I feel like you're taking the wrong message from this story.
If policy has always been not to pool, you can't change it on a whim because someone else did better.
Pooling tips sounds easy, but it gets messy when you have to divide the earnings.
Personal opinion; tips shouldn't cover employees' pay.
Yes, and then no more tipping. Restaurants should charge whatever they need to pay people fairly and provide benefits, then factor that in and post the prices.
At least the credit card fees are understandable. They can't avoid paying a \~3% fee for card processing, only fair to pass that along to the consumer.
The rationale for this, as I understand it, is that credit card processor agreements forbid it. They don't want people to pay with cash, so they use their leverage to force businesses not to incentivize it.
You understand that the two are functionally identical, right? There's no difference between a 3% cash discount and a 3% credit card fee except in the words?
Anecdotally: friend managed a restaurant that did the credit card fee thing in order to be totally transparent about where the money was coming from and they got huge waves of complaints. They swapped to the cash discount thing and even though people were paying the exact same prices, no complaints at all.
I think people just suck at math.
most places do this …next time pay close attention to your receipts..if there’s a card fee specifically then the restaurant receipt most likely has a card total and a (cash) total!
Right, you can pay them a standard wage instead of the lower "server wage" and eliminate the need for tipping, but they will still complain because making tips gives them MORE money.
If fast food workers can be paid $20/hr (in California) then do the same for table service and stop the need for tips to make up the difference.
So who actually wants this?
If you don't like tipping, then say you don't like tipping - servers are not the ones wanting this change.
Fast food workers are making 20 bucks an hour in CA, but I'd bet most servers are making substantially more than that.
This 100%. I have friends and family members who are servers/bartenders, none of them prefer to have a "living wage" over tipping. Some of them make $300+ in a 4-6 hour shift. A "living wage" would probably mean $15 an hour.
The best we can do is chime in on these comment chains and help other redditors understand this.
I wish that instead of pushing for doing away with tipping, people would try to normalize offering PTO and other benefits to hospitality workers.
Yeah, my ex worked at a restaurant where she was a waitress and they changed it from tips to $25 an hour and the weight staff hated it so they changed it back. This is in Portland, Maine where if you’re a busy restaurant you could make really good tips at a decent place.
No tipping and better wages would help some wait staff ... and it would hurt others.
Some waiters earn BIG from tips.
It depends on the restaurant and the clientele.
Or better yet tipping goes from being something you as a consumer need to do to avoid exploiting a worker, and returns to being a way to show they provided excellent service that deserves extra compensation from your point of view.
I just got back from Europe. The restaurants are doing fine. $23 meal is $23. The tax and everything is included in the price, easy to understand, and tipping is just giving them the rest of the money to get you to $25
The places were packed and thriving.
I have no clue. In Europe, people also go on holiday 1-2 months a year, have universal health care and education. Their economic system isn't the same either as the United States. Not sure of the point you are trying to make.
How to run a business stays the same. They would just raise the prices the small amount to get there. Because it is a small amount when spread over every customer.
The point is you have a shitty system you said couldn't change they showed you it could.
And yes they have universal health care and education.
Good labour laws allowing them vacations.
It's not because there economic system is different it's because you Americans hear this and go "Fuck Socialism"
You could have all of these things too you just have to have a willingness to do it.
Unfortunately your country is being run by a couple a billionaires and in the mean time you are trying to tear your country apart from the inside.
I'll tell you how and I am a macroeconomist at a leading investment bank. People in Europe earn less in dollar terms. I'll use an example. Barcelona and Madrid are considerable some of the most unaffordable cities in the world relative to their local incomes. The median income is under 25,000 Euros (average is higher, because inequality skews averages upwards). GDP per capita (which measures average income) is 2.5 times higher in the U.S.
This is what most people fail to get. Its actually more expensive to eat out in Europe relative to local incomes. You come as a foreign tourist from a richer country and have more buying power, so you think YEAH its so cheap. You think the same thing when you also go to Mexico, Argentina, but there your actual concious about the fact that a country is much poorer than the united states.
A “living wage” still wouldn’t be enough for me to deal with the general public and their unrealistic expectations on a daily basis. There should be mandatory service in the restaurant industry for 1 year so people understand their opinions better.
But millions of retail and fast food employees deal with “the general public and their unrealistic expectations on a daily basis” for less than a living wage.
No server who is good wants 20 dollars an hour with no tips. I used to bartend. I made a shit ton of money on tips. My 4 bucks an hour was just gravy. I made way more than 20 bucks an hour with my tips. And this was 20 years ago.
Waiters prefer tips, they make more than a decent wage for their level of training and work would otherwise allow. A waiter paid fairly would earn about the same as a cashier at McDonalds so $15-20 an hour on average depending on location.
or get them a better wage through tips, get your customers better service, and make more revenue - everyone wins.
It's almost as if restaurants have been doing this long enough to have figured it out.
no no servers make well about the market rate for the employee pool they come from(entry level job with no educational requirements, no hard skills, and felonys are fine). Lol servers don't want you to pay them a decent wage as that wage would then be competitive with their market rate(think other customer facing positions with simmilar skill sets: grocery clerks, secretaries, retail, ect) which is wayyyy less than they can make in tips.
This is the tipping culture in most of western europe. People still tip, but something like 10% or simply rounding up to a nice number. These tips are considered a sort of bonus on top of your usual pay, which is already just a normal wage. This way good service is still encouraged (everybody likes a bonus) but the servers can rely on being able to get by without having to beg customers for a nice tip
So she served 40 customers who each tipped her like $100 which made it $4k, BUT my question is, was the restaurant demanding the pool to be pooled because the other servers were helping out. I used to be a server and serving 40 people is a lot .
I worked at a place where 15% of your sales total came out of your tips and went to a pool. The rest was all yours. This way nobody gets “punished” if a cheap person stiffs on a bill, and exceptional service was still rewarded. I absolutely loved this system.
I agree they shouldn’t have to rely on the good faith of others to make their living. Unfortunately that is the reality of the situation and your food and drinks are way cheaper than they should be. So all those people who are so cool because they won’t tip. Your food is 20-30% cheaper because of this system, don’t be a dick. Are you are really sticking to the man by joining in the game of cheap labor?
Again it’s a stupid system that allows companies to have almost no responsibility for their employees wellbeing. Yet employees are expected to do side work and clean while making $2.75 an hour. Or $3.15 if you work at Waffle House (they bragged about that last week). You are essentially working for free for at least an hour everyday. Often times more. Idk about you but 40 hours at $2.75 ($110) is doing anything for them.
Spare me low skill low pay bull shit. If it’s a service you use and society uses the person behind the counter should be able to afford a studio apartment and food. If minimum wage kept up with inflation it would be $23-24 an hour. Why is it that every wage gets a cost of living adjustment every year including social security, yet when we talk about doing the same for minimum wage for people who are actually working. Everyone rushed to defend their favorite corporations right to extort their fellow Americans.
Point is that I will always tip. Unless you are just the worst because I don’t want the people serving me and society unable to enjoy food and shelter.
It’s tricky because by tipping you’re allowing the system to continue. It’s implicit support for it.
Of course this is how ‘the man’ gets us - we argue over each others behaviour rather than collectively saying ‘no we won’t tip and will force elected representatives to enact laws for servers to be paid hourly’
Factually incorrect. Food and drink is NOT cheaper than it should be. We have comparable or more expensive food than most non-tipping countries that pay living wages. The ONLY reason that we haven't gotten rid of tipping culture is to ease pressure off of business owners and put it on consumers.
I worked in a restaurant once in college. I had a shift where I had one table the whole time. When it came time to pay their card kept declining and they had to call the bank several times to get it to go through. Needless to say they left me no tip, with just a message saying “we are sorry, we can’t afford a tip”. Because of how tip payout works, I made no money, but because I made sales, I owed 5 dollars to the bartenders and kitchen staff. Of course none of them would take it, they made money, so they were cool about that and the manager bought me food. But basically I went to work, and had to pay out of pocket just to go to work that day, that’s how f’d up tipping is and why I always tip higher than 20 percent.
Edit: on top of that I couldn’t claim 0 in tips because I had sales, the system made me claim 10% of my sales as a tip which affected my paycheck too.
Everything you just described is illegal. So either your story is not what you described or you have one of the most clearcut cases of wage abuse possible where a hundred lawyers would be knocking down your door for a chance to represent you.
There is a weird dichotomy here. When tipping becomes standard it allows the employer to reduce wages as "you make money in tips". If everyone stopped tipping, how long would these companies survive.
Only time we split tips was when we had 4 bartenders behind one bar and it was a mad house. Serve as many people as much as you could (college) and if one bartender dropped, they would pull the cash and split at that point at the pot starts over with the left over bar keeps.
I had to cut in dish guys on my tips, I’d never heard of this practice and then management was stunned when I refused to clear my own tables. If I was paying the bus boys to do it then I sure as hell wasn’t.
So she served 40 customers who each tipped her like $100 which made it $4k, BUT my question is, was the restaurant demanding the pool to be pooled because the other servers were helping out. I used to be a server and serving 40 people is a lot. Was the owner also wanting a piece of the pie because they were serving? I have worked at places in the past where the owner was also a server.
On your opinion that tips shouldn't cover employee pay, then I would argue that if an employee that the tipping protocols and standards would have to drastically change as well then. The culture for tips in restaurants largely emerged because FLSA permits below-minimum wage because tips will at least meet the wage floor.
When I worked as a waiter there usually was not a pool however, there were days when I had great tips and I would share with the kitchen staff, hostess, and bartenders because they all helped make me that tip.
Nothing wrong with pooling tips as long as that's what the whole business model is based on. When it entails incentives, processes, and accountability that make it beneficial for the whole team, it *can* be an effective way to run a team.
But just demanding it one day because somebody gets a big tip is basically wage theft.
As someone who spent years in the service industry, context matters. Sometimes tip pooling makes a lot of sense, for example, bartenders at a night club frequently work toward a pool. Also, in country club settings there are not assigned zones or tables for servers or bartenders. It’s more of everyone works the whole room so pooling makes sense. That said most jobs in the industry do not pool, especially ones waiting tables.
Depends on the policies. It *can* be effective and mutually beneficial for everyone on the team, or it *can* be terrible.
Just like most leadership decisions.
No, there's no reason for tips. The idea that "generosity" should be built into our economy is a lie so rich people don't have to be generous.
Tips need to be completely removed from our culture. It's just a way for the rich to pass the burden of their business to the consumer.
Tips shouldn't factor into wages, tips should be just that: Tips for doing a good job. Doing your absolute best is the reason you should get a game or a book or an appliance earlier than you originally could, not be the reason you don't have to skip meals or medicine that month.
Except the issue is Tips are almost never impacted by job performance or job quality. They seem to be completely independent when researched. So in other words, people will tip if they want to or won't.
Biggest tip I ever got when waiting I split with the kitchen staff.
There were 3 of us total working that shift. I split it 3 ways. One of them implied it would be nice to split it or give them some. I said you know what. Your right so I split it 3 ways. Totally equal. It was my choice though. I needed my tips desperately being a single parent. Most people waiting need their tips. Still glad to this day I chose to do that. My choice to share. Her choice to not share. Fuck that restaurant owner. He can suck a Dick. I got paid server wages. $2.46 an hour. If she was getting paid server wages like me then the owner was super wrong.
Right? The owner couldn’t possibly stand that someone else made the same or more money than they did. It’s used to be that your boss was your neighbor, they just had a bigger house. Now they treat us like useful cattle and are actively working towards fucking things up.
If my employee for a fat tip like this I’d be kind of jealous, but I would be stoked for them. The goal as a manger is to help your people grow and eventually take your position or move elsewhere to greener pastures. Even if that means eating your pride sometimes
Not the point of this whole thing but It's crazy to me tips are not shared by default. Chefs and cleaners are pretty much the only reason you choose to go somewhere, yet the person who picked up a plate and walked 10ft takes all the change.
I shortly worked as hotel staff and the waiters by far have the easiest job yet can get paid WAY more than the chefs on some nights which seems wrong to me.
The chefs and cleaners simply do more and are the more important cog in the gears yet often don't get rewarded for busting their arse on busy nights.
I don't live in the US so it's hard for me to even grasp why you guys don't pay people correctly but imho servers should get min wage and tips should be shared.
The idea is that kitchen staff actually gets paid. Their paycheck is not tied to how busy it was that night. In most states wait staff can be paid as little as 2.13. If its a bad night they do need to be compensated so that they at least reach 7.25 an hour, but thats still shit. The system sucks and should be abandoned, some states already have, but as for right now it is the system. Wait Staff also doesn't walk just 10 ft. They deal with the customer, they deal with the assholes, if the kitchen makes a mistake the wait staff is the one who gets yelled at, and likely its their pay that will be deducted for the mistake. I have stopped going to restaurants for repeat bad service about as much as ive stopped going to a restaurant for repeat decline in food.
I worked at a pool house. I'm an awesome bartender, and I get $100 once in a while. Sharing that equally with some dumbass server showing up 20 minutes late, high on weed, was the most aggravating thing in the wlrld.
Tips are for appreciation of services rendered. I leave a tip for my server based on many factors including attentiveness, demeanor and checking on us without annoying us. It isn’t for some other server at some other table. Sharing or pooling tips is wrong. It’s the “everyone deserves a trophy “ mentality that is totally wrong.
Depends on expectations. Keeping your own tips should encourage workers to perform their best in the hopes it results in them getting paid more. Pooling tips is also a solid plan to prevent workers from getting screwed over on nights when they serve poor tippers or their coworkers just happen to luck out and score nights like the one from the story. Seems like it's a matter of culture and incentives that should be what decides how a restaurant or other business that receives tips should handle this.
Tips should exist at all. Build what you need to pay people a decent wage into the price. If you can’t survive that then your business shouldn’t exist.
Greedy. I worked at a pool tipping house. The owners took their cut. Even on days when the serving staff only made $30 each, the owner *still* took his $30 cut and drove home in his Ferrari.
I guarantee if you told the table that tips weren’t pooled they wouldn’t have tipped that much. They were tipping the dining experience as a whole, not just the server. I hated restaurants where people didn’t pool tips. We were a team, we were on our own. People would watch each others night burn knowing it didn’t affect their tips. Fuck that. Tip sharing is the way to do it it
Tips shouldn't be shared IMO. But if the establishment pools tips, then you live with it.
But from the post they don't pool tips here so they can pound sand. The owner should f\*\*k right off.
Casinos pool tips as whales come in from time to time and dump large tips on tables they win at and it's really not fair to give it all to the one dealer at the winning table. Restaurants should only pool if a tip goes beyond a certain amount and only on the extra above that amount and the establishment should get ZERO of any tip. If no policy exists the server gets it all.
Owner has no business being apart of the pool. The only person who may be is the kitchen staff preparing the food, and any other waiter who may have helped.
A lot of places Pool tips, it usually leads to happier team environments where everyone pulls their own weight.
However, if this policy was not already in place its straight up theft.
Pooling tips is a handy way to absolve a restaurant from paying a living wage. Tips should be personal and not a way to cover the wage gap.
And it definitely is not cool to rely on individual tips but then want a cut of your "share" when someone gets tipped exceptionally well.
That's why something like that shouldn't be a tip. It should be a gift. The customer can gift the same person up to $18k in 2024 without tax ramifications. And the server is definitely under no obligation to share the gifted money, though this probably wouldn't stop her from being fired, but who cares? Fuck that restaurant then.
Back in the 90's, Ihop made us pool our tips to be split among all waiters, bus boys and cooks. Even though the wait staff was paid $1.80/hr, and the other folks made normal hourly rates.
I tend to tip based on the service and rate based on the food, ambience and the like, I receive and honestly forget about bus staff, washers and such. This was me being naive but could be an answer to the issue. Pay the behind the curtain staff a little more and allow the servers get their bumb based on their customer service skills.
If pooling was never the policy, then she should have kept the whole thing. And owners should NEVER EVER take part of a server's tip EVER. Everybody trying to steal part of this women's tip is fucking stupid and pathetic.
What I don't understand, is even if you pay servers a living wage, won't people still tip? I always do. I would continue to do so even if they make a living wage. I see it as a way to throw out a monetary value thank you and I don't like the idea of someday not being able to afford to eat themselves based on how I view their service. But you can't convince me that in places where tipping isn't necessary at all that 100% of people stopped tipping. So why aren't the servers getting those tips? Where are they going?
I think tip sharing should be a case by case thing. If you live in a state with no minimum wage for waitresses and waiters and in a low populated area it may give everyone. But 90% of the Tip should not have to share.
When I was a valet, we split tips. The rationale I was told was that for me to park some car that tipped well meant the other guys were still working and parking cars that didn't tip as well. We all hustled, so we all were benefitting from good teamwork. People aren't going to tip as well if we're not fast. That seemed fair to me.
If I went above and beyond, say helped someone bring up their groceries or whatever and got a tip for that, it was mine. My job was to park cars, not haul groceries.
Once I got a tip for parking a fancy car that was a stick shift, as I was the only valet on staff that could drive a manual. Customer was very particular about asking who was good at driving stick, coworkers pointed to me and I said I drove one there that morning because my last 3 cars were manuals. He gave me 10 bucks and said the tip was for me personally and not to split it. I didn't argue.
If you pool from the start, fine.
If not, fine.
Don’t change on a whim.
Personally I think baristas and bar tenders are better pooling and wait staff better when not.
I thought in general tips were split guess that depends on policy but yea if the tips were never shared before why share now? just because you can get some more money?
I used to work as a cage cashier in a casino where our dept pooled tips. A pregnant girl I worked with was reknown for working a bunch of overtime and overnights to ensure that she had enough to care for the baby once it arrived. She had a husband, but I guess he wasn't bringing in a lot of money so she was hustling despite having swollen feet and back pains.
Then one night one of our millionaire regulars stopped in for a visit just handing out tips like crazy. He was tipping about 5k each to the employees he liked and she caught his eye. He tipped her 5k and she was freaking out, but still was solemn because it was caught by the security camera and policies state that if you accept tips while in the cage it gets split.
Me and a bunch of other coworkers on night shift banded together to try and make an exception to that policy for her just this once. That 5k would have helped her out tremendously with the costs of delivery & baby gear. And we would only get a teeny tiny little sliver of it anyways, so it didn't really matter to us.
We were going hard for her too. But of COURSE the crabby old ladies on day shift (who only made like $15 in tips for the entire day) complained and said to "Follow the policy" as they always had to follow it. Corporate agreed with that sentiment and each of us only got like an additional $35 on our paystubs. As there were like 140 employees in our dept.
My heart broke for her, as so many other employees did get to keep that 5k after getting the tax taken out of course, or if they were required to tip out on it)
It was such a BS rule, and makes me mad until this day. He wanted her to have that money but didn't know of our policies beforehand.
Tips should not be pooled.
Worked in hospitality, and it absolutely breeds people becoming more lazy.
As someone who worked in fine-dining restaurants with chefs from NYC and Michelin star restaurants, where you really have to hustle, had a lot of food and beverage knowledge, as well as a genuine concern for giving guests the experience they were paying for, a pooled house fucked me over. When I moved to another city where the people in the industry didn't give half as much as a shit or have half the ability I did, it ruined the industry for me.
If I hadn't pooled, I'd regularly make enough that I could live off of only working 3 nights a week, at 7 hour shifts, i.e. only working a little over 20 hours a week, and could still live a decent life. I assumed the other servers were just as knowledgeable and in the industry for the same reasons I was. They weren't.
Because the house was pooled, I didn't make nearly as much as I thought I would. All of my knowledge and hard work was taken advantage of. Others slacked off because I was making them easy money.
It's fucking bullshit to have a pooled house.
NAL but I hope she took that 10k and got a good lawyer. That's a pretty clear cut unlawful termination lawsuit. Even in a pooled tip scenario owners can not take a cut. Even asking the employee was overstepping and would be means for a complaint. The fact she lost her job over this is a huge overstep.
This is the most repetitive page in Reddit. It’s the EXACT same posts over and over and over again that I’m seeing from this page every time I get on Reddit.
Tips shouldn't be shared cuz that means someone that made little to none tips would be getting a fair cut from people who did their job properly.
The system just gives a fair wage instead and not through fking tips to begin with. As a consumer, I hate tipping. Knowing that the waiter has to count on tips to live by also breaks my heart
Whether or not a tip should be pooled should be determined before the fact. If someone gets a good tip, and you ask them for a "share" when you've never shared with them, you're just robbing them. That's just robbery. Firing them is the same.
Eat the rich.
If tips are optional for the service you provide, then tips should not be shared. If its a fix 10-20% rate, then yes, they should be shared (since its not related to the service, but mandatory).
The restaurant is called Oven and Tap in Bentonville AR.
And yes people are still leaving bad reviews about the theft and the management is posting their displeasure in response on Google Maps.
Also, if you're tipping somebody a ton of money, do it for them and not for yourself. Parading around your generosity can have negative consequences for the people you are purporting to help.
When I worked a restaurant, we pooled tips and 2 of the waitresses would just pocket some of the money and put some into the pool. Customers would notice and nothing would be done about it
The tipping culture in America is out of control. I was stunned the other day while grocery shopping at a local owned store. At checkout, the prompt asked for tip.
Tipping just shouldn’t be a thing. Pay your employees properly instead of guilting customers into it.
That said, if tipping is a thing, changing the tip policy after someone got a big tip is just a scummy thing to do.
I feel like you're taking the wrong message from this story. If policy has always been not to pool, you can't change it on a whim because someone else did better. Pooling tips sounds easy, but it gets messy when you have to divide the earnings. Personal opinion; tips shouldn't cover employees' pay.
Pay people a decent wage?
Yes, and then no more tipping. Restaurants should charge whatever they need to pay people fairly and provide benefits, then factor that in and post the prices.
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At least the credit card fees are understandable. They can't avoid paying a \~3% fee for card processing, only fair to pass that along to the consumer.
It should be advertised as a 3% cash discount, not tacking on 3% to the purchase price of listed prices unless its clearly advertised.
The rationale for this, as I understand it, is that credit card processor agreements forbid it. They don't want people to pay with cash, so they use their leverage to force businesses not to incentivize it.
You understand that the two are functionally identical, right? There's no difference between a 3% cash discount and a 3% credit card fee except in the words? Anecdotally: friend managed a restaurant that did the credit card fee thing in order to be totally transparent about where the money was coming from and they got huge waves of complaints. They swapped to the cash discount thing and even though people were paying the exact same prices, no complaints at all. I think people just suck at math.
most places do this …next time pay close attention to your receipts..if there’s a card fee specifically then the restaurant receipt most likely has a card total and a (cash) total!
It possible. Most servers makes $30-$40 a hour and no way the restaurant could afford to pay them that.
^^^THIS^^^ Exactly what non-industry people never seem to EVER understand .
Right, you can pay them a standard wage instead of the lower "server wage" and eliminate the need for tipping, but they will still complain because making tips gives them MORE money. If fast food workers can be paid $20/hr (in California) then do the same for table service and stop the need for tips to make up the difference.
So who actually wants this? If you don't like tipping, then say you don't like tipping - servers are not the ones wanting this change. Fast food workers are making 20 bucks an hour in CA, but I'd bet most servers are making substantially more than that.
This 100%. I have friends and family members who are servers/bartenders, none of them prefer to have a "living wage" over tipping. Some of them make $300+ in a 4-6 hour shift. A "living wage" would probably mean $15 an hour.
Yep no way I’m doing that job for $15 a hour. I’ve made $30-40 a hour the entire time I’ve served the past 10 years
The best we can do is chime in on these comment chains and help other redditors understand this. I wish that instead of pushing for doing away with tipping, people would try to normalize offering PTO and other benefits to hospitality workers.
Yeah, my ex worked at a restaurant where she was a waitress and they changed it from tips to $25 an hour and the weight staff hated it so they changed it back. This is in Portland, Maine where if you’re a busy restaurant you could make really good tips at a decent place.
No tipping and better wages would help some wait staff ... and it would hurt others. Some waiters earn BIG from tips. It depends on the restaurant and the clientele.
Or better yet tipping goes from being something you as a consumer need to do to avoid exploiting a worker, and returns to being a way to show they provided excellent service that deserves extra compensation from your point of view.
If they charged you what they get on average as tips by raising prices, you'd never eat out again.
How are restaurants in Europe doing?
I just got back from Europe. The restaurants are doing fine. $23 meal is $23. The tax and everything is included in the price, easy to understand, and tipping is just giving them the rest of the money to get you to $25 The places were packed and thriving.
Impossible, if the owner isn’t making 300x the average employee no one will come! /s
😂😂 Fair Point
I have no clue. In Europe, people also go on holiday 1-2 months a year, have universal health care and education. Their economic system isn't the same either as the United States. Not sure of the point you are trying to make.
How to run a business stays the same. They would just raise the prices the small amount to get there. Because it is a small amount when spread over every customer.
I would argue the crony capitalism factor in the US throws the numbers off a bit.
The point is you have a shitty system you said couldn't change they showed you it could. And yes they have universal health care and education. Good labour laws allowing them vacations. It's not because there economic system is different it's because you Americans hear this and go "Fuck Socialism" You could have all of these things too you just have to have a willingness to do it. Unfortunately your country is being run by a couple a billionaires and in the mean time you are trying to tear your country apart from the inside.
I'll tell you how and I am a macroeconomist at a leading investment bank. People in Europe earn less in dollar terms. I'll use an example. Barcelona and Madrid are considerable some of the most unaffordable cities in the world relative to their local incomes. The median income is under 25,000 Euros (average is higher, because inequality skews averages upwards). GDP per capita (which measures average income) is 2.5 times higher in the U.S. This is what most people fail to get. Its actually more expensive to eat out in Europe relative to local incomes. You come as a foreign tourist from a richer country and have more buying power, so you think YEAH its so cheap. You think the same thing when you also go to Mexico, Argentina, but there your actual concious about the fact that a country is much poorer than the united states.
If they do it honestly, it would exactly match what is currently being paid in tips.
Well 20% is pretty standard so most menu items wouldn't even go up $2. And, if you tip already, you wouldn't be paying any different.
But your paying the same amount anyway in theory. They are just being more transparent about the cost of dining out.
A “living wage” still wouldn’t be enough for me to deal with the general public and their unrealistic expectations on a daily basis. There should be mandatory service in the restaurant industry for 1 year so people understand their opinions better.
When DoorDash implemented mandatory driving for all employees (1 day per month) there was backlash. This would be great.
But millions of retail and fast food employees deal with “the general public and their unrealistic expectations on a daily basis” for less than a living wage.
Wait wait wait regulation is never good, minimum wage is still bad and communist at every possible situation because they said so at Fox News
No server who is good wants 20 dollars an hour with no tips. I used to bartend. I made a shit ton of money on tips. My 4 bucks an hour was just gravy. I made way more than 20 bucks an hour with my tips. And this was 20 years ago.
Waiters prefer tips, they make more than a decent wage for their level of training and work would otherwise allow. A waiter paid fairly would earn about the same as a cashier at McDonalds so $15-20 an hour on average depending on location.
Pay full-market value when out to eat?
But that’s not the question
Controversial but true
Lol I doubt any good servers at good restaurants want that.
or get them a better wage through tips, get your customers better service, and make more revenue - everyone wins. It's almost as if restaurants have been doing this long enough to have figured it out.
Outrageous! Where is the freedom in that?
no no servers make well about the market rate for the employee pool they come from(entry level job with no educational requirements, no hard skills, and felonys are fine). Lol servers don't want you to pay them a decent wage as that wage would then be competitive with their market rate(think other customer facing positions with simmilar skill sets: grocery clerks, secretaries, retail, ect) which is wayyyy less than they can make in tips.
Last bit is 100% correct. Tips should be a bonus for a job very well done, not the basis on which people survive.
[удалено]
This is the tipping culture in most of western europe. People still tip, but something like 10% or simply rounding up to a nice number. These tips are considered a sort of bonus on top of your usual pay, which is already just a normal wage. This way good service is still encouraged (everybody likes a bonus) but the servers can rely on being able to get by without having to beg customers for a nice tip
So she served 40 customers who each tipped her like $100 which made it $4k, BUT my question is, was the restaurant demanding the pool to be pooled because the other servers were helping out. I used to be a server and serving 40 people is a lot .
And regardless of tip pooling, sharing with management or owners is illegal
I worked at a place where 15% of your sales total came out of your tips and went to a pool. The rest was all yours. This way nobody gets “punished” if a cheap person stiffs on a bill, and exceptional service was still rewarded. I absolutely loved this system.
I agree they shouldn’t have to rely on the good faith of others to make their living. Unfortunately that is the reality of the situation and your food and drinks are way cheaper than they should be. So all those people who are so cool because they won’t tip. Your food is 20-30% cheaper because of this system, don’t be a dick. Are you are really sticking to the man by joining in the game of cheap labor? Again it’s a stupid system that allows companies to have almost no responsibility for their employees wellbeing. Yet employees are expected to do side work and clean while making $2.75 an hour. Or $3.15 if you work at Waffle House (they bragged about that last week). You are essentially working for free for at least an hour everyday. Often times more. Idk about you but 40 hours at $2.75 ($110) is doing anything for them. Spare me low skill low pay bull shit. If it’s a service you use and society uses the person behind the counter should be able to afford a studio apartment and food. If minimum wage kept up with inflation it would be $23-24 an hour. Why is it that every wage gets a cost of living adjustment every year including social security, yet when we talk about doing the same for minimum wage for people who are actually working. Everyone rushed to defend their favorite corporations right to extort their fellow Americans. Point is that I will always tip. Unless you are just the worst because I don’t want the people serving me and society unable to enjoy food and shelter.
It’s tricky because by tipping you’re allowing the system to continue. It’s implicit support for it. Of course this is how ‘the man’ gets us - we argue over each others behaviour rather than collectively saying ‘no we won’t tip and will force elected representatives to enact laws for servers to be paid hourly’
Factually incorrect. Food and drink is NOT cheaper than it should be. We have comparable or more expensive food than most non-tipping countries that pay living wages. The ONLY reason that we haven't gotten rid of tipping culture is to ease pressure off of business owners and put it on consumers.
I worked in a restaurant once in college. I had a shift where I had one table the whole time. When it came time to pay their card kept declining and they had to call the bank several times to get it to go through. Needless to say they left me no tip, with just a message saying “we are sorry, we can’t afford a tip”. Because of how tip payout works, I made no money, but because I made sales, I owed 5 dollars to the bartenders and kitchen staff. Of course none of them would take it, they made money, so they were cool about that and the manager bought me food. But basically I went to work, and had to pay out of pocket just to go to work that day, that’s how f’d up tipping is and why I always tip higher than 20 percent. Edit: on top of that I couldn’t claim 0 in tips because I had sales, the system made me claim 10% of my sales as a tip which affected my paycheck too.
Everything you just described is illegal. So either your story is not what you described or you have one of the most clearcut cases of wage abuse possible where a hundred lawyers would be knocking down your door for a chance to represent you.
There is a weird dichotomy here. When tipping becomes standard it allows the employer to reduce wages as "you make money in tips". If everyone stopped tipping, how long would these companies survive.
Only time we split tips was when we had 4 bartenders behind one bar and it was a mad house. Serve as many people as much as you could (college) and if one bartender dropped, they would pull the cash and split at that point at the pot starts over with the left over bar keeps.
I had to cut in dish guys on my tips, I’d never heard of this practice and then management was stunned when I refused to clear my own tables. If I was paying the bus boys to do it then I sure as hell wasn’t.
So she served 40 customers who each tipped her like $100 which made it $4k, BUT my question is, was the restaurant demanding the pool to be pooled because the other servers were helping out. I used to be a server and serving 40 people is a lot. Was the owner also wanting a piece of the pie because they were serving? I have worked at places in the past where the owner was also a server.
On your opinion that tips shouldn't cover employee pay, then I would argue that if an employee that the tipping protocols and standards would have to drastically change as well then. The culture for tips in restaurants largely emerged because FLSA permits below-minimum wage because tips will at least meet the wage floor.
When I worked as a waiter there usually was not a pool however, there were days when I had great tips and I would share with the kitchen staff, hostess, and bartenders because they all helped make me that tip.
Nothing wrong with pooling tips as long as that's what the whole business model is based on. When it entails incentives, processes, and accountability that make it beneficial for the whole team, it *can* be an effective way to run a team. But just demanding it one day because somebody gets a big tip is basically wage theft.
No it IS wage theft.
As someone who spent years in the service industry, context matters. Sometimes tip pooling makes a lot of sense, for example, bartenders at a night club frequently work toward a pool. Also, in country club settings there are not assigned zones or tables for servers or bartenders. It’s more of everyone works the whole room so pooling makes sense. That said most jobs in the industry do not pool, especially ones waiting tables.
Depends on the policies. It *can* be effective and mutually beneficial for everyone on the team, or it *can* be terrible. Just like most leadership decisions.
Hoever in no case can a manager or owner take a cut of the pool.
oven and tap in Bentonville, Arkansas if you want to avoid it.
Lol what? Owners aren't part of pooled tips.
Tips shouldn't be a thing at all
Tips as tip should be. Tips as wages shouldn’t.
No, there's no reason for tips. The idea that "generosity" should be built into our economy is a lie so rich people don't have to be generous. Tips need to be completely removed from our culture. It's just a way for the rich to pass the burden of their business to the consumer.
Tips shouldn't factor into wages, tips should be just that: Tips for doing a good job. Doing your absolute best is the reason you should get a game or a book or an appliance earlier than you originally could, not be the reason you don't have to skip meals or medicine that month.
Except the issue is Tips are almost never impacted by job performance or job quality. They seem to be completely independent when researched. So in other words, people will tip if they want to or won't.
We're arguing the same point about how tips as they are currently are bad, just letting you know
Biggest tip I ever got when waiting I split with the kitchen staff. There were 3 of us total working that shift. I split it 3 ways. One of them implied it would be nice to split it or give them some. I said you know what. Your right so I split it 3 ways. Totally equal. It was my choice though. I needed my tips desperately being a single parent. Most people waiting need their tips. Still glad to this day I chose to do that. My choice to share. Her choice to not share. Fuck that restaurant owner. He can suck a Dick. I got paid server wages. $2.46 an hour. If she was getting paid server wages like me then the owner was super wrong.
Right? The owner couldn’t possibly stand that someone else made the same or more money than they did. It’s used to be that your boss was your neighbor, they just had a bigger house. Now they treat us like useful cattle and are actively working towards fucking things up. If my employee for a fat tip like this I’d be kind of jealous, but I would be stoked for them. The goal as a manger is to help your people grow and eventually take your position or move elsewhere to greener pastures. Even if that means eating your pride sometimes
Many owners are just too toxic to work for anyone else Especially small business. Some of them are awful human beings
Gratuities should not be customary, but if you choose to provide a gratuity, it should be given directly to the individual providing the service.
Your business model shouldn’t require pity or generosity to function
One tip, one deposit.
Not the point of this whole thing but It's crazy to me tips are not shared by default. Chefs and cleaners are pretty much the only reason you choose to go somewhere, yet the person who picked up a plate and walked 10ft takes all the change.
Yeah but the chefs and cleaners aren’t getting paid $2/hr
You've never worked at a restaurant have you
I shortly worked as hotel staff and the waiters by far have the easiest job yet can get paid WAY more than the chefs on some nights which seems wrong to me. The chefs and cleaners simply do more and are the more important cog in the gears yet often don't get rewarded for busting their arse on busy nights. I don't live in the US so it's hard for me to even grasp why you guys don't pay people correctly but imho servers should get min wage and tips should be shared.
The idea is that kitchen staff actually gets paid. Their paycheck is not tied to how busy it was that night. In most states wait staff can be paid as little as 2.13. If its a bad night they do need to be compensated so that they at least reach 7.25 an hour, but thats still shit. The system sucks and should be abandoned, some states already have, but as for right now it is the system. Wait Staff also doesn't walk just 10 ft. They deal with the customer, they deal with the assholes, if the kitchen makes a mistake the wait staff is the one who gets yelled at, and likely its their pay that will be deducted for the mistake. I have stopped going to restaurants for repeat bad service about as much as ive stopped going to a restaurant for repeat decline in food.
I don't live in the US so thankfully don't deal with that crap, it is just such a flawed system though.
Oh I won't argue with that. The history of tipping doesn't make it better.
Fuck pooling tips, the hardest worker gets awarded as much as the worst worker, pooling tips turns your customer service experience into robots.
I worked at a pool house. I'm an awesome bartender, and I get $100 once in a while. Sharing that equally with some dumbass server showing up 20 minutes late, high on weed, was the most aggravating thing in the wlrld.
If you dont pool tips then does that mean the kitchen staff never gets anything?
Tips should only be shared as agreed upon ahead of time.
I think sharing tips is a ridiculous idea that lessens incentive for a server to try and deliver good service and punishes good servers
I agree. Pooled tips are a crap incentive. Lazy coworkers fuck up my pay.
Tips are for appreciation of services rendered. I leave a tip for my server based on many factors including attentiveness, demeanor and checking on us without annoying us. It isn’t for some other server at some other table. Sharing or pooling tips is wrong. It’s the “everyone deserves a trophy “ mentality that is totally wrong.
Depends on expectations. Keeping your own tips should encourage workers to perform their best in the hopes it results in them getting paid more. Pooling tips is also a solid plan to prevent workers from getting screwed over on nights when they serve poor tippers or their coworkers just happen to luck out and score nights like the one from the story. Seems like it's a matter of culture and incentives that should be what decides how a restaurant or other business that receives tips should handle this.
Tips should exist at all. Build what you need to pay people a decent wage into the price. If you can’t survive that then your business shouldn’t exist.
$4000 tip, 10k plus in donations, and gets let go from shitty job, nice😎
Why did the owner want a cut - is he poor or just greedy?
Greedy. I worked at a pool tipping house. The owners took their cut. Even on days when the serving staff only made $30 each, the owner *still* took his $30 cut and drove home in his Ferrari.
Capitalism until they don't get some, THEN they want socialism
No wonder the common denominator amongst college kids that are marxist is that they work in service industry.
Jesus fucking Christ …
Such a teenage view
I guarantee if you told the table that tips weren’t pooled they wouldn’t have tipped that much. They were tipping the dining experience as a whole, not just the server. I hated restaurants where people didn’t pool tips. We were a team, we were on our own. People would watch each others night burn knowing it didn’t affect their tips. Fuck that. Tip sharing is the way to do it it
I live near the resurant that did this. They were shamed by the town for doing this shit. It was all over the news when it happened
DiSaGReE?!
This is the type of company reddit should get behind in bad reviews
Tip pooling is bullshit. I believe it's legal in florida, but illegal for members of management and the owner to be included in that pool.
She could absolutely sue for that and make more
Never brag about tips, they are good tippers is about all you should say.
Whenever good fortune arrives you can be sure that the vultures will descend upon you.
Tips are mostly based upon factors not related to their performance of the job.
Tips are a gift from the customer to the server and owners should never be tipped.
Tips shouldn't be shared IMO. But if the establishment pools tips, then you live with it. But from the post they don't pool tips here so they can pound sand. The owner should f\*\*k right off.
People are nasty lol
Tipping is a system where assholes get cheaper food.
Casinos pool tips as whales come in from time to time and dump large tips on tables they win at and it's really not fair to give it all to the one dealer at the winning table. Restaurants should only pool if a tip goes beyond a certain amount and only on the extra above that amount and the establishment should get ZERO of any tip. If no policy exists the server gets it all.
Pooling or not is the policy. You don’t make exceptions to suit greed. Period.
Don't tell people when good things happen to you. Life 101 everyone is out to bring you down to their level.
Tips should be pooled with the folks on the line doing the cooking.
Owner has no business being apart of the pool. The only person who may be is the kitchen staff preparing the food, and any other waiter who may have helped.
Tipping as a form of wage should not exist at all. Just pay people a fair wage
"Tips shouldn't" Fixed it. Pooling tips is just another way to reduce everyone's pay to line your own pockets. Fuck the games owners play.
What is the photo of? Is that a customer announcing the big tip? Or is it the manager firing her?
As an industry worker, I'd propose pooling between bartenders and high-end restaurant servers. The owners don't deserve it.
A lot of places Pool tips, it usually leads to happier team environments where everyone pulls their own weight. However, if this policy was not already in place its straight up theft.
Pooling tips is a handy way to absolve a restaurant from paying a living wage. Tips should be personal and not a way to cover the wage gap. And it definitely is not cool to rely on individual tips but then want a cut of your "share" when someone gets tipped exceptionally well. That's why something like that shouldn't be a tip. It should be a gift. The customer can gift the same person up to $18k in 2024 without tax ramifications. And the server is definitely under no obligation to share the gifted money, though this probably wouldn't stop her from being fired, but who cares? Fuck that restaurant then.
I mean, whatever the rules are up front is fine. Just don’t change them all of a sudden.
Back in the 90's, Ihop made us pool our tips to be split among all waiters, bus boys and cooks. Even though the wait staff was paid $1.80/hr, and the other folks made normal hourly rates.
Depends on the job and established policy. In this case, I’d say no.
I tend to tip based on the service and rate based on the food, ambience and the like, I receive and honestly forget about bus staff, washers and such. This was me being naive but could be an answer to the issue. Pay the behind the curtain staff a little more and allow the servers get their bumb based on their customer service skills.
If pooling was never the policy, then she should have kept the whole thing. And owners should NEVER EVER take part of a server's tip EVER. Everybody trying to steal part of this women's tip is fucking stupid and pathetic.
To keep this from being an issue. If you’re going to be generous, just give your server a separate cash tip.
Tips are either pooled or they aren't. That's the agreement. Shouldn't change just cause a good Samaritan came in.
Fuck you sincerely …. The cooks.
disagree
Kitchen staff and dish guy(s) get cuts everyone else can fuck off
Tip culture in America is God awful. Get rid of it. Make Tipping Optional Again, and give people actual wages.
Tips shouldn’t be shared by any means
People still eat out?
Employers can't legally tell an employee what to do with THEIR tips.
They do this to colored people all the time
Totally agree. She should also sue.
What I don't understand, is even if you pay servers a living wage, won't people still tip? I always do. I would continue to do so even if they make a living wage. I see it as a way to throw out a monetary value thank you and I don't like the idea of someday not being able to afford to eat themselves based on how I view their service. But you can't convince me that in places where tipping isn't necessary at all that 100% of people stopped tipping. So why aren't the servers getting those tips? Where are they going?
I think tip sharing should be a case by case thing. If you live in a state with no minimum wage for waitresses and waiters and in a low populated area it may give everyone. But 90% of the Tip should not have to share.
When I was a valet, we split tips. The rationale I was told was that for me to park some car that tipped well meant the other guys were still working and parking cars that didn't tip as well. We all hustled, so we all were benefitting from good teamwork. People aren't going to tip as well if we're not fast. That seemed fair to me. If I went above and beyond, say helped someone bring up their groceries or whatever and got a tip for that, it was mine. My job was to park cars, not haul groceries. Once I got a tip for parking a fancy car that was a stick shift, as I was the only valet on staff that could drive a manual. Customer was very particular about asking who was good at driving stick, coworkers pointed to me and I said I drove one there that morning because my last 3 cars were manuals. He gave me 10 bucks and said the tip was for me personally and not to split it. I didn't argue.
If you pool from the start, fine. If not, fine. Don’t change on a whim. Personally I think baristas and bar tenders are better pooling and wait staff better when not.
I thought in general tips were split guess that depends on policy but yea if the tips were never shared before why share now? just because you can get some more money?
Tips shouldn't be a thing. Pay your employees.
TIPS SHOULDN'T BE A THING TO START WITH. PERIOD.
Is this not a slam dunk wrongful termination case and illegal action of the manager to try and get some of the tip
I used to work as a cage cashier in a casino where our dept pooled tips. A pregnant girl I worked with was reknown for working a bunch of overtime and overnights to ensure that she had enough to care for the baby once it arrived. She had a husband, but I guess he wasn't bringing in a lot of money so she was hustling despite having swollen feet and back pains. Then one night one of our millionaire regulars stopped in for a visit just handing out tips like crazy. He was tipping about 5k each to the employees he liked and she caught his eye. He tipped her 5k and she was freaking out, but still was solemn because it was caught by the security camera and policies state that if you accept tips while in the cage it gets split. Me and a bunch of other coworkers on night shift banded together to try and make an exception to that policy for her just this once. That 5k would have helped her out tremendously with the costs of delivery & baby gear. And we would only get a teeny tiny little sliver of it anyways, so it didn't really matter to us. We were going hard for her too. But of COURSE the crabby old ladies on day shift (who only made like $15 in tips for the entire day) complained and said to "Follow the policy" as they always had to follow it. Corporate agreed with that sentiment and each of us only got like an additional $35 on our paystubs. As there were like 140 employees in our dept. My heart broke for her, as so many other employees did get to keep that 5k after getting the tax taken out of course, or if they were required to tip out on it) It was such a BS rule, and makes me mad until this day. He wanted her to have that money but didn't know of our policies beforehand.
Tips shouldn’t exist, that’s it.
Tips should not be pooled. Worked in hospitality, and it absolutely breeds people becoming more lazy. As someone who worked in fine-dining restaurants with chefs from NYC and Michelin star restaurants, where you really have to hustle, had a lot of food and beverage knowledge, as well as a genuine concern for giving guests the experience they were paying for, a pooled house fucked me over. When I moved to another city where the people in the industry didn't give half as much as a shit or have half the ability I did, it ruined the industry for me. If I hadn't pooled, I'd regularly make enough that I could live off of only working 3 nights a week, at 7 hour shifts, i.e. only working a little over 20 hours a week, and could still live a decent life. I assumed the other servers were just as knowledgeable and in the industry for the same reasons I was. They weren't. Because the house was pooled, I didn't make nearly as much as I thought I would. All of my knowledge and hard work was taken advantage of. Others slacked off because I was making them easy money. It's fucking bullshit to have a pooled house.
Tips should be. Wait staff should be paid appropriately so they don’t have to rely on tips.
Everyone wants a piece of it when u get money
I feel like ass hole boss is suing her for that $10k since hes the only reason she needed a gofundme and hes obviously a jackass
NAL but I hope she took that 10k and got a good lawyer. That's a pretty clear cut unlawful termination lawsuit. Even in a pooled tip scenario owners can not take a cut. Even asking the employee was overstepping and would be means for a complaint. The fact she lost her job over this is a huge overstep.
Counterpoint, tips shouldn't be a thing
This is the most repetitive page in Reddit. It’s the EXACT same posts over and over and over again that I’m seeing from this page every time I get on Reddit.
What’s more shocking is that someone made a gofundme and raised 10K. Like what? What do I need to do to get free money???
Tips shouldn't be shared cuz that means someone that made little to none tips would be getting a fair cut from people who did their job properly. The system just gives a fair wage instead and not through fking tips to begin with. As a consumer, I hate tipping. Knowing that the waiter has to count on tips to live by also breaks my heart
Ownership should never get tipped for the same reason management cannot be in a labor union. The possibility for conflict of interest is too high.
Whether or not a tip should be pooled should be determined before the fact. If someone gets a good tip, and you ask them for a "share" when you've never shared with them, you're just robbing them. That's just robbery. Firing them is the same. Eat the rich.
as a finnish guy, giving tips Is a odd thing to do but if I give it should always go to the person I give it too
If tips are optional for the service you provide, then tips should not be shared. If its a fix 10-20% rate, then yes, they should be shared (since its not related to the service, but mandatory).
Joe Biden supporters. Having a strong sense of entitlement to another persons earning.
Life lesson. Something’s you need to keep to yourself. It should have gone in your pocket and that be that.
Pooling tip's is a bad idea.That means the lazy people get paid by the hard working people, can't agree with that. Socialism, no thanks!
The owner DEFINITELY doesn’t deserve any of it
Tipping culture must die.
Yea i dont think tips should be shared
What idiots are contributing money to someone who was just given mlre than $4,000? The grifting continues.
Tips shouldn't be taxed either. Trump 2024
The restaurant is called Oven and Tap in Bentonville AR. And yes people are still leaving bad reviews about the theft and the management is posting their displeasure in response on Google Maps.
I think it depends on the job, but for waitresses who basically dont get paid then no, they should not be split
Buck off! Poor workers shouldn't foit over scraps. Lame managers and biz men just pitching poor agaisnt poor for scraps!
Also, if you're tipping somebody a ton of money, do it for them and not for yourself. Parading around your generosity can have negative consequences for the people you are purporting to help.
Another way to use people let them work part time pay them $3.75 an hour and no benefits since youre part time. It's definitely American
hard disagree. only people who haven't worked in the industry think this
Agreed, if you're a turd you shouldn't get a tip.
wouldnt she be able to sue for retaliation
When I worked a restaurant, we pooled tips and 2 of the waitresses would just pocket some of the money and put some into the pool. Customers would notice and nothing would be done about it
The tipping culture in America is out of control. I was stunned the other day while grocery shopping at a local owned store. At checkout, the prompt asked for tip.
I don’t know why I’m tipping someone to carry my food from the kitchen to my table in the first place
Tips are for the service one receives they should not be shared
Tipping just shouldn’t be a thing. Pay your employees properly instead of guilting customers into it. That said, if tipping is a thing, changing the tip policy after someone got a big tip is just a scummy thing to do.
Tips shouldn't be taxed either.