I was with you until here Ship. Tipping isn't charity. It's paying the wage for a job that the job pretty much "demands". Without the tips, the valet is making $4 an hour. He's counting on all the peaks and valleys of good days and bad days to come out to, depending on the gig and level of actual customer service, an even $8-$12 an hour, which is approximately what that level of work-place-proficiency deserves. Yes, some make more, and some make less.

*edit* I may have taken your statement too literally upon re-reading it. I'm sure that what you meant was just that you don't spit on the little people just because "you're above them" (let's not go into THAT discussion!)


As for saving two bucks to prove a point, how about this. Instead of buying that $2 20oz Coke, buy a case of cans for $0.25 per can. Take the dollar you save per bottle and put that money in a jar labeled "****ing bull****" and bring that money with you every time you're knowingly going somewhere that society has placed you in such an awful position to have to tip someone.

I know it is most likely pointless, and a great troll...but my hope is that at least a few people who are on the fence about it will be realize the logic here and agree that tipping = standard.

I agree tipping isn’t charity and maybe I could have put that better, very hung over still from Chicago. My point was that I am lucky and I realize it. Sure I worked hard to get where I am, but without my being born in the right place all my work might not have amounted to much and I recognize that. Thus when I use a service that needs tipping I typically go for more rather than less.

While I ate my $1,300 dinner on Friday night at the Chicago Chophouse I was glad I was on my side of the table. When the bill came and the waiter had already put 18% on since we were a party of six I slid in an extra $50 to the check holder without my friends or wife seeing it….I wasn’t doing it to be the big spender, I was doing it because the guy was great at his job and made our night enjoyable and so I wanted his to be as well. I will never see him again and my friends didn’t see me put the money in…I did it purely because I think it is the right thing to do. Sure I just lit a match to $50 but that is what keeps our society going in the long run.

Thanks for the thread title change mod.

Ship is right.

That is all.

I think "Stevie" had to have known about Tiger. Too many girls. And this was happening during tournaments. Don't you think he would have called once and heard a girl in the background or walked in his room and saw some underwear, lipstick, lingerie, vibrator. Hanging out with Jordan and Barkley.

Come'on Stevie. We are not that naive. You can't pull off this stunt for a decade when you are his 'best friend' and with him on the road.

Don't derail the thread =P

That's under the assumption that Stevie and Tiger hung out or talked outside the golf course.

Especially in a tourney setting, there could have just been this arrangement like 'be ready 2.5 hrs before my tee time' and they part ways the rest of the day.

Ofc it's a bit far-fetched to think they never crossed-paths over the course of their 12 year partnership, but it's certainly possible, especially given what seems like Tiger's complete disconnect from fellow golfers/the club/etc.

Which completely destroys all your points about why tipping is in place.

When it comes to tipping, I'm an internet tough guy.

I always tip unless the service was just horribly bad. I'm human just like the rest of you and feel bad if I don't tip. That doesn't change the fact that the current tipping setup in America is only in place because it benefits the employer.

So you're telling me that the businesses who currently have a tipping structure in place would actually make more money if they paid their employees a living wage without tips?

I personally don't like entering into contracts that I never signed, nor had a part in negotiating the terms of. When that happens you can bet your last dollar that the person drawing up the contract (the business) will put in terms that benefit them, not you.

The bus boy comment was an obvious joke.

calmdownbro.jpg

You are dead wrong.

If everyone in America stopped tipping tomorrow, that valet would be making at least double that $4/hr and it would be paid by the company/person who employs him/her.

I might not get a, "have a good day sir!!" with a handshake and a smile, but I'd still get my car and they'd still make enough to not go elsewhere for employment.

None of you arguing for tipping have addressed the point of who wanted, and did, put tipping into action.

Hint: It sure as hell wasn't the consumer.

It's hilarious to see how great this has worked out for the business owners where tipping makes up a large portion of the employees salary. Now it's our duty as members of a free society to tip, and if you don't think it's a great idea, you're unintelligent and a big meany. LMAO, in their wildest dreams they couldn't have thought it would go this well.

No it doesn't. They pay more for stuff. It's more expensive. You're paying the same amount no matter what the structure is. If anything, the business makes the same amount of money and the customer gets better service (most of the time) because the employees are trying harder to make as much money as they can.





That's not at all what he was saying. He was saying that your money would be going to the employer instead of the employee, and the employer would then pass that money along to the employee and that it's going to cost you, the customer, the same amount.


Ah yes, the instant "You're mad but I'm not" win card. You assume we're here hammering on our keyboards. The part that tilted me was the part about not being able to speak my mind. I hate that. I was tilted over that. But I'm not sitting here brewing and steaming like you'd love to believe. Next you'll post "This is my last post in here because I don't care and obviously you do, so that makes me the winner."

Go forum warrior somewhere else. Back your words up with actual logic and maybe you wouldn't have to resort to "LOL U MAD?" comments and the like.

Yes. I said that they'll be paid twice as much as they're being paid now...and they're still going to be paid by you. Just because some business owners back in 1920 saved some money at the time doesn't mean that it's still in place now for the same reasons. I will grant you that the most likely scenario where this all started was so some business owner could make more money by strictly cutting costs without lowering his sale prices, but nowadays those costs are already factored into their price points. For the same overall-out-of-pocket expense to you, you're claiming you'd prefer not to have service with a smile. Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

So then why is it that places like Subway are so much cheaper than the restaurant alternative?

I have a hard time believing food would cost 20% more than it does now if tipping establishments went to a non-tipping model. Neither of us have the data to back up our side of this, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I wasn't the one who started throwing around personal insults, he was. That's why I told him to calm down.

And I have backed up what I'm saying with logic.

You're agreeing that it started out as a way for business owners to increase profits, but your claim is that somewhere along the way, they decided to go ahead and reduce food prices to the point where it's now a wash.

You're giving business owners way more credit than they deserve. Not to say they're all evil people or anything, because I don't think they are, but their job is to maximize profits. To assume (with zero data to back it up) that they have reduced prices along the way to make it a wash is pretty laughable.

And lol at telling me I'm arguing for the sake of arguing. You have no way of knowing that and I've done nothing to give that impression. What is the point in saying something like that?

For the same reason Walmart is cheaper than a mom and pop store. Volume. Small margins at high volume. The process is streamlined and the ingredients are cheaper in both quality and processing (including transportation, prep, etc). Also, Subway takes less than 3 or 4 minutes to get you in and out the door once it's your turn to be serviced. They're not paying someone to wait on you for 45-60 minutes, and to keep a cook, a hostess, and a manager on duty. They're just paying a manager and a glorified sandwich making cashier.



A simple analysis of the difference in wages for two waitresses for one shift at a small restaurant:

Right now they make $2.50 an hour. There's three of them at 8 hours, so that makes $60 bucks.

If they were to make $10 an hour (a more realistic wage to recruit the same level of service they were getting for $2.50+tips), so three waitresses at 8 hours..that's $240 bucks, a difference of $180.

That's not just $180 bucks. That's $180 going into the cost of the goods, and I won't go into profit margins and stuff because my point was assuming the owner didn't make a dime more or less than they currently do. I wish I knew more about the restaurant business to throw some realistic numbers out there from here but I can't and I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know for sure. It might not be a 20% increase in the price to the customer, but I'd wager it's close.

The more realistic thing that would happen is that the owners would keep the wages at or below $8 an hour and every restaurant in the country will employ the same people that society has scrubbing toilets and calling you at home to sell you cleaning products or credit card offers. Bottom of the barrel in an industry that is alive because people enjoy eating out so much.

Wow, this is going deeper than I thought. I'm going to stop here because now I'm thinking about the entire economy and how things would have to change to phase out tipping from the entire system.



Not really. Your argument has degenerated to "neither of us know for sure, so let's leave it at that."



I'm not saying they reduced prices to keep it fair for the public. I'm saying that over time, to be competitive, the price wars keep everything down quite a bit. Unless everyone agrees to fix prices (lol gas industry much?), general economics dictates that everyone will price around the same as the lowest price one business is willing to settle for, and the few profitable businesses will scrape by with ****ty margins. It's the same reason Walmart is putting mom and pops out of business. The mom and pop cannot streamline and keep costs down low enough to make a profit at the sale prices Walmart sets, and consumers generally refuse to pay more than they have to for a good.

I can agree with you that the original intent in tipping was for the owners that originally designed the process. It's not the same anymore though. Now it's just kinda stuck that way, and you're deluding yourself into blaming "the current owners" and "the current industry" to save two dollars.



*edit* This is actually kinda fun btw

It's pretty clear to me now that Stevie and Tiger deserve each other after all. The Stevie didn't know routine and anyone who believes such a thing hurts my brain. What really is truly amazing about all this, is that Tiger, after a whole lifetime of winning at just about everything on epic levels can now seemingly not do one single thing right or make himself look better in any situation. Truly bizarro.

I'm not going to reply to the rest of your post because we're just repeating ourselves at this point, but I wanted to point out how unfair/dishonest this claim is.

I gave plenty of points along the way. Just because I'm not naive enough to claim I'm 100% correct, and there can be no doubt, doesn't mean I didn't provide logical points along the way. In fact, you agreed with one of those points so its quite silly to make such a claim.

First off I dont know the history of tipping and who started it.

2ndly why does that matter? The real question you should have asked is "who benefits from tipping?"

3rdly, I dont know why Im bothering to answer this. I feel you are not open to the fact you are possibly wrong. No amount of logic and reason is going to penetrate your skull and find its way into your thoughts.

And lastly I'll try to answer your question. Yes it does benefit the owners of the company. But in my opinion it also benefits the consumers and the service staff employees.

I'll give you my opinion, since I feel based on my experiences in my life Im probably more qualified to answer that question than anyone I personally know.

I was a server for 5 years, I have been the consumer for 27 years (23ish that I have a good memory of), I have done the accounting for a very large restaurant chain (145 restaurants), a small restaurant chain (6 restaurants) and a single restraunt with only 1 location for 4 years. So that is over 600 years of combined experience doing the accounting for restaurants. Currently I do the business accounting for 31 companies (although currently only 1 of which involves any type of tipping).

So I'd like to say I have a very good understanding of the 3 different views that can be had about this conversation.

Like I said I believe it benefits all 3 parties to have tipping in place.

Why? Well I think you even know why it benefits the employer so I wont bother.

Consumer, they are benefited because they get to tip based on their personal experience. This makes the server more likely to care about that customers experience.

Servers, the reason I said servers like tipping is because they can have more confidence in their coworkers, which makes for a better work environment. Servers that suck dont get tipped well and will quit or leave, making the people around you more compitent and harder working. So I guess this should be qualified that only good servers like tipping, bad ones probably would rather get a salary.

I would say the consumer is benefited more in terms of the fact that with tipping the restaurants can hire workers at far less per hour, thus keeping the prices of their meals/drinks/etc. down.

Although I agree with you. That is 100% subjective.

You can quantify the amount of benefit a server gets, and the amount of benefit the employer gets. But how do you quantify getting better service? What is that better service worth to you?

That is the problem.

I believe that lok2 thinks that getting better service is almost worthless. So he would rather not tip and let the employer pay the employee. This will result in worse service and higher cost of the product for him. So his out of pocket expense is going to be about the same*. So the only difference to him is the service WILL get worse.

Since there is no way to quantify the value of good service, everyone will have a different rating for who they think benefits more from tipping; and to be honest each person will be right in their answer because your individual value of good v. bad service is their personal opinion.

What Im arguing is that lok2 seems to think that 1 of these 3 parties is actually being harmed by the tipping process.

*Truthfully his out of pocket expenses would be more because employers like to make this thing called profit.

Oops I misread this the 1st time.

I thought you were saying that consumers benefit more than the restraunts do because of tipping.

I think I wrote that response after reading the fist 8 words of your comment.

Why is it so hard to understand that if waitresses got paid 3x their current wages, all that would happen is that menu prices go up.

bump

I'm reading John Feinstein's Moment of Glory and he has this to say about Steve Williams:

"Except when talking to his boss or someone he deems important, Williams is one of the more unpleasant men you are likely to meet in any walk of life. His colleagues have dubbed him "the vigilante caddy," since he often takes it upon himself to yell at professional photographers for doing their job or to destroy cameras owned by fans who are not authorized to have them on the golf course".

That's pretty much what I've thought of him over the years.

Seems strange that Williams would make basically the same comments about Phil Mickelson, no?

i could probably validate or invalidate this statement with close to 100% accuracy if you'd like.

Please, and then validate your validation