Should you tip the waitress and how much thread

Haven't read through this thread at all so this reply may be completely unrelated to current discussion - my two cents - as an American that has lived abroad for a long time:

(1) Tipping is a stupid custom - it creates too many headaches - knowing when, how, how much to tip can be relatively arcane. Service should just generally be good without the expectation of a tip. Japan is an awesome example of how everything works fine without tips. If every restaurant just charged a service charge (and actually gave that money to the service staff), that's fine too - then you'd know that the cost of food is just X% higher when you go there (see Singapore).

(2) HOWEVER, if tipping is a custom, you better figure it out and follow the rules, because real people are affected by it. Stiffing a poor waitress for not refilling the coffee 10 times is not a political statement and you are not Rosa Parks.

My personal rule of thumb for restaurants in the US - tip 15% for baseline acceptable service, more if better. Usually no more than 20% unless something above and beyond (like an under the table blowjob). If it's actually bad, as in offensive/rude/dick in my soup - call for the manager and complain and let them know why it sucked, can leave no tip depending on circumstances. If service was bad but I see it's not really fault of the server (i.e. too busy), and they had a nice attitude overall, I will still generally leave at least 15%.

Hey, guys, can I argue for people who never tip by providing an outlier example of a talentless pair of boobs that makes way too much money while defending both extremes to decry the other the actions of each in some clusterfuck of logic? Or would that rustle your jimmies too much?

Also, unrelated, but would the Nascar driver be Rustle Johnson, Jimmie Rustles, or what?

Ortega_sl said:

Totals are in... $93.50 in tips on a 7 hour shift of which there were no customers for the last hour..... Factor in the $9.19 minimum wage, and you're looking at $22.54 an hour for picking up plates, and cleaning the floor. This isn't calculating that she only reported $16.00 in tips (since you only have to report a minimum of $2.00 per hour), so her tax burden is much lower than your average $22.54 an hour worker.

Let's not forget this is a Tuesday....

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What bizarre place do you live in? Where I live minimum wage is $2.13 per hour for tipped employees, and that's what everyone pays. Also, Most places here require their employees to declare a certain percentage of their tips, usually around 12% of your sales.


Never mind, figured it out. You live in the state with the highest minimum wage in the entire nation. Why Washington does that is beyond me, but good for them. The only declaring $2.00 per hour is still BS though.

He lives in WA, it makes a pretty sizeable difference. I can see why his opinion is more slanted since I there is nothing to make me think they have a different standard of tipping than the rest of the country.

If it was $15 an hour for waiting tables he wouldn't be making such a huge stink, and that's what it is for most people.

12% of sales is higher than it used to be, I was aware of 8%.

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

What is her name? I'm going to report her to the IRS for tax evasion. Fuck you and her for not paying your fair share of taxes. I'm never going to tip again because of this scumbag shit. That truly is shitty. So you want to live and participate in a nice society, but don't want to contribute to it. Basically this waitress is the same as a broke ass welfare piece of shit child-having, medicaid abusing piece of trash.

By the way, it's not a "lower tax burder", it's fucking FRAUD. Fucking piece of shit. Seriously, tell her that someone who worked extremely hard to achieve in life and who makes an extremely large salary and pays a metric jimmyton of taxes thinks that she is a fucking piece of shit for not paying her fair share. Tell her that I'll never tip any waitress again because they're tax evading pieces of shit.

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chamo-san so rustled

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

What is her name? I'm going to report her to the IRS for tax evasion. Fuck you and her for not paying your fair share of taxes. I'm never going to tip again because of this scumbag shit. That truly is shitty. So you want to live and participate in a nice society, but don't want to contribute to it. Basically this waitress is the same as a broke ass welfare piece of shit child-having, medicaid abusing piece of trash.

By the way, it's not a "lower tax burder", it's fucking FRAUD. Fucking piece of shit. Seriously, tell her that someone who worked extremely hard to achieve in life and who makes an extremely large salary and pays a metric jimmyton of taxes thinks that she is a fucking piece of shit for not paying her fair share. Tell her that I'll never tip any waitress again because they're tax evading pieces of shit.

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I'm as opposed to waiters complaining about their tips as you can be, but get a fucking grip. You really expect restaurant workers to claim every penny of their wages? I'm pretty sure every single laborer in the country right now is looking to get out of as much taxes as humanly possible. Happens every year around this time. Crazy, right? If I could only claim part of my salary to the IRS, you're fucking damn right I would.

Tipping threads always bring out the worst in people. I never saw chaos this rustled ever. Bro you derped in this thread.

Eomer_sl said:

Fucking pussy.

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So disappointed in you Eomer, normally you're not retarded.

Draegan_sl said:

Tipping threads always bring out the worst in people. I never saw chaos this rustled ever. Bro you derped in this thread.

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Nah son nah. Shit is retarded.

Agenor_sl said:

See I prefer the tipping system as it is. If you pay servers minimum wage the cost will just be lumped in with the final check. If you get shit service, but the food is good, now you have to call over the manager if you want some sort of compensation for the bad service. As opposed to getting up, and walking out without leaving a tip. Seems fine to me.

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I agree with this. I'm fine with tipping because I want my server to have incentive to treat me better. If restaurants have to begin paying waiters more money, food costs will go up a lot. Not only will you have to pay waiters more, but you'll have to pay food runners and bussers more because a portion of their pay comes from "tip out". In a lot of places a percentage of your tips go to the bartenders, bussers and food runners. So those people will have to be compensated.

Then on the business side of things, because labor costs go up, you'll see longer waits, and poorer service. If you don't think a manager is going to cut a wait staff early because high labor, you're kidding yourself. So now you are creating a potential problem where if you go out late and the restaurant might not have enough wait staff to handle a sudden influx of patrons and your service will be shit.

Then, that is not even considering the increase costs of unemployment and other FICA taxes businesses will have to pay. All of that will go into the cost of your food. Your food costs will not go up by just a mere 15% (or whatever).

So it depends on what you want to see. If you frequent commercial/corporate restaurants like Chilis, Fridays or whatever, then servers are going to have to start waiting on larger table sections to cut on labor. All of the sudden that server that is really good at taking care of 3 or 4 tables is going to start rushing taking care of 5 or 6.

Service will turn shittier.

See, tipping people is way to save everyone money and give you a better experience. The restaurant can employ more waiters as they are cheap labor, and thus giving you a waiter that has more time to concentrate on your well being. The waiter in turn, agrees to work for a low wage for the opportunity to make more money from his customers. The better the service the more he makes. In the end, you get better service because you have waiters that aren't stretched thin and are incentivized to give you the best dining experience. On the flip side, you'll have poorer waiters, who don't have time to refill your soda promptly. Food will get out to the tables slower. Your bill will be much higher in the end.

Do you really think you can convince some 19-22 year old kid, to work for $8 an hour and then deal with 10-20 strangers that change out once every hour for 4 hours (at peak dining times) and still get the service you ask for? You won't. These little cocksuckers are alone with your food.

Now before you rebut me and say, "but in Europe/Japan they get along just fine! Why can't we do it here!", just shut the fuck up because you're not just going to flip tradition and culture around in a heartbeat.

I like tipping waiters, it keeps those retarded 19 year old assholes in line most of the time. Yes I was that asshole at one point, and if you paid me $9-$10 an hour to do what I did, I certainly wouldn't of given as much as a fuck as I did. I probably would never of done the job.

However, if you people are so insulted by tipping, for whatever asburger reason as displayed in this thread, then you have to tell me how much waiters should be paid. Starting, rookie waiter and an experience waiter with a few years other their belt.

Why would service turn shittier if the baseline of 10-15% was baked into the cost and the tip was completely optional based on what you felt the waiter deserved?

There are many service jobs that aren't reliant on tips for their performance and service quality is reflected in other ways. Firing, raises and promotions are viable tools for rewarding or punishing bad employees. The middle one is currently completely non-existent in the serving industry, introducing it would alleviate some of your concerns not to mention help the industry out with turnover.

The Ancient_sl said:

Why would service turn shittier if the baseline of 10-15% was baked into the cost and the tip was completely optional based on what you felt the waiter deserved?

There are many service jobs that aren't reliant on tips for their performance and service quality is reflected in other ways. Firing, raises and promotions are viable tools for rewarding or punishing bad employees. The middle one is currently completely non-existent in the serving industry, introducing it would alleviate some of your concerns not to mention help the industry out with turnover.

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Valid points and questions.
First point, food costs would go up more than 10-15% if companies simply just took that chunk of change and put it into menu costs. So in the end, if you can deal with tipping 15% without changing the system, then you're going to get a less expensive dining experience.

Second point regarding service jobs. I wish you gave me an example of the different types of jobs, but it's doesn't exactly correlate in my opinion. For example, when you walk into a restaurant you are automatically assumed that you will be paying money for something. The moment you step into the door you are a PAYING customer and not a potential customer. When you are working retail or any other service business that is not necessarily the case. When you are looking into getting work done on your home you often shop prices around before hand, ask for quotes and then go with what you like the best. In retail, the motivation to be nice is that you buy something from them and they get a commission. In home improvement, you need to sell your services first.

Couched into that question is firing, raises, promotions etc. for motivating your employees. Firing is a motivation to do, at least, the minimum requirement of your job. Raises is a tricky question. Restaurants live and die based on a few things, the obvious is customers, but internally the highest drivers of a restaurants success are food costs and labor costs. The margin is very very thin. If you increase a waiters pay, he will most likely not work as many hours. But even if costs are baked into the cost of food, how much are you paying waiters and how much of a raise are you giving them?

Now if you're running a really good casual restaurant, you mark up the cost of food because now there is no tipping. What wage are you basing that on? If you have several good waiters that deserve a higher wage, did you figure that into the cost of your food?

There are no promotions for waiters when it comes actual positions. In the industry now, a promotion means you get the better, busier sections of the restaurant. You get the better shifts, and the better hours. The restaurant is rewarding you for a good job by giving you a more consistent opportunity to make more money if you bust your ass. Alternatively, if you are a waiter in no-tip-land, what kind of promotion would you give a waiter? The only option would be some kind of management role of some sort. That might work with small family owned restaurants, but not in corporate ones.

People complain that 15%-20% is too much, and why should they have to pay for the waiters salary? But in the end, if you change it in this country (like you somehow got congress to make it illegal overnight like prohibition), food costs will skyrocket or to maintain lower, competitive pricing, you're going to get the same people flipping your burger at Burger King, running around having to deal with a bunch of tables. I was a corporate trainer for restaurants in my youth, and I've seen the average stock of people and you DO NOT want these people A) alone with your food and B) they are just not capable, mentally, of juggling multiple tables at once.

Here's almost a perfect analogy. There are some people who can do Heroic Raids in WOW, and then you have people who has to stick with LFR because they can't just do anything harder. Who would you like serving your food to you.

Fake edit:
Again, you can avoid tipping and maintain the same quality of service that you expect in higher end places, but you'll have to be paying your waiters $15 or more an hour. Probably closer to $20.

Draegan_sl said:

So disappointed in you Eomer, normally you're not retarded.

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What? He was being a pussy. Do you disagree?

Draegan_sl said:

I agree with this. I'm fine with tipping because I want my server to have incentive to treat me better. If restaurants have to begin paying waiters more money, food costs will go up a lot. Not only will you have to pay waiters more, but you'll have to pay food runners and bussers more because a portion of their pay comes from "tip out". In a lot of places a percentage of your tips go to the bartenders, bussers and food runners. So those people will have to be compensated.

Then on the business side of things, because labor costs go up, you'll see longer waits, and poorer service. If you don't think a manager is going to cut a wait staff early because high labor, you're kidding yourself. So now you are creating a potential problem where if you go out late and the restaurant might not have enough wait staff to handle a sudden influx of patrons and your service will be shit.

Then, that is not even considering the increase costs of unemployment and other FICA taxes businesses will have to pay. All of that will go into the cost of your food. Your food costs will not go up by just a mere 15% (or whatever).

So it depends on what you want to see. If you frequent commercial/corporate restaurants like Chilis, Fridays or whatever, then servers are going to have to start waiting on larger table sections to cut on labor. All of the sudden that server that is really good at taking care of 3 or 4 tables is going to start rushing taking care of 5 or 6.

Service will turn shittier.

See, tipping people is way to save everyone money and give you a better experience. The restaurant can employ more waiters as they are cheap labor, and thus giving you a waiter that has more time to concentrate on your well being. The waiter in turn, agrees to work for a low wage for the opportunity to make more money from his customers. The better the service the more he makes. In the end, you get better service because you have waiters that aren't stretched thin and are incentivized to give you the best dining experience. On the flip side, you'll have poorer waiters, who don't have time to refill your soda promptly. Food will get out to the tables slower. Your bill will be much higher in the end.

Do you really think you can convince some 19-22 year old kid, to work for $8 an hour and then deal with 10-20 strangers that change out once every hour for 4 hours (at peak dining times) and still get the service you ask for? You won't. These little cocksuckers are alone with your food.

Now before you rebut me and say, "but in Europe/Japan they get along just fine! Why can't we do it here!", just shut the fuck up because you're not just going to flip tradition and culture around in a heartbeat.

I like tipping waiters, it keeps those retarded 19 year old assholes in line most of the time. Yes I was that asshole at one point, and if you paid me $9-$10 an hour to do what I did, I certainly wouldn't of given as much as a fuck as I did. I probably would never of done the job.

However, if you people are so insulted by tipping, for whatever asburger reason as displayed in this thread, then you have to tell me how much waiters should be paid. Starting, rookie waiter and an experience waiter with a few years other their belt.

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Sorry man, pretty much everything you said is proven wrong by the rest of the world outside of North America. Food at restaurants isn't significantly more expensive in Europe, Japan or NZ as compared to the US/Canada once you take exchange rates and other factors in to account. And the service in those countries in my opinion is generally as good or better. It's a broken system.

As far as what a waiter should make, again, that's for the market to decide. In the context of Canadian wages (so higher than American as our minimum wage is at least $8-10 across the country), I would think that a brand new rookie waiter working in a mediocre chain restaurant would likely start at or around the minimum wage, about $10/hour. Someone with several year's experience working in a fine dining establishment might be worth more like $18-25/hour.

As far as your specific comment about shutting the fuck about Europe/Japan, it flat out doesn't make sense. You made several arguments about why mechanically/rationally costs would go up by X, service would go do by Y. You can't in the next breath just dismiss Europe/Japan because of "tradition". That's a separate argument entirely. I agree that the system is entrenched and unlikely to change. But that isn't a logical explanation as to why the system in other countries couldn't work here.

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

Would you commit a crime in order to not claim some of your salary? Because that's what's happening here.

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Just playing Devil's advocate, but how many people do you think lie about things on their taxes in general.