Costa Coffee

[Hot Pepsi]

It's not that they shouldn't...it's that they don't. Especially when selling is at the heart of it. Same reason car salespeople are commission based and not salary based. Because if you remove the financial incentive to sell, people stop selling and just wait to take orders...which isn't as lucrative for anyone involved.

Yeah, but I don't think that's as much of an influence in restaurants as you might think. As that article mentions, studies show that quality of service is weakly related to the size of the tip. And that matches my experience, because most customers just want somebody who will bring the drinks, get the order right, bring the food out as quickly as reasonably possible and give them the bill when they're ready. That's just the basics of the job. Anything less than that wouldn't just be substandard service, it would be not doing the job and restaurants should be able to handle people not doing their job the way any other business does.

At least, that's the idea. I understand where you're coming from which is that in a lot of places where waiting is a fucking grind and the managers are overworked (and maybe underpaid) too, giving a more immediate incentive to stay sharp helps keep things running a bit more smoothly. Or maybe a lot more smoothly.

But the more expensive restaurants don't need that. They pay enough that there is no shortage of people who'd love to have that job. So the staff's incentives for providing great service is that they get to keep their job or, at least, get to serve the biggest tables and richest customers.

If this weren't the case and waiters were unionized and got paid the same regardless, some restaurants would devolve into a parody of the Soviet Union. But then they'd go out of business. And I don't think that's necessarily the case anyway. As mentioned before, lots of pubs and restaurants in Europe manage to offer good service by just paying by the hour. And I don't tip anyone at Trader Joe's and that's the most friendly place in the world. There are many variables.

[Sporting]

Do hairdressers and barbers get tipped in the US?

[ad hoc]

In Romania people still tip doctors. It's illegal for them (the docs) to accept it but many still do and still expect it.

How does this fit into the debate?

(Also, as in many languages, the word for tip is the same as the word for bribe)

[ursus arctos]

Do hairdressers and barbers get tipped in the US?

Generally yes.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

The servers would probably be forced to do a huge amount of emotional labor regardless. Being deferential to the customers is not "on top of the labour they're paid to do." It is the labor they're being paid to do, for better or worse (worse, mostly.) Otherwise you could just order your food from a computer screen and pick it up from a counter. Like at Panera. I like Panera.

Nurses don't get tipped. PR flaks don't make tips. Dental hygienists and receptionists don't make tips - just to name some professions I can think of with big gender imbalances - and yet there's all kinds of patriarchal, sexist, white-supremacist shit going on in those businesses. Do you really think that bars and restaurants in Europe aren't also inclined to hire conventionally attractive white people? Capitalism will always find a way to exploit people.

It probably does contribute to sexual harassment, but there's so much sexual harassment by the bosses in that industry that I don't suspect that getting rid of tipping would help that much. It would just change who the employees had to please to get paid. Ugh.

And I have heard of black people being poorly treated at restaurants, but racists gonna racist. In my experience in the business, the more prevalent prejudice was against wealthy foreign students (known as Eurotrash) and old grumpy people. But I agree that the potential for prejudices impacting service is a definite point against the system.

Getting rid of the assumed mandatory tips probably wouldn't change much if tipping was still allowed (and how could it not be?). Right now, it's expected that everyone will add at least 15% tip unless the service is really appalling or the customers are dicks. So any additional emotional labor or obsequiousness or tolerance of sexual harassment that a waiter/bartender contributes is in an attempt to get more than 15%. If their wages were better and the 15% weren't expected, they'd still be trying to get a tip over and above that. So this assumed 15% really just works out to be an inconvenient bit of accounting rather than a big incentive to be a kiss-ass. I was a pretty shit waiter who didn't try to upsell people or really chat people up. I wasn't rude, but I kept the chit chat to a minimum. I wore the minimum pieces of flair. And yet, overall, I never made less than minimum wage over a week and I averaged about 17% of my tables' bills in tips. It was still my best option for a part-time job at that time. I'm sure that some of my coworkers who really tried hard, especially the beautiful women, made a bit more, but not that much more.


Minimum wage is so low that the restaurant hardly ever has to make up the difference between tips and minimum wage so that's not really a factor. That would only happen if it was a particularly slow shift, but in that case the manager usually sends some of the waiters home - ideally based on who got there first. So in this respect, tipping is to the advantage of the the staff because it means that the manager doesn't have as much to lose by keeping a few more waiters on the clock during a slow shift. That means it if does pick up, more people will make money rather than the last remaining waiter being overworked for the same hourly wage they'd be making regardless of how many people were in the place. So if and when we get a $15 minimum wage across the board and the end of assumed tipping, you'll probably find that crowded restaurants feel very understaffed and the staff that are there will be overworked. Of course, that happens anyway. I'd be in favor of that, but I don't think it will happen soon.

In France it's mandatory to include a 15% service charge in the advertised price of your food and tipping is unusual. The service charge must legally be passed on to staff (although it seems this isn't always fully observed in practice), who receive it on top of a €10+ hourly minimum wage. It's all very civilised - the prices in restaurants are a bit higher but that's all you pay, staff still have incentives to upsell, but they aren't forced into obsequious servility.

Nurses don't get tipped. PR flaks don't make tips. Dental hygienists and receptionists don't make tips - just to name some professions I can think of with big gender imbalances - and yet there's all kinds of patriarchal, sexist, white-supremacist shit going on in those businesses. Do you really think that bars and restaurants in Europe aren't also inclined to hire conventionally attractive white people? Capitalism will always find a way to exploit people.

It probably does contribute to sexual harassment, but there's so much sexual harassment by the bosses in that industry that I don't suspect that getting rid of tipping would help that much. It would just change who the employees had to please to get paid. Ugh.

And I have heard of black people being poorly treated at restaurants, but racists gonna racist. In my experience in the business, the more prevalent prejudice was against wealthy foreign students (known as Eurotrash) and old grumpy people. But I agree that the potential for prejudices impacting service is a definite point against the system.

Yes, capitalism is bad for other reasons. But tipping has been identified by restaurant worker organisations as a cause of sexual harassment - some 80% of women working at restaurants have experienced sexual harassment from customers.

Similarly, there are stats on how people of colour receive less in tips than white people and that customers are racially profiled - it's a miserable and degrading culture.

[Guy Profumo]

You are still guilty by association, Costa.

Your name is in the outside of the tin

So pay up you bastards.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49432367

[Antepli Ejderha]

You are still guilty by association, Costa.

Your name is in the outside of the tin

So pay up you bastards.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49432367

Link not working Guy.

[ursus arctos]

Presumably this

[URL="https://twitter.com/graemepearce3/status/1164935779723988992?s=21"]https://twitter.com/graemepearce3/status/1164935779723988992[/URL]

[Guy Profumo]

Isn't that the self-same url?


(The BBC one at least?)

And yes it was.

Thanks youth.

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/danirowley/status/1165327322058280962?s=21[/URL]