If you treat waiters like shit you definitely should be thrown out of the restaurant
Do I have to tip them for that
I’d tip extra for waiters throwing them out, because it’s inconvenient for me.
Ejection fee
Especially the assholes who talk on their phones on speaker phone, or let their little kids scream at the top of their lungs.
Yeah, and maybe add a surcharge for every minute over a reasonable limit they camp at the table after finishing their meals. Call it the "linger longer" levy.
i'd tip even more if they throw people out like uncle phil does with jazz
Only in America
User deleted comment
5mo
If the server is an asshole, the customer get tipped instead.
I would tip even more just for that to be the norm
Yeah it’s minimum 22% to use the exit door
This is a meme though, this guy is saying “oh waiters are fucked because they have to be nice to make a livable wage.” Ok take this same energy to any retail job in the US, which has no tips, and has the exact same problem. People treating employees like dirt. If a job wants to mandate how you act, they can and will, and will just fire you if you disagree, they don’t need their customers to bribe you.
As a retail worker, it is getting worse every day. For example: a group of kids ages 8-16 assaulted a manager of a store at the mall I work at yesterday. They were destroying the store and he tried to kick them out. They sprayed him in the eyes with lighter fluid, and proceeded to try and light him on fire. Thankfully there were two other employees with him who saved him from that. The kids were let go by the police and banned from the entire mall property.
They came back later in the day and assaulted somebody who was walking around the mall who was minding their own business. Police were thankfully there, responded quickly, and arrested those they could.
People aren’t only treating people like shit who work in customer service, they’re assaulting them and traumatizing them. I work at a store that sells jeans, and I have people throwing racial slurs at me while I am watching them steal.
Not only this, I've worked in restaurants in the U.S. and in Australia..... Can you guess where I got more money???
Hint: It was the U.S.
I'm currently working as a bartender in Australia and it's much harder to save on a consistently mediocre salary. I feel much more stuck in my job here than I did working hospitality in the U.S.
And again, including tips, I was paid on average about twice what I'm paid in Australia.
Edit: This is the misconception: that hospitality staff outside of the U.S. are paid better and have better working conditions.... They don't. They are being screwed over just the same outside the U.S.
The only difference is the U.S. has created a system where customers are on the hook for making sure waitstaff isn't screwed over instead of businesses and it turns out customers are generally more generous than businesses.
Edit: Like I'm starting to think this anti U.S. tipping culture shit is a ploy by restaurants outside the U.S. to try and trick their staff into thinking they have it good.
There’s a reason you’ve never heard about servers wanting a normal hourly pay. Go over to r/serverlife or whatever and ask them what hourly pay they’d accept to switch from tipping and be amazed when they unironically tell you they wouldn’t accept any less than like $25/hr or it would be a pay cut lol.
People don’t like hearing it but waitstaff is the most overpaid and entitled group in the job market lol.
100% my wife makes like $300 a night average for a 5hr shift, don't feel bad for (most)servers lol
waitstaff is the most overpaid and entitled group in the job market lol
...wanting to be paid a wage high enough to live comfortably for the job you do is "overpaid and entitled"?
💯 %
My philosophy is that I am more an employee of the guest. If I were employed as a home servant, I'd expect to be well paid for my personal service, attention and loyalty.
Id expect to be treated with respect for providing a warm and welcoming environment, the kind of service that makes you feel like your needs are important.
No one NEEDS to be waited on. It is a privilege that many people in the world do not have. Tipping culture provides an accessible way to provide a sense of PRIVILEGE to more income levels in the community.
It provides a chance to make a higher income for providing... service.
I honestly believe the attack on tipped service is way to introduce a replacement model.
Traditional service will be replaced with quick service and food trucks.
Sit down table service would be reserved to a membership model. Think dinner clubs and country clubs.
To me that's gross.
Spoiler alert: it isn't a ploy from the restaurant industry. They benefit from tipping because they can pay low wages and pass the burden onto the consumer.
Americans are pushing back because, here, the consumer is expected to subsidize the restaurant's workers wages through tips. It's gotten so ridiculous that they sneak in mandatory gratuity and then ask/expect an additional tip on top of that. And the standard tip norm which used to be about 15% has now been pushed to about 25%. Let's also not forget how many anecdotes there are about restaurants that pocket the tips they collect rather than pass it on to the employees. The list goes on.
And, to your point of customers being more generous than businesses... well, maybe because they understand all of this and are tipping out of solidarity because they know how shitty it is to work in conditions where it's difficult to earn a livable wage.
I don’t think “Americans are pushing back” at all in real life, maybe just on Reddit.
The reality is, with a different system, you just end up paying the boss more, if it’s through raising prices or extra fees. If that’s the case and I’m going to pay around the same amount anyway, why wouldn’t I want to cut out the middle man, and pay the worker directly? Do you have something against workers?
I think there is a pushback for being asked to tip for every interaction you have with customer service people, but tipping servers/bartenders is well established and isn't going away anytime soon.
And if it did, there wouldn't be any savings for the customers. The restaurants would just jack up their prices 20% on the front end to cover labor costs and pay it out as more of a commission (probably a percentage of gross sales). This would be worse for the average restaurant goer as servers and bartenders would be more focused on upselling instead of making the customer happy.
For me, it's being asked to tip for stuff outside of restaurants. Beer vendors at a football game where you are paying $10 for a can of beer? Also, it was self pay, they literally did nothing. Gas stations and fast food too.
Okay. This is fair. But are people upset about this?
I worked in kitchens for a large portion of my life, so I take pride in being a good tipper. Don’t bat an eye at not tipping in those other places
I started as a busboy, then dishwasher, line cook, kitchen supervisor, assistant manager, bar manager, left the industry, then came back as a server. All this was over a 10 year period. I met my wife of 20 years when i was serving, she was also a server. My mother raised me on a server job. I tip great.
I also tip well at non-sit-down restaurants but it is getting annoying. I am in no way upset at the staff, it's the greedy owners that don't want to pay their workers properly.
I turned off at that point because if you treat waiters like shit in Canada you will definitely be asked to leave, and I have to assume based on the videos I've seen the US is reasonably similar. The exception is just "general rudeness" would likely be tolerated to some extent, but after travelling with my aunt in Europe, they tolerated her rude-ass as well.
In the US, if you treat the staff like shit in any restaurant I ever worked at we would throw you out too. People who treat the staff bad don't tip anyway.
And you will anywhere but tipping is out of control in the USA for sure however some people esp where I am make six figures bartending and waiting on customers so they also don’t want the tipping culture to change
It’s nowhere as simple and one sided as tipping = slavery that’s just naive
This guy is full of shit. I'm not even a manager and I've kicked people out of the restaurant I work at. I've literally told people that I don't need their money and they* can get out.
Also he acts like most people are assholes to wait staff. 97 percent of the time people are lovely cuz they're also want to enjoy the experience. Most of my issues with guests are etiquette related, like not listening to my spiel and then asking a question I already answered, or ordering a bottle of bud light even tho we don't have that cuz I work at a rum bar. Even then that shit doesn't happen often enough to ruffle my feathers. If we got rid of tipping, I'd probably leave the industry.
I agrée with you 100% and not being concerned with being ejected from the restaurant is a big part of bad customer behavior (along with trying to get free food (which is a whole other topic worthy of discussion)).
One thing I disagree with in OP’s statement is the blanket statement that in other countries, if you treat restaurant staff like shit, you’re just thrown out of the restaurant.
Yes…it’s much more likely to happen in European countries, but, as tourists (especially American tourists), waiters and other staff are more likely to ‘fight back’ (e.g., treat customers like customers are treating them (eye-for-an-eye), completely ignore customers after being treated like shit, ‘accidentally’ have something happen to the food (pepper, salt, or other spices accidentally getting ‘spilled’ into food, etc.).
Again, if customers are rude, unreasonable, irrational, etc. kick them to the curb (and if they’ve eaten most/all of their food, make them pay for it on top of getting ejected).
IMHO food shouldn’t be given for free as a reward for asshole customer behavior.
European here - I’m not sure if I have ever seen anyone being an asshole to a waiter (I’m sure it happens but it’s not common) what I do see commonly is assholes not cleaning up after themselves at McDonald’s - expecting minimum wage workers to clean for them, which is shitty. But being a dick to a waiter is not something I have seen in Ireland
Also the blanket statement that waiters get paid properly in the rest of the world… Waiters in good restaurants in some countries in Europe get paid well, but for the most part they get minimum wage.
is it me or the guy just repeated the same thing 8 times with different words ?
User deleted comment
5mo
Don't forget "Canada and North America." Apparently, Canada is part of Super North America or some different continent.
Restaurants in NA are super expensive from my experience, not sure where that whole idea that NA is cheap comes from
It’s not cheap, all the money the companies save by not paying their workers fairly goes straight to the executives and shareholders
it really seems to be all over the place
theres a hispanic run corner store down the street that sells big burgers for $4 and cheesefries/onion rings for a $1. basically $5 meals.
then you go to this burger truck a few blocks over trying to sell smaller burgers for $12 each and their fries are $5. its wild how different it can be.
Exactly they keep increasing prices and can't even say shit like "it's because we pay our employees a fair wage!". It's pure greed.
He leads with something about lowering food costs. How could tipping possibly lower food cost?
and are we really gonna pretend waiters are always perfectly nice and professional out of fear of losing their tips?
I’ve found service is better in Europe anyways. Service staff just wait at their stand for you to flag them if you require something.
They don’t waste 20% of their time on the floor stopping in at each table to “see how those first bites are going”.
Just look out to your tables, and approach them if they wave you down. Better for everyone.
pseudo-intellectualism monologue profound bullshit into tiktok to make yourself feel all important and fuzzy.
the tone and cadence is also crucial, if you talk at the right cadence in the right tone, people think you are an authority figure on what you are talking about.
My partner used to send me videos of some dudes who gives relationship advice and I had to tell her to stop cuz a lot of his advice was heavily based on his preference of certain relationship styles and he softened his voice as much as possible for those videos to the point where it felt condescending.
This is actually spot on and it hurts my brain seeing how many people agree with some random guy saying illogical things, but in a confident way.
Don't forget about the hand gestures as well.
He was speaking like he had some mega-mind-blowing soliloquy to lambast tipping culture for the waiters… and it’s just “they don’t make enough to leave”, along with the asinine salvery with extra steps quote.
People out here acting like he really did something.
It’s the opposite too. They make too much to leave. There is no entry level, no experience necessary, job that pay as much as serving. No one is going to leave.
It is, I worked as a server through college. After graduating, I made less at the entry level position I studied 4 years for
I worked at Applebees in a pretty busy area walking out at around $40 an hour (state paid full minimum wage). I wanted to move more into an established career and my entry level position at a startup software company paid $14 an hour. Yeah that was a big shift in my pocket.
The tipping system is a racket and not necessarily for the owners. Restaurants in the US consistently fail.
You also claim your tips, so if you make less than minimum wage in tips, your employer makes up the difference.
Shhhh, they don’t want people to know that part. They want to complain and act like literal slaves.
Exactly, you know who gets the same wage and works harder? The cooks. I was a short order cook for a lot of my early 20s. I'd watch waiters take home $100 cash every night in tips while I changed grease traps and cleaned hot grills.
I've worked at a bunch of other bullshit jobs but I make up to 40 dollars an hour as a server. Very rarely that much but I've had five hour shifts where I've made nearly 200 dollars, and most of the time I make about 15 an hour. Sometimes I make less than 5 dollars an hour but most of the time I clear 10 plus I make 3.80 an hour in base pay. I havent made anywhere near that much anywhere else yet. My next job upgrade will be electricians apprentice where I start out at like 18 an hour.
I have to actually have a "real job" to make more than I do as a server.
I don't understand how waiters are paid shit wages and simultaneously can't find work somewhere else that pays as good or better so they're "stuck".
Real explanation: Waiters make fucktons of money for very little work. They are not paid "shit wages".
If you're a good waiter, you can actually make pretty good tip money depending the time of the day, if there is a major sporting/concert event nearby, etc.
Omg. Look at everyone acting like he did something. 🙄
yeah tipping is dumb but also this guy is dumb
with the exception of US states that actually have a different minimum wage for hospitality workers the problem is a bit more nuanced than "I really hate to quote rick and morty here..."
He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. In Canada waiters are paid the same minimum wage anyone else would get.
Making a tiktok video with extra steps
He wasn’t even correct about the reason why.
The reason is because of the alcohol prohibition. During that time, restaurants no longer made enough to pay their wait staff enough, so they implemented tipping.
And just like everything else in America, we never changed it back after-the-fact (cough patriot act cough)
I don't know about the rest of you, but it seemed to me he was just saying the same thing 8 various ways.
Remember kids if you’re also doing illegal things and need a way to make sure you’re able to participate in the financial markets with your dirty money…. Being a server is the way to go.
If you work at a place that let’s you claim your own tips, you can clean some of your money. Knowledge is power 🌈
Ex pizza guy here... same went for us. Loved the c7stomers who tipped cash.
That’s not what I’m talking about. Let’s use Christopher Moltesanti (S/o to sopranos fans) as an example. Let’s say Chris finds 50k that fell off the back of a truck. Chris gets a job as a server. Chris works 1 day a week claiming $1000. Chris pays some taxes on that 50k. Having this job offers him some legitimacy in the financial market allowing him to secure bank loans and credit cards.
Obviously this would be a slow process for a huge lump sum, but if Chris was making 2000k a week on the street, there’s room for him to clean some of it as a server. Say he’s making a bit more than that. Him and his girl get a job and she claims some of his money now they both have jobs that say they make X amount a year.
The point is you can’t just have money and things in the US without a job. You can’t even rent an apartment without a source of income. For all the shitty things that come with being a server, there are some ways that average people to work the system a bit.
This isn’t financial advice or legal advice. I just watch the sopranos.
So long as Chris stays clean and doesn’t drink drive with Tony in the car you’re scenario holds
The amount I could claim in tips before it looks suspicious, is less than the amount of cash I could spend on groceries and other stuff.
So why clean it, and pay taxes on it?
You do both. Pay cash for the things you can, but clean the rest of the money that comes in. You can’t buy everything with cash, and some things can still raise an alarm with the IRS.
If you go buy a car in cash, and then try to register it, but you have zero sources of income as far as the IRS is concerned, that will raise an alarm. Groceries, eating out, buying gas; those won’t alert the IRS, but big purchases are harder to explain.
I don't think this would work as well as you think it does. #1, How much money do you think you could legitimately clean in a single wait staff position? #2, it's still going to be suspicious to investigators if you're making a significant amount above the other workers at the restaurant.
For example, you may be able to justify $1-2k more than your coworkers (you had better shifts, you worked more hours, you had better customers), but anything more than that would look suspicious. Especially since you're claiming all of that income as cash tips when most payments are made by card.
Europe is too varied to be generalised so much.
But at least in Ireland and the UK, you still have to put up with asshole customers. It's an absolute lie if someone proclaims otherwise
I used to work in the McDonald's drive-thru of my English town. Being trapped in a booth with no escape, I would often end up taking the brunt of the frustration of customers.
One guy got so aggressive that I actually welled up. Like this dude was full on, red faced screaming because we didn't have a condiment in stock. All the managers said to me was that if I'm not able to "be a big girl" and cope with being threatened over a lack of sweet and sour sauce, then they would hire someone who could.
I pray all those managers get testicular cancer (the women too)
He had some weird ideas, all the women and girls who worked there were on the front, in the drive thru booths or cleaning, so basically visible and customer facing. All the men and boys, worked in the kitchen.
I begged to be allowed to work mainline in the kitchen, it was stressful, absolutely. But because there was no customers threatening or hitting on me I could cope with the stress well.
The result of that ended up being me in the drive thru booth AND in the kitchen AND responsible for cleaning and separating all the cleaning cloths. It damn near broke me and I got nothing but criticism and bitching from the main manager.
I heard from a friend who still works there that the same manager now uses me as an example to scream at the girls on the front. Literally full on "Moth mouth could do this, why can't you?"
Testicular cancer all round! May his fries always be cold.
Yeah nah it sucks that his family get caught in the crossfire but that power tripping cunt deserves 3 generations of testicular cancer.
Glad someone pointed this out. Ron Jeremy here has just completely made that up about the UK
And the rest of the world for that matter. I've been to Egypt, tipping culture, at least as a tourist, was huge there. Probably most of the income of the waiters, cleaners etc. It was also extremely annoying always having to think whether or how much to tip. By the time we figured out the appropriate tip for each service our vacation was over.
Two thoughts
Making tipping mandatory doesn’t get rid of tipping.
Secondly, this guy has no idea of what slavery is or how the restaurant business works.
Seriously. Saying that tipping culture is basically slavery is like some dude having a minor broken bone in his foot and saying he's basically a quadriplegic now. Yeah, it might suck, but either you don't understand how bad the one is or you're way overblowing the severity of the other.
People like to use words like slavery as a checkmate to sure up their dumb shit logic. It doubles when you quote “Rick and Morty” even if you don’t want to.
Yeah he clearly didn’t hate to do that lol what a chode
He's a Rick and Morty fan and quotes Rick and Morty, he's not gonna have many reasonable takes lol
This guy is as dumb as tipping culture
User deleted comment
5mo
Yeah I hate hearing “but they only make $2 something an hour!!!” Yeah technically but no server out there is actually taking just $2 an hour home. I was taking home pretty decent money when I was a server and the people I know who are servers now are making pretty good money as well.
That's kind of why so many waiters don't actually want to get rid of tipping. They'd take a pretty big pay cut being paid a wage without tips
It’s not even technically, when they don’t make enough tips, the restaurant has to pay them the difference that would amount to minimum wage.
For some reason no one ever brings this up... i wonder why
When I was in college my then girlfriend would work 6 hour days 3 or so times a week and make more than me who worked full time at 9 an hour. On a bad day she would take home 80-100 bucks and work in a less hectic environment than a fast food employee. On a good day she would take home over 200. That’s why servers don’t want tipping culture to go away because then pretty soon they’re working for minimum wage.
Edited: didn’t phrase sentence correctly
Right. As a customer I just don’t even go out to sit down restaurants anymore. I’m tired of tipping culture and how much it’s spread to everywhere. And I’m tired of how much it’s gone up. You’ve gotta tip at least 20-25% now. As a server it’s fuckin great you can make really good money but as a customer I just don’t want to participate in it anymore.
Restaurants that tried doing a fair wage get fucking BLASTED by waiters because they make fucking bank on tips. Waiters are the ones that want tips to stay but also be able to complain about it. They want the pros without the cons.
At MOST restaurants, the wage is minimum + tips (because the STUPID ASS LIE that they don’t even make minimum wage is NOT TRUE and MISINFORMATION. If they are not tipped to at least minimum wage then the employer is REQUIRED BY LAW to pay the difference. But this almost never happens.)
So if they were payed competitive pay then they’d get far less on average and they don’t want that. The customers will pay them more than their employer ever would.
Never mind the fact that it makes no sense either. I order a more expensive drink and that makes a more expensive tip? Why? Was pouring the $100 bottle more effort?😂😂
When the restaurants near me had employees strike and quit over moving to $15 an hour wage and telling customers they don’t need to tip (low cost of living, average wage here is about $12-13), I stopped feeling bad for food service, fuck them. They upped it to $17 an hour which is really fucking good here and they still said no, tips or we quit.
Also the cooks are the one making the bomb ass food and at the places that do pool tips they always complain about having to share and not being able to keep “their tip”
Happened in my city. A new restaurant opened up as a no tip restaurant and paid about $15 an hour. It was like 2 months before they switched to tipping because servers were complaining
they were paid competitive pay
FTFY.
Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.
Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
Beep, boop, I'm a bot
Just some clarification, every restaurant I've ever seen is minimum plus tips, but minimum hourly for a tipped employee is $2-4 depending on state and then you have to at least average the real minimum wage for the week once they include your tips. And most servers in bigger cities make pretty good money but you have to remember there's no PTO and benefits often suck. In rural areas they often don't do near as well either.
Definitely agree that as a former server you can do really well hourly, which is what attracts good workers that act like they like their customers. If you pay 15/hour you'd be getting fast food level employees and service, which may be okay depending on the restaurant.
Yeah, his comparison with slavery is ridiculous. Some waiters earn over 90K per year.
The complaints about tipping culture being bad for servers is such bullshit. Tipping sucks for customers. It sucks to have a bill and have to add money on top of it.
But on what fucking planet are servers taking home less than minimum wage? In fact, on what planet are servers earning so little that they only get minimum wage? (Im sure there are some exceptions, such as waiting at dennys.) Waiters are not going to be taking home more money without tipping, that is delusional.
Servers are WAY better off with the current tipping system. Pretending otherwise is so out of touch, like this guy 100% has never had a tipped position or even known someone who earns tips.
Side note "slavery with extra steps" is just "we live in a society" but without the irony or self awareness. "They're making so little they can't save enough to leave." Thats called living paycheck to paycheck and it doesnt have anything to do with tipping culture. If waiting wasn't a tipped position it would just be minimum wage and those people would be just as poor as they are now. It's not slavery. (Unless you subscribe to the idea that all wage labor is slavery.)
I was a server for 13 years and you're correct. I averaged between $15-$60/hr at most places, depending on the season and establishment. I would have made way less (and paid way more taxes, lol) if I received hourly during that time.
Oh don't even get me STARTED on cash tips lol
Yeah I suspect most servers make more than they report to the IRS.
I cannot confirm or deny that allegation as we all know how serious the US government is about tax.
This is an outdated belief. Nowadays a VAST majority of tips are done with credit cards and are reported.
If you’re a server not reporting cash tips you’re probably young and naive.
I’m 29 and trying yo save for a house. You bet your ass I’m reporting every single dollar. I’m not screwing myself out of a potential mortgage.
Former waitperson here - in 1980 I was taking home (net) $40,000/year working 35 hours/week. In today dollars that is = $150,000. Sure, it sucked working nights, weekends, holidays, and putting up with assholes and sleazy people; and it allowed me to live a decent life while I went to college and got a degree that moved me into another world. So no, tipping does not hurt wait people (other than having to tolerate aholes)!
After 15 years in the business, I'll die on the hill of loving not having weekends off. I do all of my shopping, restaurant going out time, doctor appointments, banking, etc on my weekday days off.
The only thing I'm missing is the crowds.
Forreal. I don't give a shit about saturday/sundays.
But getting to have Monday off while the rest of the world has to hustle back to their dreary 9-5's?
Nothing like it. Also, while working fri-sun are usually the hardest shifts, they have a lively atmosphere thanks to, well, everyone partying and living it up on their weekends. Office workers taking a breather just get to see their dreary little breakroom with a dying microwave and bags of sad snacks. I take a minute breather off the line and see a place packed with people having a fantastic time.
These arguments are always framed as “look how fucked those people are” and not really what it is, which is “why am I paying more money?” It’s people wanting to help themselves guised as moral superiority. Don’t get me wrong I hate tipping culture. But keeping it ahunnid it’s specifically because I don’t want to shell out more money. I’m fucking cheap
Honestly, I’m sick of subpar or incredibly simple service and the obligation of tipping out 20% or more for it. “Oh thank you, you poured me a 9 dollar beer here is 2 dollars.”
R/antiwork and r/workreform are the worst with it. There is constant shit on tipping culture and they frame it as how they want it better for the workers and the workers are getting fucked with tips.
No, you hate tipping culture because you have to pay more. That is fine, but don’t preach about it on a subreddit that exists to help workers when most workers like the system.
If you ever bring up how much waiters and bartenders make on that subreddit they downvote you to oblivion.
I agree. A good waiter at a restaurant that isn't a value or fast food place can earn most states' minimum wage ($15/hr) in 1-2 tables so it's easy for them to exceed that amount of tables in an hour.
However, there are restaurants that are taking advantage of the tipping system and making their servers give up a portion of their tips.
gotta say, it really depends on the state but at my place the servers and bartenders make Way more than me hourly, not even counting tips. and i’m a lead line cook whose been here almost 5 years. And not saying this to shit on all servers but in my city min wage is $16.90, plus tips on every table. That said, we do have the 4% gratuity for the kitchen so i do get some extra money but it’s like 30-50$ extra on my biweekly paycheck so not exactly Tip Money
I mostly agree with this. Most waiters and waitresses I've known like the concept because they ultimately make more with tips than hourly. However they often get a few good shifts and make a killing and then keep chasing that high number long after the over all wages average down. Sure they made $250 on a shift or two..... but end up with 3 more shifts that week with $65 a day average. It all depends on where you work and the shifts you draw. Broken down to hourly..... they end up making $12.50 an hour after taxes and such take home. They continue to chase those $250 days like a junkie. They never earn enough to break that cycle.
Central Illinois, but I know women in my family that worked small town Diners/Bars that didn't meet the minimums. Some of these places might be empty for hours or most the day. It might be slammed after work or on the weekends. But if you are working 9-5 on the weekdays you might not see more than 5 people all day.
Common, no probably not. But in rural areas it happens more than you probably expect.
Edit: When I say didn't meet the minimum I meant that the employer had to bring them up to minimum wage. Idk personally anyone who didn't meet minimums on their paycheck. Just that with their 3ish dollar wage and tips didn't get them there initially.
Employers are required to pay at least minimum wage if their employees’ tipped wage + tips don’t make it to min wage
Yeah if you’re a server at a successful restaurant in any kind of commercial centre you’re making a good salary, it’s why I laugh whenever there’s a viral post from some waitress in a nyc restaurant or something who complains about only receiving a 10% tip from tourists as if that isn’t still a lot of money/probably more than the people who actually make the food
I always took the argument as saying "I hate needing to tip, because if I don't I'm the asshole that's not paying the guy serving me a decent wage."
Like, totally agree it's the customer that's getting the short end of the stick. Why should it be the customers job to supplement a percentage of the staffs wage instead of the owner just, you know, paying them more.
If everyone has accepted what a fair tip is in the country, why not just raise the wages of those positions to be in line with those figures?
At the end of the day tipping just saves the owner money and passes the cost onto the customer for no reason.
Thank you. My thoughts exactly
Hey look someone’s complaining on TikTok
Waiters don’t want that because they earn more with just tips, supposedly.
I worked at Red Lobster in college and there was this one middle aged lady who was a server and regularly took home over $300 a night because customers loved her so much. Good luck finding a chain restaurant that’ll pay you $40 an hour.
It sucks and it seems predatory but if you’re good at your job it can definitely be worth it.
A bartender friend of mine from the US told me he cleaned up $500 per 8 hour shift which was at that time more than the money I was making as an investment banker in Europe for a day’s work.
And many times you can get away without having to pay taxes on all of it.
We do. I make $40-70 an hour. No restaurant in the entire world is paying their staff that.
Took a lot of time in the industry to get to that point, but it’s on par with being in a different industry and getting promotions and raises. Even my first serving job ever at an Outback Steakhouse I made way more than minimum wage.
I’m so sick of people who don’t work for tips trying to “advocate” for tipped workers like they’re helping us. Please leave us alone and stop fighting for shit we don’t want lol.
I am 100% positive that a halfway decent waiter will far in a way exceed minimum wage. Said anyway, if you're a decent waiter at a decent restaurant, you like the tipping culture.
What has ruptured the tipping culture is that people you do make a wage that is higher than minimum wage are also asking for 20% tips and even press for tips, after you leave their restaurant. Which is turning people off, as it's not clear who makes what.
"Some are paid less than minimum wage"
It's actually most, not some. The Federal minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13 per hour. Only a few states mandate a higher number.
How is this so up voted when it's not even true?
If you do not hit minimum wage via tips + $2.13, then your employer has to pay the difference so you get minimum wage.
If you make minimum wage, you receive $2.13 an hour on top of that.
Tipping is one of those topics that Reddit is extremely ill-equipped to discus rationally.
The law is that employers have to cover any discrepancy between the wages if the total compensation for the tipped employee goes below the minimum wage. So 2.13 an hour is what would be paid after the minimum wage is met by tipping. It never actually goes down to 2.13 an hour, under the law. (You should still tip, minimum wage is insanely low)
Hi, someone from the rest of the World here. What's the point of having a minimum wage if you can pay less than minimum wage? Is it legally enforceable or just a suggestion?
Minimum wage is legally enforceable; however, as stated above, employees that are expected to receive a majority of their money from tips (I believe hairdressers also fall under this in some states, and a couple of other professions, correct me if I’m wrong) have a SEPERATE minimum wage that is lower; if the employee makes less than the normal minimum wage when including tips, the employer is required to cover the difference and pay them the full (normal) minimum wage.
So minimum wage for servers is $2.13. Let’s say the normal minimum wage is $8.50. If, after tips, the employee is calculated to have received $7.50 an hour, the employer is required to cover that extra dollar per hour.
Because they end up making much more then minimum wage (usually). My fiancé makes 6 a hour bartending which is under the minimum wage but she pulls in about 200-400 dollars in tips. So adding in that she makes anywhere from 31-50 a hour without including tax.
Most restaurant employees don’t want the tipping to go away for obvious reasons.
Yeah that’s the part of the whole discussion people like to avoid. They like to frame the discussion around the poor servers that aren’t being paid correctly when the servers are generally just fine with the current system because they are making way more money than they would at a standard hourly wage.
I used to do payroll for a pizza place, the delivery drivers were making on average around $25 an hour after tips, the bartenders averaged around $40 an hour after tips. They also allowed in store tipping for the regular crew, and those tips would push them to around $20 an hour.
It’s just them not wanting to pay the extra 20%. Which lets be honest, I can understand, but serving and bartending is one of the last jobs in America where a single mom can make enough for her kids comfortably so I’m not going to try to take that away. I know it should be the owners issue, but there’s a million other things that American society needs to change first before you take away somebody’s livelihood. Otherwise it’ll just be like every other industry where people are overworked and underpaid.
Also no one is paying a waiter 30 bucks an hour
Yeah the simple fact is that there are lots of waiters and waitresses with a lot of bargaining and voting power and if they really wanted tipping to end then it would’ve ended a long time ago. Lots of waiters and waitresses make more doing that than they could with any other job with their skillset and more than they would make if tipping went away and restaurants switched to minimum wage or near it.
There’s a reason fast food places are having to offer 15-20$ to bring workers in.
If you make less than the regular minimum wage (not the $2.13 number) your employer has to pay the regular minimum wage. I waited tables for 5 or 6 years and never had that happen. I was averaging $20/hr
Yeah I think you will be let go at most places if you go under minimum wage, not for claiming the reimbursement from the restaurant but for somehow sucking so much at the job you didn't make minimum wage
It's hard to fuck up that badly. Really, the only reason you would be making less than minimum wage is because the restaurant is slow. Maybe you worked a tuesday afternoon or something and nobody showed up for lunch.
Yeah I mean any given hour it can happen to anyone but across a pay period something must be wrong with you or the restaurant is completely fucked
Let me provide a different angle here. Waiting tables is some of the best money I’ve ever made and it’s because of tipping culture. People who have never waited tables love saying this is an unfair system and then there are those who just don’t want to pay extra. If we were to pay wait staff a wage and “outlaw tipping culture” we’d make significantly less and the cost of your meal would go up significantly. Either way the customer will pay about the same. I make $20+ at my restaurant. Before this job the most I’ve made was $15. This is the first time I’ve been able to put away more than $100 per paycheck, I’m putting $400 into savings per paycheck. I’m not far from moving to a more upscale restaurant where I’d make $30+ This video is a great example of Americans who hate tipping culture but don’t understand how it’s beneficial for everyone.
Yeah. I went from cooking where I made 15 an hour to bartending and it changed my life pretty drastically. My smaller paychecks are still more than paychecks I used to get with overtime. It also allows me to play to my social strengths cuz I can zero in on a person's interests and engage with them about said interests, and then make even more money cuz I average better than the expected 20 percent.
If you do not make at least minimum wage with your pay, and tips combined, federal law says the restaurant owner has to pay you at least minimum wage. That is a fact, that a lot of servers are unaware of, but it is written right into the law. And if you can document your shortages, they have to give you the accumulated back pay.
That being said...if you are not making mad cash as a server, you are either doing it wrong, or you work at a shit restaurant in a shit location.
And further more, if you claim taxes on 100% of your cash tips....you just might be an idiot.
Getting full min wage doesn't solve the tipping culture crisis unfortunately. Servers in my city make 14.50 minimum wage, still demand 20 percent tip. Restaurant uses service charges to help bring parity amongst employees. People complain servers aren't getting their tip and about service fee. Restaurant leaves tip line in on top of service charge as tipping is so ingrained here. Tipping culture cycle continues. All the servers I know are still broke somehow.
It's wild that in Canada we have the same minimum wage for all employees (tipped or not), but still have tipping culture. It's a double whammy for the consumer.
Anyone who repeats the misleading factoid that waiters get paid “less than minimum wage” can be ignored. If the waiter minimum wage + tips makes less than the standard minimum wage, the employer has to pay the difference. And while some employers do engage in illegal wage theft, it’s generally not by abusing this mechanism.
Yeah he is completely incorrect. US and European waiters are nowhere as nice as the ones in Asia even though there is no expectation to tip in most Asian countries. And if tips are expected it is instead mandatory as a compulsory service charge in those types of restaurants that you know about before hand
Servers if anything are overpaid a lot of the time. The guy cooking your food is making much less.
Some restaurants are putting on a “kitchen staff appreciation fee” to the bill.
I wouldn’t mind a restaurant system where you order through a kiosk and then pick up the food yourself
But I agree. I’m there for the food and not having to prep, cook, and clean. I don’t care about interacting with the servers.
The guy cooking your food is making much less.
This is why in countries where tipping is not part of the wages, all tips go to a common tip jar and are then distributed among cooks, waiters and other staff that helped make the stay enjoyable even if didn't deal with the customer directly.
User deleted comment
5mo
Food is already expensive. Pay these people better.
Words have no meaning anymore. Slavery?
The more melodramatic your language, the more restless young rebels without a cause you give meaning to, the better your content does on the algorithm. It's much easier to have a hit video if you call it slavery because you'll get engagement from both the wannabe revolutionaries AND the reactionaries.
I agree service staff need higher wages. I agree tipping culture needs to go away. But all the servers I know can easily make $300 a night so it’s not always bad for the servers. People out here acting like servers just don’t get paid. That’s not really true.
This assumes one has to or is forced to somehow work a tipping job. I personally worked tables for years and I promise you I would much rather have my tips than the wages on a check two weeks later that i would’ve received for the same hours I was working. You don’t have to become a server so there zero way this is slavery.
I'm a waiter.
If servers on a tipped wage don't make minimum wage up in tips, the owner has to pay regular minimum wage.
If you get rid of tipping owners would just pay the absolute minimum in order staff the restaurant. Let's not kid ourselves. You'd be taking decent jobs and turning them to shit jobs. And the customer would still be paying around the same price.
If you’re good at your job , typically you can make more money per table or patron and thus typically more money per hour than a “livable wage “. Yes , there are those that don’t tip and there are those who tip the bare minimum. However as I said before, being good at the job often averages out the under tipped checks. As a bartender at the end of the night I often made around 40$ per hour and you are going to be hard pressed to find any non specialized industry with that type of salary.
The rest of the world.... has cheaper restaurant prices than the USA and still pays their workers good.
This guy hasn't stepped a day out of the USA to bark that much BS.
And you don’t get rushed in restaurants because they want their next table in.
Actually the US has one of the highest median incomes in the world.
Not many places pay better than the US.
If I’m sitting down at a restaurant and being provided service, you have to do some dumb shit for me not to tip you 20%.
Who TF has enough money saved up to live off if they leave their job LOL.
I never tip. I’m sorry for the waiters but why would I pay twice for the same service?
And if you complain to a manager, they will just keep you off the schedule or schedule you for the slow days/times.
Does that equal slavery?
"Subsidize food costs" so the rest of the world's restaurants must cost an arm and a leg.
Let's not BS it at all. Waiter like tips and restaurants do too.
It's not slavery but it is fucking idiotic
This is 100% wrong. I make so much more money as a waiter than anything else I’ve done. My tips average out to $20+ an hour and there are plenty of restaurants where people make more. I’ve never been able to save more than $50-100 per paycheck and I’m putting away $400 per paycheck. If we forced restaurants to pay their employees a higher wage and outlawed tipping culture the cost of your meal would be higher and we’d get paid less. Waiting tables is honestly one of the best jobs you can get without a fancy degree.
Home of the free and backwards culture
In many developed countries tipping is seen as gauche. Servers will look at you with a "I don't need your charity" look. This is the self-respect that US servers should aspire to.
If you don’t want to tip then don’t.
Utter nonsense
Waiters make about twice as much as the cooks, bussers and dishwashers.
The only people who benefit from tipping are the waiters themselves
Yeah that's literally not slavery
I appreciated tips as a waiter and definitely made more from tips than if I trusted the restaurant to pay me.
Also, if someone is rude enough you can 100% kick them out
Tipping is perfect example what is wrong in our societies:
Assholes pay less than the good people, the salt of the earth. The latter pays more than their share because they are good people and want good things to happen to other people too. They pay THE MOST. The sociopathic assholes leave without tipping. They pay less, you pay more.
Goodness.. is punished and being greedy, selfish bastard is rewarded. Once you look at things from that angle.. it is everywhere. Being good and altruistic is punished and being selfish and greedy is rewarded.
No here is the real reason. No one that actually is worth a phuck would ever be a server/waiter for minimum wage. If there were no tips involved, the only people that would work these jobs would be teens for their first jobs. In house dining would disappear completely. The only reason anyone serves is the potential of making more then minimum wage. No one wants to be a server, no one. People only do it because there is the incentive of tip.
Would you rather make $20 an hour or the possibility to get tipped $60 an hour? Because you’re not getting tipped if that’s the case
Now, go ask any waiter or bartender in the US if they'd be willing to do away with tips as their main source of income. I'm not saying tipping isn't bull shit but to sit here and act like waitstaff are oppressed when 99% of them would quit on the spot if you took away their tips is a bit silly.
I worked as a server and bartender for years. I would never have done it for a fixed wage instead of tips. The only people I ever knew in the service industry that wanted a fixed wage instead of tips were the bottom-of-the-barrel worst employees. The ones that wouldn't do side-work, would always want to swap their Tuesday lunch for your Saturday dinner, never knew the menu, etc.
Every restaurant I worked in, there was a range of average sales/check averages - some people were better at up-selling. As well as a range of tip averages, in some cases from 12% to 22% (yes, I still remember you Melissa.). Better pay for better work should be normalized across more industries, not fewer.
In California they get $15 an hour plus tips. In the right restaurant you can easily make $80k a year
He’s wrong, waiters make more than any other similarly unskilled position. They make more than other food service workers, more than retail, etc. The only people who like tips are waiters
I was a waiter pre-pandemic.
We were paid $2.13/hr, and the majority of our wages came from tips. Despite the low hourly rate, serving at a busy place can be very lucrative compared to many 'living wage' jobs. I would have made less than half of what I made had I been paid the standard hourly rate.
You could make anywhere from $15 for an entire 8-12 hour shift, up to $400+.
At my location, you'd get horribly entitled people who blow through $300+, ask for everything under the sun, complain trying to get their entire order discounted, and leave maybe a $5 tip- which would be made up by people who'd throw out a 30% tip later in the evening.
Looking back, I just hate everything about the system.
The mental gymnastics you had to jump through only to get treated like shit, the fakeness, and weird sense of exploitation you felt on the good nights... It's all so warped.
I shouldn't be making more money than a school teacher while begging for people to pay me for overpriced mediocre food. It is gross.
I make 42 an hour waiting tables on average, livable wage would ruin me.(not including the $5.80 the resurant pays me) Fuck off with this. I've only been serving for 8 years with 5 of fine dining so it's not hard to work your way up to fine dining. You can also have a morning job.
The amount of boot licking in this thread is hilarious
Canada AND North America? That's crazy.
Someone’s is true. Some of this is a really weird soapbox
They don't get a tip anyways from me. Not after they all decided to think it's cute and funny to go viral on all those dumb ass apps. The one I seen about the little old lady really pissed me off. Had her grandkids for a burger and a cone and no doubt was on a fixed income and that little bitch put her on tik tok because she left like a 2 dollar tip instead of 20. She fucked over every server for me.
I'm an Australian and I've been to the US.
The price of food is not fucking cheap and I'm excluding the conversion. Most of the meals I paid were the same price as a meal i'd get in Australia.
Then tip 20% on top is friggin wild.
That's my answer, but when the question is, why doesn't the US have universal Healthcare.
Right, except the prices in the U.S. and Canada are far higher than most other countries, and staff are treated terribly, not paid a fair wage, and people with less money are mocked and ridiculed for not paying an extortionate amount to staff because the owners of those establishments are greedy as hell.
So why don't these people quit if it's so bad.... lol. What a mook.
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