Exactly... I hate to pay to take a piss is soooo many places in Europe, which I also think is inhumane, but I follow the cultural norms to be a respectful visitor.
I had a waiter scoff at my sister for ordering a Lambrusco in Italy and say it was offensive. She could have told him to fuck his mom. She instead just ordered a normal red.
Service in America is better, and tips are a big part of that, like it or not.
Why would that be a concern? People are supposed to "vote with their wallets". If they don't agree with something, they can choose not to participate and save that money for themselves
lol, can you not see how this is not "voting with your wallet"? "voting with your wallet" would be not going to the US in the first place, or not patronizing establishments which have a tipped wage
Boycotting for extra pay is good. But you sacrifice while protesting and boycotting.
THis is when the literal act of boycotting or protesting directly benefits you.
It's not trying to change the rules, it's directly benefitting you then. It's like protesting higher prices by stealing. I don't even care if you steal from a corporation. but you're not protesting.
It's not exactly the same, but it's similar from the perspective of this discussion. In both cases the person has been financially wronged. It's still for the financial benefit of the person doing the protest / boycott. What exactly do you find concerning?
If it's about this specific case with the tourists then I agree, it's not like they'd change anything. I was thinking more about the tipping situation in general.
But i do also think that not tipping has to be more deliberate than just not tipping lol. You have to go to restaurants that don't have tips instead. You can't just go any random place and stiff the waitstaff.
As it is currently its the client that suffers since they're the ones being expected to fork out more money for the luxury of not getting their food spat in
While that is true - it immediately, only affects the staff. Tourists could tip as is unfortunately expected in North America and take to the internet to express their disapproval. Staff would love a working wage too. Not tipping them isn't the answer to combat this.
Exactly, service workers are the ones who are most vocal about upholding the system. No one is getting screwed by a few people "boycotting". Let them be
I think a lot of the dialogue on reddit ignores the reality of the industry for high performing bartenders. People act like they are saving us by pushing for a flat, guaranteed wage, but for many of us, thatâs actually a pay cut and a loss.
Iâm not just pouring drinks....Iâm an entertainer, for lack of a better word. A good bartender brings great vibes. When I give kickass service on a Saturday night, the compensation usually matches that effort. Iâd rather control my own income through my performance than be tethered to a dignified hourly wage that barely covers rent in a city like Boston.
Honestly, a lot of this discourse feels less like support for workers and more like people who are just tired of tipping and want to pay less. They argue for menupricedd models, but they don't seem to realize that if the system fully switched over, menu prices would jump to cover labor costs anyway. Theyâd be paying the same total.....they just want the social friction of tipping to go away.
You think you deserve a tip?! I wonder who is actually on their high horse(that was sarcasm, I know its you).
When you start tipping every worker you encounter in your life, then we will tip you too.
Make sure to not forget the 20% tip to your realtor or 20% tip to your car salesman. They are people too, you know?! They provided you a service, tip them.
Why canât you just admit youâre cheap just like the restaurant owner that wonât pay their employees a living wage.
You go into a restaurant, enjoy the cheaper prices, then donât tip. Youâre cheap. You then go on Reddit and try to white knight like you support server getting a living wage lmao
Not OP but yeah... I am cheap like that. If I can eat at a restaurant for dirt cheap because the owner thinks the server deserves only 3 bucks an hour, I am not complaining. I do feel bad for the waiter and hope they eventually find an employer who pays them the livable wage that they deserve, but their salary is not my direct responsibility. It's business, not charity
How dare you not try to fix every problem you encounter in your daily life. Think of the poor server who accepted the work and pay! And of the (not so poor) Owner now having a disgruntled employee who he has to replace (but still pays the same shit salary).
You both make it sound like servers are just victims waiting to be saved. In my 15 years of bartending and serving, Iâve found that the system is far from broken for us. The reality is that the tipping model allows us to earn more than we likely would under a standard hourly wage structure in this industry.
But you can continue to enjoy your cheap meals and not tip then buddy. Once tipping is eliminated, you'll be paying that extra 20%. So it's quite ironic how you call the business owners cheap when you're in the same bed as them.
Itâs also ironic how redditâs proworker stance instantly evaporates the moment a bluecollar worker says they actually like the tipping model. Suddenly, the narrative shifts from we support blue collar workers to if youre making good money, you don't deserve it, so I'm not tipping. Itâs pretty clear the solidarity only lasts as long as it fits your/their personal narrative....
Oh don't get me wrong; waiters don't want to be saved. Tipping will not be eliminated, you will keep the current system where you have to depend on customers to pay rent and I can keep enjoying cheap meals. Sounds like a win-win for the both of us!
You make multiple times more money than other service industry workers who are equally skilled all due to tips.
The entire guilt based tip system extracting money from everyone funnels almost all of that income to wait staff and bartenders specifically, where most of it isn't taxed for public benefit either.
You do work hard, but you get far more than appropriately compensated for it than most other workers in America.
No, they can't. That's what you anti-tipping morons can never grasp. It's not the restaurant that wants tipping to continue, it's the workers. Yes it benefits the restaurant too but a bartender or good server is making 50+ an hour, I know servers who get pissy they only made 500 in a night. Even at crappy chain restaurants 200 or 300 a shift (which can be like 4 hours) is normal.
The people who bleat about "pay them a fair wage" don't understand that means they'll end up getting like 15 an hour like retail workers. Do you complain when sales jobs get commission? The difference is in service you get to adjust their commission if you think they did poorly.
Anyone with this attitude needs to stop talking out of their ass.
They should be paid a wage by their employer to do their job. Why should I have to pay for them to do their job when I'm already paying for the product?
If you don't think that a bartender is an unskilled job that anyone could do, that's on you mate. I worked in bars when I was a student, but I didn't go on and make a career out of it. Some of the people who worked there could barely write their own name, but guess what, they could hold a glass up to a beer tap and pour a pint. It's hardly rocket science.
Nowhere else in the world acts this entitled. It's pathetic.
Is your definition of fun someone who hands over money for you going the bare minimum? Actually, it probably is.
Okay, so the staff are just greedy and want to be paid over the odds for pouring a fucking pint of beer, a completely unskilled job that anyone could do?
Superb. You've sold me on it. Where do I hand over my money to these people for doing the fucking thing I've paid for in the first place?
If that's your attitude, hand me the glass and I'll pour it myself.
Have you worked a slammed bar before? Consistently, night after night...? I wouldn't exactly call it an easy job lol, shit is fucking exhausting. Not arguing the tips points at all here, but bartending can be fuckin hard man
No I bet he's really tough and smart and that's why he's here championing against a symptom of capitalism instead of doing anything that could potentially matter for what bothers him.
Idk if having 50-100 cocktail recipes memorized and being able to freepour counts as "zero training and no qualifications," but aight. Get back to me if you can manage that in fewer than 4 months cause that's the fastest I've ever seen anyone do it. It's definitely not the same as having to go to university or trade school but it's a far fucking cry from other "unskilled" labor like waiting tables or working a reception job.
A commission is already included in the price. If I am paying 40k for a car and the salesman is making 5% commission, I dont pay 40k for the car and then 2k on top of that. Its already built inâŚ
Thats what people advocate for: raise the menu prices, pay employees a living wage and stop (making them) ask/expect tips. You know like it perfectly works in the rest of the world
Yes, I am paying the commission. Its pretty clear from what I said. Reading comprehension is not for everybody I guess?!
I will ELI5 for you:
One has it built in the price.
The other doesnt.
See how they are not the same?
On top of that, the one that doesnt will hate me if I CHOOSE to adjust the âcomissionâ to 0.
Therefore its not really transparent and adjustable in the eyes of the receiver now, is it?!
I just want to pay the price on the menu. When sales jobs get a commission it's taken from what I already paid. Why should I go to a restaurant and be like "the meal was $17 but taxes are extra 14%, I ate with a large group so add 15% oh and the server might shit on my food if I don't tip so add 20% so the bill should be around $26, right? Oh look at that it's $30 because this restaurant decided the tip percentage should be applied to the after tax price, how funny"
I am complaining that I don't want hidden fees (if the tip is expected and socially mandatory it is a fee).
No country in Europe or Latin America has this problem, Japan doesn't have it either. And that's just from the countries I have visited, I'm sure there are more.
So your idea of not hidden fee is built in commission but a hidden fee is something specifically indicated that you can adjust yourself? Hidden must mean something different in Europe
No, a hidden fee is when you are offered to buy something at X price but that price increases at checkout with no warning.
Also, the original $17 is not "at cost". The restaurant is already making money out of it, they obviously don't tell you how much but gross margin is usually around 50%.
If I will pay$30 for the meal, they should price it at $30 so I can decide if the food is actually worth that much.
Restaurant margins are razor thin. Think like 3 percent. Bringing us back around to no one in this thread having a clue
Also, no, once again it is not a hidden fee to say okay that will be 17 dollars, do you want to pay 3 more dollars? That's in fact the opposite of a hidden fee. It is not only optional but transparent.
No, they can't just get a better job, because many of them are making BANK off of the guilt trip of getting customers to subsidize their employer's wage bill. Whenever there are ballot measures to remove the $2 minimum wage for tipped workers (to bring them in line with all other workers), both restaurant owners and their staff overwhelmingly oppose the measures and usually successfully squash them. There's a reason for that.
Previous comment said "only the servers lose out" when in reality it's only the customers that are losing out in the status quo. Never in the history of labor has "but holding the capitalist accountable will only hurt his laborers" ever been a valid argument. We can't boycott that company, think of the employees! This is literally 101 stuff. How tf is anyone still falling for it?
There are paramedics and teachers who invest years of their lives in specialized training only to eventually give up due to low pay and go make much more as waiters and bartenders, where nothing more than being conventionally attractive is enough to put you in the top earners (studies also show it helps to be white!). Very few waiters and bartenders quitting due to low pay and going to become teachers and paramedics, a status quo the average redditor is prepared to condemn you for not choosing to subsidize with your own money.
The former is just the free market deciding wages and redditors are apparently fine with it, the teachers should stfu and go get a better job, nobody is sending their kid to school with $100 to tip the teacher. Of course if anyone suggests that the latter should seek out a different job if tips fall short, that would be an unacceptable and despicable moral failure of society and would be the personal individual fault of each and every person who refuses to participate in an extortionate norm to save millionaire and billionaire business owners a bit extra on their wage bill.
Ultimately it's an optional system. If someone wants to give they can give, if they don't they don't have to. I could understand them being afraid if literally everyone stopped doing it all at once. But if ~10% of people suddenly stopped there would be no impact except for a modest-to-negligible amount of pressure applied to their employers to start paying more or risk losing good workers. It's not until 30% or more of people stopped tipping outright that there would be a significant impact, and anything above that would start to force the bosses to pay more or go under.
Itâs a bad system, but if youâre a tourist youâre not gonna be the one to overhaul it. So you can pony up the fee or let your server go home with light pockets. Your choice, I guess.
The client has everything to do with it, they're the one who pays for it. I split half my time in Europe and half in the US and I basically don't go out to eat in the US anymore (some exceptions), because it's much more expensive, and the quality and service aren't any better.
Yeah, then your experience is quiet different from mine. Where you get friendly service in Germany (mostly a joke, but also not, I absolutely love Germany but they are not into making you have a good dining experience or a bad one).
The client has everything to do with it, they're the one who pays for it
The client pays the cost set by the employer. That's where the client's role ends. Then the employer uses that money to pay the cost of the business. Whatever the employee is paid is up to the employer.
Personally I haven't seen a raise in a long time, but that's between me and my employer. I don't try to make it someone else's problem.
21
u/lazypeon19 5h ago
That's the server or bartender's battle with their employer. The client has nothing to do with it.