I was a server for a couple years and I hated mandatory tips. If I had a big party I would go into the computer and erase it and tell the customers I want them to tip on my performance. Always worked and I would get huge tips.
I bartend events at a hall and there's times I wish we had mandatory tips, nothing like bar tending a group of 300 people and finding a nickel in your jar
Okay, tips can be free will when it stops being legal to pay "tipped employees" $2.35 an hour (or anything less than minimum wage, really).
I HATE tip culture. To me, it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding between me and the establishment about whose job exactly it is to pay their employees, not to mention implying that the staff are too childish to do their jobs without being subject to my whim, which is insulting to them.
But I'm also not going to ruin someone's evening/opportunity to pay their rent because I don't like the system. That's taking it out on them, not on their employer.
So you've never learned about business and how cash flow works, eh? Who do you think is paying the owers, the manager's, the chef's, the busboy's and the rest of the staff's salary. Oh and the rent and ALL the other expenses too? Wait for it....... YOU ARE (yea, just think about it for a sec...you'll get it). So your argument that you are paying their salaries is silly. If the owner paid the waiter's salary or tip for you, YOU'D still be paying anyway. The price of your food would just be 15 or 20 percent higher. Make sense?
Yeah I've been a waiter and a restaurant manager and adding an automatic tip is bad from either end as far as I'm concerned. It makes good servers lazy and keeps bad servers around too long. Restaurants in my part of the country don't do it, except some do for large groups. You'll always have the random assholes who may not tip, but a good server doesn't let it get to them and makes up for it with the next customer. I'm on the fence for adding a tip for groups.
I also refuse to go to restaurants that make the servers split tips. If I tip I tip my server because they were good, I'm not about to tip everyone else just for showing up.
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· 8 years ago
A few cultures don't tip. In Japan it's considered rude to tip, as though you're insinuating that person doesn't make enough money.
Because employers think it's okay to pay under minimum wage to people who should be tipped, because tips should compensate for their small wages. But when people don't tip, the employees end up getting less than minimum wage which is barely enough to live on anyway.
@onesongglory Employers DO NOT PAY UNDER MINIMUM WAGE!!!!!
They pay servers AT LEAST minimum wage, and many servers make more plus tips. If a server doesn't make at least minimum wage with tips included employers pay the difference. This idea you have is quite incorrect. Please do a little research or at least ask someone who knows what they're talking about.
@guestwho, actually you need to do research, it's legal to pay tipped employees under minimum wage, I was a tipped employee, I was paid under minimum wage. Your the one who needs to ask someone who knows what they are talking about. It is illegal to pay under minimum wage UNLESS the person is a Tipped Employee
No my friend. I have been in restaurant and retail for 20 years. There is a minimum wage for tipped employees too.
Federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. Federal minimum wage for tipped employees is currently $2.13 an hour, and many states and cities are higher. If a tipped employee doesn't make at least the non-tipped minimum wage with the tips, the employer pays them the difference.
Employers are *supposed* to make up the difference if the tips don't make up the difference to minimum wage. I had a friend once whose employer would dismiss employees for "not reporting tips properly" if they insisted on having them made up more than, say, twice.
Sure there are assholes and crooks out there. But there are also employees who try to hide their tips, and there are servers who suck at waiting tables. When i was in the restaurant biz we used the servers' reported tips as a gauge to how well they took care of the customers, and did broom the ones who regularly didn't make tips. You only have to make about $5 in tips an hour to hit minimum, which is not hard. If the restaurant is not totally dead a server can practically tell the customers to help themselves and still take $5 an hour in tips.
Also, if the restaurant gets audited and the server had enough tickets to make enough tips on average but didn't claim them and the restaurant had to pay them more... well the IRS calls that tax fraud. There is a well accepted industry average for tips per tables, and if a server is not hitting it, they need to go.
Every server I've ever worked with including myself only claimed about 10% of their tips. Just enough to slip past the IRS. The IRS are nothing but crooks anyways. They go after hard working citizens but look the other way while millionaires avoid taxes with off shore havens.
No argument here about the IRS. But that can be self-defeating in the long run if you don't hit the minimum wage threshold and your employer has to comp you, or if your employer uses your tips to judge your service skills.
When I was in restaurant management we typically only started looking at tips if we had to comp too often or we noticed a server may be having issues taking care of customers. I'm certain my servers rarely reported all of their tips and I didn't when I was a waiter.
It sucks that some servers do have to rely on tips. I make $3 an hour as a waitress and rely on tips. If servers were paid minimum wage all across the board or say raised higher based on their performance, that'd be great.
I'm sure it'd be great for you being paid the same as the kitchen staff, plus your tips. But would that be fair to the kitchen staff? How long until they got pissed that you were getting the same money as them and still got your tips on top? As a table server you can control your own pay by the level of service you give your customers. A good server can make far above what the kitchen staff make. I don't know you, but in my experience in restaurants the servers who complained about their pay were terrible at the table. Just sayin'.
I've lived in a country that had mandatory tipping and one that didn't and I have to say that from a customer's point of view there's a significant difference between the way I was treated in both countries (read: servers who had mandatory tips were generally assholes).
I HATE tip culture. To me, it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding between me and the establishment about whose job exactly it is to pay their employees, not to mention implying that the staff are too childish to do their jobs without being subject to my whim, which is insulting to them.
But I'm also not going to ruin someone's evening/opportunity to pay their rent because I don't like the system. That's taking it out on them, not on their employer.
I also refuse to go to restaurants that make the servers split tips. If I tip I tip my server because they were good, I'm not about to tip everyone else just for showing up.
They pay servers AT LEAST minimum wage, and many servers make more plus tips. If a server doesn't make at least minimum wage with tips included employers pay the difference. This idea you have is quite incorrect. Please do a little research or at least ask someone who knows what they're talking about.
Federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. Federal minimum wage for tipped employees is currently $2.13 an hour, and many states and cities are higher. If a tipped employee doesn't make at least the non-tipped minimum wage with the tips, the employer pays them the difference.
Also, if the restaurant gets audited and the server had enough tickets to make enough tips on average but didn't claim them and the restaurant had to pay them more... well the IRS calls that tax fraud. There is a well accepted industry average for tips per tables, and if a server is not hitting it, they need to go.
When I was in restaurant management we typically only started looking at tips if we had to comp too often or we noticed a server may be having issues taking care of customers. I'm certain my servers rarely reported all of their tips and I didn't when I was a waiter.