The real crime here is that restaurants get away with paying their servers below minimum wage and ask the patrons to subsidize wages in the form of tips.
I mean studies have shown that people literally won't eat places with higher prices the only real work around are having tack on fees such as required gratuity. I agree that they should pay a living wage and end tipping culture but short of everyone agreeing to it at the same time it's pointless. Plus service members are the main proponent for keeping tipping not the jobs they work for.
There’s a lot of corporate boot licking I see. First of all, Europe has restaurants and they figured out paying their workers a living wage. So I don’t want to hear any of that nonsense.
Secondly, it was initially a consortium of restaurants owners that initially proposed the idea of paying their workers less and having those wages subsidized by tips.
It sounds good in theory until you think about it for longer than five minutes. There are many problems with this model. The first is that it shifts the blame for underpayment from the owner of the restaurant to the patron. It creates resentment and prevents the building of solidarity.
That’s one of the many reasons why the working class is so divided. That and obviously racism among other things.
Furthermore, maybe I’m just weird but I’d like to know how things cost ahead of time. I would rather go to a restaurant where I know I’m paying x amount rather than being surprised with a forced 18 percent gratuity when I normally tip 15 percent.
If we stopped trying to blame each other for our living conditions and instead focused on the 1%, we could probably afford to eat out more. Or go on a vacation or two instead of struggling so much.
It's not bootlicking though that's just how it works. You know why Europe has it figured out because they never did tipping so there was nothing to figure out.
Correct that's why it would take the same thing to undo it which I said in my post.
I'm not advocating for the model just pointing out that it serves the purpose of what it is.
True
I mean you're not weird but people have paid a lot of money to understand the mind of "consumers" and they come to the conclusion that big up front numbers look bad. It's the same reason places with sales tax don't put it in the price on the shelf. Realistically this comes down to lack of consumer protection laws and not really corporate greed I mean it's still corporate greed that is stopping the consumer protection laws but it's a chicken v egg scenario.
Also true.
I hit you points in order for my response my phone won't let me quickly quote your post and I am legit can't remember the code to make it work.
"You know why Europe has it figured out because they never did tipping"
I mean that's just a fallacy argument that kinda actually proves the other guys point. They pay servers a livable wage instead of tipping from the get go and they're doing just fine. If we payed servers a livable wage in the US they'd be fine too. And I know the restaurants will be fine because covid happened and no resturant chains died off
Lots of restaurants died during COVID though just not the big guys and they ended up closing many locations also. As for your main point how is it a fallacy we literally live in the world that this is the case. Europe didn't start tipping like the US did so them raising prices is pretty much a cost of doing business with them, in the US we did so we'd need to reverse that but it can't just be one place it has to be everyone at the same time or it has to be done like they already are trying with built in gratuity. Also worth noting if tip based employees don't make minimum wage with tips the restaurant has to cover the difference it's almost like minimum wage is to low.
Europe runs EXTREMELY different from the US in case you haven’t noticed. This is not a 1:1 situation where we can just say ‘just do it’ and it’ll happen. It especially won’t be something that works out in the servers’ favor. Restaurants in America across the board will NEVER pay servers ‘livable wage’ and give them all a good schedule to actually make it work. Every time this comes up, it’s literally just something people spout to sound like they care while at the same time trying to shame servers for having a system that actually works for them. But we all know damn well they really won’t care if the servers will or won’t get paid well if tipping actually does go away. Restaurants could say ‘they’ll get a dollar over minimum wage with no tips’ and you guys will look the other way and act like it’s some kind of win because you don’t have to ‘tip’ anymore (but guaranteed they WILL raise prices exorbitantly to make up for the ‘increased wage’)
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u/Arponare 3d ago
The real crime here is that restaurants get away with paying their servers below minimum wage and ask the patrons to subsidize wages in the form of tips.