There should never be an obligation to tip. The whole point of tipping is that it's not obligatory. I get that we've messed that up for a lot of professions, like restaurant servers, but Uber et al have a chance to reset the social norms at least around taxi-esque services and they should take it.
as a practical matter, i don't believe it's possible to have "optional" tipping that doesn't create obligation (even if that would be desirable).
either you create a cultural norm where tipping isn't allowed or expected, which Uber has effectively done, or you have a situation like restaurants, where the tip may as well be part of the price, unless you're cool being the asshole who doesn't tip, which most people aren't.
if tipping is an option, through a kind of cultural game-theoretic pressure, the situation will always devolve into the restaurant norm. at least that's how it is in the states, and short of massive cultural changes i don't see that changing.
> if tipping is an option, through a kind of cultural game-theoretic pressure, the situation will always devolve into the restaurant norm. at least that's how it is in the states
In the UK tipping in restaurants is optional and, while it sounds really weird to say this, I don't think the waiters and waitresses seem to care either way. I don't get a different reaction from them if I tip or if I don't. They don't seem elated if I tip a lot or disappointed if I tip a little. Nobody seems to care and this situation seems stable as it's been this way as long as I've been an adult.
This is the case in every country I have ever been. If you read a travel guide for any country it might say that tips are usually given to taxi drivers, restaurant staff etc, but only in the US has zero tipping almost become equivalent to not paying the tab in full.
Also, when I go to the US with 5-10 year intervals the norms for tipping seem to have always crept upwards.
I'm curious where people stand on the "To Insure Proper Service" backronym? I've always bucked back on that by saying "Well, taking some sense of pride in your work, even if that work is bringing people their food and are enjoying the experience of your establishment should insure proper service, otherwise why not work elsewhere?" but I'm not sure that's a very charitable stance to take so I've been wondering what others think as a means of evolving my position a bit?
On the other hand, if you know beforehand that you are expected to compensate the service staff outside of the bill from the establishment, you should factor in your comfort level with that arrangement before you order, not act like it is some obscure thing you'd never heard of being done.
I find it strange that the same tipping norms exist in Canada as in the US, since, if I'm not mistaken, Canadian waitstaff are paid at least minimum wage. In the US, the fact that waiters are paid less than minimum wage and expected to make it up on tips is often cited to explain why it is so bad to not tip at all.
> In the US, the fact that waiters are paid less than minimum wage and expected to make it up on tips is often cited to explain why it is so bad to not tip at all.
Waiters always earn minimum wage in the US regardless of what tips they get. A waiter who earns $0 in tips must still be paid minimum wage by the restaurant that employs them.
By "less than minimum wage", the poster was referring to tipped wage - this is the lower, $2.13 per hour federal minimum which can be paid out to employees who make at least $30 per month in tips.
Since it is expected that tips make up the difference between the tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage, yes, tipped employees are actually paid less by their employers than regular minimum wage in the vast majority of cases. This is a large part of why tipping remains in practice - tips effectively subsidize the employer's payroll.
A waiter who earns $0 in tips is likely an awful waiter and won't remain employed long. His employer does not want to have to make up the difference on a regular basis.
I'm not entirely sure if I understood your first paragraph, but it seems like you might have overlooked this quote from the page I linked:
> If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages [...] do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.
In other words, the employer always needs to pay federal hourly minimum age. Paying a waiter less than minimum wage would be breaking the law regardless of what tips they get.
> tipped employees are actually paid less by their employers than regular minimum wage in the vast majority of cases
Edit: OK, I think I understand what you mean. I agree that because most waitstaff receive tips, the amount their employers pay can be less than minimum wage. However the amount that the waitstaff receive is always at least minimum wage.
In some parts of the US following labor laws is less prevalent than others. In many places the employer will simply ignore the law knowing they will face no consequences. Please see the south.
> In the US, the fact that waiters are paid less than minimum wage and expected to make it up on tips is often cited to explain why it is so bad to not tip at all.
Right, so even if they don't receive any tips they get paid minimum wage. It's a bit disingenuous to suggest they make less than minimum wage if they receive no tips.
> but only in the US has zero tipping almost become equivalent to not paying the tab in full.
Tipping in restaurants and taxis is kind of expected in Romania, too (more exactly the capital, Bucharest). Granted, the taxi fares are ridiculously low, so even with a 15-20% tip the price only starts approaching a "normal" level. Restaurants' tips are more like 10%. I also tip my barber/hairdresser, but that's because he does a really good job.
But this is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, isn't it? You could just as easily argue that the wages are so low because tipping is pretty much a given.
As your link says, they are not allowed to pay less than minimum wage. They are allowed to set hourly wages for tipped employees lower than minimum wage, but they have to ensure that the total compensation of the employee averages out to minimum wage.
Realistically, if the restaurant owner has to contribute anything beyond their hourly rate to the paycheck of the server, that server will be fired (or the business is so slow that it will go under soon).
Not necessarily. I briefly worked at a 24x7 roadside place where tipped employees would occasionally fall under minimum wage due to slow periods or customers who would either stiff the waitress or tip out $0.35 on an egg, toast, coffee which cost $2.65.
That place systematically robbed those staff by refusing to pay minimum wage and falsifying records and withholding taxes based in nonexistent tips. The Labor department fined then pretty heavily -- but that isn't an uncommon practice.
I'm not sure how this contradicts what I said. Your experience showed that the business was not contributing anymore to your paycheck than the normal wage. Had they not been breaking the law, they probably would have fired someone due to the "extra" expense.
Exactly - so any tip just reduces how much the owner has to pay to cover minimum wage, making it a subsidy to them, not to the server, who gets minimum wage either way.
It's not really a subsidy though, it's just a complication of the payment.
It could be a subsidy if it wasn't an established custom to tip, but people know quite well that they are paying the server a tip for the service.
I suppose the fact that it enables the restaurant to under-report wages and thus under-pay wage taxes is a bit of a subsidy (but then some of that savings probably shows up for the customer).
It is a subsidy, because the server gets the same, it's the restaurant that pockets the difference.
Say the server works 40h/week like a regular full-time worker, so the minimum take-home pay under federal law is $15000. If the server gets $0 in tips, the restaurant must pay the $15000. But if the server gets, say, $5000 in tips, the restaurant can pay only $10000.
The server gets the same money, only the restaurant gets to save some.
Seattle recently passed $15 minimum wage and now a lot of restaurants are charging a "service fee" and putting up signs that discourage you from tipping. A much better system imo.
What's the point of a service fee on top of the cost of your meal though? Why not incorporate it into your meal, since it's non-optional.
I noticed they did this in Singapore. You'd be charged a service fee on top of your bill, I can't remember if they popped tax on top of that too. If it's non-optional, it should be included in the cost.
>What's the point of a service fee on top of the cost of your meal though?
For the same reason airlines don't include mandatory charges in their fares - humans are not particularly good at rational pricing evaluation.
It's known as partition pricing and generally results in higher revenues - from "The Effects on Perceived Restaurant Expensiveness
of Tipping and Its Alternatives": [1]
"Furthermore, participants ordered more expensive meals when automatic gratuities were added to the bill than when the costs of service were built into menu prices"
Servers are actually never paid that wage. If a server's tips do not elevate them above the standard minimum wage, the restaurant is required to compensate them at the standard minimum wage. This was at least the law when I worked in the service industry.
The fact really is in the USA if we eliminated tipping, the cost of the food on the menu would just go up by $X number of dollars, and people don't want that, they want low prices for the items on the menu which is why the system also is the way it is.
I don't believe you. No one I know likes tipping. It's awkward no matter how you slice it. We would all much rather just pay what it costs and not have to tip.
--
Looked it up. You were right. Well, at least in the pay structure. 85% of surveyed people prefer a tipping pay structure to including it in the price of food.
I think it has to do with the perceived idea that tipping leaves the diner in control and leaves the ability to punish a bad waiter. Maybe I'm wrong about that too.
No job wherein the customer directly employs you should give customers direct control of employees wages. Can you imagine the custom applied across the board.
I'm sorry doctor that appendectomy scar is a bit to big for my liking I'm only tipping you $180.
Honestly, this would greatly improve medical service in the US. Unfortunately, for sums this big there would be too many people willing to be dicks even when the service was good, so the system wouldn't work for that reason.
I don't think people (as least zero of the people I associate with) have any problem with tipping in the United States - it's just so understood it's what you do when in a restaurant, that the only question is usually one of "(A) I'm Lazy, don't want to calculate, 20% tip, (B) I'm being anal, figure out exact 18.5% tip, (C) Got poor service, 15% tip, (D) Waiter spit in my food and was really obnoxious/rude to me - 10% tip (but be prepared for further hostility when you do this)."
After doing this for enough years, it becomes a background task that you don't even really think of, no awkwardness.
I have never given a 0% tip in the United States. If the service is that bad, get the manager, have them fired - but as long as they are working, they should be paid. Not tipping is equivalent to asking someone to work without salary. Tipping 10% is pretty damn aggressive, and the few times that I've done it, it's certainly gotten a reaction.
What people have to understand, is that a "Tip" in the United States for a server == Salary, not some nice additional money. It's how they pay their rent/buy their groceries/feed their children.
Not hyperbolic at all. If you read through this thread, the "salary" they are paid assumes that they are making money through tips. It doesn't get adjusted if they are tipped less.
What? They are paid the standard minimum wage if they aren't tipped. It's actually the opposite of what you're saying. Their hourly pay from their employer DOES get adjusted when they are tipped below a rate which satisfies the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
That presumes first class (or at least credible) payroll management, which, while there are probably instances of in the Restaurant Industry, is less common than one might hope. In practice, waitresses are paid their minimum server wage and are then on their own to scrounge up tips to make up the difference. For each case where we can find where a restaurant actually made up the difference in missing tips, we will likely also find several examples of where it doesn't happen.
And, while that "$7.25/hour" is OK in some place like Terre Haute, Indiana, It's destitute poverty in a lot of cities, so the societally agreed convention is that in order to live/pay groceries/utilities/bus-fare/etc... tips are essential.
It's reasonable to assume that when a serving person in the United Stated doesn't receive a tip of 18-20%, then that money is resulting in a reduction of expected baseline salary.
I've only ever left 0% tip once. It was because I had to repeatedly get up from the table to find the server, first to order, then to get the check, possibly another time when I needed something and they never came back to check after the food was delivered.
There was a freakonomics episode on this. People believe they have control, but it turns out that , even if the amount people tip differs per person, people basically never change how much they tip.
The differential between server minimum wage and regular minimum wage used to be much lower, but the regular minimum wage keeps getting adjusted up due to inflation &c.
that's pretty interesting. any theories on the underlying cultural differences that explain it, or just different established customs?
all the (many) wait-people here in the states i've known really dislike it, and it's generally considered either clueless, rude, or stingy not to tip at least 15%.
i'm curious about things like:
1. if you go out with your friends to the pub, and don't tip on your bill, are you friends giving you shit about it or otherwise commenting or silently judging?
2. if you were on a date, would she notice and judge if you tipped poorly? (i know many women for whom it would be an instant deal-breaker here, essentially a social signal of many other undesirable traits)
The "cultural difference" in Australia is that servers, etc. are actually paid the same (fairly high by U.S. standards) minimum wage or above for experience bartenders. So tipping just seems kind of dumb in most cases. The bill is the bill and you pay it and move on with your night.
I think there are many reasons why it persists in the U.S. On the server end, it makes it easier for a casual employee to make a reasonable amount for a couple of nights work and you would make much less if you were straight hourly. It also allows service industry employers to "staff up" on those busy nights and not have to worry about keeping too many on the rest of the week. While customers get to do some social signalling, I think that's mostly adjacent to the server and owner's pay scheme.
If the U.S. moved away from tipping, they would need to pay a higher minimum wage, keep fewer casual employees that only work 2-3 nights a week, and the regulars would be either full-time or half-time which means the busy nights would have fewer servers, though maybe more experienced so nearly as productive for the ones that work it as a full time job.
You don't tip in a pub, and you don't have a bill either as you pay for each round of drinks as you get them.
I don't know how your date would be able to know how much you tipped, because you'd normally pay using a chip-and-pin credit card so you don't need to put any money on the table or write anything down.
In Australia, no one would expect you to tip at a pub. Depending on how long you stayed there, you might open a tab, but usually people pay by round. With something like Paywave, paying small amounts is trivial.
On a date at a restaurant, they probably wouldn't care. Waitstaff don't really react differently whether you tip or not.
Where do you live? I've lived in the south east since I was young and people definitely expect to tip/be tipped 10%. It's not as strong as America but definitely odd not to.
I guess you haven't lived anywhere else in the world other than the US then... Because tipping is completely optional everywhere except the US (and Canada). Even the US has only done it this way for about 100 years.
That's a US-centric weird custom. Not the case in many other countries. I some places (Japan, some South Pacific Islands) tipping is often considered downright rude.
Also try getting Scottish people to tip with game theory and see how that turns out..
The ultimate problem with tipping restaurant service workers is that servers are legally allowed to be paid sub-minimum wage. The restaurant offloads their obligation to pay their employees onto the customer, and if the customer doesn't tip then the server will not be paid anything for the work. Under these conditions, customers have a moral obligation to tip servers, but that doesn't mean the system isn't a mess. Servers get no benefits, back staff get no tips, but servers get cash and the opportunity to underreport their tax burden.
That is not true at all. Read the law. In a situation where a server's tips do not boost their hourly wage to the federal minimum wage, the employer is obligated to compensate them up to that level. So in a situation where, say, a server was never tipped, the employer would have to pay them $7.25 an hour just like any other food service worker who makes minimum wage.
As if managers never break the law. Plenty of managers pool the tips and take their cut from the pool. Illegal? Sure. What can anyone do about it? Only quit.
Quit and report the manager to the labor board. There are whole government departments, federally and in each state, dedicated to prosecuting people who do things like this. If people stop letting them get away with it, they'll stop doing it.
You realize that "living wage" is only a price floor for labor, not a price ceiling, right? It is a guarantee that people are paid at a minimum the amount necessary to support themselves, with various definitions excluding or including that person's family situation from consideration.
Instituting a living wage would in no way prevent you from working extra and being paid extra for that work. I'm inclined to believe you haven't actually researched what a living wage is or would entail to enact, because the inaccuracy of the claim you're making is egregious.
I think what the parent is getting at is that by instituting a price floor, you prevent people from providing services whose utility is below the price floor. In other words, if someone wanted to do extra work that wasn't worth much money (but might add up over a longer period of time), they are now unable to do said work because no one will be willing to pay them for it.
Basically, when setting a minimum wage, you end up picking between two groups of labor: those who work for some extra money (think high schoolers and retirees who would like some extra spending money and don't mind doing menial tasks that may not generate much value to earn in) and those who work to live (think unskilled laborers who do laborious work and feel they are insufficiently compensated for it). A lower wage favors the former group because they are able to offer the services for less (and the quantity of labor demanded will increase if the price goes down) while a higher wage favors the latter because they can demand more money.
I don't know if I'd be so charitable to call my counter-assertion to the assertion I replied to an argument, but the replies to your reply are indeed representatives of the argument chains that lead to the assertion, and I agree they are phrased well, probably better than I would have. More tangentially I'm now wondering how often leaving an assertion that's the obvious output (if you've seen it before anyway) of an idea framework ends up with other people doing the backward chaining algorithm to give an explanation for you...
There are part time tasks that we might want to pay someone to do, but are not worth paying anyone for at living wage costs: The value and the minimum wage don't line up. Those are often the kinds of jobs untrained teenagers did back in the day. If it's illegal to pay someone to do it for a wage I am willing to pay, then it doesn't get done.
It would be nice if it was possible to have a sensible minimum wage for, say, employing someone over 5 hours a week, but have mechanisms that make it legal for someone to do very short term work at wages nobody should ever live on. There's plenty of people underemployed at 15, 20 hours a week, that would love to supplement that with a bit of extra work, even if it was under minimum wage. In fact, in some cultures this happens all the time.
That work would also get done if we had a citizen income that matches that living wage, and we got rid of the minimum wage altogether.
Now, whether the world would be in a better state by leaving work not done but guaranteeing a living wage or by maximizing work done is a matter for debate: Looking at minimum wage laws alone is not enough to compare policy outcomes. Still, the grandparent was making a defensible argument, whether you think he is wrong (and he might be) or not.
Maybe what they meant is that without a wage floor people working for extra cash could take the job for below-living wage rate, outcompeting people who are looking to support themselves fully with the job.
(I don't endorse that point of view, just trying to make sense of their claim.)
It isn't a guarantee of that when you tie it to an hourly rate. Anyone who isn't delivering enough value after the rate hike is going to have their hours cut and is going to have a harder time finding a second job, which is something a lot of minimum wage workers have to do thanks to overtime pay requirements. I'm not saying this as some upper middle class libertarian either, I was still working these jobs just a couple years ago. A 40 hour or less work week for me would have kept me in that position nearly indefinitely. Yet raising the minimum wage much higher than it is now would price the people who are most in need of employment out of the labor market. I know you're probably likely to cite recent wage hikes in certain cities as evidence that this isn't the case, but those are areas where a dollar has a much lower purchasing power than it does in most of the country. A national minimum wage of $12 an hour would have made a huge number of the people I'd worked with at a minimum wage job a liability rather than an asset.
Living wage is not defined in terms of absolute money made from a job. Its defined in such that if you are spending your time working for something, it should be at least enough to survive off if you did it 40 hours a week.
Right, but a living hourly wage requirement that applies universally without exceptions prevents someone with a full-time job that pays a living wage (or perhaps much more than that) from doing side jobs that have a price which would provide mutual benefit to both them and the person paying for them, but only do so at a wage below what would, on its own, be a living wage.
This is a real issue (and it applies to regular old minimum wages even they aren't living wages); its among the arguments for why Basic Income would be a better minimum-quality-of-life support than minimum wage guarantees for the working plus welfare for the nonworking, since it doesn't stop any mutually-beneficial work from being done merely because the market clearing price is below an artificial threshold.
OTOH, even people who recognize that the restriction on some work that it implies is a problem think its a cost worth paying for a living wage guarantee given that its harder to get support for (and, arguably, beyond the level of the economy now to support) a Basic Income at a sufficient level in the near term.
The term itself is sort of ridiculous as well, since most advocates for it want a $15 an hour minimum wage, which is nearly twice what I lived on for quite a while, and is far above the median purchasing power amongst all people. And to be blunt, most of the people I worked with for less than $8 an hour were barely worth what they were being payed then. At $15 an hour there is just no way they would be able to find enough employment
Yeah I could take issue with the term too. At least with minimum wage (which has the same issues wrt a price floor, like many forms of work not being worth the minimum $x/hr the law requires) it's the same at the city/state/federal level you live in so you can properly account for it, and in the ideal case is enough to "live" on so proponents are happy. "Living wage" is inherently more subjective. I can live almost anywhere in the US at that place's minimum wage or less -- if I live like a college student, or a bit worse. It's not enough to support a family on. But too often a living wage gets set at some high price it takes to rent a studio apartment alone in your area and eat out every night, and maybe even support a child. It's just a nebulous term.
I live in the Seattle area where $15/hr is the minimum wage now for the city proper. Sure certain businesses still have another year or two to implement it, and other businesses another 5 or so years, but I'm looking forward to seeing the results over time and how well they match various parties' predictions when the law was passed.
I think the USSR tried a living wage. After 80 years of a living wage they had to line up every morning for their stipend of a loaf of Bread and a Bar of Soap.
While I believe people should be paid fairly, it would be difficult to implement and carry out successfully as history has proven.
Russian people were dirt poor because the USSR spent a majority of their economic fruits to subsidize strategic communist allies in order to keep them loyal. A lot of the other communist bloc countries were pretty well off until this subsidy stopped.
We need to tip in America because the prevalent attitude here is "I don't get paid enough for this shit." It's not so much about paying people a living wage, as much as changing the way people view their jobs and obligations.
Everyone wants to change the world, but how many people will actually pick up a stray piece of trash and throw it in a bin?
In many/most states, the minimum wage for a variety of jobs is not in the range of "livable". For example, minimum wage for restaurant jobs in Georgia is $2.13/hour [1]. They actually don't "get paid enough for this shit," so their attitude actually matches reality. Tipping is a necessary component of the compensation if we want to continue our practice of letting certain employers have exemptions from labor laws.
EDIT: $2.13/hour is $340.80 per month, if you are given enough hours to make full-time. Taxes etc. come out of that (you will probably see some of that money again when you file your taxes, for all the good it will do then).
(Yes, I know the employer is supposed to top-up the staff to e.g. $7.25/hr. That does not always/usually/ever happen.)
You are correct that paying people more than a pittance changes how they view their jobs.
Not sure why you'd accept that very long. I'll tell you how it works here (swe): Most of restaurant employees in the city are organized. There are no minimum wages, instead the union and the corresponding employee organization agree on a minimum compensation. A restaurant that doesn't want to follow the agreement will risk being blockaded by both this Union and any other union that symphathizes, for example their trash won't be picked up. The salaries for restaurant staff are still among the lowest at $3k/month, but still it's 80% of a police or nurse salary.
This might sound like the Union runs an extortion scheme, but interestingly the employers organizations are supportive as it means a lot less regulation and more flexibility. The result of this model is a pretty flat structure in comp: a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country.
Not saying it shouldn't, but it should because qualified work can be paid more not because unqualified work can be paid less. Having an organized workforce that says "the minimum cost for full time work of any kind is a living wage" flattens it.
I waited tables a decade ago. If I recall correctly, it was $2.95 + tips and I believe with a 4% tip-out. So your 15% tip became 11% real quick. So I hustled.
I'm not saying that we should continue to screw over people who rely on tips as living wage. What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. After all, we've heard anecdotes about service in Europe being poor.
Yes yes, they don't tip in Asia, and service is excellent. Don't forget the social fabric is different there.
Service is Europe is not poor. Not by a long shot.
When talking about service you have to consider cultural differences too. I'm american, in the country that I studied abroad in the service expectations were different from cashiers than American cashiers and neither are tipped.
I also would prefer to have much less fake friendliness.
There's no reason why it can't work differently, as mentioned elsewhere, but it would require alot of change in the way these businesses are ran in the U.S. and there's not that much incentive. Most likely the end result would be the same as far as service goes.
From having lived in both the U.S. and Australia, my feeling isn't so much that tipping is the reason why the service is better. I've had excellent service in some places in Australia and lousy service in places in the U.S. My feeling is that the management makes a point of emphasizing customer service more in the U.S. than in other places (even in businesses that don't have tips), and this is true across the board. Increased competition in the U.S. is some of it, and just plain cultural attitude is alot.
> What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping.
Except you do not give any argument for why that is the case, but just hand wavingly claim it. Why exactly wouldn't it work if tips were abolished, all the prices on the menu are raised to match the average income from tips, and salaries raised to make up for tips? I don't see why good service would only be possible with tipping.
Because customer service is draining. Because even when you get paid $75k, dealing with assholes still sucks.
I'm gonna hand wave some more: most Americans when they think of good service beyond just being quick on delivery. Good service is about having a friendly conversation and building rapport with another person. It's may be weird for those of us with introverted tendencies, but this is Middle America with big smiling teeth.
Now.. by giving me an immediate incentive (tip) to smile through a bad customer's rudeness (or even harassment--please don't ever hit on people paid to serve you, ever), I'll continue to smile and pour on that syrupy niceness even when I just want to tell a person that they're an asshole and never have to deal with them again.
Personally, I have absolute no problem with tipping, or paying higher prices to pay restaurant workers a better wage, but I think people who are pushing no-tip don't understand the complexities in place.
In the restaurant world, at the end of each night, you'd get a huge wad of cash, and you felt you had worked for it (even though it can be argued people tip consistently). So even though the carrot may not be real, it still convinced people to act a certain way.
Now take away that carrot, take away the cash. You just have better paid McDonald's workers.
I disagree completely. For one thing, many McDs employees in countries with a higher minimum wage also have a better attitude, but there are also standout employees at McDs in the U.S. The issue isn't just that the workers at higher minimum wage places are paid more, it's that they are better employees because the managers there can't afford to hire a mediocre one (especially since it's harder to fire them), so they get good employees and train them. And the instances where I've had really good service from McDs in the U.S. are often cases where there's an economic downturn and you have alot of overqualified people taking that job as it's better than nothing.
Service in any restaurant is more a function of the kinds of employees you can attract (through wages) and the amount of training the manager puts into their staff. Tipping is only important in that it allows some restaurants to pay a fairly decent amount of money to attract higher quality workers for only a couple of nights when a straight wage would require a larger time commitment to get the same amount of money. However, a (necessarily higher) straight wage would also allow more workers the opportunity to make a decent full time living as a waiter or bartender, which means you could have really good servers even on less busy nights of the week, but fewer servers on the busiest nights as there's less flexibility in hiring and firing.
Sorry but I worked in a variety of non tipped customer service jobs and I was always polite even when abused because that was my job. If I didn't do my job I would lose my job. It's really not all that draining either. I can't imagine requiring bribes, oh sorry, tips, to do my job.
The biggest difference in customer service in all the establishments I've worked in was management. Training is extremely important and can't be winged, there has to be a procedure in place. Having the highest expectations of your employees and component staffing are a must. And don't be scared to fire anyone who is not meeting your standards.
Poor customer service is mostly a result of poor management. Good customer service is a result of good management.
Anyway over friendly servers make me very, very uncomfortable. I went out for food with my companions not for a social experience with a stranger.
Being nice to assholes isn't something I consider necessary for good service. If anything it's bad service for all the other polite customers who have to listen to their bullshit.
Do you feel like the unsupported assertion that employers do not obey the law helps to bolster your point? If so, is it because you feel facts are subordinate to emotional resonance?
