We did it guys. Everyone is so proud of you guys for restarting 8 times a piece in the most played out, overdone, asswhopping of all time.

WOOOHOOO 1000

well done

Kudos

Its hilarious how Derrick tries to troll at every occasion XD

Slow day at work. I'm trying to stay entertained but man ive done like $400 in sales in like 10 hours. 3 to go today and 14 more tomorrow. Hopefully the weekend picks up. Summers in philly get kinda brutal with everyone going to the jersey shore.

You should be selling philly cheese steaks.

Yes because cheesesteaks is where that $2 tip at a time money is. I'm all about working my ass of for nothing.

Tell that to a European...

Hey I have a question for you. I was out at dinner with a co-worker who I havent had dinner with before. It was him and his wife, me and my wife.

He literally sit a stack of 20 $1s on the table told the waiter that is all his and every time he does something he doesnt like he takes $1 off the stack.

I was mortified... I was like jesus thats next level mind fluffing. What would you do as a server?

Wow. That's degrading af.

Typically in those situations where someone wants to make you feel inferior about working in this industry (which isn't honestly that uncommon, especially for women), I usually tell them to keep their money and say something like "that $20 is obviously way more valuable to you than it is to me if you're willing to be that way over it. Keep it." Just kind of spin it back at them.

I do know a lot of people who play along but I'm not the type at all.

I guess it's probably different for diner servers or something tho. Some people have worked long enough in the biz to make 50-100k a year and are no longer willing to take that for a pack of smokes and a 40. The finer the restaurant the less likely the server is to tolerate that I figure.

I'm thinking like, if i worked at a place with $8 entrees and $3 beers, where your tab would be around $60 and that $20 is actually a 33% tip, I'd probably be more likely to play along with someone trying to show off if it results in a good gratuity for me.

Here a $20 tip for a party of 4 would be realistically 8-12% max, so I'd basically lightly tell the person to go fluff themself. Not worth the egotistical BS.

I would have called my co worker an ass hole and left

Lol ya, I was like seriously. I usually tip 20% if you arnt an asshole

Depends where I go and what the bill is. But it's usually $20 too. I had a bill once of $26.xx. I left a $13.xx to make it a even $40

Where are all the drunks Derrick, they will buy booze and leave tips

What kind of a weirdo even carries 20 1s on them? Do you work at a cheap strip club?

They came in late and kept me there til late as hell. We are $10+ for a glass of wine or flufftail so drunks usually hit the dives nearby. Club had a pretty insane drag show and the restaurant filled up around 8:30-9:00. Kinda kicked my ass an hour before i left and I'm back there in 8 hours for another 14. Keeeep onnnnn grindin'

I don't tip.

And while mr pink didn't have the best arguments for that stance he was right. The tips are an arguement to keep the wages down in the sector. And wages come with benefits that the tips don't come with. So if all your working life a large portion of your income are from tips you get a crap pension.

Plus tipping automatically is for the birds. :)

Raise the prices by 10-12 percent and tell the customers that the service fee is included in the prices.

Do that often enough at one of those red gravy joins on Passyunk Avenue and sooner or later some goon will kneecap you for it.

Yeah no kidding. I usually think of gerdy as logical but this one idk. Not tipping is not going to change the way the industry is structured. If you don't agree with the business ethics and structure, you should boycott businesses that don't pay their employees a living wage rather than justifying being cheap with an individual who works for them.

What you're essentially saying is parallel to "I don't like slavery, so I killed a slave." Wouldn't it make more sense to target the slaveholders seeing as they can just go get another slave? Killing the slave doesn't do anything productive and proves nothing. It just makes you look like an asshole with bad moral character.

Most people tip with plastic these days, those tips go on a paycheck, and most places in the industry offer benefits comparable to jobs in equal income brackets. Almost all (95%+) of my income from tips is taxed, and my pension will be comparable to a worker in a different industry around the same income, so you're actually just incorrect on that. While some businesses operate with under the table employees, that's against the law and hardly normal, so your input about benefits is actually just flat out incorrect.

That said, in fine dining, servers typically have the option to auto-gratuity tables. At my work, you can add a little 20% pre-tax gratuity to anyone's ticket and it even says we have the option to do so on the menu. Most servers just tend to choose not to for parties smaller than 5, because they believe people will not take their dissatisfaction with an industry out on a particular individual. So you'd get away with that at my job once and then my people would learn your face and make sure you no longer have the option. We're essentially providing you an opportunity not to be cheap, but if we learn you are, it's not a big deal. It's better than kneecapping a mfer, and arguably better than just raising the prices across the board 20%.

There seems to be a lot of potential problems with tipping but many are behavioral (ie. How people treat servers, how servers treat customers, how servers treat each other). Most of the money ones are inconsistent wages (should we ban commissions too, then?) and bad tipping policies (ie. Tipping the house). Adding 10-12% to the price when the average tip is 15-18% seems like a good way to drop wages in the industry as many businesses would be tempted to just pay people minimum wage and pocket the profits. As it stands, it's hard to estimate the wages of people being tipped but up to and above 100k a year is not unheard of around here and some studies have shown an average of $25+ an hour. Obviously not conclusive and 100k is not the norm, but it is interesting that I've never heard of anyone in a business with a fair tip structure want tipping removed. It's a pretty complicated issue and might need some regulation rather than elimination. Mandatory minimum hourly rates or a flexible but mostly standardized tip structure that prevents abuse seem like better solutions. Im also guessing most of the underpaid people in that industry are in the kitchen working for minimum wage, rather than getting tipped but I don't know? Either way, be careful what you wish on other people.

Entry level positions in any field typically don't pay an exorbitant salary, but you are correct in your assumption that in most cases back of house staff makes less than front of house. I made about 2/3 of what I make in the front of house when I was a chef. Dishwashers, for example, make significantly less than a line cook, who makes significantly less than a chef, etc. And that's pretty much how you move up thru back of house thru experience. FOH is like host/busser/food runner/server/bartender/manager

In the US there is a tax structure and a minimum in regards to what a server can get paid though. The real problem is that minimum wage has not been adjusted enough for inflation, and is therefore not a living wage. That said, if a server makes $2.65/hr, and the state minimum wage is $9/hr, the server must receive at least $6.35/hr worked in taxable tips. If the server doesn't claim enough to reach their state's minimum wage, the business must pay the server the difference.

We use a 20% pre-tax gratuity to sort of standardize the amount that you make but honestly in fine dining it's typically better to roll the dice (most americans tip 20%+ AFTER tax in fine dining). That decision is the server's choice though. I do make it mandatory for my servers to automatically put gratuity on parties of 5 or more (for congruency sake), but allow them to make the decision on small parties.

It's actually all a bit more consistent and regular than anyone could imagine. Sure, slow months hurt and good months rule, but at the end of the year, I can almost positively bank on $XX,XXX. I do think though, that raising the minimum wage to a living wage would more directly attack the problems with tip culture. In Sweden, for example, tip credit would likely pay the person a living wage, and excess gratuity would be a bonus. In America however, tips are plainly a means of survival for millions of articulate people who are undervalued in an unfair system. Our wealth GINI is sandwiched right between Iran and Peru (Iran being the one with the better coefficient), whereas Sweden is in the top ten. I've often assumed that as the explanation for Europeans being such awful tippers. They assume the largest economy in the world would pay its people. And in that way fine dining, a business directed toward a more elite/wealthy culture, and its tip culture are probably some of the only things to balance wealth in the US. At this time in American history, tip culture provides more positives on the economy than negatives by quite a margin, and is maybe one of the only balancing factors period.

https://www.google.com/...Vaw0gn0j17pfM6dD7yoYLVUkq

Minimum wage problems on page three adresses the minimum mandatory wage.

This is how it’s like over here!
We don’t tip much, there’s already the 10% service charge. Heck, some of these restaurants are already way overpriced

Do employees of Strip Clubs fall under this act? lol

Yeah relax i think it's that way over most of Europe as well nowadays. Sweden certainly. And the unions for restaurant workers have paid for information campains to stop people from tipping since it's in the end counter to their members needs and wants.
They make very strong arguements. And in the end if someone who represents those I'm paying for a service begs me not to pay more I will surely listen. :)

I do tip for the birds when I'm in a country where tipping is the norm, but i do so with a clinched fist in my pocket in silent protest. And if there's a waiver I can sign to change the way they do business I will sign it.

Typically models and dancers are subcontractors and sign waivers with their employer. In other words, in some cases they could fall under this wage law, but it's rarely if ever the case. They're almost always 1099'd. If a stripper gets fat and you need to fire them, for example, labor laws would prevent employees from being fired. However, subcontractors you can cut ties with for any reason.

Re: Relax and Gerdy
That's clearly a more fair system, but inevitably someone would point out that it's a social program. And social programs are the fluffin devil here for some reason. I enjoy the statistic that 40% of people who are polled as very opposed to socialism in the US collect social security and can't seem to make the connection.

I tip when I'm in your country but here it's not common.
People get paid a fair salary so they don't need the tip other than more is nice...
Never liked the Tipping thing cause its terrible in all ways in the long run for the worker and it only benefits the restaurants that don't have to pay the workers a fair wage.
Everything is tied to your salary. You get more pension, more money when you are sick, more vacation money (based on your yearly income and some % of that), if you quit and can't find a new job more from the union.
Finding an apartment (both buying and renting) is based on your yearly income, being able to take loans... Everything is based on it.

We don’t tip in Aus, we just pay a decent wage.

Yeah. A lot of that stuff tho, sort of references a time when cash tips were a more common thing. Like I said, nowadays so much is credit card tips that my paycheck is basically my entire income, and my pension and sick pay are comparable to someone at my income in a salary based field.

The way you have it set up there makes perfect sense and would not lower wages significantly at all for the industry were the mininum wage here also a living wage. As it stands in the US, in most places, the minimum wage at a 40 hour full time schedule for one month is relatively equal to the cost of a 1 bedroom apartment, leaving $0 for food or utilities. Were our minimum wage a more reasonable amount, however, server's wages would be competitive to what they are now under that system.

Assuming our minimum wage was enough for rent and utilities and food, something like $15/hr it is competitive.

Assuming $1000 in sales on a 6 hour shift, servers in America would make roughly $200 on tips and $12 in wages. Under a system with a fair minimum wage and a 10% service charge, servers would make $100 in service charges, and $90 in wages. It's honestly a pretty comparable method in terms of what staff makes, but less of the wages are pushed onto other consumers.

The reason that system can not work in America currently is because our minimum wage is only approximately half of the minimum amount of money needed for survival given a full time schedule. So our tip culture cannot be corrected until our wealth GINI coefficient is no longer amongst the bottom 10% of world economies (based on population). The easiest way to balance that, of course, is to raise the minimum wage for full time employees to a minimum amount needed for survival.

Pay is really good in aus but the fluffing taxes is the killer!
But well, what to do. The govt needs the money to come from somewhere, otherwise no way they can pay for all those welfare u got there

Sweden is similar, no? High wages, high tax rate but a variety of social programs paid for with taxes drive the cost of living down, etc.? Feel like i remember hearing that somewhere but I'm pretty stoned all the time and thinking of somewhere else...

Social Security is not a social program (imo) they take YOUR money during your work life and then give you back less....way the fluff less than you was taken for, and in many cases (if not all) if you have a pension you kiss your SS money goodfluffingbye.

I already know I won't get any SS when I retire because they keep moving the goal posts further away...by the time I retire it'll possibly be 75 before you can "qualify" to get YOUR money back....better to set up your own retirement plan with a reputable company, not a scam like 401k, market collapses (it will) and kiss that fluff goodbye too, now you're homeless.

Yeah. It is an upside down program right now, but that doesn't make it less socialist. It's right in the name.

I could take some time to explain how trump is the most socialist president we've had in my life, but i feel like the word has such a connotation to americans they will just be confused and start hollering that i don't know what I'm talking about. I think it just means communism or something to people here and they absolutely go apefluff when they hear it.

What do you mean based on population? The US is not in the bottom 10% of any Gini index estimate I've ever seen. If you account for wealth transfers, after tax wages, infrastructure, etc then it is even more clearly not the case. It's the opposite of a robust model of inequality and doesn't really point to a large social issue. For example, Bill Gates neighborhood has a high Gini index. That is not a good indicator of the quality of life in his neighborhood at all. There's obviously social problems everywhere but the Gini index is not a robust enough model to tell you the solutiona required to fix them. Gini. Therefore, raise minimum wage. QED. Is not a great argument. I think you made some much stronger points before that.

When transferring tips to wages legally in Sweden, assuming the employer takes 0.0% of the cut, the employee would get something like 40-45 percent(VAT + employer tax + income tax) after taxes assuming he has a lowish income and not paying the high bracket taxes. If he does pay the higher bracket taxes he would get something just under 30%.
One has to remember tho that the employer tax is like almost exclusively going to different employee benefits either exclusively for that employee or to funds that that employee might need if he gets sick or similar.
Our taxes are way high, but the more I hear about most other countries function the less I think there is a better option. :/

The SS that KoH describes, so long as his description is correct and I understand it, sounds a bit like what we had before a big pension reform some decades ago.
People were promised a pension based on their salaries but a fund large enough was never created to meet this rising cost, instead the new payments would balance the payouts, which was never going to work with rising life expectancy. So the generations that were promised this have been fluffed over in minor and major ways repeatedly, but in reality its just because they were promised more than what they payed in essentially. They kinda bought voters.

Right now what we have is a couple of pension funds that are connected to each employee that we build up in our working years. In some of them we are allowed some autonomy in how to place the money and in others its more rigid. The biggest one is one we can get from age 63 now (but then usually very low pension) and for the rest of our lives at unchanged amounts. They calculate it so that the fund goes plus/minus 0 on each of us if we live to our life expectancy. So the way to beat the system is to live longer.

To many long posts

I meant nations like Peru and Zimbabwe, which are in the bottom 10% of world economies/populations, are situated alongside the united states. I think the US is like 24% of the world economy, so maybe that was an awkward way to make my point haha. Perhaps also I should have used a more robost model, but i was trying to keep it simple. I'll agree that GINI isn't necessarily a good reason to increase wages, but it sort of illustrates the picture a little bit to put us in a conversation with the very worst economies. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage would put our wealth GINI with the rest of the industrial world, even if that is not the case for a place like Haiti. So to your point, it was an odd way to go about saying what i was trying to say. Haha

Your description of SS is about accurate. Rising life expectancy and population have flipped the program upside down and it just doesnt adequately pay for itself anymore. The problem to adjust it now comes primarily with the fact that our generational populations have these massive booms as opposed to growing at a steady rate. Our government is only beginning to come out of a period largely dominated by people of the post world war II baby boom.

3 of our last 4 presidents (spanning almost 2/3 of my 31 years on this planet) were born within 6 weeks of each other in the summer of 1946. Government has been slowly getting a bit younger, and the generation apathy of Gen X seems to have less of a voice than the millenial boom, but largely WWII baby boomers seem pretty unwilling to modify the program currently, as it stands to remain solvent to the end of their lifetimes. And they still largely control government, as most positions have age restrictions.

What you have as a social program sounds similar to an IRA or a Roth IRA in the US, which are optional retirement investments rather than required social security, but they work similarly to what you're saying.

The thing is anytime someone tries to put the US in a conversation with the very worst economies, they're already making such a bad weird false equivelancy as to undermine their argument. I don't know if you've been to countries without paved roads but they are remarkably different economies than the US. It'd be better to compare the US to Canada or Britain etc. Or if the Gini must be used, compare it state to state, at the very least. (But Gini indexes suck in a world where we have access to much better information than we did when it was thought up)

If you compare Gini by state, and minimum wages in those states, I don't think you'll find the correlation you're looking for, either. The only easy way to lower a Gini index is by lowering the income of top earners through massively high taxation, not by raising the bottom earners up