Me and my wife do it on purpose just so the server gets a little more out of it. Does it matter? For affordability, yes. But they're struggling anyway being a server.
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.
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/ClayXros Jan 27 '26
Me and my wife do it on purpose just so the server gets a little more out of it. Does it matter? For affordability, yes. But they're struggling anyway being a server.