Why not put all tips into a pool and just share it out between everyone?
Another issue is that if Americans tip, then you start to expect tipping from everyone make the experience more expensive and worst from anyone else.
PS. I don't own a restaurant or work at one, but I have friends that do both.I live in Greece, that counts also as "Europe" I guess
One place is a very popular restaurant with counter service. The other is a bar.
I also earn tips playing music on the side.
Is this before taxes or what remains after?
They had 'Brussels IPA' and 'Belgian IPA', I ordered those beers coming from Brussels and did not knew those beers.
The waiter looked at me strangely. I did not gave any tips.
A tip is a token of gratitude, should the customer choose to offer. It is not an entitlement.
Of course, I want them to get paid a fair wage too - the only way to fight against this culture is taking a stand against tipping. If enough people don't tip, hopefully the restaurant will struggle to find staff and eventually - either close down or increase the wages. But, don't try to run a restaurant when you clearly can't afford to pay your staff a decent wage. That's just running a business on hopes and dreams. It's not my job to subsidize your poor financial and business planning.
..and the most hilarious example of how the capitalist overlords keep the peasants fighting over pennies amongst themselves
No. The customer pays your boss → your boss pays you. Stop being bitches and demand your bosses to pay you a proper salary.
It's important to remind that American restaurants work well - we have promp and good service as a rule, the majority of Americans are fine with and enjoy tipping and the vast majority of service workers enjoy getting them and are ahead financially vs European counterparts. This is our culture and we by and large like our culture.
It's fine to experiment with other options and it's (of course) fine to disagree and complain but it's also an important baseline to acknowledge that things mainly work and people mainly like it.
Europeans tip, just not as crazy as Americans.
>It's important to remind that American restaurants work well
Japanese service is top-notch and tipping is generally frowned upon there.
+1 reason not to travel to USA
I am just sitting here thinking everyone is creating a reason why their system is better while trying to diminish another’s.
A system where the employer pays a full decent wage to their workers and avoids having employees complain and insult customers because they didn't tip some random percentage number is the better system. Prove me wrong.
Extremist capitalism is still extremism.
The owner wants the maximum ratio of servers to customers possible. In the typical USA system, being paid primarily in tips means the server is highly incentivized to upsell the customer as much as possible and do everything they can to increase the total bill, and therefor increase their tip. Essentially a commissioned sales person but the customer pays the commission.
This is the least efficient way to run a restaurant with regard to staffing.
European restaurants typically use a team service model, which greatly reduces the number of staff needed. Every front of house worker can take orders, make and serve drinks, run food to tables, etc. Instead of checking on the customer every few minutes they rely on the customer to ask if you need something. There is no pressure to run up the bill or clear out quickly in this model.
Sometimes it takes a lot of time to get your order at rush hours, but the culture tolerates patience and waiting.
If the service is extra good I might tip extra.
If the service is very bad (unreasonably slow, or staff forget or mix up the order in a significant way, or they are very rude), I tip 0%. Of course everyone can mess up things a little so it’s not like I immediately tip 0% just because of some minor thing. It has to be properly bad.
Also something I have learned from the Spanish is to always order something small and quick for the table even before we have decided what to eat. Then if it takes 40 minutes before the food comes it doesn’t matter that much compared to when you are starving for food. So this is a very neat trick that helps a lot to have a good experience even at slow places, and something I have started always doing.
This is likely one of the absolute worst features of the US dining system.
So many times I have been sitting in deep conversation with friends or colleagues just for a waiter to claim all attention to ask if we want to have refilled water.
That they can even push themselves to such rude behavior is entirely insane to me.
I'm fine with checking one time early enough in the meal that conversations haven't gone deep yet, but outside of that, I'm perfectly capable of signalling if we need anything.
You do realize that it's perfectly acceptable and commonplace to explain your group's preferences to the server upon first being introduced? You're really telling them exactly what would make you happiest while also reducing the effort they need to spend on your group, a mutually beneficial setup.
Of course, incentives may not align in certain scenarios. On a busy night/time or at restaurants that don't have lots of seating, having a table that they can't 'turn over' quickly may be undesirable, especially if purchases (another round of drinks) aren't being made occasionally.
The answer is always yes. I'd come get you if it weren't.
Are you sure? I've seen way more staff shortages in real life restaurants over the past 5-6 years than any other time in my life.
https://foodinstitute.com/focus/labor-shortages-costly-probl...
> Nearly 16 million people worked in restaurants last year, representing about 10% of the national workforce, and 62% of operators said recruiting and keeping employees is a real headache. “The reasons for staffing shortages are both cyclical and structural,” Milos Eric, co-founder and general manager of OysterLink, told FI, noting government statistics showed 44,000 hospitality jobs were added in March alone, but 167,000 openings remained unfilled nationwide.
> “The reasons for staffing shortages are both cyclical and structural,” Milos Eric, co-founder and general manager of OysterLink, told FI, noting government statistics showed 44,000 hospitality jobs were added in March alone, but 167,000 openings remained unfilled nationwide. Eric said deportation is compounding the problem, considering government data shows 37% of cooks and 5% of dishwashers are foreign-born.
https://restaurant.org/research-and-media/research/restauran...
These jobs can be filled with domestic US workers, simply pay living wages.
I really haven't been smothered by checkups every few minutes. When the servers are really good, they can anticipate when you need something by simply looking at you and your table. They know when your drink is empty and when you want it filled. A server should rarely need to ask that stuff verbally. If they are continually checking up, they are inexperienced or insecure.
After I make my order, the server will usually try and take my menu. Lately I've said "I'd like to hold on to this" and they love when you do that! I don't always follow-up with another order, but sometimes I just need an extra side dish, or a dessert.
I've had that overstaffed experience, too. There are one or two small chains around here that employ 3x as many servers as they need. And their rooms are always 1/5th full or less. So the moment I walk in, there are 3-4 people greeting me and escorting me to a table, before I can even pull off my hat and gloves. In the same place, while they don't appear to do "team service" I would meet one waitress, and then get fobbed off on another guy for no stated reason. If they are sharing tips, a lot of slices to that pie.
I don't think so. The biggest upsell of a US-style tipping culture is that restaurant owners have a no-downside free pass in exploiting workers. They are literally allowed to have people working for them for barely any pay and performing a role aimed at increasing throughput and demand. Therefore there is no incentive whatsoever for a restaurant owner to stop exploiting their staff.
- French visiting the US: why is the waiter coming at us, does he want us out?
- American visiting France: what is the waiter waiting for, didn't he notice we are finished?
If France, if the waiter comes after you have finished your meal and asks you if you are done, it is usually a polite way of asking you to leave, usually because the restaurant is about to close. You are supposed to call the waiter when you are done, or, more commonly in casual restaurants, go pay at the cash register.
> European restaurants typically use a team service model, which greatly reduces the number of staff needed
100% this.
US restaurants have a "zone" model and always seem to need 3x the staff of European restaurants.
If you went the Euro model, you could have less staff and pay them more per head and therefore not need tipping.
> There is no pressure to run up the bill or clear out quickly in this model.
I think this is more a function of "need to turn over tables at some multiple per night to cover costs" but costs aren't just labor e.g. rent and food are also big line items.
American chain restaurants also use the team model. The server that writes down the order often isn't the same person bringing out the hot plates of food. Maybe less of team than Europe because the waitress taking the order will typically be the same one refilling the drinks.
It's the white tablecloth high-end restaurants where the one waiter is the only person handling all interactions with the table.
What you are noticing is that many chains have a "full hands" rule: if any server with free hands walks past a table with dirty dishes on the way to the kitchen, they are expected to pick them up no mater who's section it is. Also, if they are heading out from the kitchen with free hands they are expected to run out some dishes no matter what table they are for.
Why? It sounds very weird. In every kind of business the owner has strong incentive to cut labor.
They didn't really mind the the typical service here, where you'll have to wait a bit before a waiter sees you. You get used to it.
On the other hand, you have the first time tourists, that will go "excuuuse meee" after 5 minutes in a restaurant if the waiter hasn't showed up to take a order, and become pissy when they discover that free refills isn't really a thing.
Most Americans traveling abroad are in my experience polite and patient. But there are always the bad apples that will keep tabs on how many times the waiter comes by to offer something, and demand immediate service.
Maybe you guys like your USA service model. Maybe Europeans are mistaken about USA service model. But one thing is certain - you USA guys have zero idea about speed of service on average in European cafes and restaurants, judging by your comments :) .
Europe has 40+ countries with what, a million, restaurants… let’s conflate them all! Horrible! The whole continent! 1 star (and not a Michelin one)!
Repeat business is rewarded like in most places. I frequent many cafes and restaurants where I'm recognized and treated like family even though I have never once tipped there.
The reason I think is a mix of things: firstly people really want to make a night of it, seeing the whole dinner as an experience, and secondly the amount of staff (both waitstaff and in the kitchen) won't support a faster process.
Edit: it's not a case of better or worse, just different expectations going in
People come to a place to have fun and talk for a few hours or their free time. Drinks and food coming and going is just a small nuance. 10 minutes (often way less of course) for drinks to arrive is mostly okay. Nobody is busy waiting for them.
If you just want a quick meal there's more than enough places but you generally order at the counter there, don't sit and wait for a server.
Also, those times depend on the place and location. The ones I've been lately were pretty fast
Some extremely touristic areas can get away with anything.
Part of European dining is the social aspect, that gets ruined when you're constantly being asked if you want another drink.
Maybe they should show the price "without tip" next to the full price, so people can compare.
Paying employees with tips is an insane concept, fundamentally abusive. If it wasn't, then the owner would also get paid from tips. "The meals are all free, and we count on you to pay them through tips". Obviously no owner would take that risk, because it is insane. They make their employees take that risk because they can abuse them, that's all.
I am not going to tip if I order and take my food from a counter and serve myself (and then almost certainly clear my own table as well), or I buy any other form of product standing up. Basically, if I'm standing for the entire customer service transaction, it's not tippable.
Of course, the staff also see how you tio before they prep your food...
Lol. Yeah, that's where the game theory breaks down for me.
I'm all for not tipping people that don't interact with you directly until I start thinking about how the 17-year-old making my pizza feels about tipping on pick-up orders...
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.
With tip your bill can easily end up 40% higher.
That it's become ubiquitous has made me able to decline tips without feeling weird about it.
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.
I benefit too. It’s a way for me to express gratitude.
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.
Thank you for proving his point. This whole accusatory nonsense is why tipping sucks. If you have to pay it to not be an asshole its not a tip and should be included in the menu price.
Is poverty the only reason to dislike tipping in your eyes?
I'm absolutely fascinated by how sheltered you are, and I'm desperately trying to be charitable here as that's one of the more cunty things I've read on this site.
Personally, I find the service in USA restaurants to be obnoxious, overly fake, and disruptive. I generally only go out to eat in Europe because I prefer a peaceful meal rather than a rushed one with a side of fake friendship.
Being interrupted every 2 minutes with a "Is everything ok?" is annoying.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is true. Japan has its issues, but I am a fan of their culture of excellence. Everyone in Japan -regardless of their status- makes sure that they perform their job, the best that they can.
I worked for a company that makes top-Quality photographic equipment. It was a difficult taskmaster, but they have also consistently made stuff that people pay top money for, and stake their entire careers on, for over a hundred years. It was quite an honor to have worked in that environment, and it taught me a lot.
I agree if you had the $200 sea food tower by yourself it deviates from that otherwise perfect proxy. But that's already a weird situation so just pay the tip and move on.
Likely certain single malts vs jim beam.
Also, why do you need a proxy for the number of people when you can just count them? In Europe a service charge is relatively common and it's a per-person fixed charge.
Anecdotally, a waitress could easily earn more than minimum wage during a shift. Sometimes easy clearing $100 when minimum wage was $7/hr (it was $2.15/hr for wait staff). Add to that the tip reporting was lax and no there’s no tax on tips, waiting is on par with minimum wage.
An interesting side effect is that adding waitstaff is marginal cost to an operator.
A famous recent example, the South Park guys bought a restaurant and eliminated tips with a very nice $30/hour wage. Seems pretty good, doesn't it?
Guess what? The waiters demanded a return to tipping[0]!
0: https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/workforce/casa-boni...
Yes, the staff are supposed to declare all their untraceable cash income, but...yeah.
So at least some of that income is untaxed, meaning higher net for same gross, meaning total prices even including tip can be lower.
That said, I also sympathize with people who don't feel this way. It would be nice if we could federally ban tips and re-architect wage tables for hospitality workers so that they can continue getting paid well for what is a very intense job.
The only way no-tipping works is if it's federally banned, since it's well known that FoH makes great money from tips despite the terrible legal min wage and nobody with experience will give that up for a place that doesn't allow tips.
So, with tips of 15% or less, everyone get their fair share: service staff get a low base wage complemented by tips, kitchen staff get paid normally, owners get reasonable profits.
But when tips get to 20% or more, the system breaks, service staff get more than their fair share and that's when weird things start to happen. Owners pocketing the tips, pooling the tips between kitchen and service staff, hiring more waiters for no good reason, etc... and then it comes to the logical conclusion, which is banning tips altogether.
“The system will ask you a few questions”.
Bam I’m supposed to tip 25% for standing at a counter to order and take my food.
https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...
https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/the-racist-history-of-...
Or sometimes when I get a very tasty meal, I just tip them to share them some of the happiness that they brought me. But totally depends on how strapped for cash I currently am...
This is India, and not US, by the way..
In the US, it wouldn’t be customary to tip before receiving service.
In my opinion, the 15-20% tip is so expected and routine in the US that the supposed incentive of a tip doesn’t make your service any better. Everyone gets roughly the same service and everyone gives roughly the same tip. It might as well be abolished.
It’s also worth looking up tipping practices and its segregation history in the US. Essentially, it became popularized because it was an easy way to get around laws surrounding the end of slavery and integration. The employer isn’t allowed to discriminate based on race or other factors, but the customer is allowed to.
Because of this, I am trying (with some success) to simply tip less at restaurants. Restaurant wait staff, in WA at least, is coasting on old rules and general voter ignorance.
Those two factors lead to the inescapable conclusion that tipped staff make more money. Price discrimination captures surplus value that simply is not available to schemes that don't use price discrimination, and any new price discrimination scheme would almost certainly benefit the employer at least in addition to the employees, if not be entirely captured by the owners.
Combined with the, let's say "extra judicial tax incentives", non-tipping restaurants simply cannot compete with tipping-norm restaurants for service staff. In an environment where tipping exists everywhere else, you then get an adverse selection pressure for shitty waitstaff, because if they were competent they would be working somewhere that competency would earn them tips. Which piles on top of the dealignment of incentives to create substantially lower quality service.
> Those two factors lead to the inescapable conclusion that tipped staff make more money
Or have you ever... talked with someone who relied on tips to survive, in an environment where they don't benefit from it?
> Price discrimination captures surplus value that simply is not available to schemes that don't use price discrimination, and any new price discrimination scheme would almost certainly benefit the employer at least in addition to the employees, if not be entirely captured by the owners.
Would you mind formulating that in a simpler way? Sounds like "price discrimination captures more value, which benefits the owners". Which is kind of confirming my point that tips are a way for owners to abuse the employees.
> Combined with the, let's say "extra judicial tax incentives"
Sure, the law incentivises the owners to abuse the employees. That is insane, too.
> because if they were competent they would be working somewhere that competency would earn them tips
"If I am rich that's because I am better, because why would I be rich otherwise?". Again it sounds a lot more like an owner than an employee.
Don't get me wrong: I understand why an owner may want to abuse employees in order to make more profit. Humans suck, that's old news. I'm just saying that the whole point of regulations is to counter the fact that humans suck.
Actually it's quite common for owners to take some of the tips, even though that's not legal.
And yeah, on top of abusing the employees by not paying them (and relying on the customers to pay the employees directly), stealing from the tip is even more abusive.
And let's not even talk about those delivery (and similar) apps that also abuse the tips in their algorithms.
To my knowledge, the only province which still has the "liquor server" minimum wage is Quebec - everywhere else gets the same minimum wage as other workers.
To be clear, a server in Ontario is not legally allowed to be paid any less than $17.60/h _plus_ their tips.
Most people get 4-5% credit card cash back at restaurants (Amex, Chase, Cap1).
I prefer getting 18-25% cash back by leaving $0.01 tip.
I leave 1¢ so they know I didn’t forget. It saves a lot of back and forth.
This depends on the state. For example, in California, servers get state minimum wage, at least ($16.90/hour). On the other hand, most "red" states use the federal minimums: $2.13/hour for servers (!) and $7.25/hour for non-tipped employees.
Likely depends on the state, but in many states, traditionally tipped positions have a different, lower, minimum wage than non-traditionally tipped positions.
So it’s really a way to extort good tips from customers, because it’s understood that our gratuities are the only way they can make minimum wage!
For example, with Doordash and Uber Eats, tips are prepaid. The driver may also be made aware of their prospective tip during the bidding process. Therefore, tipping is gamified into enticing a driver into accepting the bid over other jobs.
I will not reduce a post-paid tip if I perceive that I got bad service. I usually won't increase it, either, without extenuating circumstances, for example, if the server overcame adversity somehow (especially if I was the adverse one). However, if a prepaid tip turns out to be unwarranted by horrendous service, I will go after that and require it to be reduced to $0. That is basically the only punishment that a customer can exact on a service worker. I don't like to do it, but if it was a prepaid thing, I consider that tip to be made under duress, and revocable.
For example, let's say you're allergic to nuts. Not only should the menu list all allergens, but also you should be able to say "I'm allergic to nuts. Can I have the beef cheek without the walnut garnish?" and the waiter should know if that's possible or not, and if there are any other nuts hidden in there, without having to ask the chef. They can say "let me check with the chef", but if they don't need to check because they already know the dishes well enough, that's great service.
It goes without saying:
- if you can and do order it nut-free, the dish served to you should be nut-free
- the waiter shouldn't freak out like this is the first guest with allergies they've ever had to accomodate
- they shouldn't refuse to serve you anything at all because "there are nuts in the kitchen", even if you explain that you're ok with the presence of nuts in an area provided they're not deliberately part of the food
- they shouldn't hand you a binder of laminated pages marked "ALLERGENS" and make you find the menu entry yourself
Also, if you're doing a tasting menu with a party of six and the restaurant has already agreed to accommodate your allergies, but you sit at a different seat at the table, they shouldn't reliably serve the nut-free dishes to the wrong person, sitting in the seat they decided the allergic customer would be sitting at, for every course.
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 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.
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.
Mostly yes, there's not much extra they can deliver besides a better staff to customer ratio.
And say what? "Please don't come and check on us, and instead keep an eye for our signal" seems more rude than I'd be comfortable with doing.
This is the study I was recalling: https://www.academia.edu/51293325/Restaurant_Tipping_and_Ser...
Though in looking for that I did find this other study that found racial bias: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/soin.12056
FWIW it comes off as pretty snarky to provide evidence and then pre-emptively insult the reader by assuming they won’t respond to it, or assume that disagreement will be a result of rejecting evidence in general and not having some more specific objection (e.g., cab vs restaurant tipping culture being different)
Do you also tip every single time bus driver, colleague, bureaucrat handling your request or your child because they did their work as expected? Because why stop at some imaginary border.
Everybody has different ways of expressing gratitude. That bus driver may be well paid and just doing their job, but I'm still grateful they are doing it and will thank them as I get off the bus.
> In the typical USA system...
> European restaurants typically...
But the interesting thing is that no one ever complains when people group things by continents like that if the theme is bashing the US and praising Europe. Only when talking bad about Europe it's suddenly an issue.
It's wild the extents to which Americans overestimate the cultural differences between their states and literal entire countries with actual differences. Scandinavia and the Mediterranean are quite different, Americans speaking in a different accent and maybe being slightly friendlier or not is nothing.
My price discrimination comment was admittedly unclear, since I tangled up two chains of reasoning. Restaurants make some amount of money from customers. Some of that money goes to the owners, some of that goes to labor. Price discrimination schemes (i.e., charging people willing to pay more, more, and people willing to pay less, less), by their nature, extract more money from customers. So restaurants with price discrimination schemes have more money total to split between labor and the owners.
Thus, we'd expect that labor makes more money at a restaurant with a price discrimination scheme than at one with flat pricing.
Culturally expected tipping is a specific price discrimination scheme, that has the cultural and legal rules to disproportionately benefit the labor. Other price discrimination schemes lack these rules, so we'd expect some of the excess value extracted from customers to be taken by the owners, rather than labor.
Thus, Labor at restaurants with tipping get paid more than labor at restaurants with other price discrimination schemes, which get paid more than labor at restaurants with flat rate pricing.
Tipping culture is not an exploitation of the servers. If you're morally opposed to (even voluntary) price discrimination, you might be able to frame it as being exploitative against the customers. But of all the ways to structure a restaurant, tipping is one of the most effective at inflating servers' pay checks, which I struggle to imagine how you can frame as exploiting said servers.
Or would you say that all tipped staff makes much fatter paychecks?
Does tiping make any sense? Not to me. Does it (strangely) result in higher wages? Yes, and it's not even remotely close (unless there is some argument that being a barista is markedly more skilled than working at McDonald's, an argument I am somewhat skeptical of).
Sorry, I prefer to eat while rushed.
That’s how the median American household income is US$7,600/month. Half of all households make more than this.
Although, yes, at times unhealthy amounts of productivity probably also play a role, true that.
Touristy places in central London maybe. They wouldn't dare try sneaking an undeclared service charge onto a locals bill in Northern England or Scotland :-)
> In the UK, they are legally but not practically or socially discretionary.
Speak for yourself. When entertaining clients at touristy places in London, one routinely asks for this underhand charge to be removed from the bill. (Whether or not we then choose to leave a cash tip is a matter of discretion, but the chances are rather low after such shenanigans).
Adding an undeclared "service charge" to the bill only when it is presented to you is what we are talking about here. It is an increasingly common underhand tactic in and around London and an charge which one should ALWAYS ask to be removed ("that wasn't on the menu mate").
remember, this is Europe - the coffee is not made the same nor looks or tastes the same as you get in the US. it's mind boggling to me that people get a 16oz "cup of coffee", black.
That was not obvious. Nor is that a common practice
"Restaurant owners set a price on their dishes, because if everyone payed at will, the owners know they would make less money. Therefore we can assume owners know that paying at-will does not optimize earnings. Therefore, it's insane that they make their staff work for pay that's at-will".
Source: I waited tables in NYC in a past life.
Before they got state drivers licenses, they could only show their non-US ID/passport whenever they got carded for alcohol. A few times, the venue would just tack on a 20% service fee.
One time, they asked the table next to them if they also got a service fee: They didn't. They complained, got the service fee waived, then told them to forget about getting a tip at all.
You might guess a person might be a non-tipper, but giving shitty service or forcing a discriminatory service fee will make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Southern europeans tip, there wouldn't be much difference there
Northern ones it depends, they don't tip at home but they usually do on vacations to southern europe (where tipping culture very much exists). Though some of that also has to do with currency conversions, at least historically, even if the tradition has stuck past the euro being introduced. So maybe that's why they don't tip when it comes to dollars?
No we don't. In Portugal, Spain, and Italy it's not common nor expected.
It doesn't matter what kind of bottle it is, or which company made it, all returns are accepted at every point.
Children, unemployed, and elderly people are often seen hunting for stray cans/bottles, by bins, in parks, and similar places, to return them for the cash.
Edinburgh Fringe special variant: charging extra for plastic cups and then not accepting returns.
So like every culture in the world then?
In the average place in most European countries (excluding places with a queue outside or highly sought after reservation only places), nobody would bat an eye if you stay talking an hour after you're done.
That's because most European restaurants operate on a single sitting model when it comes to financial planning. Someone coming in later in the evening to fill an already vacated table is a nice and welcome extra income for the restaurant, but that not happening will not cause a financial loss either.
Trying to pay for what I used, in order to leave and do some things was a pain...
In many USA restaurants, the waitstaff tips are also shared into a pool with the runners, busboys, and kitchen staff. The % may not be equal however.
>What you are noticing is that many chains have a "full hands" rule:
But that contradicts the idea that "USA restaurants almost always over staffed there." The chain restaurant could just "overstaff" with dedicated table runners with no need for a "full hands" rule.
It doesn't seem like USA restaurants are overstaffed nor do owners have the incentive to overstaff. The very common scenario is the hostess seats you at the table and the waiter doesn't even show up for 10 or 20 minutes to take the order. The patrons are frustrated and wondering why it's taking so long. That's a symptom of understaffing where the waiter is handling too many simultaneous tables.
This doesn't change anything because the incentive is still to drive up the bill to drive up the tips. This is caused by the staff being primarily paid in tips.
> The chain restaurant could just "overstaff" with dedicated table runners with no need for a "full hands" rule.
Unlike servers, bussers and runners are generally paid minimum wage or close. Only over staffing servers helps make more income. Over staffing support staff runs up costs.
USA restaurant staffing is widely studied and your personal anecdotes don't change the conclusion: compared to most anywhere else, restaurants in the USA are over staffed with servers.
There are several gaps in your assertion about USA restaurants being overstaffed with servers.
#1 the mathematical relationship between servers and income is questionable: Servers acting as quasi commissioned salespeople by upselling patrons on "another beer?" or "anyone here want to order desert?" ... can be time-staggered interactions across multiple customers as the server rotates among their assigned tables.
Let's say, a restaurant has 20 tables and initially has 5 servers. Each server rotates among their assigned 4 tables. For a single turnover of 1 set of 20 tables, the diners have been asked(upsell) "Do you want desert?" 20 times. Let's say the owner wants to "overstaff the # servers" to be 1-for-1 and have 20 servers to 20 tables. The # of upsell events is still the same at 20. In what scenarios do overstaffing servers increase restaurant's income? (On the other hand, understaffing servers causes diners to twiddle their thumbs for half an hour after they finished eating because the overbusy server hasn't gotten them the final bill yet which causes less turnover of the tables which leads to less restaurant income.)
It's also not clear why you need tipped servers to upsell. Fast food places like McDonalds have trained minimum wage workers to constantly upsell... "Do you want fries with that? Do you want to upsize that drink?"
#2 the economics equilibrium of what tipped servers want to be paid and whatever staffing levels the restaurant owners want. Trying to overstaff the restaurant means waitstaff notice they don't work as many tables which means their tips (thus total income) is lower. This causes them to quit, which then causes the restaurant to keep trying to hire new waitstaff. Many restaurants chronically run "shorthanded" because of this negative feedback loop. (Which is one of the causes of extra delays between the hostess seating the diners and the time the waiter finally shows up.) Therefore, adding more servers to increase restaurant income isn't going to work.
>USA restaurant staffing is widely studied
The only studies I found analyzed restaurants not being able to hire staff including the servers. No study talked about restaurants having overstaffed servers in the USA as a proven driver of extra income.
EDIT to reply: >In Europe a typical place with 20 tables will have 2-3 servers and no runners. We go from 8-10 floor staff down to 2-3.
Your premise doesn't work for USA because with the hypothetical American restaurant that only has 3 servers with no runners and those 3 all sharing the workload "as a team" for all tables ... still means those 3 servers want to work for tips. That negates your parent post saying the higher # of staff is the barrier to eliminating tipping.
Instead, the barrier to end tipping in the USA is the inertia of the ingrained culture where servers expect tips and patrons keep paying them.
There are several high-profile restaurants in New York City, etc that tried to eliminate tipping by raising prices and they eventually reverted back to traditional tips.
>Hopefully it is clear how 5 servers dedicated to 4 tables each and backed up by runners can do a lot more upselling than 2-3 staff doing team service.
It isn't clear because those same lowered server count of 2-3 can still ask the same upselling questions... "Do you want desert?" Asking that question isn't mathematically constrained by the # of servers. Instead, it's constrained by the # of tables.
Especially because most payments are by card (where I live), the tip first ends up with the restaurant itself anyway, not individual waiters.
It feels as if he/she "finished" with your table and you are SOL if you want anything else.
Of course, there’s a bit of future optimization where they want you as a repeat customer, but that manifests in pretending they don’t want you out, not actually feeling that way. It makes sense - a rational revenue maximizing business does want you out but they need to pretend they don’t. The veneer is thin in many cases (though it varies by establishment). Personally, I’d prefer the incentives aligned with being a bit more straightforward, down to earth and without fake flattery.
I remember I had a meal once as a group of 5 about 10 years ago at a beachfront restaurant in Boca. At this group size a tip of 18% was added by default. Our waiter had been so cloying and over the top, calling us friends, etc. When the bill came and I didn’t tip anything other than 18% the waiter started shouting from across the room and made physical contact with me because he thought I hadn’t tipped. It was really a horrible experience, but very telling.
That's at least once too often.
Overly-solicitous hospitality staff can make me tense.
At the far end of the scale are bathroom attendants who want to help me wash/dry/moisture my hands after using the facilities.
Efficient service, good food, good prices (for a foreigner), no tipping expected or even possible.
That was grossing up for her. Illegal? Likely. "But they have laws against that" - low wage employees are easily taken advantage of. They often _need_ that job.
That's certainly not the norm in the US. I've eaten in restaurants in every state and have never seen or experienced anything like that. It sounds like you just got a terrible server or restaurant.
Obviously you will do as you please, but I wish tourists would try to get with the culture. As a European, one of many reasons I don't tip is that I don't want to encourage a class system where anyone who doesn't pay up is seen (and sees themselves) as stingy.
Also about the $10 - they would need to gather quite a few more dollar notes and spend time finding a cash exchange bureau. Else the note is just a memento of a weird American.
In some EU countries the tips have to be counted as salary and income (+social) tax paid, or even they have to be declared as revenue to the restaurant along with the VAT (19-25%) going straight to the state. Of course, when paid in cash - that rarely happens. The point is that the provision exists in the law (so the tips are not unheard of)
Then, if you wish, tip the staff whatever amount you prefer. (Though at this point, any restaurant that tries sneakily adding an additional charge to my bill probably isn't getting anything).
No, that's too unpleasant and would put a dour note on the evening. Particularly if I'm there with a date. I'm OK with simply not returning.
Maybe they judge me too poor for their products and it's an attempt to get me to leave...
>At the far end of the scale are bathroom attendants who want to help me wash/dry/moisture my hands after using the facilities.
I've never ran into these and I hope I never will.
This is already overstaffed and you are doing the math backwards. The place with 5 servers in the USA almost always has runners as well making total floor staff 8-10.
The comparison is not a mythical restaurant with 20 servers for 20 tables. In Europe a typical place with 20 tables will have 2-3 servers and no runners. We go from 8-10 floor staff down to 2-3.
Hopefully it is clear how 5 servers dedicated to 4 tables each and backed up by runners can do a lot more upselling than 2-3 staff doing team service. And they don't need to because their salary isn't dependent on it.
Locking down 1 server to a strict set of 4 tables is very inefficient as well especially when one section is slammed and another is half empty.
You will find plenty of study of tipped wages and restaurant economics but they generally don't use words like "overstaffed" instead they say things like analysis found that owners systematically offload slow day risk to tipped employees.
The feeling I get from those experiences is that I'm being rushed to clear the table, not that the service is great and always there to help me.
You could ask for the salt or ketchup when the meal arrives.
Also Europeans are not, I think, accustomed to asking for salt, or ketchup, on already seasoned food. So your request is actually unusual.
I would expect to find salt, pepper and mustard on the table in a decent restaurant, in my corner of Europe. Not ketchup, though, except in a cheap burger place.
Not all us Americans are, either. The only time I can remember asking for such things is when the server forgot to provide ketchup for some fries.
If a restaurant doesn't season the food adequately for me, I'm not going to fix it at the table. I'll just factor that in the next time I decide where to eat.
Also, the vast majority of restaurants I've been to use far too much salt during cooking anyway.
For ketchup, I'm afraid you'll need to stay in the US.
A chef forgetting to add salt sounds like a photographer forgetting to use a camera.
That’s a perfectly valid reason for complaining, then. Politely, of course, but the chef might use the feedback.
One thing is true though, I never ever had to add salt in restaurant in past 25 years, one can ask for pepper/olive oil/etc but salt? They often use too much of it to enhance taste ie in sauces. Maybe get your kidneys and heart checked with such refined palate.
It's just there is a difference between "slow service" and, you know, taking needed time.
Sure, some times it can be slow, at any place or country. But the thing described in the parent comment is just either a hyperbolization (my bet) or some unfortunate coincidence.
Which is it - low gini for talking to a waiter, high gini for starting a fam?
Spain’s gini coefficient indicates it is much more equal than USA, but not as equal as, say, Denmark.
In fact I'd say gini has nothing to do with birth rate. Birth rate declines when parents have confidence that there is a good likelihood their children will survive to adulthood.
It is often easy to forget that just five hundred years ago almost one of two infants born didn't survive into adulthood. Low birth rates are good. Don't let anyone say otherwise.
Gini: Spain << US
Youth unemployment: Spain >>> US
Living with parents: Spain >>> US
First birth age: Spain >>> US
Fertility: Spain << USAll these generalizations are as slippery as a bar of soap.
Restaurant A's pasta is $14.95, printed clearly on the menu.
Restaurant B's pasta is $13, with a 15% service fee written in tiny letters on the menu somewhere.
Restaurant C's pasta is $2.99, with a 500% service fee written in tiny letters on the menu somewhere.
You're paying the same thing at each restaurant. If you think C is sneaky and unethical (which I hope everyone would), then why is B ok?
If they ask after you've eaten, that would be rude, from my British perspective.
Granted, we all vary in our outlook :-)
But, date or not, it's not something I'm OK with doing. It's just not worth it when I can resolve the issue completely with much less bother.
At this point I'm waiting for supermarket self-checkout to add a default tip amount.
The old ones (never seen the tip option on those... for now): https://www.simple-shop.si/en/pos-terminal-tcpip-en and eg https://www.unicreditbank.si/si/podjetja/upravljanje-z-denar...
The new ones: https://www.sumup.com/sl-si/karticni-citalec-terminal/ and https://besteron.com/si/pos-terminali/ (both support tips) + many other in similar designs (full front touchscreen)
I don't think square supports slovenia for now, but POS vedors add the tip option, and our restaurant owners enable it, because it doesn't cost them anything, any many (especially foreign) guests "feel bad" for choosing the zero on the screen.
It's also more money to the company providing the payment system so they are incentivized to tell every restaurant to turn on tips.
I hate it. I don't know how to fight it except to try to start a movement big enough that everyone who goes to such a restaurant gives it 1 star and not not return, until it becomes unacceptable for business to do it. Like many things that is unlikely to happen without some major awareness campaign.
But those nobles had limited power because they didn't have the communications technology we have today.
Esso petrol stations routinely ask for this, and the staff member ALWAYS clicks the 'no' button before you can offer your card.
Source: Somebody who drives around the UK a lot for work.
But obviously, a government service should give fair and proper service to everyone.
Setting a baseline of 10% just says to me that the restaurant owners can just pay their staff less. And if the server is having an off day or just didn't meet your particular standards then they're losing money.
It would be a bizarre approach in Scandinavia because the consensus here is that companies must pay their employees a decent baseline salary -- which unions negotiate across the whole sector -- so there's no expectation of a tip by default.
But for much of the rest of the world, it's not a given that working conditions are as good.
Thank you, A Swede.
However, contrary to what many might say, tipping has been a part of European culture for a very long time (especially in the UK, Germany and some Slavic countries). You won't offend basically anyone if you don't tip, since it's basically considered an extra thanks for the service, but small tips/round-ups are fairly common[0] and sadly somewhat important in countries with lower minimum wages or heavily seasonal tourism.
*That said*, while I have nothing against tips as a purely voluntary contribution, I'm of the idea that - regardless of traditions and customs - the push to de-normalize compulsory tips is of fundamental importance for establishing (and keeping) decent wages for staff.
[0]: from a few euros, up to 10%. The new 15/20/25% model is purely American and predatory in nature
I can't think of any long-term outcome of a tipping culture that is efficient for the workers and employers, even if the amount the customer tipped was correlated with quality (the research I've read shows it's got more to do with looks). It is simply more efficient that both parties know what they are agreeing to up front when (1) the worker still has to go to work for 3 months when they resign and (2) the employer has to pay them (and their replacement) full wages during training.
A couple of decades ago I had a waiter run out to the street after me, midtown Manhattan, a sushi/tappas place, sternly inquiring as to why I didn't tip them. I simply forgot, it was very late. I didn't need that.
It should also be said that restaurant staff in Norway make a much better living than in the US, both relative to other Norwegian workers and their US counterparts.
She was non-Swiss herself though and I read it as trying to take advantage of a tourist
Why would being non-Swiss make someone more likely to take advantage of a tourist?
People who are not used to tips (i.e. foreigners visiting the US) don't necessarily know when they should and when they shouldn't give a tip. When in doubt, should they or should they not tip 20%? The whole concept is just very weird.