So your plan is to discourage everybody else from tipping, in hopes that the dealers will argue a better wage, which means the casino will rake more in order to afford the extra wages they give the dealer, thus costing you more money.

Good job.

The chances that you've ever actually even come close to doing this in real life are somewhere between zero and zero. Most 2p2'ers in real life are borderline social outcasts who barely speak or make eye contact at the table. I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced that you're the William Wallace of tipping protocol, stepping up on a soapbox at the beginning of each session to say this.

Or how about you don't say or do anything. If somebody tries to antagonize you and ask you why you don't tip, tell them to mind their own business.

If I get grief for tipping my usual .25 cents a pot I just say, "I'm sorry I have to really watch my money right now, I've been kinda having a bad time financial wise with losing my job and everything, I'll be glad when things pick up for me so I'll be able to tip more someday."

Cool...and then when the waitress comes over and takes your food or drink order, I will be glad to tell her that you don't believe in tipping and that you further believe that if she is unhappy with her hourly wage she can protest to management...Bon Appetit!

I've told this story here once, I think, years ago.

Guy orders water, gets it, doesn't tip (dunno why, but I noticed this). Does it again 20 minutes later. 30 minutes later, he orders water again. Waitress returns without his water. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot". She returns again, again without water saying "I didn't have room on my tray". I think she did it to him a third time, but it mighta just been two. Guy is fuming. After she sashays away he's asking WTF?!?!?!

I decide to explain it to him. He starts bouncing around in his chair making threats about going to management and demanding she be fired, he's never been so outraged in his life, he won't stand for this treatment, blahblahblah. Someone else suggests "or you could just give her a dollar". Eventually the guy decides to take that advice and starts tipping and the water starts flowing again.

Easy game.

Easy solution to that, just bring your own bologna sandwich and a coke or whatever with you from home. No need to tip the waiters then.

Then why on earth would you be gambling?

Are the waiters and other service people independent contractors or are they employed by the establishment? The quality of service must be a standard, not a sliding scale based on how well they're bribed to pay more attention to you and incentivized against spitting in your food, as you seem to be insinuating.

lol tipping culture

It's hard to argue against someone who doesn't feel like doing his/her best work if he/she isn't going to get paid. No one said anything about spitting in food, but maybe that person will get his order last instead of first.

Like the guy who tips in quarters said, bring your own if you don't want to pay for the service.

Poker isn't gambling

But you are paying for the service. The employer's overhead, including wages for services rendered, is covered in the price. At least, it's supposed to be. Employers pay the employee, not patrons. No, it's not my responsibility as a consumer to cover the living costs of somebody who produces a good or provides a service. You produce a low quality good, you don't sell and you don't eat. You provide terrible service, you don't work and you don't eat. That's everybody's each and own responsibility. You don't like your wage? Get a better job. Not qualifed? Get a better education. Don't have money? Get a loan. And yes, I don't care about paying a higher price, if it means the service peoples' wages go up.

Save money by making your customers absorb a large portion of your own employees' wages... You've bloody well gotta admire the sheer capitalist genius of this degree of social conditioning.

I am in awe of how highly intelligent people still defend this completely arbitrary, subjective, emotional and irrational custom. lol

Then I'm sure you'll have nothing to worry about, so enjoy your beer and chili.

**** beer and chili.

You seem to be suggesting that a service person should do away with standards or at least have them set to some low baseline, pending the tips. If that's the case, why not tip everybody up front? That way your food will always be clean, on time, and you'll get extra special attention (which is totally unnecessary, mind you, but it makes you feel special, doesn't it?). You must walk into every restaurant, bar and casino expecting the apathetic treatment, that is, until you pull out your roll and start throwing money at them.

The standard must be set by the establishment that hires the service provider and everybody must get the same standard of service and treatment. Partial treatment based on gratuity is conceptually corrupt.

I'm not defending the "tipping culture." It's been put on me, so I know that it's a part of going out. If I want to go to a restaurant but I don't want to tip, I go to a place without waitstaff. If I don't want to pay for a waitress getting me sodas in a poker room, I walk over and get my own. (Yes, I actually do both of these things sometimes.) You can choose not to participate as I sometimes do, but accepting the service without paying for it via tipping is an ethical violation.

Rapini, this is such an obvious answer to when everybody asks something like "Why should I tip(a reasonable amount)? The casino takes enough already that I shouldn't have to pay more!" or "If I tip (a reasonable amount) it will make my winrate go down (or lossrate go up) too much to make it worth my time to play". Perhaps, as the mod, you could make something like this a sticky or FAQ at the beginning of this thread.

The only thing is you didn't use poker dealers as an example. If someone is dead set enough against tipping a poker dealer, they should also find a poker room that either doesn't have dealers (meaning they have machines) or one where dealers don't take tips (like in Australia*, where the rakes are much higher and the dealers actually are paid full market value for their service by the casino).

* Admittedly, my only knowledge of Australia's lack of a "tipping culture" in poker rooms comes from browsing though the threads of rooms in Australia in threads in the poker venues subforum of B&M.

Is this real life? Was my post even read?

Waitstaff are paid to bring you that soda. That's why they're paid to stand around and attend to people. You are not their employer, you do not pay them their wage. If you want to opt in and do so, it's your money and you're certainly more than free to do as you wish. It's not wise to part with your money under no obligation of any kind (societal and cultural pressures notwithstanding), but it is still your choice.

Now, if they're not paid a wage at all, but are simply allowed by the manager/owner to work there on tips only, then that's a different story altogether.

they are paid under minimum wage. that is why this has become so debated... They do get salaries but it is not enough to sustain a living and is not really their expected salaries. The house only pays them enough to tell them what to do IMO but that money is negligible. You seem to be arguing in a perfect world a tipping culture wouldn't exist. This is probably agreed by 99% of people in this thread. But that world probably existed at one time and rich people got pissed @ bad service and started tipping and the waitresses ignored every1 else until every1 tips. If you want to not tip waitresses now that this culture exists you are effectively making some1 underpaid because their salaries have been adjusted because of this. Hypothetically the house should take more rake and pay dealers/waitresses a normal amount though IMO (done in Europe and Australia?). I think for this to be better they should also fire bad dealers/waitresses but in reality that wouldn't happen and every employee would prob blow.

Why don't you just have security come and escort out any player who does not tip?

Again, the sheer arrogance of the "if you don't tip, go somewhere else" crowd.

What next, if a player is too tight for your liking, boot him out too? "Sorry George, you don't generate big enough pots, hence rake, for the casino."

How about accepting the fact that an extremely small percentage of players, for whatever reason, do not tip? Live with it.

Better yet, put a big sign up in the card room: "Players are required to tip the dealer at least $1 for any pot that has a flop" -- you think that will help the dealers' bottom line?

In California they get at least $8/hr.

In Nevada they get $8.25 ($7.25 if they get benefits).

Two of your larger poker economies.

I didn't know that was true... I've had dealers tell me they make 3-4$/hr w/o tips. (they could lie to get bigger tips or could be different on east coast) If that is true then I feel as though i'm overpaying TBH. I know minimum wage for them is less so they don't have to make much from the house.

It's this "class" of employees that results in your question. Very specifically, "tipped employees" are a class of employee for which the standard federal minimum wage does not apply. Instead, employers must pay a tipped employee at least $2.13 / hour.

This is real life in the US. Your post was read and understood as someone on the outside looking in. You probably don't know that the vast majority of people in tipped positions--waitstaff for example--are not paid the federally mandated minimum wage, which supposedly is the minimum someone could live on. Therefore their salaries are NOT figured into overhead, etc., like you said in your original post.

You can pretend all you want that you're under no ethical obligation to tip, but it doesn't change the obligation.

The slippery slope doesn't really work here, as your post demonstrates. No one is saying there should be a rule or law requiring tipping a certain amount, tipping in certain situations, or even tipping at all. What I said is that there is an ethical obligation to tip in these situations.

Then that's a major cop-out by business US-wide, and like I said earlier, a genius solution to cutting costs. I'd be happy to tip, if they work for tips only, but it's this idea that it's almost as if the business subsidizes their own employees' earnings that I have a problem with. Either pay your employees what the market value of their labour dictates, or tell them they can't pay them and that they're welcome to work on tips only. Then let the service person decide if those working terms are acceptable.

This half-ass, inbetween compromise is bull****, and I won't apologize for not playing along. Call me stingy or cheap if you like, but the name calling won't mean anything other than an attempt to guilt-trip and potentially ostracize the non-tipping party into conforming and contributing to the custom.

This is what I take big issue with. To say that somebody is acting unethically, that alone is enough to warrant that the viewpoint you're supporting is correct by virtue of it being ethical. Problem is, you have to argue and show how it is ethical. The only argument that's been made so far is something along the lines of, "you're not paying for a service that's provided to you."

What's wrong about this particular argument is that there is no contract on the terms of the service. It's not agreed upon prior to the service being provided. If we agree beforehand on terms (no, walking into a restaurant and sitting down/being seated is not an implicit agreement into this tipping contract), and then I break those terms, I've done something unethical. I'd have to renege on my word or cheat/deceive the other party somehow for it to be unethical - the action of reneging or deceiving itself is what's unethical. So you need to show how not tipping becomes unethical. You can't just say it's wrong, if I haven't actually wronged anyone.

Some places include a service charge on the bill and the service person tells you upfront or there's a sign or note in the menu. That's sometimes saying, "tip included in your bill." It doesn't matter much to me as a customer whether that service charge goes to the owner or to the server, since I'm still getting squeezed for that extra cash. You can clarify, then tip anyway, if it makes you feel better. It doesn't make it ethical to do so, or unethical not to do so in this case.

Do you understand the difference between implicit versus explicit? Because it really seems like you don't.