Hello everyone. I think this is the place to go since I’ve seen a lot of complaints about tipping culture on here and a lot of people trying to protest it by not tipping at all to “encourage employers to pay fair wages”. It doesn’t work. Employers don’t eat that bill, your server does.
As someone who has worked in service for years now, I didn’t realize most people don’t know what a tip pool/tip out is until I complained to my friend last night. Where I work, it is 6% of net sales. At the end of each day I have to go to the back and hand over 6% of my net sales to back of house (the kitchen workers, bar, cleaners, supervisors etc.) regardless of how much I got tipped that day. It’s legal where I live by the way. I’ve left work with $100 in tips but $84 in tip out and gotten $16 for my time. I’ve had tables come in and spend $200 then “tip” me $5. That means I PAID $7 to serve that table, and when you only make $15 an hour those bills add up.
I agree that tipping culture is a mess. I think in theory it’s a great idea. If you take on more tables you get paid more money, if you’re better at your job you get paid more money. Why would any restaurant worker work a Friday night over a Monday morning if we weren’t paid per table? Why would any kitchen worker do the same without a tip out pool? Why would people be kinder and more hospitable if you’re just a table and not people who deserve a quality experience? It’s a fair way to be paid for the actual quality and quantity of your work, but the managers can’t decide the quality in customer service, only the customer can, so that’s why it falls on you to decide what you tip.
The problem occurs when there’s a tip out. Back of house deserves that money for working more but front of house doesn’t deserve less than minimum wage for taking on more work for non-tippers, especially when the issue was with the food/drinks or they just don’t tip regardless of the experience. On days we were understaffed and I had to take on more tables, I got tipped less than the days I could tend to each in depth because the business just wanted more money, and when people didn’t tip, they didn’t lose any money. I did.
I’m writing this here to let you all know that if you want to protest tipping and not tip your server at all please tip at least 7%. It’s the highest tip out I’ve seen and it means we didn’t pay to take another table. Even if we sucked at our job we at least deserve minimum wage for it I think we can all agree on that. Imagine a car pulled into your shop and you paid money to fix it, or paid to wire in another light, or paid to take on a client, or paid to do someone’s nails. Imagine you lost money for doing more work. That’s what’s going on right now in Canada and America when people don’t tip. Ask a manager when you eat out if you don’t like tipping culture and make a stink about it but please don’t put it on us. We also want to get paid today, and they don’t listen to us up top. We’re not even worth more than minimum wage to them.