Yeah but the waiters don’t have a living wage in the us without tips while the fishermen get paid –
Sorry I just got word that the fishermen are actually just permanently trapped on the ships and do forced labour out somewhere in the Pacific
there is slavery in the food industry.
Happy cake day
Ya filthy animal
Yes, but the author of this comic turns out to be a real moron. Third comic in the row that is just stupid.
All of the people in that comic get paid for their labor. The server doesn’t.
Everywhere in the world the restaurant pays the server for their labor, in the US they make the customer do it and guilt them of they don’t.
Damn everywhere in the world the server works for free except in USA they get tips for salary. Why do they even work as servers in the rest of the world without tips for paid labor? Are they retarded?
They’re also required to be paid minimum wage in the US by the restaurant if tips don’t cover it
Minimum wage being below poverty in the US is, of course, a separate issue
It’s required, but ask any servers you know how often that actually happens. Last restaurant my friend worked at would carry over tips from previous days in their books so it’d look like they made exactly 7.25 an hour every time. Only reason they got caught is because they always made it exactly 7.25 an hour on those days.
They got a meager fine and were told to pay the money back. They filled for bankruptcy rather than pay out like $4000 in back pay. If you or I had stolen $4000, we’d be in prison. A business does it and it’s a slap on the wrist and a quick bankruptcy and reopening under a new name
The servers I know all end up with way more than minimum wage, but I completely agree any restaurants getting away with that should have to pay at least 10x the stolen wages, and all court fees, plus a fine that is a percentage of their revenue
they must be retarded if they’re working for free as slaves when they clearly could be working for tips.
yes, but they all get paid way below the value of their labour.
So pay the server then!
The Server gets paid exactly the price they agreed to when they took the job
Ahh, they agreed to it! Perfectly acceptable then
Well if they all said “I’m not working for that shit wage” or they joined a union, did literally anything at all. NMaybe they would get paid more. Instead they do nothing, and bitch
Nevermind that Servers make more money than every single person in the supply chain. I don’t understand why everyone feels so bad for them. Ask any of them if they would rather work back of the house. Forget about logistics, or in agriculture?
Source: I was a server for almost a decade.
This excuse for worker exploitation has always baffled me. 1. The contract was signed under duress: “Take this shitty job or continue to be unemployed.” Consent made under duress is not consent. 2. It was agreed to under an extreme power asymmetry: If you refuse the job, your family will have to go hungry, but the company will easily find some other desperate soul to fill the position. 3. I haven’t even begun to touch on all the class, racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination that workers face.
There’s nothing even close to meaningful or fair negotiation under such conditions.
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Yes, but waiter are underpaid and should have a salary too.
… Apparently. This is too american for me to understand
As wish many things American, it goes back to slavery. Tipped workers were a way for employers to avoid paying (mostly black) workers, effectively providing slavery-lite even after slavery had ended (Happy Juneteenth).
In any case, current U.S. labor law has specific carve-outs for certain tipped jobs that allow the minimal wage to be not the already unlivable $7.25/hr but the unsustainable $2.15/hr. Technically, employers are required to bring a tipped workers pay up to $7.25/hr if they do not report enough tips, but in practice employers encourage reporting incorrect tips and find reasons (if needed) to dismiss employees that do not report enough tips.
Fisherman, Sailor, Teamster, and Chef are not tipped positions. Waitstaff is a tipped position.
Tipped workers were a way for employers to avoid paying (mostly black) workers, effectively providing slavery-lite even after slavery had ended
It’s not just about being cheap though. It reinforces the idea that the worker is of a lower social status than the customer. The customer may, at their own discretion, choose whether or not to pay the worker a fair wage for the work they have done. That’s a very clear power imbalance.
And ironically one of the biggest proponents of keeping the tipped minimum wage was Herman Cain (who is black. Or was. He dead now).
True but some states don’t have this distinction and it means servers actually make pretty decent money.
Yes and “tipping” has gone insane. Not just amounts (tho even when I was a child, my parents consider 10% the bare minimum) but also you get prompted to leave a tip for transactions that don’t involve a tipped position.
My experience is from one of the shittier states for workers (Arkansas), right-to-work effectively eliminates all union activity, the state would remove the minimum wage if it could, and there’s even people that want to make it easier for 14-18 year olds to work.
Waiter is the only one who gets their wage subsidized by their bosses customers.
Everyone gets their wage subsidized by the customers of the business (both B2B and B2C) they work for.
So, they all can ask for tips?
The money comes from the customer in either scenario, functionally there is no difference it flows from customer to employee regardless.
Edit: just to be clear, I am very much against the tipping culture in the US as it only benefits the employer and leaves employees at the whim of the customers mood. But all employee salaries are paid by the customers money in the end.
Yeah, but that’s not what subsidized means at all.
No the definition is technically to be partially financially supported by public funds (I.e. government or other organization)…but that wouldn’t cover tipping from private customers either so…
No, you’re just wrong here and there is no technically.
You’re misunderstanding what public funds are.
No, but we shouldn’t expect to pay less if they stop receiving tips and the employer pays them instead. I think a lot of people make this assumption. In reality it’ll be more like you don’t have to tip but your meal is 20% more expensive.
And we won’t pay less!
they stop receiving tips we pay the same
employer pays them insteadoops, forgot this part. restaurant owner makes 15% more money!To be fair, they will do the whole boiling frog pot thing. It’ll be easier to do with 7% inflation a year.
Are you saying the restaurant should charge more and prevent tipping or if you don’t tip you get hit with an extra charge? Or is it a different method?
Ideally, the restaurant should pay enough that tipping is not required (which does require them to raise prices). As a customer you would then be free to tip a smaller amount if you thought that the service was exceptional.
That’s how it works in the UK although a lot of businesses are adding a tip onto the bill in advance so that you would need to complain about the service to get it removed (technically you can just ask them to remove the tip without giving a reason if that’s how you want to play it).
I would like the charge to stay the same but the waiter still gets a living wage but it’s absurd to believe that will happen and may be unrealistic to expect that it should. I don’t know what profit margin any given restaurant has but none will give up 20% of profits and a lot may not be able to remain open if they have to. In any scenario the business would have to change beyond recognition. The ones who choose to adapt may just fire the waiters and have you order through a machine and then you don’t have to tip but that business model already exists in most fast food chains.
I may have misunderstood the question. Restaurants who have adopted no tipping add the 20% charge in one way or another. Either the food costs more or there’s a service fee.
They can all ask, I’ll still say no.
(I get it. It was just for the meme)
Visit Canada where wait staff don’t have a separate minimum wage yet still we have American tip culture.
So is the fisherman and the cook.
Servers are just sales people. Their pay is commonly not from wages when in corporate world built up by commissions. Tips are effectively commissions but rather than an agreed upon amount from the employer it’s with the buyer. I hate both equally.
Sales commissions are still paid directly from the business’ account. Why do restaurants not have to pay their “sales people” directly?
Not always. There are sales jobs that are 100% commission, but I’m the same way they do have to ensure you are paid a minimum. The person making the exchange is arbitrary.
No sales person was ever paid directly by the business’ customer. It’s always paid from the company’s account.
Yes and this was stated in my initial message. Thanks for reiterating?
Ok, If I squint really hard I can kind of see where you were trying to say that. Let’s just consider my comments to be a clarification rather than a correction.
Tips were introduced because employers refused to pay their newly freed slaves.
It’s because everyone except the wait staff gets paid a living wage. The waiter probably gets paid $2.75/hour because the shady restaurant owner wants YOU to pay the rest of their employees wage for them.
The problem is not overly entitled wait staff, it’s tipping culture in general. Any other job would pay at least normal minimum hourly wages.
I keep seeing this repeated in the comments. Apparently no one on Lemmy has actually worked in a restaurant before (because you’re all bots?), otherwise you’d know that a lot of cooks, dishwashers, etc don’t make a living wage either and split tips with the front-of-house staff. It’s not just the wait staff.
Correct, except for saying everyone else is getting a living wage. I bet most of them are not. Still higher than the server.
Every step of that chain is nickel and dimed. Only the public facing employees get to ask for tips.
You ask wait staff if they prefer a stable wage or receiving tips. The overwhelming majority of them will want to keep tips.
It would be better if we eliminated tips overall and paid fair wages. But the people who directly benefit will still fight you on it.
But the people who directly benefit will still fight you on it.
Is that still true? Even back when I has tipped workers as peers, their attitudes were mixed. If you have any polling data, that would be appreciated – but, I don’t have any data either, just vague memories.
I’m admittedly talking from a personal experience living in a HCOL area that does not have a lower wage for wait staff. Wait staff are paid $17.13 at minimum here and that’s before tips.
So it is area dependent. Probably.
When I had tipped peers, wait staff got $2.15/hr + tips. It certainly changes the calculus.
Having worked in food service, and having many friends who do, I don’t know a single person who would rather keep tips. The majority have openly talked shit about tipping. Everyone I know hates tipping except the management that benefits from it.
I live in a very HCOL area and that probably has more to do with attitudes on tipping anything. Wait staff in this area can easily earn wages that are much, much higher than minimum wage with tips.
For example, the state in the US I live in does not have a lower base pay for wait staff. They’re making at minimum $17.13 an hour before tips.
Small correction, $2.75 an hour against tips. In a lot of states it’s legal to withhold that $2.75 once they’ve made more than that in tips per hour. They only have to guarantee that you make minimum wage they don’t have to actually pay you it If you’re getting it paid by somebody else.
While the waitstaff has particular challenges in U.S. labor law (lower effective federal minimum wage), it is not safe to assume any of the other workers in the chain are still paid a living wage either.
The waiter probably gets paid $2.75/hour
In a specific country
Ok but some people argue for paying tips outside the US too where this isn’t the case.
I have also heard owners ask about making a service charges mandatory instead of optional. They don’t like it when I point out they will now have to pay tax on it and try to ask about any other options in the POS software. No, if must be optional or tax must be paid.
The solution is to cook at home. It’s better, cheaper, and you only have to source the food, learn the recipes, understand the techniques, own all the equipment, serve yourself and your family, and clean up after yourself. Fuck tipping.
If you have a family you can divvy up those tasks to all care for one another. You can make a fine meal without a lot of specialist equipment. One sharp knife, one big spoon, and one pot can make a good soup with the right ingredients.
It’s one of the few jobs in which an untrained and not especially strong person can make good money right off the bat without exposing themselves to extremely dangerous conditions.
I worked with a bunch of 40-70 year old women without many qualifications to put on a resume who earned decent money (they were often homeowners who paid for their kids to go to college). I don’t know of many industries where that is the case.
It’s very easy for an employer to exploit tipped workers in places with a difference, but I don’t know if getting rid of the tipping culture would make anything better. Restaurants constantly take advantage of their employees, whether they’re tipped or not, and if menu prices go up, that increase in revenue is not going to just be distributed among the employees. My guess based on how restaurant owners treat their employees is that prices would be raised by 15-20%, servers would be bumped up to minimum wage or just above it, and the rest would be pocketed by the owners.
In that scenario, customers are paying just as much as before, but now it’s mandatory, while servers are poorer (as are kitchen, dish, and bar employees who used to get tipped out [in some restaurants, each server gives 5-20% of their earned tips to various other sectors of the restaurant*]), and restaurant owners are richer. I don’t see how that’s a better situation than the one we have today. It’s definitely less hassle for consumers and it’s fairer in the sense that now nobody makes good money (except of course the owners), but I don’t think it’s an improvement that would stand alone.
If we were to improve the whole system for workers in general, I’d want to get rid of tipping, but not until then.
- I worked somewhere where the servers each tipped 20% to dish and kitchen (total, so if there were eight people in the kitchen, they each got 2.5% from each of the servers), and the employers used that as justification for paying everyone in the back as a tipped employee. The kitchen begged the front of house not to strike, because they were working quasi under the table and didn’t want to lose even a really shitty job. Just a fun anecdote about restaurant exploitation.
we can’t possibly do this, it will make everything worse says only country that does this
From my original comment:
If we were to improve the whole system for workers in general, I’d want to get rid of tipping, but not until then.
I now live in Germany and people with little training, strength, or desire to risk their health are able to support themselves at all types of jobs, plus they’re able to gain qualifications in their chosen field if they want, to further increase their wages. That just requires reworking the whole system.
The US absolutely could do that, but do you think they’re going to?
See this way capitalists get to underpay workers
Nah, all of the people in that strip are underpaid. Tipping waitstaff is a mechanism to tie their ability to feed their families directly to sycophantic ass kissing behavior. It’s essentially a way for the rich to know they can get dancing monkey entertainment anywhere they go.
I mean it literally started so owners wouldn’t have to pay POC waiters, the rest was just added bonus
But yes everyone on a wage is underpaid
Well yes, the owners didn’t want to pay black waitstaff, but also tying it to patron tips meant that they had to perform fealty and fawning and “good humor” under abuse in order to get paid. It’s both a way to underpay and a way to control and break the spirit.
There’s really only two classes: Us and them… And if you’ve got less than 10 million, you’re probably one of us.
Everyone in this are a worker, the guy we don’t see in this comic (edge fund, financiers and owner) are the real problem and this comic artist seems hell bent to hide this
I have spoke to owners complaining that they want to make service charges (tips) mandatory, then cry that they have to pay tax on it if they do that. “But can we just change the text instead?” - No.
Waitstaff fought against raising their minimum wage because they make more with tips
Yep. Anyone fighting against tipping etiquettes is committing warfare against the working class. It’s silly how quickly and frequently we turn on each other. Works for the capitalists though.
