I don’t tip either, simply because the work done wasn’t worth tipping. The only time I tipped was in a 7 stars restaurant, and the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table changing utensils and plates and filling the drinks. North America tipping “culture” is out of control, I remember picking up some street food and the guy asked for a tip.. Most restaurants nowadays buy the food from costco, machines do most of the cooking, and the waitress job can be literally replaced by a robot, it’s just a scam and it should be illegal actually.
The actual scam is that restaurants can and do pay wait staff below minimum wage (like 2-3$), because it’s explicitly allowed, with expectation that the rest comes from tips. So not tipping in USA may in some cases be an asshole move.
Tipping is one of those Moloch coordination problems where if everyone would suddenly decide to make the world better at the same time, it would be, but if only a few people try to make the world better, it gets worse and they're assholes.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
It's really not a binary situation where you'd ever see $2 wages with no tips though. If less people tip then the effective real minimum wage will gradually increase to compensate - either because laws are updated or because the restaurant has to compete with other better paying job opportunities. Sure some waiters may get upset when someone doesn't tip, but that is just that - them getting upset - and not the client being an asshole.
This will hurt people in the moment, people who sometimes are few dollars away from not making rent or buying enough food.
And as other commenter correctly pointed out, by the federal law of hour wage plus tips is below federal minimum wage, the restaurant must pay extra to reach the minimum wage. So if we assume that restaurants actually follow this law, wait staff will be kept at poverty wage 7.25/hr.
They legally cannot. If the average wage per hours including tips is under the Federal minimum wage in a pay period, the company must top up so that the wage per hour is the Federal minimum wage.
Well wage theft in the US dwarfs all other forms of theft combined.
But also actually demanding those wages if you dont get enough tip money is a great way for them to get fired. And if they are that poor to work in those conditions they will have a hard time scraping the money to go to court to get an unlawful dismissal case.
Wage theft sucks.
But servers are the only industry where they demand we the consumer take care of the problem because they're unwilling to do so themselves:
"Hard time scraping the money to go to court"? You don't go to court, you go to the DOL with your documentation.
"If you don't tip I have to pay/pay taxes to serve you" - no, you don't. The IRS assumes that you get a certain amount of tips. If you document that you got less, then guess what, they tax you on that.
Know why servers don't like to do that? Because the IRS assumption is that the average tip is 8%. What proportion of a server's customers do we think don't tip versus those who tip more than 8%?
"That's a lot of work" No. IRS Form 4070 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf) charitably takes less than five minutes a month to fill out.
"I'll get fired". Sure. That's a risk, I admit, and easy for me to say "You need to risk something". Inertia is a powerful thing. How many servers getting fired for fighting wage theft is enough to make a restaurant start to have problems?
>pay wait staff below minimum wage (like 2-3$), because it’s explicitly allowed
Not in all U.S. states, for example California.
I remember dining out one time. In Philly, if memory serves me?
Anyways I remember the hamburger place because they didn’t ask for, or even allowed us, to tip. The price was all-in.
It’s a breath of fresh air! More restaurants should advertise with this feature.
Wait staff can lobby to change that if they want. Or just get a different job and let supply and demand sort out the wages for the remaining waiters.
You can't be serious. We're discussing a class of people making sub-minimum wages, barely scraping by to afford rent and groceries (much less any childcare or medical expenses), and your suggestion is "lobby to change that" or "just get a different job"?
As someone who has previously worked for that wage and finally did "get a different job," there was no "just" about it. I had the support of well-off family who were willing to significantly contribute to my education and living situation, and it still took years of hard toil (all while being nearly destitute) before ever achieving anything resembling financial stability. That was not (and likely never will be) an option for 90-95% of the people I worked with in the food-service industry. There is absolutely no justification (beyond abject greed) for that type of poverty wage, and it's the responsibility of everyone in our society to prevent that type of exploitation of the vulnerable, precisely because they cannot afford to "lobby to change that" and often can't "get a different job" outside of the same industry.
This is what trade unions are for.
I don't know what proportion of waiters are members, but the union for hospitality workers is one of the largest (possibly the largest) in Denmark: https://cf.3f.dk/english/wages-and-sectors/working-in-the-ho...
In Danish, the collective agreement they negotiated with McDonald's: https://www.3f.dk/-/media/files/artikler/overenskomst/privat...
> the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table changing utensils and plates and filling the drinks
FWIW, this sounds like a deeply unpleasant experience to me
> and the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table
I hate that. My old boss would book us into 5* places when we travelled for work and his wife was also there. People standing over me just felt “ick”. Like when the security guard decides to fallow you around the supermarket! (the latter has only happened a couple of times that I've noticed, when it did I made a point of spending much longer than I otherwise would meandering back & forth, and gave them a grin on my way out after paying…)
It's usually pretty discreet - they'll stay out of your line of sight and, if they're doing it right, you should barely notice them stepping in to top up your wine, etc.
Not sure what star rating system you're going by (Michelin only goes up to 3), but I'd expect that level of service even at 1* restaurants.
I'm meaning hotel (and therefore the bars/other within them) ratings rather than restaurant stars.
Maybe years living in a somewhat ropey town and having to be careful in alley-ways and tree covered areas has tuned me to be extra sensitive to people trying to stay out of line of sight…
One of the things not discussed here is that for many wait staff wages are far lower than our pathetic minimum wage (USA) so these people tend to make sub poverty to start with on the promise of tips.
I do agree though that the whole culture was broken before and now with payment kiosks asking for tips everywhere it's absurd.