Keller said he’s changed the system so customers with reservations have to pre-pay for drinks, including a service charge. “It’s just to protect our staff,”
So, customers not paying tips is forcing the business to pay a living wage, as well as incorporate wages into the price model of products rather than leave it as a hidden morality tax?
Oh, The horror. /s
Yeah, it’s dumb. One of the many things we do differently than the whole rest of the world in service to the civic religion of capitalism.
It’s worse than that. It comes from racism and slavery. When you started having folks freed up from slavery who were doing jobs like being a waiter, Rich folk set the system up under the guise of saying good service gets good tips, but really it allowed them not to pay them. And so they had to work really hard for whatever tips they could get.
And that basically continues today. The system is absolutely bullshit.
Sounds like a good “problem” to me. Fuck tipping. It all originated from slavery also.
It really obscures costs to the consumer who is required to do math every time. A $20 meal plus tax plus tip lol. So stupid. Just post the price for the thing and be done with it.
I find service charges pretty horrifying. I would like the number on the menu to be the number that I actually pay when I cash out, and service charges don’t do that.
I’ve lived in the US for decades and I would like this too. The whole tip culture here is stupid. Just include a gratuity for the staff by default. Or better still, pay them a living wage like most other countries.
Well, the US are the only country i know of that shifts the responsibility of making sure employees can have a home and food from the employer to the costumer. In central Europe, we tip when the service was excellent, but not by default, and only when being waited at a table.
I live in Central Europe too but I have almost the opposite experience. The way I see it is that tipping culture is way worse in the US but we were always bad here aswell and we’re inching towards them every year. Honestly I also doubt that service industry people are not getting fucked almost everywhere in Europe.
FFS, it’s called a price for a reason.
If it were up to me I would turn the fucker around. Maximum listed on the menu, and if the customer behaved like an actual human being instead of an entitled prick, their final bill would be reduced by up to 20%.
The price on the menu isn’t anywhere near the bill the expect you to pay at the end.
Bill = menu-price + taxes + 20% tip
(where 20% is just a rough average)
Should be the employer paying their employee for doing their job, not the customer
America is a broken country that rewards the rich few and has no empathy for the rest
This is just one symptom of that
Exactly. Also just write the price you got to pay, including tax, service, the whole. Just the full price!
(Either that, or I wanna see a full break-up of the costs /s … how much the farmer charges, transport, wholesale, sellers cost & profit, taxes … everything)
…but that doesn’t make it “confusing”. I’m not sure why any adult would find +20% confusing. Is it fair? That’s a different question.
Yes, it’s confusing to say something costs $X then charge the customer $X+$Y.
Almost like it’s deceptive.
Most of the rest of the world expects that if you have 10 money, and see something that is advertised as costing 10 money, you can buy it.
I learned this at a kid in the US. This fast food place had cookies labeled "99¢!” so said “mom can I have a dollar for a cookie?” and she gave me one, as a treat. I hope to the register and the girl says “ok it’s actually $1.06”.
I don’t think I got the cookie that day. I don’t remember it, but if I did it was soured by capitalism.
That’s literally the reason given in the article why it’s confusing. It didn’t even have to exist if the employer paid the employee as I wrote above. The existence of the expensive tipping itself is confusing.
It’s not though. American employers don’t want to pay a living wage, therefore a 20%tax is issued to the diner. That’s not confusing and can be summed up in one sentence. If the idea is make other nations seem like idiots then… ok, I guess but it’s not “confusing”. Oh nooooo, in England I have to pay a tax on television? I’m so stupid and confused.
I’m an American. I was born here. I’m used to the taxes and the tipping and all of that stuff.
I don’t find it confusing, sure. But I’m also used to it.
But as an analogy, imagine that the posted speed limit wasn’t the actual speed limit. Well, in fact, it sort of works like that because you can usually but not always go 5 to 10 mph over.
But let’s say that it was a little confusing. That it was more like 20%. Or it depended on some sort of. I don’t know how to make this analogy work, but maybe sometimes it was 20%, sometimes it was 25%, sometimes it was 15%. The point is that having to calculate that all of a sudden when you never have before is difficult and a pain in the ass.
And if you come from a country with a speed limit, is the speed limit or it’s like always like five over would be safe or something like that. This percent thing is bullshit to you because you’ve never had to deal with this stupidity before. Doesn’t matter that the natives have no worries about it, this is weird and different and bullshit and there’s no good reason for it.
Not the greatest analogy, but if you try and use it to you know get an idea of how they feel about it. I hope it helps a little bit
…but that doesn’t make it “confusing”. I’m not sure why any adult would find +20% confusing.
We can do the math for sure, but we are not interested in the break-down of the costs. Just tell us the final price, that’s all that matters. We are used to be presented with the price we are gonna have to pay. Not some math at the end of the meal figuring out what the local tax rate is, guessing the expected tip of 15%-40% not based on actual service but … just the waiter’s expectations (or more frequently the waiter’s demand)
i do not tip the tax.
These days I’ve seen people trying to push 30% to 40% as the minimum tip. Either that or they sneak it in with service charges or gratuity fees with a suggestion of a 25% tip on top.
Yeah the combo of tips + taxes is enough to throw any european off. 13% where I am, so mentally disregarding the final price presented and then adding 33% on top of that is a huge difference than paying the number the items added up to on the receipt, and then tipping if the service was excellent.
I think State taxes are lower than my provincial tax generally, but its a big shoft mentally. You have to fundamentally accept and financially reward a system that considers underpaying its employees completely normal and actively resists improvements for those employees.
Hold on. Is there no tax on the tip?
Only as of the bill last year the president passed, but that no tax on tips, a campaign pledge, is temporary and will expire. I think after this year.
As of last year, for the most common scenarios, yes, up to $25,000. https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/no-tax-on-tips
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Only if the server reports it as income (in Canada, at least).
Almost all tips are by credit card now in the US so most all of them you can’t underreport for taxes anymore.
Don’t worry American citizens are also confused by the expensive tipping culture in the US. I still maintain 15% for a good job, 10% for a mediocre job, 5% for anything below. Giving above 15% is just subsidizing the pay the employer should be giving. It’s a symptom of the fact that wages have stagnated for over 50 years. The pay that once supported someone and even a child is now far below the poverty line for even an individual. So instead of increasing pay to match what it once was many businesses have turned to aggressive tipping over just increasing the prices of their service / products.
Me as someone not from the US: why would you pay even 10% for anything below exceptional let alone a mediocre job? I am not going öt subsidise their employer.
Irl, culture. 15% is becoming an insult but is still normal or acceptable most places. If you ever want to return to a restaurant and not have your food tampered with its best to keep with some agreeable norm. At 10% I wouldn’t suggest being a frequent visitor anywhere for your health and wellbeing. To zoom out a little, there’s been no country I have lived in where the culture was 100% agreeable even to the majority. We’re all policed in some way or another by it.
Crazy culture if my options are pay extra or be poisoned.
If you piss off food staff anywhere on earth your food may be tampered with. Now what people consider to be rude can be unique in different places.
I tip generously at my local bar and in return they sometimes give me free stuff. Got a whole sandwich recently.
Employers are giving you the option of cheating the employee and you are taking them up on it, claiming to be fighting the system, by cheating the employee.
Think about that, just because millions of cheating self interested half wits and tools and jerks agree with you, doesn’t mean you are right. You are cheating working people under a false pretense. If you don’t like tipping that much, don’t patronize establishments that use it.
It’s legal ransom, you’re mad at the wrong person
I mostly decrease eating out which is arguably worse because now they get a 0% tip. If enough people avoid establishments that abuse tipping then the problem will solve itself.
The federal and state governments are cheating staff by allowing employers to pay slave-level wages of $2.xx/hr, if staff are paid ~$5/hr or more through tips.
This has gone on for a while so you’re right, maybe I shouldn’t visit some states in the USA anymore even after Don the Con is gone.
You tip 20% of the bill, or less if you are an asshole. What’s so hard to understand?
It’s kinda insane to me how successful tip propaganda is. 20%??
My whole life, 15% was considered a top tier tip. Prices have gone up on everything across the board, but tips are a percentage meaning 15% is still more money than it was twenty years ago, so why in the fuck has it gone from 15% for a great tip to 20% as a minimum?? So not only are prices higher, you want a higher cut of that higher price?? Insane.
Pay has gone up less than prices. That’s why tip percentage has gone up.
It’s been creeping up too, 20% is now the offered minimum but I’ve seen the options go up to 30% at least
People are stupid and that’s why it’s done what it has.
I hate when I walk to a counter, order something then the machine is programmed to ask for a tip. Fuck everything about that. Hate hate tipping culture to begin with.
They’re all from places where the price on the menu is the final price.
But in case you’re thinking “you have to adapt to the culture,” Americans are still notorious for standing out as tourists and not adapting.
No one asked them to go there, and it is all known and written in so many subs what the US tipping culture is about. Own fault. They should stop behave like 5 year old.
Blame the victim. Nice…
Exactly. Fuck FIFA, fuck USA. Stop giving money to these fuckers.
