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Are you obliged to tip or can you refuse? (feddit.online)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
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I'm not into tipping when I've visited the US, since I come from a country where servers are paid the equivalent of Fr. 20-30 ($24-43) an hour so there isn't an obligation to tip them, but that's the opposite in the US. Am I allowed to hand them large cash tips such as Fr. 1000 ($1236) or 500€ ($583)? It gets weirder: as apparently fast food places demand a tip, like really? It's getting out of hand, what's the point then?

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[–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

A little while back in another thread, someone was arguing that the only way to force the US away from tipping was to not tip. That is just...that's not going to work.

Okay, let's say that enough people stopped tipping servers to the point that the employers have to start making up the difference to pay them minimum wage. Then what? Small businesses already operating on a thin margin close. Chains raise prices. Previously tipped workers probably make less than half of what they did previously. And the government? They do nothing because, heck, everyone is getting paid enough. Because we all know that US minimum wage is definitely something people can live on.

Increased prices and closing of some small businesses seems inevitable no matter how you go about it, but we can't just rely on restaurants paying servers up to $7.25 an hour and expecting them to survive. It's a massive change and needs to come from the top down. And I can't see that happening.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (1 child)

    Those restaurants do already pay more than minimum wage for the most part. Look at McDonald’s national average for their lowest paid employees. It’s $12-$14/h.

    And like another person so kindly pointed out in this thread, they make 15-20x of $40/h waiting tables. Not tipping is not going to hurt most servers. It’s just going to get those servers to help change the law quicker.

    That massive change never comes from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. That’s literally every law in this fucking country. If people don’t push for it, it will not change. Slavery, women’s rights, gender rights, marriage rights, literally all of it is bottom up change.

    Chains raise prices

    There have been so many studies on this. It’s something like, for every $1 increase in minimum wage, food costs go up by $.01. Businesses have done a hilariously good job of convincing citizens that any increase in wages will hurt the costs of food.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago

    Sorry for any confusion. I don't consider McDonald's a tipped server. I'm talking about restaurant workers whose hourly wage without tips is below minimum wage.

    The "tip everyone working any service job" is something else entirely.

    Obviously a single customer not tipping doesn't hurt a server financially, but this isn't really about a single customer, right? You have to get to a tipping point (no pun intended) to affect change. If we all just gave up on tipping without a solution in place, who suffers? The servers. That's it.

    Fair enough on raising prices, but with chains I was thinking less about the increase coming from paying employees and more from "look, people will pay more!"

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