Tipping- Part XLV

[SeeBass]

Originally Posted by edn88

I totally agree with Mr. Coyne - charge the appropriate amount for your service and pay your staff accordingly. If you want to be an upscale restaurant, you will have to pay more for your staff, and if you want to eat upscale, you will pay for that. Supply and demand will dictate which restaurants will get the most business.

I don't tip my masseuse or my mechanic or the maid and I won't (I do tip my hair dresser - see my comment about hot chicks). If the rate they are charging for their service is inadequate, time to raise your price. If you are a good service, people will use your service. I tip at restaurants simply out of a social obligation (and I don't tip for bad service). I am sure I tip hot chicks more than male waiters. Taking a flat gratuity for service on a large table is ridiculous - if it costs more to serve ten people than two put in a surcharge - but I am sure that cost of serving a larger group should be less per person than a smaller group.

Perhaps restaurants should have a table charge of say - $5 per head, and that goes to pay servers etc and then the food and such would be the variable cost.

Nothing to do with cost to a restaurant. it is regards to what is fair to the server. A large table consumes your section and if there is a poor tip the server is screwed for the night/month.
When you are a student server the cash on Saturday night is your eat,travel fund. If this wasn't the case every server would never want a large party and would treat it accordingly.

[Northendzone]

This topic has been resurrected for a few days now. I am stunned that springs1 scanning code has not picked up this so that she could make an appearance.

[Canehdianman]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Everybody wants a ####ing tip today. No.

Don't forget to tip your lawyer!

[Locke]

Originally Posted by driveway

There's a great recent Freakonomics podcast about tipping - though it might be a rebroadcast of an older one.

It centers on a New York restaurant - I think the one in the Met (owned by the guy who started Shake Shack) so a big-time restaurant - which completely did away with tipping, why they did it, and how they did it.

Coming from a background of managing restaurants, I am hugely in favour of moving to a no-tips anywhere, anytime model of business. Ideally, every restaurant in town should just increase their prices 18% and pay people what they're worth.

Thats the problem, 'Ideally' I agree with you, but realistically thats not whats going to happen. Within the North American system we would need a complete paradigm shift.

What you would get is prices going up 18%, no increase in wages and a continued expectation of a tip.

This is largely because in most markets profit-margins in the food-service industry are razor-thin and they look to grab a percent or two anywhere they can get it.

The same isnt true in higher-end restaurants obviously, but thats sort of where the model starts to break down, the top-end guys could get away with it but the vast majority couldnt.

Then, because the entire industry isnt playing by the same rules, a great server could realize that they could make more money working for tips at a mid-level place rather than for a wage at a top-end place.

Thats the thing with tips, for the people who really earn them it isnt just 'a nice extra' it becomes their primary compensation because they realize that if they're in a place with steady throughput and decent prices they can make more money.

[Fuzz]

Clearly the solution is for government to ban tipping everywhere.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Clearly the solution is for government to ban tipping everywhere.

No, the answer is for the Government to appropriate all restaurants and operate them themselves.

Change the name of every restaurant to: 'Aunt Rachel's Alberta Government Approved Feedbag and Breadlines!'

Maybe we could even have teachers work them during their summers off.

Remember, more Government is always best!

[Tyler]

What's the general opinion on tipping for services at your wedding?

Do I tip:

- Wedding planner
- Officiant
- Photography
- DJ
- Musicians

Friends have mentioned they've all tipped these people to a certain degree, but I'm not sure it's needed

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Tyler

What's the general opinion on tipping for services at your wedding?

Do I tip:

- Wedding planner
- Officiant
- Photography
- DJ
- Musicians

Friends have mentioned they've all tipped these people to a certain degree, but I'm not sure it's needed

Musicians and a DJ? We got a badass over here...

Well I cant speak for a wedding planner as we planned our own wedding, but the rest of those, yes.

[puckedoff]

How much is the expected tip to the CRA this year at tax time?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

How much is the expected tip to the CRA this year at tax time?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Tyler

What's the general opinion on tipping for services at your wedding?

Do I tip:

- Wedding planner
- Officiant
- Photography
- DJ
- Musicians

Friends have mentioned they've all tipped these people to a certain degree, but I'm not sure it's needed

If they own their own business under no circumstances should you be tipping them. They set their rate and that's what you should pay. So hard no on officiant, band photographer and planner. The DJ if you get one of those big DJ companies maybe you could justify tipping the individual

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Clearly the solution is for government to ban tipping everywhere.

They should do a better job tracking tipping and enforcing the payment of taxes on tipped wages. That would help to somewhat disincentivze tipping compared to other forms of compensation.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Clearly the solution is for government to ban tipping everywhere.

The government has no business being involved in stuff like this.

[Fuzz]

Of course not. But I'd be willing to make an exception if I never had to tip again...

[driveway]

Originally Posted by Locke

Thats the problem, 'Ideally' I agree with you, but realistically thats not whats going to happen. Within the North American system we would need a complete paradigm shift.

What you would get is prices going up 18%, no increase in wages and a continued expectation of a tip.

This is largely because in most markets profit-margins in the food-service industry are razor-thin and they look to grab a percent or two anywhere they can get it.

The same isnt true in higher-end restaurants obviously, but thats sort of where the model starts to break down, the top-end guys could get away with it but the vast majority couldnt.

Then, because the entire industry isnt playing by the same rules, a great server could realize that they could make more money working for tips at a mid-level place rather than for a wage at a top-end place.

Thats the thing with tips, for the people who really earn them it isnt just 'a nice extra' it becomes their primary compensation because they realize that if they're in a place with steady throughput and decent prices they can make more money.

Oh I totally agree, the industry has somehow managed to convince customers they should pay for labour separately. Imagine going to a hockey game and refusing to pay 20% of your ticket price because the beer vendor didn't come around enough times and Wideman blew his defensive coverage twice.

This is essentially what tipping is: labour costs. It's a stupid and terrible system which marginally benefits servers who work in restaurants for short periods of time in their teens and twenties.

It actually becomes a significant hurdle for people who become career servers as going to a bank and asking for a mortgage or car loan becomes problematic when 80% of your yearly wage is tips (to say nothing of the sudden tax bill with which you get stuck when you decide okay, NEXT year I'll get that mortgage by declaring every last penny of tips this year).

Slightly off-topic, but high-end restaurants don't make any higher margins than anyone else in the industry. The only people who make significant margins are alcohol-only-or-primary places like nightclubs.

Another group who can - depending on location - get screwed by the tipping system is back-of-house staff. We don't have this in Alberta, but in the Freaconomics podcast they were talking about how there is a law in New York which restricts the amount of tip-outs which can go to staff who don't spend like 80% of their time face-to-face with customers. The end result is most of your servers at high-end places in New York are culinary-school grads who wanted to be cooks, but need to serve in order to survive.

The notion we've bought into that somehow a customer should be able to withhold payment for services rendered because they were slightly dissatisfied with the service is absolutely ridiculous. If something apocalyptically bad happens (like the time I watched our chef serve bacon to the table of Muslims) then obviously everything should be free. But choosing to not pay for services because your water glass wasn't refilled three times and it took ten minutes to get the dessert menu? Anyone who does this should be kicked in the genitals by a juvenile moose.

Ultimately, I don't expect this paradigm shift to happen prior to most service jobs being replaced by some kind of automation. The idea of tips being "To Insure Prompt Service" (insanely stupid and grammatically incorrect) is far too deeply ingrained. However I intend to keep tilting at this particular windmill any time it comes up.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

The government has no business being involved in stuff like this.

Technology has actually made this a small and simple thing for the government to implement. Considering how cashless Canadian society has become, simply mandate that tips which come in electronically must be put on paychecks and not factored into cash-tips at the end of the night.

The issue for restaurants is they'd then have to pay EI and CPP on what their servers were actually making and customers would see this reflected in the cost of food, but it wouldn't be a complex or onerous regulation.

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by snootchiebootchies

I always use the McDonald's rule. If the establishment does not offer me any more service than I would eating at a McDonald's, then I do not tip.

How much do people tip home service contractors (plumbers, electricians, painters, landscapers, etc.)? I've stopped tipping them over the last couple of years or so. Instead, if they do a good job, I will write them a positive review on websites like Homestars. If they are there for several hours, I will also offer them a beverage and/or lunch.

Originally Posted by Tyler

What's the general opinion on tipping for services at your wedding?

Do I tip:

- Wedding planner
- Officiant
- Photography
- DJ
- Musicians

Friends have mentioned they've all tipped these people to a certain degree, but I'm not sure it's needed

There are people that tip contractors and for wedding services? I thought tipping was reserved for minimum wage service jobs like waiters, barbers or taxi drivers? Those guys are making enough cash they definitely don't need a top up.

[Amethyst]

I think it started (got worse?) with those hand held debit / credit machines. Now that everyone carries those around, they just automatically set them up to ask for a tip, no matter what you're paying for.

[para transit fellow]

When I drove for Calgary Handibus in mid nineties, I had a Sunday evening run picking up three different WW2 vets. I had a hella of a fight trying to stop them give me a loonie "for a coffee" on a $2.10 fare.

I had a union blue collar job and they had pensions to support their spouse while living in a nursing home. (I was taking them home on Sunday evenings after they had a weekend pass).

One fella was a Lancaster tail gunner and the only one to survive when they were hit by AA fire. He was 19 and the youngest on the crew.

I always felt outraged that they felt they had to give me a tip.

In the end I took the tip to make them happy.

They were some of the stubbornness men I had ever met

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by Amethyst

I think it started (got worse?) with those hand held debit / credit machines. Now that everyone carries those around, they just automatically set them up to ask for a tip, no matter what you're paying for.

Good point. I've even started seeing that pop up on debit machines in Sydney even though there is no tipping here.

I'm always like you are making at least $17.70 per hour plus 25% on Saturdays, 50% on Sundays and 150% on public holidays, there is no chance you are ever getting a tip.