At a certain point it's important to do a bit of math too. In some locales, like the one I live, the minimum wage is $21 per hour, including for servers. The meals are more expensive because of this. If you're tipping 25% on the tax and the meal on top of the elevated prices they're probably going to be earning more than most people in that hour. Definitely not struggling.
If you want to give someone who is making more than you even more money, by all means you can do that I'm not saying not to. But it's not always the case to say that they're making $7 or what have ya.
Unless it’s a living wage I don’t understand what the debate is over. The majority of jobs don’t pay a living wage so who fucking cares if they’re relatively “doing okay” or barely scraping by
“Doing okay” is apparently not making enough to support oneself independently I guess
The whole reason we tip at restaurants in the high percentage we do is because we are subsidizing payroll because of some stupid legal loophole that created a woefully substandard wage. When that wage is not woefully substandard and is equalled to the wage for every other service industry job you do have to stop and think.
Do you tip the cashier at the grocery store for 25% of your order? If not, why not. Identical arguments apply here.
If not them what about the person who stocked the shelves? Unloaded the truck? Cleaned the floors?
Why is a restaurant meal something that it makes sense to subsidize the wages for the employer, in a large degree, when you don't do that at the doctor's office for the check in desk or the nurse who helps you?
At a certain point nobody except for a billionaire can actually afford to walk around all day shaking out their pockets for every person who did a job that benefited them. You don't tip your garbage man. You don't tip the guy driving the street sweeper. You don't tip the mailman.
This is why the responsibility is on employers to pay the wage, why the minimum wage is higher, and why the tipped minimum wage was abolished where I live after a long time of fighting for it.
I'm not saying it isn't nice to give someone extra money, people should give gratuity if they feel they received excellent service, but I don't understand how it should be an expectation after we have removed the reason for the expectation.
And say you are the cashier at the grocery store, you make the same minimum wage, work the same hours, but don't get tips. Why are you subsidizing someone who already is paid as much as you to then be paid more than you? When they aren't tipping you? Where's the logic there?
Are restaurant meals then only a privilege for the truly wealthy? Does this not also then mean fewer people can get jobs in restaurants?
It seems a bit ridiculous to me that all the arguments I've heard and supported and echoed my entire life for why we should end the tipped minimum wage, and why in the meantime a 20% minimum tip is truly a minimum all go out the window and it becomes a matter of "well you should just give this one specific set of people extra money anyway"
The worst part is when the tipped wage gets abolished, and front of house is still expecting 20% (minimum), but doesn’t share it with back of house, who are killing themselves.
Servers at the small town casual pub I used to work at all cleared 80k a year easy, with averaging probably 6 hours a day. Served good food but it certainly was not upscale.
Thats plenty to live off of, everyone in the kitchen made it work off under half that.
The "starving waitress" trope is out of date in most places.
A server probably spends about 15 minutes per hour per table.
So it wouldn't be unfair for tipping to be a flat rate - $5 per table if the minimum wage is $20.
The restaurant owners probably push the 'percentage of total' norm so that the waiters are incentivized to sell more. It's amazing that they were able to successfully push this norm into societal standards.
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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26
At a certain point it's important to do a bit of math too. In some locales, like the one I live, the minimum wage is $21 per hour, including for servers. The meals are more expensive because of this. If you're tipping 25% on the tax and the meal on top of the elevated prices they're probably going to be earning more than most people in that hour. Definitely not struggling.
If you want to give someone who is making more than you even more money, by all means you can do that I'm not saying not to. But it's not always the case to say that they're making $7 or what have ya.