- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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I’m glad to have moved from a country where taxes and (high) expected tips are on top of the price, to a country where tax is included in the price and tips are usually not expected. It makes a surprising difference in affordability when you can actually buy a €5 item with €5.
As soon as companies started asking for tips at self check-out, it became obvious that it’s just a way of trying to underpay their staff and shift that responsibility on the customer.
I am so tired of it. Pay your god damn employees.
A solicitation for tip BEFORE any service is rendered is essentially blackmail.
“Hey, not for nothing, but sometimes pancakes can fall on the floor before they get into your to-go bag… I’m just saying… Anyways, here’s this tip screen, no pressure [holds eye contact]”
Said absolutely no service worker ever
from the netherlands where this nonsense is starting to take root, i refuse to pay more than it said on the bill
i do not order or buy from places that dont include taxes in the price tag and report them whenever i come across them, i refuse to order from places that dont include the deposit on cans and bottles in the price tag, and i refuse to to tip people for just doing their job
ill tip if i messed something up, but i dont see any reason why i should pay someone extra for doing what their job requires them to do, especially since theyre at worst making the same minimum wage i am
Something I’ve noticed in the UK post Covid, is that take aways have a delivery charge and an option to tip the driver. Maybe I would have chucked him a few quid in cash when it was free delivery, but what’s the delivery cost for if not to pay their wages already?
Honestly I think the delivery cost is there because people are willing to pay it. Because they’d be “leaving money on the table” if they didn’t levy fees that people are willing to pay. I dont think the fee exists for any other reason.
Same in NZ. We have a high minimum wage and already pay pretty high prices for everything.
Some Eftpos/Credit card terminals will even ask if you want to tip when you make a payment. Such an awkward moment pressing “No” right in front of the person serving you.
Tipping is absolutely everywhere and it feels like a lot of these screens default to 20% or more. And the employees usually give you a look if you change it to below that or no tip at all.
A sit-down restaurant I understand for your server, but I still disagree with it and feel that they should just be paid a normal wage, not dependent on the tips. But I’m not going to tip for takeout 9/10 times.
Also how do we even know, as customers, if the tip is actually going to the employees?
No no, don’t feel bad about hitting that 0% button. I feel like this is a PSA but in the USA if you tip a minimum wage (untipped) employee, THEY WILL NOT GET YOUR TIP. Severs get paid on tips and a minimum wage (tipped) of about $2.50. Tipping a normal employee (on screens, not cash) will just mean that the employer has to pay them less wages. Seriously? Yes seriously. You can tip at subway, the only person getting that money is subway.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t true throughout the entire US. Wait staff in Washington, for example, get paid the full state minimum wage, and the minimum wage act explicitly requires that tips be paid to employees rather than retained by the restaurant. Of course, actual practice or compliance can differ, but there are a few states with better laws than the norm.
I appreciate the added details. As far as I’m aware, they aren’t keeping the tips. But it is legal to pay a tipped employee down to about $2/hr in every state. So most places like Sonic will reduce your pay when you get tips and you claim the tips (which you’re required to do wink wink). So rather than Sonic just paying their employees $10/hr at minimum wage, they’ll pay them $5/hr assuming $5 in tips. Saves the company money and the servers don’t make much more than normal minimum wage while the customer fronts their wages.
Isn’t that lovely?
I feel like how you’re describing it makes it sound more complicated than it is.
All employees are required to make minimum wage.
If your tips don’t take you over minimum wage, your employer has to pay the difference.So tips given before you get to minimum wage just reduce how much your boss needs to spend to make up the difference. Once you get there, your boss has to pay you at least some very small quantity and the tips increase your take-home
It’s a stupid system and exploitative, but it’s not as “wink wink nudge nudge” as you made it sound.
Thats fair but I don’t think this description is entirely accurate either. And I do think it’s a big scummy because minimum wage is already very low. So putting employees tips into their wages is just employers taking advantage. It’s legal, yes, but it’s bad for everyone except the employer.
not in every state. in Washington, my home state, there’s no such thing as a tipped wage and employers must pay all tips to employees. does this always happen? no, but it is illegal unlike what you’re claiming
This is only true for positions paid in tips. (Workers making below minimum wage like waiters/servers)
This is not true for people working jobs at or above minimum wage, like baristas at coffee shops. The vast majority of those places give their employees the tips on top of their wages. Most employees don’t put up with tips going to the owners and will let you know they don’t get it.
That’s the worrying part of this trend. The local coffee shop might still give their employees the tips. But the local chain fast food place? No. I’ve had subway workers tell me that directly. They said “don’t tip me, I don’t get any of it” and sonic employees will sometimes tell you the same.
I never tip with takeout. The only way to stop the cancer of tipping from spreading is to refuse to buy in to it. Pay your damn employees a living wage and then they don’t need tips!
A large portion of you in the replies don’t feel like they should be obligated to tip because they feel it’s up to the employer to properly compensate their workers, and yet they feel comfortable enjoying the product of these exploited workers’ labor. My question to all of you is, if you care about worker exploitation, why don’t you, the consumer, speak out against this practice directly? Call employers out, speak to the workers, see what you can do to help them organize. If you can’t be bothered to do any of that, consider not dog-piling on the worker for the faults of their employer by deciding not to tip and making it harder for workers to organize. It seems to me that by not tipping, you’re just helping employers and not workers.
It’s called voting. Most people do that.
Tip culture is an obvious moral blackmail. While being against it I tend to go with it in countries that struggle moving past slavery.
To a certain extent if everybody stopped tipping things would change probably faster than by any political mean anyway.
If absolutely everybody stopped tipping in America this instant maybe something would change. But that’s not going to happen, just as voting tipping away won’t happen. It’s incredibly easy to sway people who have no opinion on the matter (more than you’d think) to believe that tips are good and necessary and actually beneficial to the worker. And the people most motivated to argue this happen to have the money to throw into shifting public thought on the matter. No, the only real solution is worker organization, and the only way workers can organize is if they have the resources (time, energy, money) to do so, also external support can help.
I was ordering a pizza online for pickup. When it prompted for a tip at checkout I canceled the order. This is the worst case scenario in my book.
I just hit 0.
When someone said something to me, I stopped picking up pizza from there….
I’ll tip and quite well (usually 25-30%) for full service stuff. But for buffet style/sandwich lines and takeout. No thanks
Same here… If I’m being served I will tip well. However if I call in my order, go pick up my order, and the “server” who took my order doesn’t even collect my money, then what my tips are really going towards is making up for the fact that the restaurant isn’t actually paying their staff a livable wage. During the COVID shutdowns, sure I was willing to help keep their doors open. Everyone is back to full business now, so what exactly are you asking me to pay for?
Went to a concert the other day and they were asking for tip on their $6 hot dogs. The options were 20% 25% and 30% and no option for custom lol.
I’m not tipping at a concert concession stand when stuff is already outrageously overpriced. GTFOH.
If you can’t afford to pay your employees a decent wage, you should raise your prices or you shouldn’t be in business.
There are a few places here in Seattle which have eliminated tipping, raised prices, and raised wages. I greatly prefer this, personally speaking. Add no, I’m not going to start tipping every random cashier just because they start prompting me to.
The problem is - restaurants in most parts of the states cannot reliably do that. They’re going to see a higher price and they’re probably walking out soon after. Or worse - they stay and leave a shit review because they set their expectations at a higher bar of food quality than was provided.
If we could unilaterally remove exemptions for tipped wages, I’d see the possibility of it becoming much more common.
Most restaurants in America as they exist now should not exist. We’re essentially all subsidizing low quality, frozen food.
So these people are willing to tip for naff food but not pay more to begin with?
Yeah, I actually stop going out for any restaurant or outing ever since the tip inflation went out of control. I just rather spend the money on a cooking class and cook things myself. I really encourage everyone else to do the same, you save a lot of money, and you can add whatever creativity you want to the meal.
It’s bonkers how much money you can save making food yourself by just planning meals based on what’s on sale this week. People don’t believe me, but chicken thighs/legs go on sale here every 3/4 weeks for 99 cents a pound. Week’s worth of meat for the equivalent price of a McD’s meal.
I don’t really eat meat. The thing that gets me are the vegetables. If I want anything fresh, it costs so much more than canned or frozen. Frozen/canned veggies are fine for some meals, but for others they can really taste a bit off. We just moved and I’m hoping there are some good farmer’s markets around where I live now with decent prices (the place I moved from were worse than the grocery store).
If you can, I highly recommends saving up for farm bot, while you might not be able to grow every food yourself, but you can grow quite a lot and those would be extremely fresh.
Goddamn that’s cool! I only wish it had a flamethrower attachment to ward off the squirrels that keep raiding my garden…
Lol, you could use electrified wire to shock the squirrel away (not to kill the little rodent, but enough that it’s deterred from raiding your plant.)
Tipped wages are disgusting.
Every business should pay their employees stable wages.
I have no problem with putting some extra cash down for the waiter that looks no older than me and is working at the roadhouse down the village back road for minimum wage.
If a fuckin Pret a Manger opened up in center Philly and defaults to 30% tips, wtf man, wtf.
@Dankenstein @RotaryKeyboard as an European, US tips things is just ridiculous. Seriouly can’t understand that shit. Why don’t you pay your ppl for the work they do?
With so many things in this country, the origins are racism. While tipping originated in Europe, it became popular in the States post-slavery as a way to not have to actually pay black people. Haven’t shaken it yet.
And annoyingly, the ones who often push the hardest to keep tipping culture are the servers themselves as they can take home a lot of money on a busy weekend evening. Hopefully, we’re getting closer to getting rid of it though.
For the longest time tipping was very stable and nobody said much but with the covid-inspired tipping greed hopefully you’re right. If enough people get pissed off maybe something will happen for tipping to be eliminated. I personally haven’t sat down in a restaurant since the end of 2019, haven’t done a food delivery since 2021, and that won’t change until tipping is gone.
I love that vast majority of Europeans don’t tip. At least the ones thinking rationally.
I hate the tipping culture, and wish it would go away. But I’ll still do it for sit down service as that’s part of the deal. The ones that really get me are for pickup as well as the fastish food services where you go to the counter to order, prepay, you pick it up from the counter and bus your own tables. What exactly am I tipping for?
And why do taxis need tips? Or hairdressers?
Over covid we would tip fairly frequently for takeout. We still on occasion tip to local places, but most of the time we don’t. I’m literally picking up the food, no service is being provided.
Here is a crazy idea, Pay Workers A Livable Wage and price goods accordingly… that is the easiest step forward as I would be tempted to ask for more because profits are unpaid wages.
I would not object to a law banning establishments from requesting tips before service has been provided.
They shouldn’t request tips at all. Tips only should be provided if a customer feels like the service was above and beyond normal.
That’s not true in the US. They have a tipped minimum wage; there, if you’re not tipping you’re stealing someone’s labour.
It is a sucky system, as the buried lede in that article shows:
However, data from the very checkout system that prompted tipping revealed disparities in pay. Neitzel noticed that Black employees were earning less tips than their White counterparts.
But, until it is burned to the ground, that is the system and (in the US) you should not use it to exploit people.
Technically the employer is stealing their labour, the customer is paying the advertised price in a perfectly legal exchange.
If the staff don’t like this, they need to unionise and fight the employer to pay a proper living wage.
Some areas in the US have tipped minimum wage. Some areas have an actual minimum wage that is paid regardless of tips. Don’t accuse others of exploiting people when it is truly the employer backed up by the local state law. Blame your state and do something about it.
Sure, but that’s a societal and cultural change. I’m talking about a legal change.
There is a legal solution too. It’s called: regulate the minimum wages.
FYI: Denmark doesn’t have minimum wage.
Guess what’s the difference between minimum salary of McDonalds worker in Denmark vs USA.
Keyword: labor union.
And here I am, avoiding bars and restaurants just because I prefer to eat at home.
