Tipping in the US - why it needs to go

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Does anyone else think tipping in the US is completely out of control? “Experts” (which are usually journalist) say that even if you get bad service, you should still leave your waiter/waitress 10%.

These journalist and restaurant owners will tell you that their staff needs tips to live but… why doesn’t the dishwasher need tips? Or the cooks? Or literally any other profession in the US? This entire system feels like a scam.

I’m sure anyone reading this is thinking “Tovi is just a cheapskate” but no that’s not the case. My husband and I are actually great tippers. If we get what we consider is great service, we’ll tip above and beyond 20%. The problem is I think US citizens have been guilted so hard for so many years that they think they’re supposed to leave 20%, no matter what. I’ll give an example.

This past weekend my husband and I met my MIL and her sister for dinner. We unfortunately got this lazy freaking server. He didn’t bring out my MIL and aunt’s salad first, he refilled our cups only after we flagged him down, and after we finished eating and my MIL and sister got the bill, we told him to please open another tab for my husband’s beer because we were going to stay a bit longer and play Keno (we weren’t going to ask the MIL and his aunt to pay for our beer.) He completely ignored us and stood by the soda fountain, tapping on his phone. My husband eventually just bought a beer from the bar and when that lazy punk seen that, he come over and said “oh I thought you guys were leaving” which was a complete lie because I had told him not 10 to 15 minutes earlier to start a new tab.

When my MIL and aunt were figuring out how much tip to leave, I told them to just leave $5 for the table. They were appalled. They said “you can’t do that, you HAVE to pay at least 20%!” I laughed and said hell no you didn’t, not for $5 worth of service. They, of course, ignored me and I told them that this is the exact reason he ignored us and tapped away on his phone because people like you reward him for that behavior. Then we all proceeded to debate the whole “tipping what people deserve” vs. “tipping so people can live.” To me it feels like getting bad to mediocre service is the norm and it’s because people feel like 20% is mandatory.

Non-restaurant business have started to add tip lines to receipts even if they pay their employees minimum wages. There are some restaurants that pay minimum wage and won’t tell you that but there will still be a line for tips on the receipt. My favorite are restaurants that tell you right off the bat that your bill will have a gratuity for parties of certain sizes but my coworks will still make sure to leave 20% on each receipt.

Then there’s the fact that every thing is so damn expensive now. I’m old enough to remember when 10 bags of stuff from Wal Mart was $50. Now those same 10 bags are well over $100. My daughter and I got crappy Chinese at our favorite buffet yesterday and the bill came to $45 plus, of course tip. I left $5 and even then that felt like too much for food we got ourselves and one refill each for our drinks. Social norm says I was supposed to leave $9. Insane.

I just hope this whole scam comes crashing down and restaurants start paying all their staff fair wage. Apparently it’s already started in some European countries and Australia. Japan doesn’t expect tips because for some strange reason they think good service is their wait staff’s job. Crazy, I know.

What do the 5 people that hang around this forum think about the tipping insanity?

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Tipping is a reward for service not an entitlement.

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Really? :roll_eyes:

America is polluting the earth with their negative cultural aspects.

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I’m not sure what you mean.

Edit: since you’re not answering, I have to assume you’re just jumping on the anti-American bandwagon because what you said makes zero sense.

If other countries are doing this, but not the US, then wouldn’t that make it their “negative cultural aspect?”

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  1. it’s not a scam as some of these people who rely on tips make close to nothing without them
  2. there are plenty of people to blame including you and me. If the exact same entree at restaurant ABC costs $30 and at restaurant 123 costs $36 even though they have no tipping, most people are going to the cheaper place.
  3. I wish it would go away but if restaurant owners can kick the bucket of employee pay from themselves to the customer, they will. Owners will even tell you if they had to pay their employees a “living” wage they would not be able to staff properly.
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It’s amazing that restaurants even work in other countries.

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I believe it’s a scam because restaurant owners put the burden of paying the wait staff on the customer instead of doing it themselves.

If an owner of a restaurant said that to me, I would like to see the books on that before I start playing a violin.

How does any business do it?

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of course they are passing the burden but I would say they are taking advantage of the situation more than scamming us.

every owner cries poverty when it comes to paying their employees, even billionaire ones that make money hand over first. You would have a few restaurants with poor cash flow that can’t start/survive without tips but that’s more of a “should you even start a restaurant discussion”

lets not forget for US restaurants the name of the game is turn over. Europe restaurants tend to be at a slower pace, you are sitting down for a longer time. More turn over also means more tip profit for the workers. You tend to hear from US tourists about the cost of eating out in other western countries while those countries are shocked at how many restaurants we have in the states in places that are not even major cities and how the staff make them feel “rushed” with the attention they give.

BTW, I’m all for getting rod of tipping and giving people a livable wage. But the federal minimum wage was last increased over 15 years ago (not happening with these politicians) and only 14 states even have $15 per hour as the state minimum wage so I’m not holding my breathe either.

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I wasn’t just talking about restaurants, I was talking about any business.

Why does restaurants get put in this super special category where they get away with putting the burden on paying the wait staff on the customer when a shoe store, that has employees that work just as hard or harder than waiters/waitresses, don’t get tipped and the owner has to pay them fair wage?

Why is it that other business just have to fail if they can’t afford to pay their employees but a restaurant can get away with it? It’s like you said: you throw a rock in any city downtown and you’ll hit 20 restaurants. How is it the customer’s problem they’re spreading themselves so thin?

These questions are why I feel like this entire system is a scam.

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because in the USA, we eat out more than any other country. We have more “sit down & serve” restaurants per pop than any other country (China & India have a boat load more places to eat but they are more causal/take out). So we want cheap food and lots of options. It’s a symbiotic relationship and we are part of the problem. BTW, tipping was outlawed at one time in some states but got repealed because we kept doing it. As one Cornell professor who studies the subject stated:
I think the dynamics of tipping are such that if restaurants today were to eliminate tipping, and replace it with an automatic service charge or higher menu prices, what you would find is some people would tip on top of those high menu prices on top of that service charge. Why? Because they want to help the server, because they want to show off, because they think the server did a spectacular job and deserves something extra.

But once those people start tipping, that’s going to put social pressure on everyone else to tip, too. And some people will succumb to that pressure, others won’t. But as those people who do succumb get added to the people who do it just because they want to for whatever reason, that increases the social pressure and it becomes this positive feedback loop and more and more pressure is put on people who otherwise didn’t want to. They’ll feel pressure to tip.

And that’s why, unless restaurants forbid their employees from accepting tips, I don’t think you’re going to be able to eliminate it in this country

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I agree with you there. My family is trying to do our part by going out less, especially when it seems like a lot wait staff these days don’t have a vested interest in making the experience enjoyable and the fact every thing is getting more expensive. Our kid is grown so it’s only my husband and myself going out these days but even with the two of us it’s 70+ not including tip. I’m sure a family of three or four is paying well over a hundred bucks.

Sounds like a smart guy and I agree with him 100%.

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i need to start eating where you guys are eating, it’s a $100+ plus for my wife and I. In fact we are going on vacation soon to a southern city and I was looking at places to go and eat and many of the restaurants entree started close to $50 each…and I’m coming from metro NYC prices.

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I’m sure NYC has much better restaurants than rural Ohio :stuck_out_tongue:

We usually pick bars over restaurants because my husband loves Keno.

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Sure. Once wages and housing are reasonable again, one adult’s 40 hour job can pay for rent and bills. But after 40 years of Regan’s lies that has caused nothing to trickle down, and the banks viewing housing as investments, I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

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I wasn’t answering because I was at work.

But to answer your thing, no I am not being anti-American, I am saying the negative aspects of American life are proliferating across the globe when they are destructive to people like relying on tipping for survival.

There’s positive aspects, but sadly that is being overshadowed by the negative ones.

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This does seem pretty anti-American because 1.) you have no proof this is from our influence, especially since we haven’t stopped tipping and 2.) again, if they did it first, why isn’t the blame being assigned to them?

Matter of fact, if I was to pick which country probably did it first between Australia, a handful of European countries and Japan? I would pick Japan just because they’re such nice, giving people, I can see them refusing tips for just doing their job.

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Gunna be honest. I have never tipped the dishwasher, but I have/do tip my cook. I also do tip my server and am always polite to them even if their service is not good. But I also tip appropriate to the service and meal. So I feel like it kinda balances out.

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I came into this topic thinking this is about the Service Charges called Mandatory Tips!

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I’ll be polite to them too but tipping for bad service is over for me because the way I look at it, this person is going to keep giving everyone bad service if the tips stay the same.

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I feel you. Like, it’s totally your call on what you do with your money. Especially if the service is poor. We have a huge problem with delivery in our areas. Drivers are late, rude, or don’t even show up at all. It’s bad. Really bad. We have had groceries stolen, we’ve had pizzas stolen. Wrong orders. Like every kind of problem you can imagine.

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