Tips are fundamentally broken. If you didn't know about tips, and someone offered you a job and said, "I'll pay you crap wages, but you can ask the customers for more money. Don't worry, they'll pay or their friends won't like them," you'd think it was a scam because it's such an obviously terrible deal.
Tips are an awful way to incentivize good service.
I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I've got very limited and potentially misleading information about what a reasonable expectation is. I've got no idea what small crises my server had to deal with, or how other customers are treating him.
And because tips are everywhere now, nobody knows the going rate for most tips. Obviously tourists have no idea how much to tip.
If I reduce the tip, the waiter is only finding out that I was unsatisfied after it's too late to fix anything. But tipping up front makes the exercise entirely pointless.
And the moralizing of tips is stupid.
Many moral arguments paint people in the service industry as paupers or victims, but a basic level of respsect has to assume they're competent professionals who chose this line of work.
A tip is not an act of generosity, either, you're paying a fee for a service rendered. And that's why, as a system, the morality of tipping is entirely backwards: it rewards people who rip off their servers.
The thing that really bothers me are the awful motivations behind tipping: being control freaks, conspicuous consumption and all the slimy business incentives to push their payroll onto their customers.
You're absolutely right, given the premise that we tip to incentivize good service. In reality, we tip so businesses can advertise an $18 meal for $14.99.
And also so that customers can dangle a tip in front of an underpaid, overworked employee, only to snatch it away if they don't smile or go to church or insert some arbitrary reason here. It's both consumers and employers who keep the tipping culture and its toxicity alive.
I mean the one time I was in the US having breakfast or lunch at some random place. They had at least five staff milling around for twenty-five customers, probably more (staff I mean). You don't need to have two teens frantically going around with pitchers of water, just plop one down on the table and pay the remaining employees a good wage.
A good wage is not minimum wage either. Minimum wage is a "what is the least I can legally pay this employee", while as an employer your mindset should be "how much is this employee worth and how can I make them feel appreciated"
Exactly. We aren't necessarily pushing the payroll onto the customer, we're discounting the cost of a dish at the expense of the server. And to the parent's post, that's an arbitrary decision that sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't for the person making half of minimum wage.
The tipping culture in Spain seems to account for this acceptably well. 1-2€ left on the table for a staff member who poured you a couple of drinks seems to be generally well received. Of course, they know a table of American tourists is likely to be a gold mine so far as tips are concerned.
In the UK tipping is very hit or miss. Especially now that cash payments are becoming rare. I've noticed that food delivery drivers will be half way down the street by the time I open the door these days. They obviously don't expect anything. If there is a service charge on the bill I typically don't leave anything in particular, and I'd prefer it this way.
Same. One time we were out at a restaurant and having all had full meals a couple of us were getting some extras like milkshakes when the Waitress came over to tell us in no uncertain terms that she needed the table back.
This is a very good insight, however the way you say it comes across like you seem to like it or are OK with it. Sarcasm does not come across. We should point out this really is not OK and is not a desirable by anyone except the ownership class.
> A tip is not an act of generosity, either, you're paying a fee for a service rendered.
I once took a cab from my hotel in Zhengzhou (in central China) to the airport. It was during rush hour, so what would otherwise have been a 15-minute drive took over an hour. But the meter was obviously set to work only on distance travelled, and the fare seemed to me to be obscenely low for over an hour of work. I knew in China that tipping wasn't a thing, but having been raised in the US, I felt obligated to try in this situation. You should have seen the insulted look on her face. She was doing an honest job for an agreed-upon price, and didn't need any "largesse" from me.
It’s even worse, in most places, tips are pooled and split evenly from what’s left over after you as the waiter tip out the bussers, bartenders, etc..
It makes for awful office politics.
this may be true, but it is definitely illegal. the owner can keep a tip if directly given to them by a customer (eg, while serving a table), but they may not participate in any sort of tip pool.
of course, "illegal" is very different from "doesn't happen" in the restaurant biz. the owner of the place I worked would often reach into the tip jar to pay himself back when we made mistakes.
haha, right. I've seen it done in most places I've worked when I was younger.
It's also illegal to clock people out during their shift when business is slow and yet many many places do it (because it's not enough to underpay and have employee rely on tips/charity from customers).
I think virtually every restaurant or bar has fine print that any tip over a certain dollar amount goes to the owners. The excess does, that is, and the staff keeps the part of the tip that is under the threshold. It's usually somewhere between $1k-$5k.
Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark?
I'm genuinely curious what you think the factors are in their difference because when I live in Denmark (as I do now) it feels like the waiter could give less of a s** whether the service is good or not whereas when I live in LA or NYC I feel like I am the golden child of their day.
The mind first reaches to "it must be tips" but I am genuinely curious what you think the primary factor of this yawning gap in service is if not tips.
I mean I even worked for a Danish guy who was Noma's head chef's former sous chef (he had just opened a new restaurant in NYC at the time) and the American staff he employed there was just leagues beyond anything I had ever seen in DK.
Others have already said that this boils down to a mix of precarious living not existing to this degree in other countries, and cultural norms. To illustrate with a counterexample: I think I know what you have in mind as good service, but to me (who found the service culture in Denmark really great) this comes across as stalking/ not respecting the customer's privacy/ badly roleplayed friendliness/ thinly veiled upselling attempts. I can't stand it to a degree that I've actually stopped going to a local restaurant because they tried to enforce this service attitude with their employees.
There's this anecdote of Walmart opening a store in Germany and people were horrified by the greeter an the entrance, to a degree that many reported them to the store because they thought he/she was some random weirdo from the street, not an employee of the store. Ditto for baggers, the very idea was appalling for the locals, and Walmarts expansion ultimately failed because of these US service culture imports.
This boils down to the cultural norm: If the behaviour is endemic in the local culture, it comes across as natural. If not, it comes across as fake friendliness in one direction and baseless rudeness in the other.
>>Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark?
Absolutely not in my experience. Only visited America a few times but nearly universally the service was about as good as anywhere in Europe not any better or worse, but it was made infinitely worse by the fact that no matter what, the tips were expected. It left such an incredibly sour taste in my mouth - like, the service wasn't special in any way, the waiter came, took our order, the food arrived, we had it....and now I have to leave like $10 in tips? Like, literally, honestly.....wtf. I do leave tips in europe ocassionally but only when going to really fancy restaurants when the service is exceptional. Tipping everyone everywhere every time is just....crazy.
>>I mean I even worked for a Danish guy who was Noma's head chef's former sous chef
Funny, I know a Chef who actually worked at Noma, he now runs a restaurant in the UK and I'm somewhat familiar with the staffing woes. But in summary from everything he told me - it's like any other business. If you want good employees who are engaged and doing a good jobs....you need to pay well. Pay waiters above the bottom of the barel wage...and suddenly you can find people who give a shit about the job. Pay minimum wage and you get people who'd rather spend half their time outside on cigarette breaks.
I think it's a very cultural aspect. In the US you have the waiters coming up to you, asking if you liked your meal, would you like something else. In Nordic countries people prefer to be left alone, which might be interpreted as not caring. If you were to go to Greece, you could be getting the same experience, with the owner himself walking around the tables and asking what you thought of the meal.
Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US
I've been reflecting on my restaurant experiences in the US and Europe and I'm not sure, is it really "astronomically better"? On balance I've probably had people screw up my order and tab at least as often in the US as in Europe. Waitstaff in the US don't seem more knowledgeable about the menu or the wine list, in fact on the whole they tend to be less knowledgeable (probably due to high turnover and restaurants not investing as much in staff). Kitchen 'failures' and food not arriving on time isn't less common in the US and so on.
Sure US waitstaff will be a lot chattier, smile a lot more, ask me more about my day and my meal many more times and say "I am SO sorry" a lot more when things go wrong. But on the whole they don't seem to handle the mechanics of making sure I have a smooth and stress free dining experience any better.
One 'plus' I will give to the US which might account for some of it is that due to wait staff being basically free there are a lot more of them pr. customer which sometimes speeds up service.
Having lived in Australia and the UK, and travelled around Europe quite a bit, and to the US a few times, I could not say that service is astronomically better in the US. I've found it particularly fake and insincere.
When I go to a restaurant, I want good food. I don't particuarly care about the service. That's not to say I want the wait staff to spit on me when I eat my delicious meal, but I'm not really looking for people to constantly suck up to me throughout the meal so they can afford rent.
Mainly I think it is cultral differences in perception of quality. The very American "The Customer Is Always Right" attitude of service staff being there to serve the customer's every whim doesnt really translate as much overseas.
Much of the enjoyment of the meal is predicated on good service though.
Were the dishes served appropriately together or was one person’s salad served 5 minutes after the others? Were the courses paced appropriately? Were the drinks continually available? Were the main dishes served hot and together?
I don’t need a server asking me every three minutes if everything is okay, but I do need them looking things over and ensuring that the things that would negatively affect any diner’s enjoyment are being silently taken care of.
I wasn't drawing a connection to tipping. I was responding to your claim that you "want good food" but "don't particularly care about the service". It's impossible to entirely separate those in my opinion.
Really awkward as well. Basically the whole staff was waving at us until we went around the corner and they couldn’t see us any more. Didn’t know what to do - ignore, acknowledge, turn back and keep eye contact while still walking forward, smile, stop, wave ...
Outside of that it's on an establishment by establishment basis. I know an amazing restaurant in a less touristic Paris arrondissement that will provide stellar service no matter who I show up with or how terrible my French is. Their menus are only in French. If I'm not fast enough the staff notices I'm using a translation app and starts translating it into English.
Japan. Phenomenal service every single place I went and some was so good we tried tipping only to be chased into the street to have the “mistake” fixed.
Service might simply be seen as better because of cultural differences between your home country and one you visit. Example: in France Americans often perceive restaurant service as slow and indifferent, because the French service is not about feeding you and getting you the hell out of the restaurant. The word "restauration" in French implies a restoring (of not just your stomach, but your well-being) and that is what French restaurants are for. Allowing you to be seated and to look around you for a while, discussing rather than quickly selecting what is on offer for the meal, a leisurely consumption of what is served and a pressure-free interval for some digestion make a meal in France slow.
I'm also told that the coyness of the server in bringing the check comes from the feeling of community a restaurant strives to foster: "we would rather you stayed here a bit". Getting pushy about turning a table over simply doesn't happen in France.
I’m curious why ‘good service‘ is important for you?
Because the whole point of going out to eat instead of cooking at home is to have an enjoyable and stress free experience.
If it takes 20 minutes before someone asks what I want to drink, then 60 minutes to get food, you cannot answer any questions about what is on the menu and half the people get the wrong thing and then that completely ruins what should be an enjoyable experience.
Waiters in Europe are not necessarily slow or less knowledgeable, and waiters in the US are not necessarily fast or knowledgeable. What US waiters are, is visibly polite (obsequious, even?) and ever present.
In Europe it's perfectly normal to have a rather rude waiter who takes your order quickly and your food not long after that. They can also be efficient and know the menu in detail, albeit being colder when you discuss with them.
The shock Americans experience is probably due to the frequent stone faces of waiters in Europe.
That's what real people look like when they're not conditioned to always smile and instead they smile when... they feel good :-)
I'm European, live in Europe, and I'm perfectly aware of the service in European restaurants. I still expect "good service" when I go out to eat. I don't care about smiles or being "warm", I care about fast, efficient and correct service.
I'm not advocating the US way of doing things, and certainly don't think the service in the US is better on the whole, in fact in many ways it's worse. However what I have found is that the worst service I've had in the US is far better than the worst service I've had in Europe. I've never had terrible service in the US, and I certainly can't say the same about Europe.
I could tell you many stories of my near-death scrapes with cars and cabs on my hour long bike ride to and from a tiny upscale restaurant in Manhattan, the blistered feet my girlfriend at the time would lovingly restore after 8 hours on my feet, and barely making rent on my tiny Brooklyn apartment I shared with 5 others while narrowly avoiding all manner of attempted thefts of the few discretionary dollars I had left.
When I choose to spend the money I have, I want a good experience. Service is a very big piece of that. My stepfather is a restaurant owner. He has always been the model of politeness. Articles have been written about the magic he'd pour out as maître d' in the early aughts. I learned from him the transformative impact good waitstaff can have on a dinner which is in many ways staged theater with you acting your best (honestly, dishonestly, you are still presenting a face of you) for your date you've held in enough esteem to offer this piece of your life to.
well I've worked long grueling hours - but good service is important because if you are paying money for something you don't want to be treated badly at the same time you are paying money - which has been my experience sometimes in Denmark, although I think the service level has improved in the last decade (maybe I just look more important with age)
first of all, some people seem to dislike what is considered "good service" in the US, so let's call it "high touch" instead. tips are definitely a factor, but I think it's mostly just the US service/retail culture. even people who don't work tipped jobs are quite likely to ask you if you need help finding something if they are not busy.
You can get used to it however and when you go to even a neighbor country like Canada, the staff seems apathetic. I'm not saying they are but it takes an adjustment from the 'high touch' trained Americans.
I think people like tipping because they like this amount of power: enough to feel a bit powerful over other people, but also not so much they have a responsibility to carry.
That's why you're not allowed to tip 0% if the services rendered were worth 0%.
You shouldn't be downvoted. A lot of people make a lot of money off of tips. Does that translate to most? No, but this incentivizes many people to be pro-tip.
>I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I've got very limited and potentially misleading information about what a reasonable expectation is. I've got no idea what small crises my server had to deal with, or how other customers are treating him.
That's ridiculous. If you're not qualified to judge the value of service to yourself then your probably not qualified for a lot of spending decisions in your life.
Reasonable expectation ? If you're a reasonable person you'll have reasonable expectation and it's really easy to notice when someone makes the experience more pleasant.
And if a car mechanic returned your car smelling like shit would you not be mad because he had digestion issues ?
>That's ridiculous. If you're not qualified to judge the value of service to yourself then your probably not qualified for a lot of spending decisions in your life.
I can trivially judge the necessity of service but unless I am an expert in the domain I cannot judge the quality of service and very often the entire point of the service is to outsource expertise.
I sent my car in for an oil change. They didn't replace the clogged oil filter and it started leaking a little. I had to sent it in again.
Clearly I know that I need an oil change but unless I do my own inspections (the very thing I am paying for) how am I supposed to know that something went wrong?
>I can trivially judge the necessity of service but unless I am an expert in the domain I cannot judge the quality of service and very often the entire point of the service is to outsource expertise.
The entire point of this service is to improve your subjective experience - if you can't evaluate that then you probably need a legal guardian.
I can judge whether I had a good time, but is it the waiter's time things took long or was somebody in the kitchen slow or some other customer holding them up? Is the stain on the table the fault from the waiter not replacing everything or the boss's policy? etc. And if the food and my company is great even the worst waiter has little impact in that.
The waiter is the face of the establishment, but there are many things out of the control of even the best server.
They can do as much as they want. It's the owner's responsibility, thought. The owner makes the decisions. The waiter is the underpaid person, which will be replaced if they complain too much.
If I don't like a place I let the owner know and reduce my spending. If I like the place I tell the owner and spend more.
Tips are an awful way to incentivize good service.
I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I've got very limited and potentially misleading information about what a reasonable expectation is. I've got no idea what small crises my server had to deal with, or how other customers are treating him.
And because tips are everywhere now, nobody knows the going rate for most tips. Obviously tourists have no idea how much to tip.
If I reduce the tip, the waiter is only finding out that I was unsatisfied after it's too late to fix anything. But tipping up front makes the exercise entirely pointless.
And the moralizing of tips is stupid.
Many moral arguments paint people in the service industry as paupers or victims, but a basic level of respsect has to assume they're competent professionals who chose this line of work.
A tip is not an act of generosity, either, you're paying a fee for a service rendered. And that's why, as a system, the morality of tipping is entirely backwards: it rewards people who rip off their servers.
The thing that really bothers me are the awful motivations behind tipping: being control freaks, conspicuous consumption and all the slimy business incentives to push their payroll onto their customers.