Originally Posted by
exbayern
I was enjoying the discussion but to be honest I didn't respond to your last post because I did find it put me off (in an effort to be pleasant I'll use that phrasing)
Since the subject is eliminating tipping, why do you think that the non-tipping culture can work outside the US, but not within the US? (Putting aside the logistics of actually switching to such a culture)
Do you believe that servers in high end restaurants in Europe are making mininum wage? I can assure you that it is seen as a professional career, not the view often taken in America where serving is a stop-gap position or for the unskilled worker.
Again, my intention was certainly not to offend and I wholeheartedly apologize if I did.
As to your question, I'll be honest. I don't really know why it doesn't work in the U.S. I think it might be BECAUSE the job isn't viewed in high regard here. In Europe, as you mentioned, the job is viewed as a career, and I'm sure the nicer restaurants pay their servers a wage that is worthy of a career.
In America, even the management of the restaurants view us as a dime a dozen. So they're unlikely to ever pay us a wage that is commensurate with having a career. Because of this fact, the talent pool that restaurants draw from is necessarily weakened (since there are far less people willing to do the job due to its lack of career status, not to mention having to deal with the American public
) and only the best servers are
worthy of making a career-type wage.
So now what you're left with is a select few that will do a good job just because it's the right thing to do, and a lot of people who are doing the job just because they can't do much else, and that batch, is the "Burger King" level service that I'm talking about. Given that talent pool, if we eliminated tipping, that majority bunch that doesn't take much pride in their job would be even less motivated to provide good service (and that's tough to demotivate them even further).
I know this doesn't fully answer the question, but this is my feeble attempt to try to explain what I think would happen if you eliminated tipping in the current restaurant culture here in the U.S.
Chris