'm used to...but surely you typically order more than once at a bar? For every beer you give a tip?

This thread, like any tipping thread on an international forum, really underlines the one demographic that really sucks isn't blacks or Hispanics or even poor whites, but fucking foreigners.  God, they're all terrible, whether polite German travelers, drunken Japanese businessmen, or Desi engineers with annoyingly-specific caste-based dietary needs.  If they haven't been in country a year, the legislation we should push for is for them to be barred from restaurants.

This is another annoying thing in tipping discussions. Often Americans will bitch about foreigners being cheap. That our culture of tipping is obviously exactly the same, we're just tight.
The American system really is very strange to people from most countries. It is very hard to actually grasp the intricacies.

While vastly superior to service in Korea, I wouldn't say that they were quite up to American standards. Close though.

I've yet to go to the US I must admit (really considering a Hawaii or Guam trip in the not too distant future...) but from American style restaurants...I really don't like the intrusive American service style. That is not good service in my book.

If you passed a law against tips tomorrow, waitresses would be paid minimum wage and make less than they did with the previous system.

Nobody is suggesting a law against tips. The issue is employers being allowed to steal people's tips to cover what they should be paying them.
Waiters should get minimum wage and a tip which depends on how good a job they did.

[Admiral Yi]

Nobody is suggesting a law against tips. The issue is employers being allowed to steal people's tips to cover what they should be paying them.

This makes no sense to me.  Instead of adding $3 to the bill and passing it on to the waiter later, the cash goes directly from the customer to the waiter.  How is the second one stealing?  It's just cutting out the middle man.

[Razgovory]

Uh, Yi?  Do you not know how tips work?

[Sophie Scholl]

Cheap fucks.   I've found the best tippers are generally people who work/have worked in the service industry, and the worst tippers are wealthy people.  While in theory raising prices to increase wages for employees sounds great, it would never be a direct translation in terms of money made to price increase.  The workers would inevitably lose out in the exchange while the top dogs made even more money.  Also, tip pooling is fucking wretched.  I hate the concept with a passion.  It fails for the same reason Communism does.  Who wants to bust their ass and end up making the same at the end of the shift as the dumbfuck who did nothing all shift?  Fuck that.

[Admiral Yi]

Uh, Yi?  Do you not know how tips work?

Good point Raz.  I hadn't thought of that.

[Razgovory]

I must be getting through to you.   I don't even have to make the full argument anymore.

[Josquius]

Nobody is suggesting a law against tips. The issue is employers being allowed to steal people's tips to cover what they should be paying them.

This makes no sense to me.  Instead of adding $3 to the bill and passing it on to the waiter later, the cash goes directly from the customer to the waiter.  How is the second one stealing?  It's just cutting out the middle man.

Tips are meant to be something extra for the waiter since he did a good job for us and we know he gets shitty pay. They're not meant to be an excuse for the shitty pay, a way for employers to increase their profit margins by reducing their staff bill, making it look like things cost less and passing on hidden costs to customers

[Admiral Yi]

Tips are meant to be something extra for the waiter since he did a good job for us and we know he gets shitty pay. They're not meant to be an excuse for the shitty pay, a way for employers to increase their profit margins by reducing their staff bill, making it look like things cost less and passing on hidden costs to customers

In my hypothetical $3 added to the bill or $3 handed over directly to the waiter, how does the employer's profit margin get increased?

[Josquius]

Tips are meant to be something extra for the waiter since he did a good job for us and we know he gets shitty pay. They're not meant to be an excuse for the shitty pay, a way for employers to increase their profit margins by reducing their staff bill, making it look like things cost less and passing on hidden costs to customers

In my hypothetical $3 added to the bill or $3 handed over directly to the waiter, how does the employer's profit margin get increased?

Who said anything about ading $3 to the bill?

[Eddie Teach]

Cheap fucks.   I've found the best tippers are generally people who work/have worked in the service industry, and the worst tippers are wealthy people. 

Honestly, waiters at $50+/plate restaurants don't deserve 15%. But in an apples to apples comparison, I got more from delivering pizza to people living in nice houses than people living in shitty apartments.

[Admiral Yi]

Who said anything about ading $3 to the bill?

Josephus did and I did.

Are you suggesting that the employer pay the wait staff more and *not* increase prices? 

[Josquius]

Who said anything about ading $3 to the bill?

Josephus did and I did.

Are you suggesting that the employer pay the wait staff more and *not* increase prices? 

Depends on the restaurant.
Some will have to, some won't.

[Razgovory]

Tyr, sit down before you hurt yourself.  Yi, the money you give the waiter does not go directly to the waiter.  It typically goes to a big pot which management often dips into.  So you really aren't "Cutting out the middleman".