"In PA and in many other states, those who earn tips, in addition to a wage, can be paid a lower minimum wage"

That was kind of a "duh" kipper; my point was that poster was comparing apples and oranges. In this economy, there is no problem getting people to work for minimum wage. I suspect that many wait people in low price places, especially those who work slow shifts, would prefer the fed. minimum.

I was under the strong impression that if the tips didn't make the salary up to minimum wage, the restaurant had to make it up - that is, no one works for less than minimum wage.

I have. Service seems to depend far more than the individual waiter / waitress than on the pay structure on either side of the border.

I still don't follow your point.
Per this site, yes, employers must make up the difference between the federal minimum and what the employee earned. So, if one earns $7.05/hour after tips one evening, the restaurant must contribute $0.20/hour for that shift.

Didn't mean to insult. But, I will ask, how often do you get good customer service from someone that has a job paying near minimum wage (in the US)? I'm not saying it'll NEVER happen, but the likelihood is much lower than if someone had the skill set for job paying around $20 an hour or better. Same reason you get better service at Morton's than Applebee's. The servers make more money at Morton's so the cream rises to the top.

I meant to bring up the point that the "instant gratification" of the job is a perk that can't be made up for by going to a paycheck system. Let's say I get a flat tire and have to shell out a couple hundred bucks to pay for a new one. Let's say that eats up a good chunk of my liquid cash. (And that isn't a pun for drinking, but very well may be for some :D) The perk of my job now is that I can pick up a dinner shift the next night and make a good chunk of that money back. If we went to a non-tipping paycheck system and I didn't get any of that money until ten days later, that'd be one perk down the toilet for me.

Also, one of the perks of only getting paid $3 an hour is that my employer doesn't care THAT much about overtime. When I work more than forty hours, I get something like $5.50 an hour (it's a different calculation than straight time and a half), so it's not a dramatic departure from what I was getting paid. So, when I go on big trips (such as the 1.5 month one I just got back from), I work 60-70 work weeks leading up to the trip to save up. If I instead got paid $20 an hour and didn't get tips, there's no way my employer would let me work that much overtime.

It's actually based on a week, not a shift. Which sucks worse. I've worked patio shifts at my current restaurant where it rained but had a chance to clear up so they didn't send us home. I walked out three hours later with $0 and the restaurant was under no obligation to pay me anything because my other shifts averaged it out.

Chris

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.

Didn't realize it was based on a week. :)

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

Today I had a revelation -- the tipping system is essentially making the servers and bartenders commissioned workers. Now I can see why there is such resistance to switching over to a no-tip system. No one who works in sales would trade a job that brings in up to $50/hour for a flat hourly wage, unless the rate was really high, which businesses would probably not pay.

Think about it, do you tip at a furniture store? No! Then why are the workers so attentive to the customers (instead of just standing at the cash register waiting for people to say "I want this and that")? It's because they get a low hourly rate plus a commission for selling the merchandise. But the customer doesn't have to determine how much that commission is. That is between the workers and management and it works just fine.

So how about this: at No-Tip Restaurant, the employees make an hourly wage plus a % of sales (for example, $9.00/hour plus 12% of sales). Raises in hourly wage and sales % are available for the better workers.

For the bartenders, if a % doesn't make a lot of sense, pay per drink (e.g., $1 for a beer and $2 for a mixed drink). Instead of charging $3 for a beer and expecting the customer to give a dollar to the bartender, just charge $4 for the beer and add a dollar to the bartender's paycheck.

None of this explains why 97% of the world works perfectly well without their servers being afflicted by the American disease of tipping.

The premise of this thread is how to end tipping, not to defend the practice.

This has occurred to me.

The one challenge I was able to come up with would be that the current system prevents servers from being overly aggressive.

The pushy used-car salesman can be pushy because he's paid a percentage of the profit he brings in to the dealership. If he can bully you into signing on the dotted line even though you may not be all that satisfied with the purchase, he still makes his cut. This leads to the sleazy, pushy reputation of many people in sales.

On the other hand, at a restaurant, the waiter is effectively a salesman motivated (in some small way) to upsell you by adding on appetizers, soups, salads, drinks, and deserts. However, you hold the ultimate trump card: if you feel the upselling was a bit too pushy and uncomfortable, you can lower your tip, and the waiter-salesman can actually make less money than had he not bullied you into buying that salad, cake, and fancy mixed drink.

Think if you determined the commission of the used-car salesman. If you felt like you were pushed too hard, you could lower the commission of the salesman. This would have the effect of reducing the salesman's pushiness in the future, since he would know that he stands to actually earn less money by leaving you penniless and dissatisfied than maybe if he cut you a better deal but you were happy about the price you paid and the service you received. Car salesmen would be the nicest, most pleasant people to work with.

I can deal with pushy salespeople in a place where I expect to be sold, but when I'm out to dinner, I'd rather a lighter touch be employed, so I think the current system works out nicely.

FWIW, as I think I've mentioned upthread, I tend to generally be an easy-to-please diner and am usually very happy with the service I receive (consistent with the level of service expected at a given class of establishment--of course I expect more at a place like Daniel or--the place I received the best service ever--Del Posto), so I generally find myself tipping right around 20%, rounded up or down to the nearest dollar. It's rare that I consciously go below that amount.

Yet this week (in the span of a couple of days), I experienced both mediocre, inattentive service wherein I consciously tipped exactly 15% as well as (just tonight) excellent service (a beer sampler during happy hour--an amazing 9 five-ounce pours for the whopping sum of $6, and we spent a good 1.5 hours enjoying the music and ambiance) wherein I consciously tipped well north of 20%, since our waitress's time and service felt worth much more than $1.20.

Very well said jackal. Much better than apparently I've been able to convey.

Chris

I do get good service in the US, from the shop assistant in Macy's who trawled through piles of jeans in the stock room to find the exact ones I wanted, the cinema attendant who helped find a booster seat, servers in the food court who were happy to change things about the meal to accommodate diatary preferences / fussy child eaters, transit workers happy to provide directions, dry cleaner who 'fixed a couple of things that needed doing as well' with no additonal charge, etc etc. People take pride in their jobs, and I think most people are human first, and like helping others if they can.

The reason you get better service at higher end restaurants is little to do with earnings (in fact, the opposite, as a mediocre server at Morton's could earn more without trying than someone working hard at Applebee's simply because of menu pricing and this 'automatic tip x%' culture), it is to do with the culture and tone set by management, training provided, and ongoing service management. Does a manager at Applebee's really give much of a carp about the service standards? Probably not, and that is why they are a manager at Applebee's and not Morton's. The place I managed wasn't top of line, it was solidly in the middle, type of food / pricepoint wise. But the service was higher end, because we hired people who cared, and management really cared, spending moneyb on 'mystery customer' visits, cross training (so the server would know how the dish was prepared because they had worked in the kitchen for a stint etc), and the company ethos was 100% consumer driven. Another unrelated company manager told me they loved hiring our ex-staff because they had such good training. The majority of staff were on minimum wage (we employed mainly university students and part time parents who liked the hours we could offer around school hours etc, and many of the parents were 'career' workers, having been there for years.)

The instant cash 'perk' can be got around by having a reserve account for emergencies etc. or, as some prefer to do, by having a credit card. Again it is a mindset shift from 'student beer money work' to 'career' - if you treat the job as a salaried career, you act just as any other worker does in planning bills etc. around pay cheques. The cash-to-hand mindset is part of what people are saying about the tipping culture. Peversely, if you remove the instant gratification, the desire to do an overall good job rather than only do a good job because you see instant results sets in.

We would pay time and a half overtime for people covering vacation etc. if that was the best way (whilst we didn't aim for it, sometimes with sickness etc. it is unavoidable) but really, I wouldn't want one of my servers working 70 hour weeks - as the quality of service would most likely decline. Good for the server, but not for the business - I saw it myself when I had to cover shifts - I certainly wasn't on my A game 16 hours after I got to work. Functioning, yes, A game, not even close.

I don't doubt that you can get good customer service from non-tipped employees. I just find I, more often than not, don't. YMMV. Might just be where I live too, you never know.

I fully agree that management is a huge part of whether a restaurant gives good service or not. But I will disagree with a part of your first sentence. The whole reason that (in theory) the server works at Morton's in the first place is because they give good service. As you mentioned, management is likely better there than at Applebee's so they probably pay more attention to who does a good job and who doesn't. At Applebee's, unfortunately sometimes management has to hire warm bodies to do the job, and they are far less likely to fire someone for incompetent service. For a place where you're going to make a lot more money, management can be a) more restrictive in their hiring practices and b) quicker on the trigger finger for bad servers, because people want to work there. My first serving job was Red Lobster (long time ago) and because our staff was filled with irresponsible, uneducated, and unmotivated servers, the people that just managed to show up with any regularity were among the managers' favorites, their service quality notwithstanding.

Some people have perks in jobs that other people don't care about. My sister works for a company that gives away free tickets to sporting events regularly to employees. Because she doesn't like sports, this perk is irrelevant to her. Just because someone doesn't care if they get their money that night versus two weeks later doesn't mean that I shouldn't care about that perk.

My house burned down last year, and while insurance paid for a great amount of my belongings, it didn't pay for everything. Being able to work more and get money right away definitely helped me rebuild my life more quickly.

Maybe I'm just an iron man :D.

Chris

I think you're ascribing too much to the majority of the population. Having managed a team of salespeople, I can assure you that had they not been commissioned, they would not have worked nearly as hard as they did, and my company would have suffered the loss of a half a million dollars in profit.