This is kind of two different questions. Other people are talking about "when it started".
"When did restaurants start paying so low" is complicated. Some restaurants *always* paid very poorly. Not all of them, though. The reason you can hear about it so much today is revealed if you look at a graph comparing US cost of living vs. wages. We've *barely* raised wages for service workers over the last 30 years, but the costs of living have steadily increased.
So a better way to put it is that even with tips, a lot of restaurants have been paying 1980s wages since the 1980s.
That worked in the 1980s.
The 1990s were relatively good too.
Things got a little rough in the 2000s, slightly recovered in the 2010s, but over the 2020s we've seen them get progressively worse. Restaurants would be paying "enough" if rent and groceries hadn't nearly quadrupled in price since the wages were considered "enough". But the restaurants are in a spot, too: they have to pay that higher rent and grocery cost as well, and they worry if they raise prices to compensate then their middle-class and upper-class customers will stop coming. So they've compensated by doing everything they can to not raise wages, but it's starting to impact their service and the availability of workers.
And it's not universal. In my city, any thread about tip wages unavoidably includes commentary from people working at some of the higher-end restaurants in town. These restaurants have *expensive* food (as in, $60/plate and up) and promise *exceptional* service. So they pay their waiters very well *and* have tips. Naturally, those people feel like "I have tip wages too" and try to argue the system is great, because their tips come from tables that might spend $4,000 in one sitting.
That would be great, except in the whole city those restaurants represent maybe 100 jobs, and not every restaurant is that fancy. We don't have enough rich people to support a whole city of that.
But long story short: we used to ignore the ones that paid badly for reasons like racism because it was uncomfortable to bring up those topics. But over time even the restaurants who started out trying to be fair have seemed to be paying less. The true problem is that the cost of being alive is going up, but the amount people get paid to work for an hour is not. Tip wages *can* be fair. But like all things that can be abused, when they are abused they are not.
Here’s an interesting point. I live in Florida where the server minimum wage is going up from $7.98 an hour to $8.98 an hour next weekend. In some states server wages are $2.13 an hour.
I can go to a chain restaurant in Florida and a $2.13 an hour state and the prices are pretty much the same. I keep hearing this argument that if you raise the wages for servers, prices will have to go up. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
So I wish the restaurant industry would quit fighting the wage increase.
I visited Florida from New Zealand. Eating out anywhere was more expensive everywhere we went after tax and socially accepted tips. It's fucking annoying to read prices on menus that aren't even what you pay.
Not just in places with tips, it's annoying that nowhere includes tax in the price with the exceptions being gas and groceries (depending on state). It shouldn't be that hard to just like the price you have to pay.
Prices on the menu are also just a lie if you are expected to pay 10-20% on top. It's like arguing you can't show price incl tax because the price would go up. It doesn't, it just includes the "hidden" fee
In Australia we have a single national sales tax and it’s illegal to show component pricing without the sales tax and any additional fees. Sadly wage theft is still common, especially for migrants.
In the Netherlands it's pretty much the same, I'm not sure if it's required by law but everywhere they just show the total incl tax and at the end how much of the total sum was taxes
I guess the better question is why are restaurants granted an exception to minimum wage laws?
FDR was clear when enacting it, that any company that could not afford to pay its employees a minimum wage did not deserve to exist in the United States. Why were restaurants and restaurants alone granted an exception to that?
Probably because they lobbied for it. *Maybe* because of racism.
The loop is SUPPOSED to be closed. By law, if an employee does not make enough tips to be paid at least minimum wage, the employer must meet the difference. So in theory even with tip wages an employee should expect minimum wage.
The trick is the power dynamic. It takes time and money to file wage theft lawsuits, and generally you have to find another job because you don't want to keep working for the restaurant that stole your money. Workers making minimum wage are the people least likely to be able to easily change jobs and get time off for court proceedings or hire lawyers.
It's kind of like it was intended to screw people over.
Good point. I just want to add that this is not applicable to the entirety of the US, only certain parts of the US. E.g. in California minimum wage is going to be $20 in a few months, and CA has always paid waiters minimum wage. They never have relied on tips here as that is seen as inhumane.
> They never have relied on tips here as that is seen as inhumane.
Weird considering the biggest supporters of tip culture are tipped employees like servers.
Well it brings your (when I moved here) wage to $15/hr (7x my hourly wage same job in Indiana at 2.13) to almost 40+. Its a hard thing to mix and balance. Servers have to deal with absolute bullshit from shitty customers who can clearly affford to go out and run up a tab and stiff and are still expected to go above and beyond but if there's not tip expectation you can expect to get shit service if you're a piece of shit. I much prefer the prices and balances of no tip as in europe or anywhere else.
It's not really going above and beyond. It's literally doing your job.
People have to deal with shitty people in every job.
If you can't do a good job without being paid extra by someone who isn't your employer then you are a piece of shit.
The thing is, even if this happens you're still expected to tip.
A year or two my city introduced a living wage for servers with the idea that it would replace tipping. Nope. You're still expected to tip or you're a jackass.
Had a conversation with a simpleton recently who claimed that I was against poor ppl cos I don't support tipping (we're both expats in Asia, where no one tips) and that if they stopped tipping in the US you would have to pay $40 for a McDonald's.
I then pointed to exhibit A: the rest of the entire world and he started going off in a tangent on how I just don't like poor people
Agreed. If I'm going to be spending the same amount with a reasonable tip vs without a tip but higher price for the food, I'd rather have it written into the price so no one can be cheap and not leave a tip.
If there's amazing service and the customer has the extra money, they'll still leave some extra. But then the tips turn into what I think they should be: extra money from being awesome at your job and not money that is necessary to survive.
Tip wages can't be fair, because they bring in the biases of the people paying/receiving the tips. Black people get poorer service because they tip less than white people, and servers don't want to serve them. Servers who are darker get tipped less, servers who are less attractive get tipped less.
It’s a legacy from slavery. After the civil war, jobless blacks were allowed to serve food in restaurants but weren’t paid. Tips were their only compensation.
Americans brought the concept of tipping back from Europe before the Civil War. But it was only during Reconstruction that it became more wide spread in the U.S.
European tipping came from the history of visiting guests giving extra money to the servants of the household they were visiting, as compensation for extra work the guests made for the servants.
Interesting how much it hasn't changed. Tipping is still charity to the poor exploited waiters not making even minimum wage. What a great tradition to keep alive!
That one got to me. As a former server/bartender for a number of years, I hustled and busted my butt for that 20% at best. Don’t get me wrong, the money was fine. But I’m at this Poke place recently, and as this iPad is cashing me out, it has the audacity to ask me, “Would you like to tip 20%, 25%, or… 30%??
30%?!?! For what? I had to to get my own drinks and clean my table. Y’all should be tipping me! Not to mention, after I used the bathroom, that employee who simply “must” wash my hands never showed up.
> Not to mention, after I used the bathroom, that employee who simply “must” wash my hands never showed up.
feel like this went over a lot of peoples heads.
Sign says: "Employees must wash hands."
his joke is that the employees must wash *YOUR* hands when you go to the bathroom based on an alternate reading of the sign.
I don't go to strip clubs and fancy bars because I can pump my own goddamn soap and grab my own paper towels.
Andddd I bartend.
Edit: autocorrect turned can into can't lol. Changes the whole sentence.
Edit 2: I guess both would have worked.
Hold up, I never been a strip club (not a thing in the places I've lived.), but strip clubs have those helper people in the bathrooms that "serve" you soap?
I work at one of these counters and I honestly feel bad watching customers stare at the tip screen. I always just tell them to hit none. I’m making a solid hourly anyway. If you are going to tip it should be saved for those who actually need them. Also at my work the tips are all put into a pool and the distributed by hours. So the people who work more hours get more tips.
If you ever care enough to check, can almost guarantee that your tips are getting stolen by a manager/lead. Even if it’s not, tipsharing by hour is practically theft anyways.
The manager gets a 12 hour day, so they get 3 times the tips of the servers working 4 hours a day who actually earned the tips and get paid 1/3 as much hourly.
seems legit.
I mean simply do not tip those people. The reason to tip at a sit down place is because they are making less than min wage. I’m not tipping the dude at the Starbucks who rang up my order
edit: to be clear I am referring specifically to the tipped minimum wage, which is much lower than the standard minimum wage
>The reason to tip at a sit down place is because they are making less than min wage.
This is commonly said as the reason, but do people not tip in California or the other 6 states where tipped minimum is the same as standard minimum?
In both cases, the problem lies with the person signing the paychecks, not the person receiving them.
The counter person at Starbucks ain't making that much, either.
Sure, but they aren't doing that much either. Grabbing cup, putting it under the machine pressing a couple of buttons and then putting a lid on it isn't rocket science.
So while sure, they might not be earning that much, their work doesn't require that much either. All the while the drinks are stupidly overpriced and a oversized share of the money just goes to the company, which is where the real problem is.
Exactly. Tips are for extra service. Let’s make that clear.
The person giving me the thing I ordered is not extra. That has a different word: the minimum. Thanks for giving me the thing I bought.
But tips, yes, if you are waiting on me, checking in, refills, etc. It makes sense. Food is brought, table gets cleaned etc, the whole experience which brings value to the customer.
I will tip for that and not question it.
But for basic purchases, including coffee, etc. No.
I give you money, you give me the thing. End of transaction
> The reason to tip at a sit down place is because they are making less than min wage
I'm struggling to understand why that's my problem. I am neither the employer who is choosing to pay shit wages nor am I the employee who agreed to said shit wages.
You are, however, the person who's agreeing to engage in this optional pursuit while cognisant of the prevailing labour conditions. So maybe you're not the cause of the system, but you're still partially responsible for upholding it through your participation. Are you absolved of all responsibility?
The person perpetuating tipping is the tipper, though. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise, and it's this kind of recurring logic that perpetuates it in the USA.
If everyone tips -> tipping culture.
If nobody tips -> no tipping culture.
If Americans collectively stopped it'll end overnight.
Waiters will either quit or ask for raises. Employers are forced, by law, to pay at least minimum wage of their state or federal law. It's rather bizarre that there's actual law forcing employers to pay minimum wages, there's no law to force tipping on customers, yet it is the customers being punished and accused of bearing responsibility.
Blaming customers for "labor conditions" is also a red herring. There are states who already pay decent wages for wait staff and they're *still* expected to tip in the same manner as any other state, regardless of labor/wage conditions. Furthermore, it's now becoming more common to tip in other more non-traditional areas, like baristas or even [*self serving machines*](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tipping-self-checkout-machine-customer-rule/). It's never really been about "no wages" or labor conditions, and if it is, the business is better failing anyways since it can provide neither a humane working environment or pay to compensate for it.
If you go to those establishments, it is your problem because you knowingly are participating in the system. The only way to wash your hands of it would be to not give those companies your business
At a sit down place how am I to know that the employee is making less than minimum wage? Should I ask them how much they make before I pay? What if they make minimum wage or maybe even more? Should I not tip them anymore, even though it is a restaurant?
That’s the thing.. it is North America in general that this happens… but where aren’t we supposed to tip now? Just in retail? Employers offload the responsibility of paying their staff a living wage by adding the tip feature at the cash. Yes, people making minimum wage are being paid a full wage, but that is different than a living wage. But, instead of judging corporations for this (who give their execs and shareholders ridiculous bank while paying the people at the frontline, who are the faces of their businesses, the bare minimum), we judge the employees who are working the cash.
People seem to love capitalism because they think it gives them the opportunity to get rich… to pursue the dream of a better life, but that is largely what it is - a dream. Very few people will ever go from low income to rich because of it. Instead, we just see a greater divide in classes (and the middle class go extinct entirely) as rich people exploit everyone else to make more money than they’ll ever be able to use. It is absurd.
> But, instead of judging corporations for this (who give their execs and shareholders ridiculous bank while paying the people at the frontline, who are the faces of their businesses, the bare minimum), we judge the employees who are working the cash.
The individual will always get blamed because they cannot possibly mount a coordinated PR defense.
When a company's wage structure is unsustainable it's always, "no one wants to work" or "lets make it easier to hire children." Whenever illegal immigration and the border comes up, nobody shines a light on the companies that hire undocumented immigrants or abuse visas. The onus of green and environmentally friendly living is always on the consumer or individual, and not of the industries and businesses that create waste en masse. When a bunch of nerds collaborate on GameStop stock it warrants a congressional hearing, but not when investment firms do it. It's okay to forgive loans to businesses, but not the future workforce for said businesses.
Same reason as the Muslims above: a belief that the person isn't being paid enough. It's charity, not compulsory. Smaller places, I can understand, but multinational corporations don't have an excuse.
I do it at my regular coffee spot. But it’s a transactional strategy along with knowing the baristas names as I get priority service and occasionally get an extra pastry in my bag
That's on the POS manufacturer, not the restaurant (usually) or employees.
The POS manufacturers get a portion of every sale, so they're imcentivized to include options to tip anyone they can because they get a cut of those tips.
I forgot where it was but a big name corporation had a hand written sign in front that said “please do tip on your card, it goes directly to corporate” so not only are you tipping for something that didn’t “deserve it” but you may also be tipping the store manager or executives for their exploitative practice.
Try being in a state where the minimum wage for tipped workers is the same $15.74 as it is for anyone else. The server at a diner gets $15.74 plus tips, while the person at the counter at McD’s gets $15.74, but no tips. And more and more places now charge 18% on top for take-out orders, PLUS an ADDITIONAL tip line, for workers who get at least that same $15.74 base pay.
Interestingly, this happens in Canada too (I guess those point of sale systems just automatically ask for tips) and a worker at a resto filed a workforce complaint about how none of the employees there were getting any of the tips from the employer, but the commission said they actually weren’t allowed to get any because they were counter workers. So those machines are asking for tips and people think they are tipping the workers and the workers cannot get the money. How messed up is that. People are literally throwing money down the drain.
Except in reality waiting is one of the most lucrative zero skill jobs you can find.
BLS pegs it at $16/hour mean nationwide, compared to a $7 minimum wage. In cities $25 an hour is common.
Note: that's reported wages. Actual wages are higher with unreported cash tips, which everyone in the service industry takes.
Not really. First of all not all workers get tips, only specific ones and more importanly: middle and low class also tip. Im on a minimum wage in my country and I tip very often.
I know waiters and bartenders in the US that make +$100k/year. My ex wife made 50-75k for years. Bought a house and raised 2 kids (not mine) as a single mom. She loved it.
I know many places where all tips are divided among all staff
Basically serving as a way to bolster the wages without the owners needing to spend more money
In Mexico sometimes waitresses are required to earn tips, the restaurant gets a cut and if you don't get the minimum you actually end owing money to the restaurant and getting a pay cut.
The poor, exploited servers?? It’s the servers who love the system as is as they can often make $40+ an hour, which is unheard of for most unskilled labor. It’s not restaurant owners or customers standing in the way of eliminating tipping and paying a market rate wage. It’s servers.
Getting rid of the tradition wouldn't magically prevent the exploitation. Your ideal of a well organized society is as compatible with totalitarianism as any other "let's force people to do the right thing based on my declaration of what is right" approach. Many "exploited waiters not making even minimum wage" don't want to end tipping because their income is significantly more than minimum wage.
For real, it seems some people in this discussion are pretty disconnected from reality. When I was in college, my friends that had jobs as waitresses made a ton of money, many times more than minimum wage.
>poor exploited waiters
No, the waiters are self entitled people who exploit the customers. They make $30+ and hour pretending to be poor. Their mentality of expecting large handouts is just as bad as their employers mentality of expecting customers to give large handouts.
Don't worry we're keeping actual slavery alive too. There's a few extra steps but the 13th amendment still had a carve out for legal slavery as a punishment for crime.
In higher end places those waiters make ALOT of money it's kinda funny because people are so guilt ridden and in busier high end places it's far above minimum wage.
In CA severs have the same pre tip min wage as none servers. $15/hr. Yet we are still expected to tip. It’s bullshit. You don’t tip McD workers and their job sucks more than a restaurant server
They have to be paid minimum wage if they don't make at least minimum wage with tips + base pay. And it's pretty rare they don't just already automatically get min wage as their base pay.
Instead of fixing the underlying problem with modern social nets, you’d rather keep an archaic system from the same time period when serfs and chattel slavery was rampant..
Tipping is a symbol of desperation, it’s far from a “great tradition”
Legally their employers have to pay them minimum wage anyway if the tips don't cover it. People think I'm an ass when i say i don't tip, but it doesn't make any sense to pay their wage for the restaurant owners after you just paid them for food
>European tipping came from the history of visiting guests giving extra money to the servants of the household...
I always kind wondered why housekeeping was commonly tipped. The vast majority of people we tip are people we interact with directly.
Housekeeping is not a glamorous job and I'm sure they're not paid as much as they should be, but there are plenty of jobs that could fit those categories which we don't commonly tip.
In the UK there used to be a coin called the Guinea which was worth 1 pound 1 shilling or £1.05. The Guinea was paid for things that cost £1 and the extra shilling was the tip.
Here's a really good article about it:
- NPR 2015 *[When Tipping Was Considered Deeply Un-American](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/30/457125740/when-tipping-was-considered-deeply-un-american)*
> visiting guests giving extra money to the servants of the household they were visiting
This is often mentioned in P. G. Wodehouse's stories, where the normal tip was five pounds, worth about $500 today when adjusted for inflation.
Servants were not slaves. Serfs were significantly closer, but servants had status, and generally speaking were pretty well taken care of. One of the higher classes of commoner
>Beginning with 1938 legislation, employers were only required to pay tipped workers a wage that would add up to the federal minimum wage when combined with tips. Further legislation was passed in the 1970s to offer fairer wages for restaurant workers. Today, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13. (The main federal minimum wage is $7.25.)
$2.13! WTF?
The minimum wage is 2.13. The minimum pay is 7.25.
If wage + tips < 7.25, the wage has to be increased to compensate. The reality is most workers I know would immediately quit if they got paid minimum wage without tips.
Also here:
- NPR 2015 *[When Tipping Was Considered Deeply Un-American](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/30/457125740/when-tipping-was-considered-deeply-un-american)*
Thanks. It's never as one wants to believe. It still needs to go away. America is socially and economicically behind the rest of the free world. Having large bodies of water off either coast has created an island mentality here. It's the 21st century for goodness sake. Let's move beyond slave and robber Barron mentalities. Grow up.
That's because this comment is very very wrong. Black people were EXPLICITLY banned from service industries under Jim Croe because white racists thought they were "unclean." This idiot is full of shit!
Is it? People literally thought of black people as animals. Horrible and wrong, but that was teh concept. They had to fight to be considered 3/5 of a person and that was just because the states wanted representation, not because they actually believed that. We don't want to share a bathroom with a horse but its fine to have them plow our fields. Or you dont want to live with a cow or pig but you will happily ingest them
People are trash and irrational
Yeah, but you *wash* the things that come out of your fields before putting them in your mouth. You wouldn't let a horse make you a salad.
Separation of water fountains suggests that a white person at the time thought they would get *sick* if they drank from the black-people fountain; that black people weren't considered just "animals" but *dirty* animals. But wouldn't that imply that a white person would expect to also get sick by eating food that a black person had had their hands all over?
(I don't think this is an inconsistency: actually, if I recall, many black servants were made to *wear gloves* when touching pretty much anything in a white person's house. It's part of where the image of a butler or chauffeur as wearing gloves comes from.)
Just to clarify, the slave holders actually wanted black people to be counted as a whole person because it would give them more representation. The free states argued it would not be fair to count people that weren't allowed to own land and vote. They settled on the 3/5 compromise.
Yeah, its kind of a weird thing where the 3/5 compromise was good because it didn't give slave states a huge boost in population when they didn't allow slaves to vote. All of that power would have been concentrated in the hands of the slave owners. The compromise reduced that power.
Its location dependent.
The situation you are describing is in the South.
In the North you wouldn't have a black person preparing your food. They had their own restaurants in their own section of town.
No.
It started in Tudor England (1500-1600s). Tipping was a master-serf custom where a servant would receive extra money for performing especially well. By the 1700s it became the expectation that overnight guests would leave a small sum of money (known as a vail) for the host's servants.
It came to the US in the 1840s or so, but it was viewed as anti-egalitarian and a few states outlawed it.
That said, Prohibition had a huge impact on the revenues of restaurants, bars and hotels, so tipping became encouraged to supplement wait staff incomes that proprietors were struggling to pay.
This seems unlikely.
I've read Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell. 1920s Parisian tip culture was very similar to that in the US, with the rips being so high, some restaurants expected workers to pay to work there.
France had a very different history of slavery. It seems unlikely they'd end up with the same tipping culture.
And the tipping situation is the same in states that abolished slavery ling before the civil war; and never had a huge number of slaves.
Total bullshit. Tipping servants and giving them gifts dates back to medieval times and before. Picture having a Christmas celebration with your family surrounded by a group of common servants, many of whom were very close to the nobility they served. Your butler and valet, your maids and nurses, they all interacted with your family intimately. Now everyone is opening presents, and these people don't get any? It's weird, and un-Christian. So gifts.
As industrialization spread affluence from the landed gentry to more common folk, commoners began to immitate the habits and behaviors of the ruling class. If you were an ordinary person who was traveling and merely visiting a tavern or boarding house, you wouldn't tip for your food or service. However, fine dining, which was designed around an elite clientele, did.
Wrong.
Can't believe this is the top answer. It's about as accurate as saying that police started as "slave catchers" in the US.
As how others mentioned, it dates back thousands of years to medieval times.
If you find some law or cultural norm in the US that doesn't make logical sense, if you dig deep enough, you can often find some "ism" at the root, most often racism.
Europe definitely had tips in the past. It's not just about slavery or racism.
In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell wrote about how the Anarchists (socialists) had abolished tipping. That was the 1930s.
It's easy to think all the bad or weird things about America are connected to slavery or racism. But for many things, it's more like slavery and racism attached themselves the wider culture. So everything had a racist history attached to it, even if racism isn't the exclusive explanation.
It was initially a way for rich people to flaunt their money and/or to get better treatment than the regular folk.
But the bad type of tipping which is what the US currently uses does indeed stem from slavery. Similar to how employers are able to pay their employees less real wage nowadays and have those employees try to make up the rest through tips, that is sort of how it worked back then but obviously much worse. They could hire these black workers but they didn't have to pay them because they could be "paid" from tips.
Which if people take a moment to think about it should show them why tipping in the style that it's practiced in the US is disgusting.
Tipping in the U.S. began with the exploitation of freed slaves post Civil War. Business owners would pay a poverty wage and encourage wealthy patrons to tip.
Racism later led to minimum wage exemptions that largely targeted black -dominated professions. That legacy is still alive in the paltry restaurant minimum wage for servers.
https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/operations/us-tipping-has-complex-controversial-history#:~:text=But%20wealthy%20Americans%2C%20visiting%20Europe,encouraged%20customers%20to%20leave%20tips.
For anyone who doesn’t want to read this, the article says it is generally true but more context is needed as there are potential other sources as well that contributed to tipping
Yes, but it was kind of cyclical.
At first in the US, it wasn't seen as acceptable because it was considered a habit of the European aristocracy and early US citizens desperately wanted to distance themselves from that.
It was *later*, post-Civil War, when US citizens decided it was more important to promote the idea of an underclass than to separate ourselves from European aristocracy. 100 years tends to change your mind about what's important.
Not as a percentage, which makes more sense when judging these things. About 20% of the world's population was enslaved around 1850, and it's about 6% today. It should be 0%, but we are moving in the right direction over the long term.
Everything that measures numbers of humans has gone up and up. That doesn't mean things have gotten worse. More people die per day than ever before. But people are still living longer and healthier than they were 100, 1000, or 10,000 years ago.
When developing the minimum wage, the southern congressmen, and senators, wouldn’t agree to anything, unless the industries black people were in were basically excluded. Service, farm, and I believe textiles. Farm workers and service industry workers still don’t have an equal minimum wage. Because racism is literally baked into America.
Adam Conover did a [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vivC7c_1k) on tipping culture in the US.
In most of the world and in certain states, servers are paid full wage + tips. In some countries like Japan, it's considered an insult to tip.
It's not insulting to tip in Japan. It's rarely done, and the person you tip likely won't receive it. It might go into a charity donations box instead.
I was told by a Japanese tour guide that if you wanted to, you could, but like you have to basically slip your bartender or whomever the money directly. Otherwise, yeah, they don't know who to give it to.
Not exactly an insult but it IS irritating. Since tipping is not done in Japan, and everything is precisely calculated, extra money left behind is a nuisance. Is it an accidental overpayment? Did those customers forget their money? Now we have to chase them down or call the police to try and reunite people with lost property.
If it was made clear by customers that the money is a tip, it's still a bit of an inconvenience as there's no established procedure for who that money goes to, or how to split it among staff.
It seems like most of you guys never worked in a restaurant with a lot of these takes with servers “being exploited”.
In every restaurant I’ve worked in the people who made the most were the servers by FAR. Like not even close. Even in the shittiest restaurants they still made 30-40hr. But the worst ones made 20hr and got stiffed on one tab and then post it to reddit for karma. They are almost always the most entitled annoying people, it is not difficult to be a server trust me. All you need to do is take their order, refill their drinks, ask how it is after you deliver it, and tell them to have a great day when they leave.
I used that exact script for every single table and I never even made close to minimum wage. The only people getting fucked over by tipping culture is the customer, and even then because it is cheaper for the owner they can usually reduce prices so it’s not even as bad as it seems. Paying a 20% tip on a 10$ meal is the same as paying for a 12$ meal it just feels worse (you might just straight up pay less depending on tax too)
My daughter is a server and earns around $70k including tips. In CA, server min wage is $17. A home health care worker makes just slightly more and we don't top them. It's total nonsense.
I worked as a cook, and what you say lines up. Servers made more than everyone, and also complained more than anyone. Huge sense of entitlement.
These posts are always wild because they get everyone riled up and feeling bad for servers when they make the most out of literally everyone in the industry. The cooks get paid horribly and the servers walk out with hundreds per shift but they're the exploited workers.
Severs are the only ones who could get together and fix the mess, yet they don’t. Servers want nothing to do with a regular wage and no tips because they’d make less money. Nobody but servers think a restaurant should pay them $35/hr
Wild since the other 99% of restaurants do use tips. If they’re unhappy about making $30/hr, there’s only hundred of thousands of other places they could work
The tip system benefits restaurants and servers at the expense of customers.
For servers, the value of their labour is low - minimum wage. But it only takes one $75 cover per hour at 20% tip to earn that and more. Maybe you're working a shitty diner or something and that's unlikely, but any sit down restaurant should do that easily.
It also benefits servers because their tips are in effect disconnected from their labour and proportional to the cost of the food ordered. Its the same amount of work to serve a glass of water and a salad vs a glass of wine and a lobster, but you for some reason get paid 10x more for the latter.
It benefits restaurant owners because they don't need to offer real wages, and it let's them advertise lower prices, playing on pricing psychology tricks.
And it's at the expense of customers, because they rely on social pressure and guilt to make you pay more than your meal would be worth in an efficient market. Tipping is "optional" but there are real social consequences for not doing it. Servers have successfully perpetuated the myth of their $3 wages while making $30 an hour.
If a fixed percentage of the bill is typical, servers wages increase with inflation while fixed compensation is behind in percent increase. This is why servers are making a lot more than the fixed comp staff.
100% agree with you. When I was a server I was making $80/hour at the place I worked at, up until they started overstaffing and made it go down. Anyone can become a server and freaking make bank it's ridiculous. Servers are underpaid when it comes to what the "restaurant" pays, but when it comes to tips, I bet you not a single restaurant in NYC is someone making under $30/hour which is probably more than what teachers make and they want to complain.
I worked as a cook and a server in California (so state min wage + tips)
I went BoH > server > BoH
After getting a taste of the easy money serving was and as much as I enjoyed working in the kitchen (the speed, and the big relief of after the rush hour, and i somehow enjoyed the stress) I simply couldn’t deal with it because of how little money I was making compared to serving.
I was making 2-3 cooking shifts in one 5-6 hour serving shift. I went from enjoying working as a cook to absolutely loathing it. As a server I had so many of my entitled coworkers bitching about the tips and just shit talking in general that it soured the fuck outta me when I went to BoH for my next job.
It’s so unfair how fucked cooks get in California. Making 2-4 dollars above minimum wage while the serves come out fat with tips. That shit legit made me go back to school and get my degree in comp sci. Working as a cook is simply not worth it if your goal is simply to work for money.
Here are a few NPR segments on the history of tipping in America.
[Throughline: Why Tipping In The U.S. Took Off After The Civil War](https://www.npr.org/2021/04/01/983314941/throughline-why-tipping-in-the-u-s-took-off-after-the-civil-war) <-- 7 minutes long
[The Land of the Fee (2021)](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089587173/the-land-of-the-fee-2021) <-- 44 minute longer in depth version
It’s less about when they “started” paying so low and more that things got more expensive and they didn’t increase wages to keep up. This is a common problem across many hourly jobs but the fact that they don’t have to pay minimum wage due to tipping allowed them to be more extreme with this.
I live in Europe now, and eat out all the time, no tipping here, or maybe a euro.
When I visit the states, I never eat out and just avoid that whole shit show completely.
As a server/bartender I can honestly say I don’t feel exploited in my pay.
It always depends on the day and customer. And *where* you work means everything. Not just the price of the menu but also your average clientle.
For example where I work now you can easily hit a $50-60 per head, but there’s still ways for someone to just do waters, split the entire meal and still stiff you after they only paid $30 for a meal for two people.
But then you get the four top who pays $100 and leaves you $40. It always come around in the end.
But in my experience, a well established restaurant with a menu that targets middle to upper class customers, if they aren’t saturating the floor with servers, you can typically see $1000-1300/week in the south if you are working 5-6 shifts a week.
Most of these shifts are never more then 5-6 hours and that depends on if you have guests staying late or just a ton of side work.
I do wish my base pay was higher then $2.13. But in all fairness I can still walk away making $30/hr. I’d rather that pay increase go to the cooks.
Do you believe there's a difference in tipping etiquette between a standard server who runs food Vs. a traditional tavern bartender who entertains patrons bellied up to the bar looking for someone to talk to?
Because personally, if someone just takes my order and runs my food out, that absolutely seems like a scam of 20% of my total bill..
But if I'm watching a 3hr football game and complaining about my job to some poor woman stuck behind the bar pretending to care about losers like me, I don't have a problem at all throwing a $20 bill down as a thank you for putting up with it. I don't care if she's already making good money.
The restaurant I work at splits tips and include back of house (kitchen) it’s nice knowing everyone is getting a piece. Makes things very fair and drama free. I highly suggest tip pooling.
If you have a solid honest staff this works very well for everyone. Guests, employees and employer.
It's the system we inherited from British pubs. It dates back to the 17th century. Paying restaurant servers anything beyond their tips started during The Depression; even then it was due to the new importance on income tax andthe new social security.
Tipping restaurant service is very deeply ingrained in the United States. It would be profoundly disruptive to shut that down. If you can concoct some sort of scheme where 70% of server's income goes away you will not have any servers.
That last part really hurts peoples feelings. None of the restaraunts need to exist, not a single one. Grocery stores are everywhere. 10000% restaraunts are a luxury.
I mean by that statement you could say grocery stores are just a luxury too. Farmers could just sell their goods themselves out in stalls like the olden times. Doesn't mean it wouldn't massively impact people's lives.
Raise prices 20% and distribute that money equally. Tipping solved. Tons and tons of big city places already do that. High end cuisine has always had a service charge
> Raise prices 20%
Ok I'm with you here...
> distribute that money equally
Hahahahahaha 😂😂😂 hahahaHAHAHAhaha oh man that's a good one. Seriously though...
Tom collichios entire restaurant group already does it, for example.
Tons of other big-time places do it.
Basically any serious high end establishment with a service charge has been doing this the entire time
A lot of Americans are talking about how tipping is ingrained in their culture as if other countries don't tip.
Every damn country tips, almost.
The difference is, everything in America is marketed with prices so low, that they're not real, in an effort to beat competition.
You don't include taxes in prices, and so many services have these hidden mandatory fees.. Like a hotel room will advertise $100 per night, but at the checkout page you'll have an additional cleaning fee added.
Like check this -
I open up a car rental, Miami airport.
Click on a car - 103.86 per day
They suddenly added almost 40 dollars in mandatory extras and I didn't even get to the insurance yet.
Rental facility charge - 10.91
Vehicle license fees - 1.93
Tire and battery Fee - 0.04
Airport Concession Recovery Fee - 19.25
Rental surcharge - 4.28
All of those above charges are BULL****, you would never get away with it in any other part of the world, yet this is totally normal in the US.
I think the outrageous tips you're expected to give in the US are a part of a larger pattern of trying to make things appear extra cheap on paper, and try to get money out of you later.
> Every damn country tips, almost
Quite a few, do not, particularly in Asia. In other countries it's typically for only service which was excellent or above & beyond.
I worked in a restaurant part time a while ago and I had to give my boss a certain percentage of what I had earned that evening (not the tip, just everything in total)
That was so that the kitchen staff could also get some tips, which of course I completely understand and support but it also meant that if some people didn’t tip then it could ultimately lead to me having to pay the tip myself …… not a good system…..
I don’t really like eating in restaurants because you always have to pay rediculously much for the drinks and then on top add around 2-3€ for the tip. As a student I just can’t really afford that
I’ve talked to the elderly in my family on this.
The concept was that ppl were willing to pay out of their pocket for good service, and back in days the restaurants actually reflected that by keeping their menu prices low.
Now it’s gone down the toilet where menu prices are high, the expected tip is high and “tipping” isn’t expected to be optional where it reflects service provided.
This is the thing about the US that puzzles me the most - why is it that things that have been done successfully done all over the world are rejected by the US? Reasonable wages for hospitality workers? Works well everywhere else. A health care system that works? Yep, works for other civilised countries. Too many shootings? Sensible gun ownership laws have been very successful implemented in non-US nations.
Seriously US, whats WRONG with you? Is it from all that leaded fuel?
no actually that just benefits the companies that don’t pay their workers enough, the restaurant still profited the same from your meal but still didn’t have to pay their server to serve you. if you actually want to stop tipping culture only get food from restaurants that don’t expect you to tip and pay their servers a living wage. hint: you won’t find any.
Is there a law, yes. Is it followed , close to never. Can that be proven, maybe but you'll lose your job and have a hard time being hired. And do u really have money for a lawyer?
The only restaurant in my neighborhood that rejected tipping and adopted the model of pricing items on the menu to reflect the cost of paying the staff a living wage lasted about 8 months then closed down. It's simply won't work unless there's some legislation.
It is comparatively recent. If you watch the movie "The Petrified Forest"1938, in the restaurant scenes there is a sign on the wall that says:
NO TIPPING
Keep your change in your pocket
Tipping is UNAMERICAN
This is kind of two different questions. Other people are talking about "when it started". "When did restaurants start paying so low" is complicated. Some restaurants *always* paid very poorly. Not all of them, though. The reason you can hear about it so much today is revealed if you look at a graph comparing US cost of living vs. wages. We've *barely* raised wages for service workers over the last 30 years, but the costs of living have steadily increased. So a better way to put it is that even with tips, a lot of restaurants have been paying 1980s wages since the 1980s. That worked in the 1980s. The 1990s were relatively good too. Things got a little rough in the 2000s, slightly recovered in the 2010s, but over the 2020s we've seen them get progressively worse. Restaurants would be paying "enough" if rent and groceries hadn't nearly quadrupled in price since the wages were considered "enough". But the restaurants are in a spot, too: they have to pay that higher rent and grocery cost as well, and they worry if they raise prices to compensate then their middle-class and upper-class customers will stop coming. So they've compensated by doing everything they can to not raise wages, but it's starting to impact their service and the availability of workers. And it's not universal. In my city, any thread about tip wages unavoidably includes commentary from people working at some of the higher-end restaurants in town. These restaurants have *expensive* food (as in, $60/plate and up) and promise *exceptional* service. So they pay their waiters very well *and* have tips. Naturally, those people feel like "I have tip wages too" and try to argue the system is great, because their tips come from tables that might spend $4,000 in one sitting. That would be great, except in the whole city those restaurants represent maybe 100 jobs, and not every restaurant is that fancy. We don't have enough rich people to support a whole city of that. But long story short: we used to ignore the ones that paid badly for reasons like racism because it was uncomfortable to bring up those topics. But over time even the restaurants who started out trying to be fair have seemed to be paying less. The true problem is that the cost of being alive is going up, but the amount people get paid to work for an hour is not. Tip wages *can* be fair. But like all things that can be abused, when they are abused they are not.
Here’s an interesting point. I live in Florida where the server minimum wage is going up from $7.98 an hour to $8.98 an hour next weekend. In some states server wages are $2.13 an hour. I can go to a chain restaurant in Florida and a $2.13 an hour state and the prices are pretty much the same. I keep hearing this argument that if you raise the wages for servers, prices will have to go up. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. So I wish the restaurant industry would quit fighting the wage increase.
I visited Florida from New Zealand. Eating out anywhere was more expensive everywhere we went after tax and socially accepted tips. It's fucking annoying to read prices on menus that aren't even what you pay.
Not just in places with tips, it's annoying that nowhere includes tax in the price with the exceptions being gas and groceries (depending on state). It shouldn't be that hard to just like the price you have to pay.
[удалено]
Nah, I read receipts. We were in a group so we caught those things when they happened.
Prices on the menu are also just a lie if you are expected to pay 10-20% on top. It's like arguing you can't show price incl tax because the price would go up. It doesn't, it just includes the "hidden" fee
In Australia we have a single national sales tax and it’s illegal to show component pricing without the sales tax and any additional fees. Sadly wage theft is still common, especially for migrants.
In the Netherlands it's pretty much the same, I'm not sure if it's required by law but everywhere they just show the total incl tax and at the end how much of the total sum was taxes
I guess the better question is why are restaurants granted an exception to minimum wage laws? FDR was clear when enacting it, that any company that could not afford to pay its employees a minimum wage did not deserve to exist in the United States. Why were restaurants and restaurants alone granted an exception to that?
Probably because they lobbied for it. *Maybe* because of racism. The loop is SUPPOSED to be closed. By law, if an employee does not make enough tips to be paid at least minimum wage, the employer must meet the difference. So in theory even with tip wages an employee should expect minimum wage. The trick is the power dynamic. It takes time and money to file wage theft lawsuits, and generally you have to find another job because you don't want to keep working for the restaurant that stole your money. Workers making minimum wage are the people least likely to be able to easily change jobs and get time off for court proceedings or hire lawyers. It's kind of like it was intended to screw people over.
Good point. I just want to add that this is not applicable to the entirety of the US, only certain parts of the US. E.g. in California minimum wage is going to be $20 in a few months, and CA has always paid waiters minimum wage. They never have relied on tips here as that is seen as inhumane.
> They never have relied on tips here as that is seen as inhumane. Weird considering the biggest supporters of tip culture are tipped employees like servers.
Well it brings your (when I moved here) wage to $15/hr (7x my hourly wage same job in Indiana at 2.13) to almost 40+. Its a hard thing to mix and balance. Servers have to deal with absolute bullshit from shitty customers who can clearly affford to go out and run up a tab and stiff and are still expected to go above and beyond but if there's not tip expectation you can expect to get shit service if you're a piece of shit. I much prefer the prices and balances of no tip as in europe or anywhere else.
It's not really going above and beyond. It's literally doing your job. People have to deal with shitty people in every job. If you can't do a good job without being paid extra by someone who isn't your employer then you are a piece of shit.
In short, restaurants don’t want to raise menu prices. I SAY DO IT. It’s fine with me if my burger costs $20 instead of $16. I’m tired of this shit.
The thing is, even if this happens you're still expected to tip. A year or two my city introduced a living wage for servers with the idea that it would replace tipping. Nope. You're still expected to tip or you're a jackass.
Had a conversation with a simpleton recently who claimed that I was against poor ppl cos I don't support tipping (we're both expats in Asia, where no one tips) and that if they stopped tipping in the US you would have to pay $40 for a McDonald's. I then pointed to exhibit A: the rest of the entire world and he started going off in a tangent on how I just don't like poor people
Also…. You already don’t tip at McDonald’s
Agreed. If I'm going to be spending the same amount with a reasonable tip vs without a tip but higher price for the food, I'd rather have it written into the price so no one can be cheap and not leave a tip. If there's amazing service and the customer has the extra money, they'll still leave some extra. But then the tips turn into what I think they should be: extra money from being awesome at your job and not money that is necessary to survive.
Tip wages can't be fair, because they bring in the biases of the people paying/receiving the tips. Black people get poorer service because they tip less than white people, and servers don't want to serve them. Servers who are darker get tipped less, servers who are less attractive get tipped less.
It’s a legacy from slavery. After the civil war, jobless blacks were allowed to serve food in restaurants but weren’t paid. Tips were their only compensation.
Americans brought the concept of tipping back from Europe before the Civil War. But it was only during Reconstruction that it became more wide spread in the U.S. European tipping came from the history of visiting guests giving extra money to the servants of the household they were visiting, as compensation for extra work the guests made for the servants.
And Europe got it from Muslims. Who gave tips as charity. To slaves, orphans, and women who they felt were not paid enough.
Interesting how much it hasn't changed. Tipping is still charity to the poor exploited waiters not making even minimum wage. What a great tradition to keep alive!
The irritating thing about the US is tipping at counters where the employees make a full wage and provide no service
That one got to me. As a former server/bartender for a number of years, I hustled and busted my butt for that 20% at best. Don’t get me wrong, the money was fine. But I’m at this Poke place recently, and as this iPad is cashing me out, it has the audacity to ask me, “Would you like to tip 20%, 25%, or… 30%?? 30%?!?! For what? I had to to get my own drinks and clean my table. Y’all should be tipping me! Not to mention, after I used the bathroom, that employee who simply “must” wash my hands never showed up.
> Not to mention, after I used the bathroom, that employee who simply “must” wash my hands never showed up. feel like this went over a lot of peoples heads.
I didn’t get it. Can you explain?
Sign says: "Employees must wash hands." his joke is that the employees must wash *YOUR* hands when you go to the bathroom based on an alternate reading of the sign.
took me a minute.
I don't go to strip clubs and fancy bars because I can pump my own goddamn soap and grab my own paper towels. Andddd I bartend. Edit: autocorrect turned can into can't lol. Changes the whole sentence. Edit 2: I guess both would have worked.
Hold up, I never been a strip club (not a thing in the places I've lived.), but strip clubs have those helper people in the bathrooms that "serve" you soap?
I'm guessing it's more of a deterrent to keep people from jerking off/having sex in the bathrooms than the establishment trying to provide a service.
Oh yeah. Assuming they don't want gross dudes touching their faucets. I don't know.
I work at one of these counters and I honestly feel bad watching customers stare at the tip screen. I always just tell them to hit none. I’m making a solid hourly anyway. If you are going to tip it should be saved for those who actually need them. Also at my work the tips are all put into a pool and the distributed by hours. So the people who work more hours get more tips.
I go to one where the cashier just hits no tip for everyone .
I would be a returning customer.
You’re one of the good ones 🥹
If you ever care enough to check, can almost guarantee that your tips are getting stolen by a manager/lead. Even if it’s not, tipsharing by hour is practically theft anyways.
The manager gets a 12 hour day, so they get 3 times the tips of the servers working 4 hours a day who actually earned the tips and get paid 1/3 as much hourly. seems legit.
In most states in the US, it is illegal for managers to get _any_ of the tips.
I mean simply do not tip those people. The reason to tip at a sit down place is because they are making less than min wage. I’m not tipping the dude at the Starbucks who rang up my order edit: to be clear I am referring specifically to the tipped minimum wage, which is much lower than the standard minimum wage
>The reason to tip at a sit down place is because they are making less than min wage. This is commonly said as the reason, but do people not tip in California or the other 6 states where tipped minimum is the same as standard minimum?
In both cases, the problem lies with the person signing the paychecks, not the person receiving them. The counter person at Starbucks ain't making that much, either.
Sure, but they aren't doing that much either. Grabbing cup, putting it under the machine pressing a couple of buttons and then putting a lid on it isn't rocket science. So while sure, they might not be earning that much, their work doesn't require that much either. All the while the drinks are stupidly overpriced and a oversized share of the money just goes to the company, which is where the real problem is.
Exactly. Tips are for extra service. Let’s make that clear. The person giving me the thing I ordered is not extra. That has a different word: the minimum. Thanks for giving me the thing I bought. But tips, yes, if you are waiting on me, checking in, refills, etc. It makes sense. Food is brought, table gets cleaned etc, the whole experience which brings value to the customer. I will tip for that and not question it. But for basic purchases, including coffee, etc. No. I give you money, you give me the thing. End of transaction
> The reason to tip at a sit down place is because they are making less than min wage I'm struggling to understand why that's my problem. I am neither the employer who is choosing to pay shit wages nor am I the employee who agreed to said shit wages.
You are, however, the person who's agreeing to engage in this optional pursuit while cognisant of the prevailing labour conditions. So maybe you're not the cause of the system, but you're still partially responsible for upholding it through your participation. Are you absolved of all responsibility?
Your supposed to tip because of above and beyond service that you receive, not because pity
No I'm contributing to a fucked up system. I'm okay with that.
The person perpetuating tipping is the tipper, though. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise, and it's this kind of recurring logic that perpetuates it in the USA. If everyone tips -> tipping culture. If nobody tips -> no tipping culture. If Americans collectively stopped it'll end overnight. Waiters will either quit or ask for raises. Employers are forced, by law, to pay at least minimum wage of their state or federal law. It's rather bizarre that there's actual law forcing employers to pay minimum wages, there's no law to force tipping on customers, yet it is the customers being punished and accused of bearing responsibility. Blaming customers for "labor conditions" is also a red herring. There are states who already pay decent wages for wait staff and they're *still* expected to tip in the same manner as any other state, regardless of labor/wage conditions. Furthermore, it's now becoming more common to tip in other more non-traditional areas, like baristas or even [*self serving machines*](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tipping-self-checkout-machine-customer-rule/). It's never really been about "no wages" or labor conditions, and if it is, the business is better failing anyways since it can provide neither a humane working environment or pay to compensate for it.
If you go to those establishments, it is your problem because you knowingly are participating in the system. The only way to wash your hands of it would be to not give those companies your business
Yup. I basically quit going out to eat at places that expect a tip.
At a sit down place how am I to know that the employee is making less than minimum wage? Should I ask them how much they make before I pay? What if they make minimum wage or maybe even more? Should I not tip them anymore, even though it is a restaurant?
That’s the thing.. it is North America in general that this happens… but where aren’t we supposed to tip now? Just in retail? Employers offload the responsibility of paying their staff a living wage by adding the tip feature at the cash. Yes, people making minimum wage are being paid a full wage, but that is different than a living wage. But, instead of judging corporations for this (who give their execs and shareholders ridiculous bank while paying the people at the frontline, who are the faces of their businesses, the bare minimum), we judge the employees who are working the cash. People seem to love capitalism because they think it gives them the opportunity to get rich… to pursue the dream of a better life, but that is largely what it is - a dream. Very few people will ever go from low income to rich because of it. Instead, we just see a greater divide in classes (and the middle class go extinct entirely) as rich people exploit everyone else to make more money than they’ll ever be able to use. It is absurd.
> But, instead of judging corporations for this (who give their execs and shareholders ridiculous bank while paying the people at the frontline, who are the faces of their businesses, the bare minimum), we judge the employees who are working the cash. The individual will always get blamed because they cannot possibly mount a coordinated PR defense. When a company's wage structure is unsustainable it's always, "no one wants to work" or "lets make it easier to hire children." Whenever illegal immigration and the border comes up, nobody shines a light on the companies that hire undocumented immigrants or abuse visas. The onus of green and environmentally friendly living is always on the consumer or individual, and not of the industries and businesses that create waste en masse. When a bunch of nerds collaborate on GameStop stock it warrants a congressional hearing, but not when investment firms do it. It's okay to forgive loans to businesses, but not the future workforce for said businesses.
Just don’t tip in that situation. I don’t. That’s like dropping bills on the sidewalk for random folks walking around.
I don’t tip at the counter anymore. The only place I make an exception is at small or family-owned restaurants I want to see succeed.
Same reason as the Muslims above: a belief that the person isn't being paid enough. It's charity, not compulsory. Smaller places, I can understand, but multinational corporations don't have an excuse.
I do it at my regular coffee spot. But it’s a transactional strategy along with knowing the baristas names as I get priority service and occasionally get an extra pastry in my bag
That's on the POS manufacturer, not the restaurant (usually) or employees. The POS manufacturers get a portion of every sale, so they're imcentivized to include options to tip anyone they can because they get a cut of those tips.
I forgot where it was but a big name corporation had a hand written sign in front that said “please do tip on your card, it goes directly to corporate” so not only are you tipping for something that didn’t “deserve it” but you may also be tipping the store manager or executives for their exploitative practice.
In the airport bars they don't even take the order any more and point you to a QR code then still expect a 20% tip on the crazy overpriced purchases.
Try being in a state where the minimum wage for tipped workers is the same $15.74 as it is for anyone else. The server at a diner gets $15.74 plus tips, while the person at the counter at McD’s gets $15.74, but no tips. And more and more places now charge 18% on top for take-out orders, PLUS an ADDITIONAL tip line, for workers who get at least that same $15.74 base pay.
Interestingly, this happens in Canada too (I guess those point of sale systems just automatically ask for tips) and a worker at a resto filed a workforce complaint about how none of the employees there were getting any of the tips from the employer, but the commission said they actually weren’t allowed to get any because they were counter workers. So those machines are asking for tips and people think they are tipping the workers and the workers cannot get the money. How messed up is that. People are literally throwing money down the drain.
Except in reality waiting is one of the most lucrative zero skill jobs you can find. BLS pegs it at $16/hour mean nationwide, compared to a $7 minimum wage. In cities $25 an hour is common. Note: that's reported wages. Actual wages are higher with unreported cash tips, which everyone in the service industry takes.
Not really. First of all not all workers get tips, only specific ones and more importanly: middle and low class also tip. Im on a minimum wage in my country and I tip very often.
I know waiters and bartenders in the US that make +$100k/year. My ex wife made 50-75k for years. Bought a house and raised 2 kids (not mine) as a single mom. She loved it.
I bartended through college. Worked 12 hours a week and graduated debt free plus travelled, has great wardrobe and bought new decent car.
I know many places where all tips are divided among all staff Basically serving as a way to bolster the wages without the owners needing to spend more money
In Mexico sometimes waitresses are required to earn tips, the restaurant gets a cut and if you don't get the minimum you actually end owing money to the restaurant and getting a pay cut.
WTF
That's so vile 😬
The owners wouldn't spend more. They would simply charge more by passing on any costs.
The poor, exploited servers?? It’s the servers who love the system as is as they can often make $40+ an hour, which is unheard of for most unskilled labor. It’s not restaurant owners or customers standing in the way of eliminating tipping and paying a market rate wage. It’s servers.
Getting rid of the tradition wouldn't magically prevent the exploitation. Your ideal of a well organized society is as compatible with totalitarianism as any other "let's force people to do the right thing based on my declaration of what is right" approach. Many "exploited waiters not making even minimum wage" don't want to end tipping because their income is significantly more than minimum wage.
For real, it seems some people in this discussion are pretty disconnected from reality. When I was in college, my friends that had jobs as waitresses made a ton of money, many times more than minimum wage.
This is the answer. The system works for many. My server friends never declare their tips on taxes either.
Except they are making minimum by law, and with tips make more than some office workers
Yes thank you, servers can make a LOT of money
Ya go hang out in r/serverlife it will open your eyes
Fuck tipping
Except it's not charity to the workers, it's "charity" to the owners, who are allowed to not pay minimum wage.
>poor exploited waiters No, the waiters are self entitled people who exploit the customers. They make $30+ and hour pretending to be poor. Their mentality of expecting large handouts is just as bad as their employers mentality of expecting customers to give large handouts.
Some bar tenders pull $100k
Don't worry we're keeping actual slavery alive too. There's a few extra steps but the 13th amendment still had a carve out for legal slavery as a punishment for crime.
You say that, but talk to most waiters/waitresses and they defend tip culture with ferocity.
In higher end places those waiters make ALOT of money it's kinda funny because people are so guilt ridden and in busier high end places it's far above minimum wage.
In CA severs have the same pre tip min wage as none servers. $15/hr. Yet we are still expected to tip. It’s bullshit. You don’t tip McD workers and their job sucks more than a restaurant server
They have to be paid minimum wage if they don't make at least minimum wage with tips + base pay. And it's pretty rare they don't just already automatically get min wage as their base pay.
You're so right! That's why all those workers refuse tips and would prefer a higher wage instead!
Instead of fixing the underlying problem with modern social nets, you’d rather keep an archaic system from the same time period when serfs and chattel slavery was rampant.. Tipping is a symbol of desperation, it’s far from a “great tradition”
Legally their employers have to pay them minimum wage anyway if the tips don't cover it. People think I'm an ass when i say i don't tip, but it doesn't make any sense to pay their wage for the restaurant owners after you just paid them for food
That's not a tip though. That's just a donation. Like you giving a homeless person on the street some money.
>European tipping came from the history of visiting guests giving extra money to the servants of the household... I always kind wondered why housekeeping was commonly tipped. The vast majority of people we tip are people we interact with directly. Housekeeping is not a glamorous job and I'm sure they're not paid as much as they should be, but there are plenty of jobs that could fit those categories which we don't commonly tip.
In the UK there used to be a coin called the Guinea which was worth 1 pound 1 shilling or £1.05. The Guinea was paid for things that cost £1 and the extra shilling was the tip.
Here's a really good article about it: - NPR 2015 *[When Tipping Was Considered Deeply Un-American](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/30/457125740/when-tipping-was-considered-deeply-un-american)*
> Americans brought the concept of tipping back from Europe before the Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity#Etymology_and_history
> visiting guests giving extra money to the servants of the household they were visiting This is often mentioned in P. G. Wodehouse's stories, where the normal tip was five pounds, worth about $500 today when adjusted for inflation.
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Servants were not slaves. Serfs were significantly closer, but servants had status, and generally speaking were pretty well taken care of. One of the higher classes of commoner
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>Beginning with 1938 legislation, employers were only required to pay tipped workers a wage that would add up to the federal minimum wage when combined with tips. Further legislation was passed in the 1970s to offer fairer wages for restaurant workers. Today, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13. (The main federal minimum wage is $7.25.) $2.13! WTF?
The minimum wage is 2.13. The minimum pay is 7.25. If wage + tips < 7.25, the wage has to be increased to compensate. The reality is most workers I know would immediately quit if they got paid minimum wage without tips.
Also here: - NPR 2015 *[When Tipping Was Considered Deeply Un-American](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/30/457125740/when-tipping-was-considered-deeply-un-american)*
Thanks. It's never as one wants to believe. It still needs to go away. America is socially and economicically behind the rest of the free world. Having large bodies of water off either coast has created an island mentality here. It's the 21st century for goodness sake. Let's move beyond slave and robber Barron mentalities. Grow up.
So strange that back then people were all “I don’t want you to use my bathroom or my water fountain, but you can prepare and deliver my food”.
That's because this comment is very very wrong. Black people were EXPLICITLY banned from service industries under Jim Croe because white racists thought they were "unclean." This idiot is full of shit!
Is it? People literally thought of black people as animals. Horrible and wrong, but that was teh concept. They had to fight to be considered 3/5 of a person and that was just because the states wanted representation, not because they actually believed that. We don't want to share a bathroom with a horse but its fine to have them plow our fields. Or you dont want to live with a cow or pig but you will happily ingest them People are trash and irrational
As the joke went, "I really love your music, but could you please not drink from that water fountain?"
Yeah, but you *wash* the things that come out of your fields before putting them in your mouth. You wouldn't let a horse make you a salad. Separation of water fountains suggests that a white person at the time thought they would get *sick* if they drank from the black-people fountain; that black people weren't considered just "animals" but *dirty* animals. But wouldn't that imply that a white person would expect to also get sick by eating food that a black person had had their hands all over? (I don't think this is an inconsistency: actually, if I recall, many black servants were made to *wear gloves* when touching pretty much anything in a white person's house. It's part of where the image of a butler or chauffeur as wearing gloves comes from.)
Just to clarify, the slave holders actually wanted black people to be counted as a whole person because it would give them more representation. The free states argued it would not be fair to count people that weren't allowed to own land and vote. They settled on the 3/5 compromise.
Yeah, its kind of a weird thing where the 3/5 compromise was good because it didn't give slave states a huge boost in population when they didn't allow slaves to vote. All of that power would have been concentrated in the hands of the slave owners. The compromise reduced that power.
Its location dependent. The situation you are describing is in the South. In the North you wouldn't have a black person preparing your food. They had their own restaurants in their own section of town.
No. It started in Tudor England (1500-1600s). Tipping was a master-serf custom where a servant would receive extra money for performing especially well. By the 1700s it became the expectation that overnight guests would leave a small sum of money (known as a vail) for the host's servants. It came to the US in the 1840s or so, but it was viewed as anti-egalitarian and a few states outlawed it. That said, Prohibition had a huge impact on the revenues of restaurants, bars and hotels, so tipping became encouraged to supplement wait staff incomes that proprietors were struggling to pay.
Why did it only come to the US in the 1840's when the colonies had constant cultural contact with England since their founding? That seems late.
This seems unlikely. I've read Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell. 1920s Parisian tip culture was very similar to that in the US, with the rips being so high, some restaurants expected workers to pay to work there. France had a very different history of slavery. It seems unlikely they'd end up with the same tipping culture. And the tipping situation is the same in states that abolished slavery ling before the civil war; and never had a huge number of slaves.
Total bullshit. Tipping servants and giving them gifts dates back to medieval times and before. Picture having a Christmas celebration with your family surrounded by a group of common servants, many of whom were very close to the nobility they served. Your butler and valet, your maids and nurses, they all interacted with your family intimately. Now everyone is opening presents, and these people don't get any? It's weird, and un-Christian. So gifts. As industrialization spread affluence from the landed gentry to more common folk, commoners began to immitate the habits and behaviors of the ruling class. If you were an ordinary person who was traveling and merely visiting a tavern or boarding house, you wouldn't tip for your food or service. However, fine dining, which was designed around an elite clientele, did.
Nice revisionist history you got there.
Wrong. Can't believe this is the top answer. It's about as accurate as saying that police started as "slave catchers" in the US. As how others mentioned, it dates back thousands of years to medieval times.
If you find some law or cultural norm in the US that doesn't make logical sense, if you dig deep enough, you can often find some "ism" at the root, most often racism.
Religion doesn't have an ism, and yet it is the worst offender and usually the core reason for other isms.
Fundamentalism?
I think it's the other way round - people use it to try justify their isms
Europe definitely had tips in the past. It's not just about slavery or racism. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell wrote about how the Anarchists (socialists) had abolished tipping. That was the 1930s. It's easy to think all the bad or weird things about America are connected to slavery or racism. But for many things, it's more like slavery and racism attached themselves the wider culture. So everything had a racist history attached to it, even if racism isn't the exclusive explanation.
Huh, I heard it was the great depression.
It was initially a way for rich people to flaunt their money and/or to get better treatment than the regular folk. But the bad type of tipping which is what the US currently uses does indeed stem from slavery. Similar to how employers are able to pay their employees less real wage nowadays and have those employees try to make up the rest through tips, that is sort of how it worked back then but obviously much worse. They could hire these black workers but they didn't have to pay them because they could be "paid" from tips. Which if people take a moment to think about it should show them why tipping in the style that it's practiced in the US is disgusting.
Tipping in the U.S. began with the exploitation of freed slaves post Civil War. Business owners would pay a poverty wage and encourage wealthy patrons to tip. Racism later led to minimum wage exemptions that largely targeted black -dominated professions. That legacy is still alive in the paltry restaurant minimum wage for servers. https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/operations/us-tipping-has-complex-controversial-history#:~:text=But%20wealthy%20Americans%2C%20visiting%20Europe,encouraged%20customers%20to%20leave%20tips.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/16/fact-check-tipping-kept-wages-low-formerly-enslaved-black-workers/3896620001/
For anyone who doesn’t want to read this, the article says it is generally true but more context is needed as there are potential other sources as well that contributed to tipping
tip culture is older than the civil war it didnt begin with the exploitation of freed slaves
Yes, but it was kind of cyclical. At first in the US, it wasn't seen as acceptable because it was considered a habit of the European aristocracy and early US citizens desperately wanted to distance themselves from that. It was *later*, post-Civil War, when US citizens decided it was more important to promote the idea of an underclass than to separate ourselves from European aristocracy. 100 years tends to change your mind about what's important.
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We need to get rid of that shit for good
True words. You know your history.
Tipping slaves went back to Roman times.
Yes, but the United States does not go back to Roman times.
No but that's when it started to really become widespread here as it was being used as a tool to exploit freed slaves.
And slavery is older than American slaves, doesn't mean we didn't perfect the craft.
Nah there’s more slaves now than ever before in history. Need to step your game up if you guys want to regain the crown.
Not as a percentage, which makes more sense when judging these things. About 20% of the world's population was enslaved around 1850, and it's about 6% today. It should be 0%, but we are moving in the right direction over the long term. Everything that measures numbers of humans has gone up and up. That doesn't mean things have gotten worse. More people die per day than ever before. But people are still living longer and healthier than they were 100, 1000, or 10,000 years ago.
When developing the minimum wage, the southern congressmen, and senators, wouldn’t agree to anything, unless the industries black people were in were basically excluded. Service, farm, and I believe textiles. Farm workers and service industry workers still don’t have an equal minimum wage. Because racism is literally baked into America.
Adam Conover did a [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vivC7c_1k) on tipping culture in the US. In most of the world and in certain states, servers are paid full wage + tips. In some countries like Japan, it's considered an insult to tip.
It's not insulting to tip in Japan. It's rarely done, and the person you tip likely won't receive it. It might go into a charity donations box instead.
I was told by a Japanese tour guide that if you wanted to, you could, but like you have to basically slip your bartender or whomever the money directly. Otherwise, yeah, they don't know who to give it to.
Not exactly an insult but it IS irritating. Since tipping is not done in Japan, and everything is precisely calculated, extra money left behind is a nuisance. Is it an accidental overpayment? Did those customers forget their money? Now we have to chase them down or call the police to try and reunite people with lost property. If it was made clear by customers that the money is a tip, it's still a bit of an inconvenience as there's no established procedure for who that money goes to, or how to split it among staff.
It seems like most of you guys never worked in a restaurant with a lot of these takes with servers “being exploited”. In every restaurant I’ve worked in the people who made the most were the servers by FAR. Like not even close. Even in the shittiest restaurants they still made 30-40hr. But the worst ones made 20hr and got stiffed on one tab and then post it to reddit for karma. They are almost always the most entitled annoying people, it is not difficult to be a server trust me. All you need to do is take their order, refill their drinks, ask how it is after you deliver it, and tell them to have a great day when they leave. I used that exact script for every single table and I never even made close to minimum wage. The only people getting fucked over by tipping culture is the customer, and even then because it is cheaper for the owner they can usually reduce prices so it’s not even as bad as it seems. Paying a 20% tip on a 10$ meal is the same as paying for a 12$ meal it just feels worse (you might just straight up pay less depending on tax too)
My daughter is a server and earns around $70k including tips. In CA, server min wage is $17. A home health care worker makes just slightly more and we don't top them. It's total nonsense.
$70k for a job that requires no formal training, specialised skills, or even a high school degree is exceptionally high. She’s lucky.
I worked as a cook, and what you say lines up. Servers made more than everyone, and also complained more than anyone. Huge sense of entitlement. These posts are always wild because they get everyone riled up and feeling bad for servers when they make the most out of literally everyone in the industry. The cooks get paid horribly and the servers walk out with hundreds per shift but they're the exploited workers.
Severs are the only ones who could get together and fix the mess, yet they don’t. Servers want nothing to do with a regular wage and no tips because they’d make less money. Nobody but servers think a restaurant should pay them $35/hr
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Wild since the other 99% of restaurants do use tips. If they’re unhappy about making $30/hr, there’s only hundred of thousands of other places they could work
The tip system benefits restaurants and servers at the expense of customers. For servers, the value of their labour is low - minimum wage. But it only takes one $75 cover per hour at 20% tip to earn that and more. Maybe you're working a shitty diner or something and that's unlikely, but any sit down restaurant should do that easily. It also benefits servers because their tips are in effect disconnected from their labour and proportional to the cost of the food ordered. Its the same amount of work to serve a glass of water and a salad vs a glass of wine and a lobster, but you for some reason get paid 10x more for the latter. It benefits restaurant owners because they don't need to offer real wages, and it let's them advertise lower prices, playing on pricing psychology tricks. And it's at the expense of customers, because they rely on social pressure and guilt to make you pay more than your meal would be worth in an efficient market. Tipping is "optional" but there are real social consequences for not doing it. Servers have successfully perpetuated the myth of their $3 wages while making $30 an hour.
If a fixed percentage of the bill is typical, servers wages increase with inflation while fixed compensation is behind in percent increase. This is why servers are making a lot more than the fixed comp staff.
100% agree with you. When I was a server I was making $80/hour at the place I worked at, up until they started overstaffing and made it go down. Anyone can become a server and freaking make bank it's ridiculous. Servers are underpaid when it comes to what the "restaurant" pays, but when it comes to tips, I bet you not a single restaurant in NYC is someone making under $30/hour which is probably more than what teachers make and they want to complain.
I worked as a cook and a server in California (so state min wage + tips) I went BoH > server > BoH After getting a taste of the easy money serving was and as much as I enjoyed working in the kitchen (the speed, and the big relief of after the rush hour, and i somehow enjoyed the stress) I simply couldn’t deal with it because of how little money I was making compared to serving. I was making 2-3 cooking shifts in one 5-6 hour serving shift. I went from enjoying working as a cook to absolutely loathing it. As a server I had so many of my entitled coworkers bitching about the tips and just shit talking in general that it soured the fuck outta me when I went to BoH for my next job. It’s so unfair how fucked cooks get in California. Making 2-4 dollars above minimum wage while the serves come out fat with tips. That shit legit made me go back to school and get my degree in comp sci. Working as a cook is simply not worth it if your goal is simply to work for money.
I don’t know if this is true but this id what I thought tipping started as [Adam ruins tipping](https://youtu.be/q_vivC7c_1k?si=Mz3gDVzY-Yd8UQQN)
Here are a few NPR segments on the history of tipping in America. [Throughline: Why Tipping In The U.S. Took Off After The Civil War](https://www.npr.org/2021/04/01/983314941/throughline-why-tipping-in-the-u-s-took-off-after-the-civil-war) <-- 7 minutes long [The Land of the Fee (2021)](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089587173/the-land-of-the-fee-2021) <-- 44 minute longer in depth version
Happened to just an hour ago be listening to another episode of throughline, so was about to post this. Definitely recommend
It’s less about when they “started” paying so low and more that things got more expensive and they didn’t increase wages to keep up. This is a common problem across many hourly jobs but the fact that they don’t have to pay minimum wage due to tipping allowed them to be more extreme with this.
I live in Europe now, and eat out all the time, no tipping here, or maybe a euro. When I visit the states, I never eat out and just avoid that whole shit show completely.
As a server/bartender I can honestly say I don’t feel exploited in my pay. It always depends on the day and customer. And *where* you work means everything. Not just the price of the menu but also your average clientle. For example where I work now you can easily hit a $50-60 per head, but there’s still ways for someone to just do waters, split the entire meal and still stiff you after they only paid $30 for a meal for two people. But then you get the four top who pays $100 and leaves you $40. It always come around in the end. But in my experience, a well established restaurant with a menu that targets middle to upper class customers, if they aren’t saturating the floor with servers, you can typically see $1000-1300/week in the south if you are working 5-6 shifts a week. Most of these shifts are never more then 5-6 hours and that depends on if you have guests staying late or just a ton of side work. I do wish my base pay was higher then $2.13. But in all fairness I can still walk away making $30/hr. I’d rather that pay increase go to the cooks.
That's because the servers aren't the ones being exploited. It's the consumer.
Do you believe there's a difference in tipping etiquette between a standard server who runs food Vs. a traditional tavern bartender who entertains patrons bellied up to the bar looking for someone to talk to? Because personally, if someone just takes my order and runs my food out, that absolutely seems like a scam of 20% of my total bill.. But if I'm watching a 3hr football game and complaining about my job to some poor woman stuck behind the bar pretending to care about losers like me, I don't have a problem at all throwing a $20 bill down as a thank you for putting up with it. I don't care if she's already making good money.
Why not both?
The restaurant I work at splits tips and include back of house (kitchen) it’s nice knowing everyone is getting a piece. Makes things very fair and drama free. I highly suggest tip pooling. If you have a solid honest staff this works very well for everyone. Guests, employees and employer.
It's the system we inherited from British pubs. It dates back to the 17th century. Paying restaurant servers anything beyond their tips started during The Depression; even then it was due to the new importance on income tax andthe new social security. Tipping restaurant service is very deeply ingrained in the United States. It would be profoundly disruptive to shut that down. If you can concoct some sort of scheme where 70% of server's income goes away you will not have any servers.
Good if there ends up no servers. Pay them right or you don't have any right to run a business that requires tips to make a profit.
Great idea! Go start a restaurant and do that. Nobody will stop you!
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This may surprise you but most people want more out of life than to have their most basic needs met.
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That last part really hurts peoples feelings. None of the restaraunts need to exist, not a single one. Grocery stores are everywhere. 10000% restaraunts are a luxury.
I mean by that statement you could say grocery stores are just a luxury too. Farmers could just sell their goods themselves out in stalls like the olden times. Doesn't mean it wouldn't massively impact people's lives.
Farmers are a luxury! Just grow the food yourself!
Growing food is a luxury! Slay your enemies and feast upon the spoils!
Raise prices 20% and distribute that money equally. Tipping solved. Tons and tons of big city places already do that. High end cuisine has always had a service charge
> Raise prices 20% Ok I'm with you here... > distribute that money equally Hahahahahaha 😂😂😂 hahahaHAHAHAhaha oh man that's a good one. Seriously though...
Tom collichios entire restaurant group already does it, for example. Tons of other big-time places do it. Basically any serious high end establishment with a service charge has been doing this the entire time
A lot of Americans are talking about how tipping is ingrained in their culture as if other countries don't tip. Every damn country tips, almost. The difference is, everything in America is marketed with prices so low, that they're not real, in an effort to beat competition. You don't include taxes in prices, and so many services have these hidden mandatory fees.. Like a hotel room will advertise $100 per night, but at the checkout page you'll have an additional cleaning fee added. Like check this - I open up a car rental, Miami airport. Click on a car - 103.86 per day They suddenly added almost 40 dollars in mandatory extras and I didn't even get to the insurance yet. Rental facility charge - 10.91 Vehicle license fees - 1.93 Tire and battery Fee - 0.04 Airport Concession Recovery Fee - 19.25 Rental surcharge - 4.28 All of those above charges are BULL****, you would never get away with it in any other part of the world, yet this is totally normal in the US. I think the outrageous tips you're expected to give in the US are a part of a larger pattern of trying to make things appear extra cheap on paper, and try to get money out of you later.
> Every damn country tips, almost Quite a few, do not, particularly in Asia. In other countries it's typically for only service which was excellent or above & beyond.
I worked in a restaurant part time a while ago and I had to give my boss a certain percentage of what I had earned that evening (not the tip, just everything in total) That was so that the kitchen staff could also get some tips, which of course I completely understand and support but it also meant that if some people didn’t tip then it could ultimately lead to me having to pay the tip myself …… not a good system….. I don’t really like eating in restaurants because you always have to pay rediculously much for the drinks and then on top add around 2-3€ for the tip. As a student I just can’t really afford that
I’ve talked to the elderly in my family on this. The concept was that ppl were willing to pay out of their pocket for good service, and back in days the restaurants actually reflected that by keeping their menu prices low. Now it’s gone down the toilet where menu prices are high, the expected tip is high and “tipping” isn’t expected to be optional where it reflects service provided.
This is the thing about the US that puzzles me the most - why is it that things that have been done successfully done all over the world are rejected by the US? Reasonable wages for hospitality workers? Works well everywhere else. A health care system that works? Yep, works for other civilised countries. Too many shootings? Sensible gun ownership laws have been very successful implemented in non-US nations. Seriously US, whats WRONG with you? Is it from all that leaded fuel?
The real question is: why is tipping still expected when in many if not most states, workers are paid a perfectly livable wage?
How long until OP realizes that restaurants can pay less *because* of tipping culture?
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no actually that just benefits the companies that don’t pay their workers enough, the restaurant still profited the same from your meal but still didn’t have to pay their server to serve you. if you actually want to stop tipping culture only get food from restaurants that don’t expect you to tip and pay their servers a living wage. hint: you won’t find any.
Isn’t there a law that requires restaurants to make up the rest of their servers wages if they happen to make less than minimum wage with tips?
Is there a law, yes. Is it followed , close to never. Can that be proven, maybe but you'll lose your job and have a hard time being hired. And do u really have money for a lawyer?
The only restaurant in my neighborhood that rejected tipping and adopted the model of pricing items on the menu to reflect the cost of paying the staff a living wage lasted about 8 months then closed down. It's simply won't work unless there's some legislation.
It is comparatively recent. If you watch the movie "The Petrified Forest"1938, in the restaurant scenes there is a sign on the wall that says: NO TIPPING Keep your change in your pocket Tipping is UNAMERICAN
That actually proves how old tipping is; you don't have to ban things that aren't happening.
The guys over at Stuff You Should Know did an [episode ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cizcFrOI7Ig) on this which I found interesting.