I tip my barista and budtender a dollar every visit, personally. I love those people though. Restaurants get 20% unless they fuck up, then it's 15%, unless it was absolutely egregious.
IMO restaurant tips (and other service businesses) are 15% by default, 20% if they do well, 10% if they do poorly. If they do especially poorly (like, completely ignoring the table for an hour while chatting with coworkers off to the side), they get $.02. If they do especially well, more than 20% (I've gone as high as 50% once).
Do you tip your local cashier in the groceries store? Do you tip the bus driver who took you to work? Do you tip a bank clerk who processed your application? If no, then this is a living wage.
Also not having "tips" prevents freeloaders from not paying taxes, which every other worker in the country pays fairly.
Tips (if reported) are always subject to 7.65% FICA tax. And there are several conditions that must be met before tips are excluded from federal (not necessarily state) income tax. (U.S. tax law). In short, many tips are still fully taxed despite false promises to the contrary.
As a European, I never understood why you'd tip automatically. I get that waiters are allowed to be paid less, but I don't see why that would be the customer's problem.
I also don’t get the logic of tipping a percentage of the cost. Asking for several cheap beers is more work for the waiter than a single bottle of expensive wine, yet the latter earns them more?
Because it's part of our culture and it's an easy way to show appreciation. You don't have to do it anywhere. Waiters also explicitly aren't allowed to be paid less. They must make at LEAST minimum wage. If they don't make minimum after tips, their hourly rate is raised each paycheck to equal minimum wage. It's literally not the customer's problem. You should probably learn how things work here if you're that curious!
> Waiters also explicitly aren't allowed to be paid less. They must make at LEAST minimum wage. If they don't make minimum after tips, their hourly rate is raised each paycheck to equal minimum wage.
That means they are allowed to be paid less than minimum wage. Wage is paid by the employer, not the employer's customer. If the employer can deduct the tips from the minimum wage, that explicitly means that they are allowed to pay tipped workers less and that tipping does not provide any additional income but instead only shifts the responsibility of paying people for their work to the customer. Tips are are nothing but gifts to the employer.
> and it's an easy way to show appreciation.
If something is socially expected simply as part of protocol and people only do it out of the social pressure not to deviate from the norm and be seen as assholes, then that is not appreciation.
7.25 is not a livable wage anywhere really, so even at 7.25 they would need tips to live. It really is the customers problem to pay them - their employers get off on 2.13 mostly, and 7.25 if they're extremely unlucky.
And yes, I'm American. Of course it's culture, but more than that we want waiters to not starve to death so we tip. You can, of course, choose not to but I consider it an asshole move knowing what they're making.
For their skill at accomplishing their job. Their jobs are primarily skill-based and customer-facing. A taxi driver who gets you where you want to go quickly and safely, a waiter who never lets your coffee cup get empty, a barber who makes you look... well dang, pretty nice!
If you have something to add to the conversation then just do that. Don't make bad faith interpretations and unsubstantiated accusations against people.
>If you have something to add to the conversation then just do that. Don't make bad faith interpretations and unsubstantiated accusations against people.
You mean like you just did?
Tipping culture in the US is absolutely rooted in bigotry[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. That's not a "bad faith interpretation," it's well-documented history.
The bad faith interpretation is claiming that tipping is racist, not providing any evidence for it, claiming that OP knows that it is racist and supports it for that reason.
>The bad faith interpretation is claiming that tipping is racist,
That's not a bad faith interpretation, the origins of tipping in the US are absolutely based in bigotry.
>claiming that OP knows that it is racist and supports it for that reason.
A fair point. GP certainly did not assume good faith or give the comment to which they responded the most charitable reading.
My apologies for being somewhat knee-jerk about it, but I have a really big problem with bigotry (I am absolutely not claiming that you or the poster to whom GP replied are bigoted) and believe that decent people should call attention to bigotry, especially when it's embedded in society as the tipping culture is in the US.
Bigotry is ethically wrong and harms the societies which it infests. As I mentioned, I feel strongly about that.
If I was less than charitable with your response to calling out bigotry (GP's attempt to do so was rather ham-handed), my apologies.
I also cut my own hair, but sometimes I’m lazy and just hit up the Barber shop.
She charges me $15! I tip +$25 and it’s still a cheap haircut.
My haircut has to be one of the simplest around, but 9 out of 10 stylists will leave me fixing it myself later. Once I paid $50+tip for the same cut at a swanky joint and STILL went home and fixed it. She doesn’t know what she’s worth.
That's it. I cut my own hair.