Served/bartended quite a bit. Currently doing it

If they made a service charge 20% I'd be fine with it if it all went to me, but I'm sure some restaurant owners would try to finagle some of it knowing how they can be. Hell, my own brother takes 5% of servers CC tips to pay for service charges. I'd guess 17-18% is about average after all these years so I'd want no less than 20 because while there are some bad days I'd never want to discourage those who will randomly drop me 50 bucks on an 80$ bill just to be nice.

Also, you dont have to report your cash tips if you dont want, I'm betting some of you forget that. In California, they take tax right out of your paycheck from your CC tips. Of course these states who allow businesses to pay servers 2.13$ an hour are a joke. At least pay 10$ an hour (I know California pays 12) so if they do have a bad month they arent struggling as it happens.

Jfound, you're a jackass. Not everybody is an upbeat bubbly person, but if you're given good service just tip well. Those big titted blondes get taken care of in life as it is. So you really should be tipping inversely in these situations.

Also, be slightly more generous in life guys. If everyone left an extra buck or two itd really help out. I've worked in coffee too, you come get your 5 dollar latte 5 days a week, so what you tip 5 bucks a week. Again, if everybody does that all the workers wage goes from 10 an hour to 13 an hour. It's a big difference.

And no Mustafa, they dont pay a living wage at these places are you foreal?

But he's THIS CLOSE to getting a date with this one girl!

Heh. I edited this to de-personalize my post a bit. But exactly, she dont want you man

I agree but I'd rather see it in the menu prices rather than a service charge much like most consumers would rather see the price of the hotel room all in one line item rather than room + room tax + resort fee + resort fee tax.

I get the traditional tipping services as I've lived with them my whole life. I just have more of an issue that they've led to more and more people asking for tips for what have previously been non-tipped jobs. I don't want to call it retail panhandling but it still feels off to me. I get that many of these people don't make enough to live on from their current job but I find it odd that the proprietor of the establishment has no shame basically saying I don't pay them enough, would you like to help? And if choose not to tip, I now have it in the back of my mind that I might get some "extra protein" with my order and so I'm turned off by the whole feature especially in the counter service areas.

Scamming is a part of the culture

And to be clear again, this debate, outside perhaps the very lowest end of serving is not about a living wage and even at the very lowest end, I have not seen evidence and my experience does not suggest the waitstaff do not do BETTER getting tips than they would a set hourly wage paid for by a service charge.

Yes anecdotal but that on one of my first hits on a random google search I found an IHOP forum were servers and potential servers talked and found this (and I did not cherry pick thru responses this was one of the first)


"...I've been a server for 15 years and have worked in franchise restaurants like IHOP to four diamond restaurants. In franchise restaurants you can make $40 one day and $190 the next but honestly it averages in the long run to about $25 an hour,..."


I think anyone would agree that $25/hr average or an ADDITIONAL $52K a year on top of the hourly wage (even if small) is a living wage, plus.


So the question we are truly addressing is more of HOW do you want the money provided to the server. Do you want the customer to be able to use some discretion and reward better service and lower it for worser, where the server still AVERAGES $25/hr on the LOW end? Or do you want the owner to take control, via a service charge and simply pay everyone the same flat wage, in an attempt to ensure the worst service always receives the same pay as the best?

Seems that you're backing yourself into a pretty anodyne statement. You can already tip anyone for anything at any time if you feel like they've done a good job. So why the focus on servers? Because there is a whole apparatus in the US designed to pay them substandard wages and then say don't worry they make it up in tips and by the way it helps you as a customer if we do this.

I reject the premise of what you say here generally and have provided info as to why.

Again my position has nothing to do with societies and restaurateurs setting a 'base wage' whether set to the 'minimum wage or choosing to pay above any set minimum wage, as many do.

The entire issue I am discussing her would be the 'extra' money these servers typically make above and beyond what would be included in that base wage.

So if you look at the IHOP server example I highlighted above who says servers in his industry 'average $25/hr in tips' ($52K/annum) which is ON TOP of any base hourly wage, should those tips and that EXTRA $52K/yr he is making instead be taken in by the restaurateur as a service charge and the restaurateur INSTEAD just pay the server a higher hourly wage utilizing some, but perhaps not all, of that money.

If that specific IHOP server said 'no thx, I would rather keep my tips and not get a bump in my base pay as I doubt I will make as much', the question is would other people who are not servers say 'sorry but for your own good I am getting rid of tips'?

My unscientific answer:

I like tipping because leaving a good tip makes me feel good and being vindictive and leaving a bad tip to rude servers also makes me feel good.

I usually tip the occasional terrible servers higher--with the hope that they'll re-evaluate their lives

Even when I have received poor service I struggle to really leave a punitive tip. I give 15% for poor service and have given as high as 25% for fantastic service and that tends to be my range.


Only once in my entire life can i recall service so bad that myself and our entire table left no tip.

We had a server who never checked in on our table, we had to wave arms and chase the person for every drink needed. No check in after food was brought to the table to ensure everyone got what they ordered. It was so bad that a nearby table saw us waving at points and would flag the server for us to get the person to pay attention. And the restaurant was not busy.

In that instance we left zero tip.

When did I say I didn’t tip well, if I get good service u get a nice tip unless u are a bad person and give bad vibes. I just tip extra if you look cute. I tip base on vibes(Oxymoronic cause if I get bad vibes I ain’t getting a good service). You are just entitled, lots of people are homeless they need the tips more than u do but u only care about urself. Go f ur self if u think I’m an jackass, u don’t even know me. 20% not entitled at all when mcd workers don’t even get tips. Why doesn’t cashier or other service gets tips when they provide too.

Honestly I feel 4 u but the truth is we need to tax the rich people n be More socialist.
Crony Capitalism in American is mess up. Trust me I tip well Unless u have bad vibes then I just give enough. Tax the ****ing rich so you don’t have to pay so much taxes

Same, that's why I specified rude. If the food's late it could be the kitchen's fault and out of your control. If you're not checking in, maybe you're getting slammed. But there's no real excuse for rudeness.

I would also not tip in that last scenario you had. Don't think that's ever happened to me though, at least not to that degree.

No name calling please, thanks.

Regarding your first post, I cant decide for the people who work at McDonald's-we're talking about servers right now. I've always been confused having cooked and served why anybody decides to cook. It's a grueling job and yes you're garunteed a paycheck but I dont think it's worth it.

All this political and economical talk here is a cop out. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand. The reason I singled you out is the whole thought behind a lot of people's actions are If they tipped the waitress at Hooters 30% they should make up for that the next time they go out and their server isnt the most attractive and give 12%. Maybe this isnt you, but there are some really petty ignorant rednecks out there who justify their behavior in many different walks of life. I think it's best to judge solely on the service you get.

Explain "vibes". If your server isnt attractive but runs for every drink and anticipates all your questions how much are they getting compared to the same who is attractive (male or female?)

She gets more than the one being just attractive n doesn’t do much customer service.

If you have no cook how do u expect to serve

Yes, if there's one thing we've learned, it's that rewarding bad behavior def causes people to stop the bad behavior.

Not sure what you're rejecting here. You can tip anyone, at any time, for anything. If Jeff Bezos holds the door open for you, you can tip him 5 bucks if you want. And if you wanted a Jeff Bezos that held doors open for people you should want to tip him, but most people don't even consider tipping rich people for things, why not?

Because tipping, while nominally having a idea of meritocracy, is primary used because we implicitly understand that service workers live precarious lives and we tip to help salve that precariousness. It's also why tipping is spreading through society and being mostly focused on lower income service trades. Because inequality means that people know that they have far more money than others and it's a way to help balance out that inequality.

So your hypothetical remains just that, a remote hypothetical. If service workers were making a decent wage and weren't extremely dependent on tips, it wouldn't even be much of a question of should you tip or not. Tip if you want, just like you can tip anyone right now if you want.

I am rejecting a hypothetical that is literally true but practically meaningless.

Yes we could tip at Dry Cleaners and everywhere prior but NO ONE DID. Fact is, if you remove tipping as PART of the payment method that is expected then you kill off tipping in any way that is worthy of discussion.

You are correct and perhaps someone has tipped Bezos for holding a door. I still would NOT include that fact in any reasonable discussion on tipping.

meh I look at it as another variant of being way dressed down/sometimes even worse for whatever reason and the server being lackadaisical until the end when they find out they were actually serving the best tipper in the place Once people start down the road of coming up with excuses to dock servers for every slight real or imagined they're off on a different trip ime and it's always easy to find a reason. Nothing changes if you keep doing the same things--but if whatever you're doing is working for you go for it. I'm good

Reading is not one of my strong suits but I don't see where I referred to a living wage in my post.

Why bother when you can just pass the cost on to your customers. Tipping culture benefits servers hugely as well. Arguably, it benefits customers too.

Being Australian I haven't had much exposure to tipping apart from a stint as a bartender in London where part of my income was supplemented by tips (albeit not very much) but my interest really does stem in that field of minimum wage workers that work for tips over in the US and the disparity that I see between the same workers in the same field where the difference in income is driven by the difference in pricing yet they are doing the exact same job.

So that standard 15% or 20% tip that you might give per drink which is my example may change the take home pay quite significantly between one worker that works at a bar that charges more per drink versus another bar that doesn't assuming that they are both paying the same minimum wage which is why I always argued that you should be tipping a set amount rather than by %. Although this becomes difficult outside of the single drink purchase at a bar and you are tipping based on a total bill. If you are tipping on a total bill I think % is fine but per drink I'd like to see set tipping ($1 a beer, etc).