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- Hacker News
- In Japan, I think the servers are paid well, and they don't accept tips. If you leave money on the table, they will chase you down, and give it back.
And the service is incredible. Japanese service culture is pretty amazing, if you are used to the US. You really want to tip them -much more than in the US.
I think the US underpays waitstaff pretty badly. They desperately need the tips, but in some places, they can do fairly well. I know lots of [former, mostly] bartenders, and they tell stories of bringing home hundreds of untaxed dollars, every night.
- I live in Japan and see signs for hiring restaurant staff at restaurants pretty often, because they’re always hiring since there’s always a shortage of labor, and the posted wages are usually at or slightly above minimum wage. In Tokyo that’s 1226 yen/hour (US$7.70 as of now) which is not much to live on. They’re not paid below minimum wage so that puts them ahead of US wait staff in one sense, but I expect that when taking into account tips, US wait staff probably come out ahead.
Which makes it clear that service is not necessarily a function of compensation, and that eradicating tips does not necessarily make wait staff economically better off.
by presentation - it's time for a worldwide reset on tipping culture / assumptions.
america was always weird - the tipping practice leads to over-the-top fake service, is abusive to staff and only benefits restaurant owners. and they turned all that up to 11 over the last few years. how americans can cherish and even defend this, i can't get my mind around it.
meanwhile in europe, american practices are imported by way of POS terminals asking in outrageous use cases for outrageous amounts of tips. no, im not tipping 30% for an item i pick from a shelf in a store. add to that the awkward interaction at a bar or so when you have to select a tip under the watchful eye of the server.
people are shamed into tipping in all manners of ways and let those abusive practices plow over them.
it's a disgrace.
i wish for a world where all prices, including tips & taxes, are on the label / menu when i buy them and asking / giving anything on top is illegal. we would all be better off, even though americans for some reasons can't accept it - i have little trust in the headline of the linked article becoming a bigger phenomena.
by malthaus - I never thought about paying staff via tips being a tax dodge for the restaurant if it lets them avoid raising prices and thus taxable revenue.by nkrisc
- The BBC article's "sales tax" reason sounds good - unless you know that several US states do not have sales tax.
The actual history of tipping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping#History
And a bit on Sales Taxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_tax#In_the_United_States
From old family stories, I figure the real reason for tipping service workers is that both employers and customers want there to be plenty of service workers available - but the demand for their labor (restaurant customers, whatever) is very unpredictable compared to factory, farm, or gov't work. And service industries can't afford to keep a lot of idle workers around at full pay. So tipping is a simple revenue-sharing scheme, wrapped in social niceties, that boosts/cuts the service workers' income based on whether business is currently fast or slow.
by bell-cot - If the price increase is actually linked to higher wages for the staff, there should be no increase in taxable revenue for the restaurant, because the wages are deductible expenses. But there is still the matter of sales tax (paid by the customer), and the tax payable by the employee on their wages (not sure if tips are technically taxable income already, but regardless, you can bet most staff aren't paying taxes on them).by NoboruWataya
- Very often regarding those articles, you read in the comments different varieties of "good service":
- may I ask: What does this actually mean?
I have never been to a "high class" or "fine dining" location, so maybe my expectations are in general not high.
My expectations are just simple: Give me the menu quickly, let me order quickly, let me eat and let me pay quickly.
Thats it. What do I miss?
EDIT: Im located in EU.
- As with many other products, they do have an incentive to claim you're receiving something special.
Mostly yes, there's not much extra they can deliver besides a better staff to customer ratio.
by nitwit005 - There's a one star restaurant in my hometown. Not even expensive, it's about 60€ for a three-courses menu, so we try to go at least a few times a year.
It's really about reading the room. A good waiter won't bring the main of you're still finishing the wine that paired with your entrée. Won't come to pick the empty plates right in the middle of a lively conversation.
Things will land on and leave your table at the right time.
by lbreakjai - It means nothing. Whoever writes this has no idea about American restaurant protocol. The "tip for good service" thing comes from the UK (perhaps elsewhere in Europe too, not sure since I don't know those cultures well). There (obviously it's changing as US cultural virus propagates) the idea was: default is no tip, a tip only exists as a token to denote thanks for something -- friendly service, quick service, and so on. Most service is slow and surly so -- no tips.
By contrast in the US the tip is mandatory. The server doesn't make any money and goes broke if you don't tip. So everyone does. Service would have to be astonishingly bad (waiter threw up on the customer?) to receive no tip. On the other end, one might give a somewhat higher tip if the server was particularly friendly, helpful, is related to you, is a friend of your kids, seems like they could use the money, and so on. There's no metric of "I was well served" that correlates to the tip.
by dboreham - That's a good question. Good service is something important to the overall dining experience, so much so, higher end places regard the "maître d'hôtel" aka the service/restaurant manager equal to the chef.
Great service is generally about "reading your mind": e.g. providing you with a replacement fork that you dropped without you needing to ask. Also, coordinating that "timing" you are after, perfectly. Good service is attentive without being overly present. If you ever ate somewhere in a sitdown restaurant and thought after "wow that was a great meal", service contributed to that.
by ricardobayes - Good service is mostly invisible. Courses paced to how you're eating, not fired all at once or giving you 20 minute gaps between mains. Drinks refilled, plates cleared without asking. Reading the room and knowing when I want to chat or be left alone. Staff that know what their serving, whats in it, how it's cooked, what wine pairs well, etc.by jmull3n
- FWIW France has it right: there's no tipping, service is always included.by ciconia
- We take food very seriously :)by JackSlateur
- I am french, living in the US: yes, service is always included in France, but service is usually not that good. At least, definitely not as good as in the US.
- Good. Tipping creates so much mental overhead and unnecessary bad feelings on everyone's part.
- You're telling on yourself.
Most people I know are happy to leave a tip - especially to reward great service as part of a great night, or in cases where you have a long term relationship with an establishment and its staff.
I can only imagine the staff is likewise happy to see the nice tip from us at the end of the night.
If you can only imagine "unnecessary bad feelings" - I can only imagine the tip you leave and how the staff feels about you. If you are so poor, you won't enjoy the price hike either and if you are not poor then just tip properly and move on.
by xyzelement - I hate that some workers depend on tips and that creates an obligation on me, but I do like to tip because I know how great it feels to get one. At work I sometimes get a bonus and what’s that if not a tip?
I benefit too. It’s a way for me to express gratitude.
by criddell - The thing I hate the most is tipping at bars.
20% tip when all you do is pour my beers, which I have to order at the bar and bring to my table myself? Insane.
by yuye - The bigger story for me is tipping fatigue. Almost every service worker requests a tip now. It seems to be from the rise in digital payments where everyone just turns on that feature. As a consumer, I have no idea if the worker’s compensation model is tied to tips or not and it feels like the ones who aren’t have hijacked my generosity.by eagerpace
- > Almost every service worker requests a tip now.
That it's become ubiquitous has made me able to decline tips without feeling weird about it.
by JohnFen - Next also include sales tax in label prices.by phreeza
- how does that work with things like tax free weekends?by plopz
- welcome to europe, where tips are optional and sales tax is denotedby daef
- We're going in the other direction. In Seattle it's common for restaurants to tack on an extra "service charge" that's not a tip, just because. It's supposed to be declared somewhere.
With tip your bill can easily end up 40% higher.
by tdeck - As a foreigner in the US, I've made the faux-pas of assuming waiters and waitresses were being paid a full salary by their employer.
I even suspect that I received sub-par service from some of them, who may have identified me as a "no-tip risk" from the first moment.
by Rygian - Level of service doesn't depend on the tip in the USA. Tip size may depend a little bit on level of service, but not the other way around. Basically the tip is how the customer pays the server and table clearers etc, because the restaurant owner does not. It's just a convention on how to split up the total charge that American culture has determined in the way to do it. And like every single weird thing in American culture, it's that way because of slavery.by dboreham
- You were lucky to get out alive.by jacobgorm
- I've completely forgot to tip many times while visiting the US. It's just not something that I ever do in my country. And then you learn it's not only restaurants, but bars and, for some reason, the person behind the cashier at a Wallgreen's is sometimes also tipped?by SwiftyBug
- To be honest they are paid a full salary. Tipped wage does not preclude the minimum wage. In addition there are many states like CA that do not have a tipped wage.by chung8123