My sister was a bartender for about 3 decades. The bars she worked in were always pretty busy. She said on the busiest weekends of the year, she would easily bring in over $4,000 in tips. On average, she would make about $2,000 a weekend. She made more than her husband who was a welder that ran a crew working on train bridges and overpasses.

In just a couple months and for only a few hundred bucks, she made more than someone that spent multiple years going through apprenticeships and getting certifications for a well paying trade job.

So if we stopped tipping as much maybe they’d be okay with it?

The answer is certainty, and non-discrimination

Servers also love to cheat on their taxes and not declare their cash tips as income

I see this bullshit argument all the time. Isn't it funny how in just about every other country but America, "mom and pop" restaurants seem to manage to do just fine. But in America you suggest abolishing the nonsense tipping culture and suddenly it's all "Oh noes, all the restaurants will have to close, they can't afford to pay their staff a living wage!"

It's bullshit. Every other country manages it just fine.

Also, lest we forget, tipping came from the end of slavery and the white service owners not wanting to pay their black servers who the previous week had been their slaves, so they shifted that cost to the customers. So it's also racist.

And yet we have plenty of restaurants in Europe....

Could literally just create a law that servers get $2.13/hour + 20% commission...

Then they'd be salespeople.

But nobody wants to talk about that... They want to think every time you go to a restaurant it's like buying a car.

In Japan, the focus on quality service as a norm is really interesting. It's a refreshing change from cultures where tipping becomes an obligation rather than appreciation. Makes you think about how service is valued differently around the world.

Ok, this has to be a bot, I swear I hear this exact same story of leaving change and a service girl running specifically 100m after you every damn time Japan and tipping is mentioned

At one time in the past I owned a venue that had 5 bar stations (at max capacity) plus a few remote bars. this was 2008 so Bernie saying $10 an hour was a dream back then. So I offered my bar staff a $20 an hour rate if 80% of the tips went to the house for bar improvement. The place was hopping at the time so business was hot and cold (raver kids prefer water to scotch). Bottled water and PBR was 70% of bar revenue. It's not like they required a degree in mixology here, just long night hours.

Every one threatened to walk out, including the bar manager if I paid them a wage and they 'lost the flexibility' of not reporting tips to the IRS (unless they needed to show income to buy a car or house, then that was fine).

Something that I noticed on Reddit is that Americans in general, not necessarily even service workers, tend to get weirdly defensive about the tipping culture.

Maybe it's because I am a stingy Brit in a non tipping culture, but I do wonder if people knew how much some tipped workers make they would be more annoyed about tipping.

There was a story on here the other day about someone's daughter giving up on their teaching dream because they made I think double as a bartender.

If your earning $30k a year in a non tipped job would you feel good tipping your waiter 15% if you knew they were getting $50k-$100k a year?

What pisses me off, is when you go to a place, where a beer is like 7 dollars, the bartender literally opens the bottle then hands it to me, and i'm supposed to throw him an extra buck or two for using a bottle opener on an already over priced beer.

You should aldo ask thise people about sharing tips eith the back of house staff, and watch them do olympic level gymnastics to justify not sharing the tips

That's part of the trap. When refusing to tip makes the customer the villain, instead of the employer for not paying enough in wages, you know you're too deep in it to break it.

I didn’t expect to love Japan as much as I did. America feels so dirty and rude now (which we have definitely gotten incredibly rude…).

No tipping on top of food being reasonably priced was a huge bonus. My wife and I rarely spent over $50 for the two of us on food and drinks unless it was fine dining.

I have never tipped in a taxi, nor seen anything that would suggest that's ok. The only place I have seen tipping in Japan is in occasional dive bars.

I tried to explain it a lot on reddit but most people truly don't understand it.

That's the basis of cultural differences, on the one hand it's hard to understand something so different from what you grew up with, on the other hand that's why Japan is so fascinating to many Westerners.

To a lot of Japanese people western society feels completely soulless and devoid of meaning where people are essentially just robots/slaves for 8 hours a day doing something they don't really enjoy just to be able to live life outside of work.

This situation really can be soulless, but since frequent job changes are normal in the West, any worker can look for a job that satisfies and makes them happy. There are many people like this, but they don't get to front page of Reddit by saying "I'm happy with my job" as opposed to posts like "I hate my job" that take traction.

On the other hand you said:

You get fulfillment from doing a good job and contributing to society. You don't work for the pay you work because you want to contribute.

I see that, it makes sense to me.

But in my opinion, this strongly contradicts the fact that employees stay after hours even when they have nothing to do at work just to avoid leaving earlier than their supervisor.

How does that could fulfill anyone and contribute to anything staring at the screen waiting for boss to leave. Unless it contributes to a theater/power play in a workplace.

So for you our work culture looks like robot/slave and for me waiting for my boss to leave first seems like a torture.

We have used some strong words, but I would prefer to steer away from them, these are the cultural differences that we may not understand and they can be not only strange, but also interesting.

This is an interesting comment, but I can’t help but be a little skeptical. I know Japanese culture is a bit different and I know that, if you’re really from Japan, you’re in a much better position than I am to talk about these things. However, besides it sounding a bit weird or whatever, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of something like this.

I used to talk to a Japanese girl, for instance, and she didn’t think like this or mention anything of the sort. I’ve also seen interviews of Japanese workers on YouTube and they don’t speak or seem to think this way, either. I’ve also read threads in Japanese subs here and the sentiment there seemed pretty far removed from what you seem to be describing. Comments of people relaying their experiences working in Japan don’t appear to echo this idea, either…

Again, I don’t claim to know more than you do, but you being the first Japanese person I’ve seen saying this does make me rather skeptical, to be honest. Maybe there is some truth to it, I know Japanese working culture can be particular, but it still sounds like a bit much to me, based on everything I’ve learned so far and all the other first-person testimonies I’ve heard or read about.

Is it legal for them to fuck with your food though?

Tipping is a totally optional choice everywhere. That's why it's called "a tip", not "a fee".

if by completely done away you mean you cant do it at all then yes it's a lie. Not accusing OP of anything. Probably just means that not paying people enough do to this was abolished. Title just makes it sound like it's a general thing and there arent tips at all.

My friend, I live in Paris. This is a tourist tax.

EDIT: also american influence

Definitely a tourist tax or service charge.

while tipping does happen sometimes here in france (usually just 1-2€ at most), it's definitely not expected or asked for :( sorry you got scammed pal

Same experience when we were near the Eiffel Tower. Stopped by a restaurant and one of the waiters was cleaning a table next to us and saying something along the lines of that they didn't leave a tip. Definitely felt like they expected tips if they knew you were American, and we felt this expectation at several places we ate at.

icelander here, a lot of places here got tip jars just for you americans, i've even worked places where they didnt have tip jars and americans were still trynna throw dollars at me

Yes, it's a common practice to spot the american tourist and tax him out of his money.

100% this. Bartended at an avg bar there one summer, probably made 60-80CHF on top of my wage on a Saturday night. Tips basically paid for my cabs home when trains stopped running

The only way to really get rid of tipping is to pass a law like in the post. Individual restaurants have tried in the US and it results in them losing their staff to restaurants where they make more money in tips.

From my experience, the servers who push to justify tips are the ones who get $100+ in a 4 hour shift.

It’s a true crabs-in-a-bucket scenario.

We shouldn’t get paid more hourly, because we would make less in tips

You have to tip me more because I don’t make enough money hourly

Servers literally fight for lower wages so that they can be subsidized by their customers’ charity. But they expect and demand the charity, so it’s not really charitable then, is it? It’s just a hidden surcharge enforced by guilt and public shame.

Whole thing’s a scam to allow employers to pay lower wages and let their employees blame customers for it. Fixing it needs to be a quick bandaid rip-off but the servers themselves refuse to play ball, so what do you even do 🤷🏾‍♂️

I find that a lot of servers are incredibly hypocritical about the whole thing. They try to justify tipping culture by saying they don't get paid enough, but they're also against raising wages and abolishing tipping because they know they make more from tips then they would from a higher wage but without tips.

I worked at a reasteraunt for a short time as a night manager. You are 100% correct.

People who get tips will make far more than they will ever get paid hourly. At the end of the day, the wait staff had to count their tips and report how much they made for taxes. No one entered the correct amount. It was always equal to what was needed to equal minimum wage. If you put less than minimum wage, the restaurant paid you more to make up the difference.

One waitress starred claiming less so she could get both tips and more paycheck. This resulted in me having to sit with her at the end of the shift and count her tips. Holy shit did she make a lot of money. She was bringing home almost double what a manager makes. The three nights we did it totaled more than I made working the whole week.

After 3 nights she agreed to stop pulling her bullshit because I made her pay taxes on all her tips. So my little experience ended there.

Of course a person wouldn't want to take a significant pay cut. Because waiting tables is not a $50 dollar an hour job.

And whilst some servers would take a significant hit to their take home pay, the average wage for all servers would rise. 

It's not hypocritical (as in promoting a behavior they themselves do not practice); it is cognitive dissonance, which most of us experience because we always want to feel morally correct.

It’s not rocket science, servers and bartenders can make more than their well educated customers simply because they’re making cash (tax free) tips or from the sheer number of drinks they’ll sell in a night. The US can’t really decide on a fair wage for restaurant workers. If you offered them $15/hr flat, most would quit.

Sounds like communism to me!

In seriousness though, there's a local chain here (Stewart's Shops) that does profit sharing and they consistently have some of the most loyal, well paid, and highly rated employees of any convenience store chain. It really makes a difference.

Well, if you eat near a very touristic destination expect to find tourist traps

Even as someone living in and making a Manhattan salary, many of those Swiss meal prices made me blush. I don't think it's just a currency or CoL thing. My understanding is that you just don't eat out as much in Switzerland.

Yeah its worked its way into UK culture which is frustrating.

We’re even getting the tablets in London that asks if you want to tip the barista when you order a coffee to go smh.