A tax on people-pleasing
A tax on people-pleasing
158 comments
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Not gonna stop doing it though. In fact, my brain is broken in such a way that. If I see someone else not tipping, then I have to tip even more to make up the difference.
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well yeah, that's why donations don't work either, somehow. consider:
if you're the person always donating to charity, and nobody else does, you're essentially providing the community service that should be provided by the community taxes. instead, you pay it all yourself. that's why taxes have to be enforced by the community: the first one to donate suffers a disadvantage, but if a general rule says everybody must pay taxes/donate at the same time, nobody loses.
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This comment section is all people missing the point.
The point of the post is that a particular job will generally stabilize at a particular pay. If it's a tipped position, then the employer will pay less, so that the overall income is roughly at that stable income for that position, including the overall average tip.
So people who tip less than the average are free riding off of the people who tip more than average, where that worker will make an average tip overall, which comes more from the generous tippers than the stingy tippers. Thus, it effectively transfers money from generous tippers to stingy tippers, on net, in the long run.
The merits of this system, whether servers deserve to be paid more, whether we should push for reforms so that this isn't the system, is besides the point. The post is making an observation of how things actually are, not advocating for how things should be.
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Tipping is one of the only reasons to carry cash
I like to pay by card and hand the waiter a bill or two so they aren't giving half of their tip to management
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Tip your waitstaff. Don’t be a pos.
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It goes both ways. We do want families and kids to come in and eat. Some people don’t tip well because they don’t have the means and that’s okay! It’s socialized service. You can look at it like you’re supporting the people who are working and those who want their kids to have experiences they otherwise couldn’t. Just like the guy who orders 3 cocktails subsidies the water and sandwhich guy. Or the 4 kids meals and fries guy. You can look at it a lot of ways.
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the ignorance of calling this “people pleasing” behavior is crazy to me. Its not people pleasing to want somebody to have food on there table at night, or to pay their bills. its the awareness that its a fucked system and that were doing our part to support people. the amount of privilege in this tweet is jaw dropping.
its the equivalent of supporting women's rights and calling it “people pleasing” behavior. get fucked dude
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Tipping is basically donating money to the waiting staff (in a broader sense, to the management of the restaurant).
I think there are more people in need of donations than the ones who move your food 10 steps.
I would 10000% pick my own food and cary it to the table, as I often do in many """lower class""" restaurants (diners?)
That, or add a flat service charge, add it to the check and pay fucking taxes (this is directed to the management).
I don't tip. But I don't live in the US.
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The major problem is the ethics of tipping. In the U.S. tipping puts (all if not most) jobs into a category which employers now pay a sub-minimum wage. Legally the employer isn’t responsible for a federal minimum wage anymore because it is assumed tips will cover the rest of it. In actuality with taxes, many people don’t get a paycheck because of how little they earn. It just went to taxes.
EDIT: Imagine working full time (40 hours) and getting a piece of paper that says “THIS IS NOT A CHECK” telling you how little you earned.
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Unless you’re talking about somewhere other than the US or you have some crazy locality, this doesn’t sound right.
In the US, the employer is legally obligated to make up the difference between what the employee earned (wage plus claimed tips) and minimum wage. In fairness to your point, that’s not a big help since the federal minimum wage is a joke. If they’re failing to do that, they’re breaking the law.
Additionally, taxes should be a percentage of their earnings. How would they be ending up with zero dollar paychecks after 40 hours?
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No your tips become profit for the greedy assholes who own the restaurant, you aren't compensating for non tippers, you are compensating for greedy cunts not paying people a living wage and the fact that most Americans can't understand this and are agreeing with the post calling people who don't tip as rude is why tipping is never gonna leave this fucked up country
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Not tipping is rude. You are not facilitating change by not tipping, because the burden of your choice is felt almost entirely by the worker you stiffed. The employer is not motivated to pay their employee more from reduced tips because they aren't really worse off for it. Sure, maybe their employee eventually quits if they aren't making enough, but tip industries typically have high turnover anyway, so the worker is already considered replaceable. The worker suffers from missing an expected part of their income, but they also lack the ability to make things better for themselves. So it's just piling onto their bad situation.
If you want to get rid of tip culture, stop patronizing places that rely on tips to give their employees a living wage. That's how capitalism works, businesses make changes in their power when something affects their bottom line. So you have to protest in a way that actually hurts the person with the power to change something, not someone caught in the crossfire. And of course, try to support reform that guarantees a living wage regardless of tips.
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In Europe tipping is optional and the expectations are lower because the base wage is the full minimum, or higher.
In North America tipping has become a necessity because there is a lower minimum wage for waitstaff, which is a stupid arrangement that allows management/ownership to keep wages low and also now claim a portion of tips, for some reason.
Anyone who thinks that is a good system and that the problem is "cheapskates", not the deeply flawed system for paying waitstaff, is not thinking things through
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It works both ways. If noone tips then noone will work at restaurants where their wage consists solely of tipping. That is also how capitalism works.
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Capitalism works by putting poor people is actual crossfire and then incentivise giant hulking demonic entities to engulf the planet. Sterile headless doom machines that employ sociopathic human turncoats and force them to labor or lobby in the name of profit, the final score of which global rabiate construct was the best at the game of purging tellus. You conflate the two
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I'd find it almost funny, how much capitalism as a system seems to favor those who are most capable and willing to detach morality from their actions for capital gain, if it weren't so sad.
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There are good criticisms of other economic systems that have been tried, but capitalism really seems designed to transfer the most power and resources to the greediest and least ethical.
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I understand your point, and i totally understand the hatred of capitalism, because it is a cruel system.
Just let me put things into context, though:
Capitalism isn't the fundamental origin of the difficulties of our time. The difficulties have already existed earlier. There were the romans who waged war against basically the rest of the world, putting many people in hardship, and then there were the English in the 18th century who developed the modern version of capitalism.
In the roman system, it was all about power. You conquer some other country to get its resources, and you use these resources for personal gains. So it was direct personal greed.
The english refined the system in the way that they said, "alright, people are fundamentally greedy, but at least let's try to put that to good use. let's use the destructive power as positively as possible". And then they went and designed a system where companies that are more fit to provide attractive products to others gain power; As such, greedy assholes have an incentive to provide something to others, even if it's ultimately to their own gains.
I understand it's a small positive in an overwhelming crushing wave of greed and sociopathy; i just wanted to explain the background of modern-day capitalism and the origin of "companies" the way we know them today.
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No but you don’t understand.
Capitalism works because it pits everyone against each other and so even though every single person is greedy and unethical, they begrudgingly improve society overall because of reasons.
All we have to do is make sure we teach every child that all humans are fundamentally greedy and evil and the only ethical response is to out-greedy and out-evil them.
And then we’ll have a prosperous society!
- Adam Smith basically
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Insert Winston Churchill quote here.
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We should end tipping culture. Wages should never be optional, and anyone working full time should be paid by their employer a living wage as described by FDR when the minimum wage was created.
Until we end tipping culture, tip your servers. You're not some edgy social justice warrior by quoting Mr. Pink and acting like keeping your two dollars is somehow helping. You're just an asshole.
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Calling it culture sounds a bit weird to me it's an exploitative loophole that's illegal in cultured places.
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That's fair. We should call it regulation and labor laws. Minimum wage laws specifically enshrine tipping as a foundation of server wages, and closing that loophole is a necessary first step.
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The single best thing people can do to end tipping culture is to just stop tipping.
Vote for social safety nets or make donations to care for those who will be harmed by this.
But right now it's people like you that are perpetuating tipping culture.
And yes, I am an asshole - but it's not solely because of my stance on tipping.
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Nah, it's a known cultural fact that tipped wages are offloaded directly onto the consumer. Not paying them is refusing to participate in the game of capitalism in the worst possible way. By withholding the wages of your fellow worker but continuing to do business with their employer, you are just increasing the value extracted from them.
If you don't want to tip, don't go to tipped restaurants.
That's it. That's the only ethical play to avoid tipping. Don't participate at all, don't fund the unethical business model at all. As it stands, not tipping doesn't threaten the business model - they still get paid.
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Lol, I'm sure your reasoning is really going to make a difference to the person depending on tips to make rent. And I'm sure the owner is just going to feel terrible that his server didn't get compensated.
Maybe you should just avoid giving your business to restaurants that exploit the tip based system? You aren't ending tipping culture by not tipping, you're just taking advantage of workers just as much as the owners.
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Bullshit, and that's a dangerously naive perspective. If everyone stopped tipping tomorrow, the only people that would be hurting are the people who serve.
All labor regulations exist because there will always be someone desperate enough to do anything for a paycheck. Child laborers. Prostututes. Dallas Cowboys. People will do anything for money, and the only way to prevent exploitation is with regulation. The "free market" will turn your bones into paste before it provides a living wage to laborers.
Capitalism is an unbalanced power dynamic that relies on an excess of desperation. If people didn't need to sell their time, they'd never sell it for less than it is worth to employers. So if everyone agreed to just stop tipping, service would get much worse, and servers would be working for $2.10 an hour plus kitchen scraps.
At least we agree on uour last point.
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The whole point of that scene was that even a room of psychotic killers was disgusted by the idea of not tipping.
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It's amazing how many people saw it and said, "You know, the crazy-eyed murderer makes a good point."
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Until we end tipping culture, tip your servers.
If everyone continues to tip by default, then I believe this will delay or prevent an end to the culture. If servers don't have an issue with tipping (because everyone does so), then there is less reason to support change.
If one person doesn't tip:
You're just an asshole.
If a large majority doesn't tip:
Maybe there is a problem with tipping by default?
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That's not how anything works. If you want change, you need to vote for it. You're not going to change the entire economic structure of the whole restaurant industry by being a selfish asshole. You're just punishing the people who handle your food and making life harder for everyone.
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If the large majority doesn't tip, wait staff will become homeless. That's the only "message" you're sending. Restaurant owners won't care in the slightest.
Don't patronize organizations that don't pay their employees. This is the message, you're claiming you want to send. You have to take money away from the people who set the policy, not the worker who has to live under the policy. Find restaurants that refuse tips and spend your money there. (Or just don't go out.)
Until we end tipping, tip your servers.
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Well in Australia we don't have tipping.
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You sure you don't use some other word? You guys have one of the best accents out there but can be tough to understand.
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I'm Canadian. Servers now make minimum wage. I have stopped tipping. It doesn't make any sense that a server who is making above minimum wage has to rely on customers paying a gratuity. Where were my tips when I was a lifeguard? Or a tour guide? I didn't get a bonus for doing a good job landscaping. I'm not angry at the servers. I'm upset at the ones who blame customers for the shady business that they help keep open.
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Minimum wage isn't a lot of money, especially of you're living in a city like Toronto. There's an expectation for a server that they're getting a tip, so when you don't do that you're inherently guaranteed to give them a negative feeling emotion.
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That's true. On the other hand, if a server accepts my tip which helps their employer to keep underpaying them that gives me a negative feeling emotion.
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Then you should focus on contacting your representatives urging them to increase the minimum wage, not perpetuate an unfair system that forces workers to depend on the generosity of random customers. I've worked on minimum wage restaurant gigs, your tips don't get shared with the back of l the house staff who are busting their ass in the hot kitchen making the food you eat, while pretty stack racks all the tips taking plates from point A to B
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Both can be true
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Yes, at this point it’s rude people that don’t tip.
It’s like people moving next to an airport, then complaining about planes. If you don’t want to tip, don’t go to a full service restaurant.
That being said, every single order at the counter POS terminal that asks for tips can fuck right off.
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It’s like people moving next to an airport, then complaining about planes.
I believe this analogy works in the opposite way?
Moving next to an airport is like starting a job at a restaurant that doesn't pay minimum (or living) wage.
In either case, you know ahead of time that it'll be annoying to live/work in those situations because planes are loud and not all people tip to make up the poor wage level.
And then to solve these problems, instead of requiring that planes be quieter or that people always tip, perhaps re-zone the areas surrounding the airport so people can't move there, and sign into law minimum wage that scales with cost of living so people don't have to need tips.
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It's rude that the insane hyper capitalist dictatorship forces this, but you attack your own class, exactly like the oligarchs want. They want free mercenaries to sow hate and dispute in their own class so they can win the class war. In the end when all humans die it will be because nobody attacked the oligarchy while they set up the feral slaying machine corps that will salienate the planet.
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This is how a greedy person thinks. It's morbid, but fascinating.
I am not in a financial race against the people who do not tip. And if this guy thinks I am then he failed to factor in that people pleasers probably go a lot further socially in life and thus are likely to make more money. Maybe I tip not because I want to please, but because I have more expendable income than the average self-limiting greedy asshole.
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I don't think the richest people are the ones who want to please people the most, I think the less they want to please people, the richer they get. Then they run society with their wealth and the people pleasers are at their mercy
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The richest people, yes certainly. But they didn't get rich merely by not tipping, and the moron who wrote the tweet is certainly not that level of wealthy. I'm just talking about 99% of people, the working class.
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In the US, servers and restaurant staff tip like 100% of the time they go out because they know how important it is with our current pay laws, and they know that the waiter expecting that tip isn't the one making the laws or who deserves to be punished for them. So that tip is almost always going to someone else who also tips.
Btw, don't bother arguing with me that tipping is wrong so we shouldn't do it. I agree that it's wrong, but abstaining punishes the wrong people (servers, not owners or policymakers). So instead of writing a comment, write a letter to you local govt to eliminate sub-minimum wages for tipped workers, and keep tipping poor waiters and drivers til they change something.
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All the things I've read say that a majority of tipped workers (as well as the general population) prefer the current tips system. Maybe it's not true, but looking at the comments here it seems accurate.
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They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them, literally. Its an expected response. Those that don't depend on tipping or who can look at a bigger picture are able to be less biased in most cases.
Let's be clear, paying someone 2$ an hour is never okay, tipping or not.
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Former tipped employee here. This is probably correct, but I don't care. The majority is often wrong. They can be educated. Change is scary, and the people who benefit from the status quo demonize changes that will give them less power.
I would probably have made less money if paid a salary, but it would be worth it to not have to balance priorities between getting a good tip and following restaurant policies.
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I work at the most expensive restaurant in my town, FOH workers are paid $2.13 (regardless of tips) and servers have to tip out 30% to assistants and bar. If everybody stopped tipping one day then some of them will literally not even have the money to buy gas to go home.
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Yes, and then the restaurant would close because noone can work there. They might have to consider paying a decent wage.
Y'all act like there aren't restaurants that already pay a standard wage. Stop supporting your oppressors, its a shitty look.
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An expensive restaurant pays $2/hr and we think people tipping/not tipping is the problem?!
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Usually if you make under the federal minimum wage they'll bump you up to minimum wage for the shift. I know my restaurant does. But yeah thats still nothing
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The only way you can help increase the wages is to not tip, all it does is subsidize the owners
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It's all about how far you look into the future.
If you look into the future by 20 years, then yes, not tipping is the best way to improve the average wages of servers, and in fact the wages would probably rise to match exactly the loss in tippings.
But if you look at only the next 3 months, wages might not rise quickly enough to compensate the losses through tipping, and that puts servers in a (temporary) hardship.
So, it's all about whether you're far-sighted or short-sighted.
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Unfortunately as this very thread shows, a lot of Americans are mindbogglingly not in agreement about that. Which explains a lot about the current predicament of the country.
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Not tipping isn't rude.
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If you're somewhere like Australia or Japan, where it's not a normal part of the culture, then fine
If you're somewhere in the US where the laws around pay are shitty, and people rely on tips to survive, then you're a cunt for not tipping
I think tipping is shit, and that people should just be paid properly, but I'm not blind to the realities of life when I travel. So I do what is appropriate to be a decent person
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That depends entirely upon the context. There are many situations where not tipping is rude. There are also situations where tipping is rude. "Rude" is a quality related to social expectations. You can be unintentionally rude due to ignorance of the norms, and that doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. But if you knowingly refuse to tip when tipping is expected for a provided service, then you're a shitbag.
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if you're utilizing a service that pays subminimum wage conditional on tips making up the difference, then yes, it's not rude. it's straight up evil.
if you have a moral objection to tipping, then dont use services that pay workers subminimum wage
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I adjusted my tip to 10%. Yep they don't pay tax, so I adjusted accordingly
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I want to share my perspective on this as someone who works for tips.
I don't like tips in theory, but I'd be below the poverty line without tips so I really appreciate them. I also enjoy that they act as a mechanism to adjust my wage to the work I'm actually doing; I produce much more value as an employee on a busy day than when it's dead, and without tips I'd make the same amount despite working much more.
I think realistically, unless we also massively adjust how the labour economy works, eliminating tipping would make profits higher for owners and make service industry workers poorer.
Like I'd gladly trade my tips for universal basic income, I would not trade my tips for poverty wages.
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Wow what a massive adjustment to the labor economy that you give money to the workers what model on earth has something that advanced except every other nation almost on the planet that is not hyper capitalist class war pigs
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I'd love for the place I work at to be an employee-owned co-op or something but those aren't really a thing around here, and sadly I'm not rich enough to start a business and open one myself.
Also, could you please cut back on the snarkiness a bit? It doesn't really make for pleasant conversation.
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I produce much more value as an employee on a busy day than when it’s dead, and without tips I’d make the same amount despite working much more.
You're not selling your work, you're selling your time. If you're at the restaurant on a slow day, you're not seeing your friends and family and you're not using your time however you want to. If you're spending the exact same amount of time at the restaurant on a slow day as on a busy day, you should take home the exact same amount of money and I'm having a hard time understanding why you would argue your employer's case of paying you less under any circumstances. I think it's a question of self-respect. Who gives a shit about "producing value" for someone else? You're there, sacrificing your time, and that's what you should get paid for. If your employer can't efficiently use the time they employed you for, that's their problem and never yours.
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I'm not arguing for my employer to pay me less. I'm just saying I like the fact I make more money when I have to work more.
On a slow day, I'm basically chilling with my coworkers and my customers (both of who I do actually enjoy spending time with). On a busy day, I can be running around making food, drinks, cleaning, without even having a thought for myself or a second to relax and breathe for stretches of like 5 hours straight.
My wage before tips is fair to the amount of work I do if no one comes in. I would not be satisfied with my untipped wage on a day where we serve 80+ people an hour.
Obviously, I wouldn't complain if we eliminated tips and made the minimum wage close to what I make with tips on a busy day. That's not what I think would happen, though. Realistically, under the current economic system, most restaurants could not afford to pay their employees that much. Which is why I said in my original comment that we'd need some sort of change to the labour economy before I'd be willing to give up my tips (such as UBI).
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I still struggle with tipping on to go orders. I usually keep that at around 10% but sometimes I feel like even that much shouldn’t be warranted.
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It doesn't even make sense to do it then, but sometimes I cave to the pressure.
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And this is why when people call for to-go orders after I’ve started doing clean-up (usually 8 or 9), I won’t take their order and tell them kitchen is closed for to-go. If they come in to order that’s fine, and most nights I’ll do it basically up until I close down, because they are more likely to tip for it, and re-cleaning isn’t that hard. The owner of the place told me it’s entirely my call on that, and she won’t re-open the kitchen for to-go either because people usually don’t tip for it.
I cook everything myself as well as being the only bartender, and our food is fairly inexpensive, so it doesn’t end up costing all that much and 10% is basically nothing, assuming they even leave that. I’m not doing that shit for no reason. Fuck all that noise.
So do be conscious of what sort of place it is before you apply that rule. If it’s somewhere with a full kitchen and kitchen staff that gets paid decently, sure. Little bar and grill with at most 2 people working and making not that much? Ehhhh..
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I do 15%. I’m hoping the kitchen staff sees some of it.
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Lol... How is this a meme.
Anyway, just avoid joints that need tipping. Fuck the restaurant industry and their fucking owners. I am done with that shite
Tipping amount goes up and quality of food and service down
Then they act indignant when three dudes need the check separate 🤡
WTF am I tipoing for, asshole?
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Anyway, just avoid joints that need tipping.
That was always encouraged. If you don't want to tip, don't eat at restaurants in places where tipping is relied upon.
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I tip cash so the server doesn't need to share the tip with anyone when I do go out...
Remember folks this is an adversarial arrangement, fuck the owner 🐸
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A tip a lot because jobs where you get tipped suck and I want to support workers in those situations.
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Dunning Kreuger effect - the foundation of meme culture. Apparently somebody just finished Econ 101. Congrats!
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You could make just as good a case that it’s the other way around.
A salaried employee makes the same amount of money whether they please people or not. Since pleasing people does not earn them extra income, they often won’t do it, and often their jobs even specifically require being an asshole (managers, supervisors, etc.) at least some of the time.
Someone who works for tips on the other hand can increase their pay quite a bit by pleasing people. And many professional assholes will actually tip quite well for good service, because being around other professional assholes all day can be quite tiring, and being generous for a change is a good way to unwind from that.
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Okay, but good service means interrupting my family as little as possible and bringing food out in a decent time frame. People power tripping with their tip percentage, like oh this server didnt grovel enough so they get 10%. Its stupid and petty and causes stress and anxiety for both parties which is bullshit.
JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH TO PAY/TIP SO MY FUCKING SERVER CAN AFFORD A LIVING WAGE. STOP TREATING PEOPLES LIVELIHOODS AS A CARNIVAL GAME.
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First of all, it's usually not in their control how fast the food comes out, that's up to the kitchen staff. Second, it's not your business whether they make a living wage. I've been friends with many people working in the industry, and I even dated one for a while, and I came to the conclusion that there's a certain type of personality who is cut out for the job, and they tend to do quite well for themselves (often raking in several hundreds of dollars in tips PER DAY).
As for those who aren't, it's better for them to fail fast so they can move on to something else that they're better at, instead of continuing to work a job they hate just because it pays the bills. It's the same with salespeople, who also usually make a meager salary (sometimes none at all) and only get paid on commission when they make a sale. Some people thrive on this sort of challenge, others don't. Sure, my girlfriend would still complain when she went above and beyond for a table and still ended up without a tip for reasons entirely out of her control, but it didn't happen all that often.
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