This still doesn't explain why servers should pay for it.

I mean everyone is making less than the owner -- if a cook wants more money surely his boss is the person to talk to about that?

The myth that all, or even most, American servers make $2.13/hr plus tips is just false, despite how often it's casually thrown out. $2.13/hr is the Federal minimum for tipped employees, and 31 states (and DC) pay more than that (up to $9.00 or more in a few states, and even $11 under certain local laws) I can't find any statistics, but looking over the various state minimums, I would guess that the national average pre-tip wage is at least $5/hr, and higher if you were to only include urban areas in your average. In addition, as El Diablo pointed out, all employers are required to pay their servers the minimum wage if they don't get there on their own with tips.

Not you personally, but poker players as a group really shouldn't be throwing stones here.

PR: You're still not understanding how that works in the US. Servers don't get a wage of $2.13 in those states, they get a wage of $2.13+tips with a MINIMUM that is usually minimum wage, sometimes more. So if nobody comes in during their shift, they get paid at least $7.25/hr. And if they make $20/hr in tips, they get paid $22.13/hr. (Edit: FYI, in SF they get paid minimum wage of ~$11/hr + tips)

Line cooks even at fine dining make **** wages. Generally speaking, the higher-end the place, the greater the disparity in income. Which prob explains why the no-tipping trend appears to be much more prevalent in high-end places.

Exactly. And the bosses have three options here. 1) Increase wages without changing anything, making operating cost % higher. 2) Increase prices to support higher operational costs. 3) Change the allocation of money spent by the consumer to compensation levels that are more equitable across front and back of house.

Some owners believe that the current system leads to a compensation model that doesn't make sense, and a no-tipping service inclusive policy lets them address that without increasing prices or decreasing profitability. I tend to agree with those owners.

mullen: No argument with that, mullen. As I said, I don't know what the correct distribution is, and it's likely different per place. Maybe at Olive garden it's $16/14 and at a higher end place it's $35/20. Different rates for different skills, and the range for servers is likely going to be wider than the range for line cooks. But at all of those places, I don't believe the current breakdown (prob something like $20/10 and $40/15 in those two examples) makes sense.

Some servers don't -- and this is sort of my point. When they don't, you wouldn't have the cooks donate a portion of their earnings to that server, so why should a server pay the cooks. Like if you were cooking when the house had a walk-out, you wouldn't/didn't attempt to pay for any of it, right?

Moreover, knowing that of the two positions one is likely to pay more than other other, we still don't have an argument why would anyone apply for the lower-paying one and then say the higher earners owe them something that the owner doesn't.

Btw this kind of in-fighting between staff is how owners avoid paying either group more.

So you just don't like the idea of servers making more even after posting a study of the things a server can or should do to increase their tips 1 or 2 % at a time -- drawing happy faces, telling jokes, flowers in the hair.

I don't really have anything against a distributed fixed auto-grat because I don't think a server will kill themselves for it as they do for an unknown tip.


How often do you get up and bring your tip to the kitchen, btw?

Hello PR, happy new year soon.

Tell Henry we said hi.

Servers need to be presentable, good with people, good communicators, not easily rattled under pressure, able to take a certain amount of abuse and smile, and good multi-taskers. You'd be surprised how many people can't do that. I'm not saying it's rocket science. But there definitely is a large segment of the population who would never be a good server.

Poker players avoiding taxes is obviously terrible too.

Yes you're right they do avoid paying taxes. But I guarantee you servers pump more of their income back into the local economy than others who make the same amount but don't walk off the job all amped up with cash in pocket.

If you're going to get rustled over servers dodging taxes, you should be out in the streets raising bloody hell over the Mitt Romney's of the world paying 10% on 9 figure incomes and investing the windfall in China. I don't care if it's legal, it's not right.

I get that you are right on one level, it's probably not fair. But taking the big picture into account, do you really think the answer to knock servers down a peg just to spite them/even things up/whatever?

This reminds me of the "The idiot at the Taco Bell drive-thru screwed up my order. He doesn't deserve to make more than $7.75/hour" line of argument. There is a lot of evidence that if people at the bottom end of the scale make more money, eventually that trickles up to the middle class in the form of upward wage pressure.

...and if they make the difference in tips, they made the difference in tips. You think that if they make more than the difference, still in tips, they are less deserving of whatever they earned above the threshold but you don't really know why except in reference to what some other person makes doing a different job, who does not have to "pay for" his own wage in this way.

I get it. It satisfies your innate sense of fairness and the reasons for that can be difficult to define, but you need to acknowledge the limited role feelings play here. This is why I asked you to stop linking to other people who also can't provide an argument why:

1. Cooks are placed at a disadvantage by servers making more and there are public-good reasons to correct this.
2. Cooks are prevented from becoming servers/bartenders (While not every cook had the server gene, all restaurant servers I knew were male).
3. The discrepancy in earnings reinforces social ills and there is a wider public benefit to stamping it out. As most servers are female and from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (and present-grounds) I don't know how you expect to argue this.

PR,

Huh? Never. Allocating wages across staff is the employer's job, not the customer's. In America, the convention is that you pay for the amount of your bill plus a gratuity. That's what I do.

I'll just repeat what I wrote above:
Not sure how much clearer I can be than that.

If you want to get into a more specific scenario, I wrote this earlier:

Let's say there's a pot of money at that place with $50 in it to pay a server and a line cook (obviously oversimplified example since there's not a 1:1 ratio of servers:cooks). In the traditional system here, that leads to compensation like $35/hr to the server and $15/hr to the line cook. I think a system that distributes that pot $30/20 or $25/25 would be better. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the impression I get is that in that situation, you believe the server deserves that $35/hr compensation. That's a totally reasonable position, I just disagree with it.

Well that's reality. No cop is going to give a **** if your manager made you split a tip with her. Maybe the labor board or something.

I asked because sometimes people will say they feel strongly about a situation like this but rarely, if ever, actually do something that would reflect their sentiment -- like they'll say that cooks and servers should make roughly the same amount but still contribute to the status quo through behaviour like tipping when they know the server will keep most of it.

This is purely an academic discussion for you, then. No problem.

i really don't care if bartenders hide their income but lol@ people who complain when guys like romney (who i can't even stand) pay hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions throughout their life in taxes.

yea they should just bend over and let the govt steal more of their money for fun.

you're right people who pay a few thousand dollars a year tops, get tens out thouands of dollars a year in govt services should be in the streets rasing bloody hell because some rich guy is only paying tens of millions in a year in taxes making their free **** possible.

You too! Henry bought artificial chicken for our New Year's dinner, I'll let you know how that goes when you come down next.

PR,

That's a silly argument. First off, this is not something I feel strongly about, not sure where you got that idea. I'm simply explaining to you why I think the no-tipping policy has merits.

I support that by patronizing a number of all-inclusive places.

I don't support that by withholding tips from people who take a job based on an expectation of a certain level of compensation; that would be ridiculous and incredibly unfair to those people.

As a line cook covering the whole restaurant on weekdays, and only 2 of us on weekends, I would get tipped out if there was a special table, a regular who wants an off menu item, or a server screw up I had to scramble to cover. A fiver once in a while, or a $20 for a big party we kicked ass on. The chef didn't care as we didn't get greedy or try to squeeze anyone.
Still, the pay was ****ty for the work involved, especially when poker was just sitting there (pre-black friday).

One thing to consider: how many illegals end up in back of the house. Spanish is the language of the kitchen.

best cook Ottawa has to offer.

The missus asks when you will ever take a vacation. If you don't neither will Henry! Maybe I can appeal to you so you'll make the drive up!

Sigh. This attitude is why the wealthy and connected are going to keep robbing the rest of us blind.



Yes please by all means let's stick it to the poor and give the Romneys of the world more money. It's working so well. What's stopping Romney from trying to go make his money in some 3rd world ****hole where the govt "steals" a lot less of his money?

New rage tilt moment, the van in front of me at a drive through makes 5 separate orders and pays for each one separately.

Holy ****! She just handed back a tray of three drinks and asked for them to be separated into two trays.

I may just rear end her.

I'd follow them to wherever they are going, wait til they park and leave, write VENMO on a brick and throw it through the window.

Problem solved.

Group diners,

Cliffs: venmo ftw

Went to lunch at a casual thai place in a loosely connected group of 7. I've only eaten with half the group before, so I'm not sure what the payment will be like. Check arrives, one of the girls says she'll put it on her card and we can just venmo her. She says it's $15 each, and everyone has settled up with Kim before the waiter has even taken the check. This is something only younger people in my circles do, but venmo is so great for this. Also I scored because my crab fried rice and Thai iced coffee were like $14 before tax+tip!