Tipping is optional. I’ve lived off of low wages as a server where I didn’t get tipped and yeah, I would have loved extra money but I didn’t bemoan the fact that I didn’t get it. And yes, I generally tip a little high if the service and food is good. But there are many valid reasons why a person may choose not to tip and none of them are anyone else’s business. I’ve never eaten at a food truck but I’m surprised anyone would tip. It’s take out.
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Interesting new article on HuffPost, if the reporting can be believed to be accurate:
Just so you know, I do take HuffPost fluff with a grain of seasoned salt, but am inclined to believe this study says a lot about the system.
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@jeremy, not sure why you would assume that the barista was a woman?
This whole discussion about tipping at Food Trucks as me rethinking my tipping policy. I can see why you’d want to–acknowledge the good service–but I draw the line at it being expected because the owner isn’t paying a living wage. I don’t show or support WALMART because of that. I’d rather not buy from such places so I probably won’t do food trucks unless they’re extra special. Locally a bunch of “gourmet” trucks gather weekly to offer quite an interesting array of food. If I ever eat there again, I’ll tip.
But at the pool hall where I ordered a Mocha to go and the guy asked “No tip?”, nope. His entitlement was why I responded to a college kid working part-time in a pool hall in Boulder over the summer–“You’re not that cute.”
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Slippery slope argument. This is how tipping got out of control in this country.
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I do actually tip about 20% while I’m in the US, so this isn’t my excuse not to do it. However, the current system is basically working as an inefficient charity. It perpetuates the problem of poor salaries and works on the basis of guilt, therefore creating an awkward relationship between the diner and the waiter (when you make what is essentially a waiter’s livelihood a directional extra that people feel guilted into paying, this is a charity and no longer a nice way to show your appreciation). Tips often get skimmed by the people creating the inequality in the first place. It makes charging taxes complicated and leaves the worst-tipped shortchanged. Despite some people tipping well, the average waiter will still earn very little and coverage will often be haphazard at best (tip waiting but not cooking or cleaning staff? At nice restaurants but not burger joints or food trucks? As a fixed percentage of the bill or a flat rate based on your evaluation of the service?) Working for tips is also different from doing a job well, so it can actively promote a worse experience for the diner. It’s confusing, especially to those unfamiliar with the system. People will judge you based on something that should have been done before you came to the restaurant. If it’s actually our job to decide how much each employee should earn, I expect an itemized list of the basic wages of each staff member and an indication of what a living wage would be in that area (coupled with an assurance that the tips will actually go to the staff members I choose). In short, I am not their employer and I resent having my gratuity being used to bring their salary just above minimum wage
For all that, while I’m here there’s not much to do other than keep tipping, in the knowledge that it’s my fault if waiting staff here are poorly paid.
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I’d be very happy if the U.S. had labor laws which guaranteed that people in the service industry could get a living wage without tips. Until that day comes, we’re stuck with the “inefficient charity” model. I just get annoyed by people who pretend that refusing to tip their server is some kind of principled act of political rebellion.
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I do think a level of professionalism is necessary, but it is a problem that a customer can tweet as nastily at a company as they like for any perceived slight, yet there is no recourse for the employee when they are under-tipped or otherwise abused by a customer.
I used to work in food service, and any complaint was treated with true seriousness and responded to with the utmost guilt and subservience, regardless of the validity of their claim. Once I had to apologize to both my boss and a customer because they came demanding a cup of water, while on their phone, while I was in the middle of another task. When I was too terse in telling them I was busy, they ended up writing a letter. This was a non-paying customer.
These days, I don’t work in food service, but I regularly respond to client/customer feedback on social media. And it’s scary. When people don’t get what they want, they will get truly nasty in order to get a quick response. On the one hand, companies are more accessible. Your airline lost your luggage and blatantly has no intention of helping you get it back? One well-placed tweet will make them shape up. It’s nice. The negative side of this has people jumping straight to squeaky-wheel status before they even seek help.
I sympathize with this food cart worker. “The customer is always right” has gone wrong. There’s no need to treat that kid in the name tag well; they’re working for you. They’re having a bad day and look at you wrong? Tell the manager; they’ll shape up! I know I’m adding a lot of my own baggage to this incident, but I guess I’m just saying the customer-employee relationship is getting increasingly one-sided, and it’s resulting in worse customers. Which, in turn, breeds discontent employees. Which, of course, means worse service.
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Glass, Lewis and Co. are just completely retarded… Who would hire these bunch of idiots who complain about someone shaming them for not tipping?
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Because recognizing that improving ones skill set is the best ticket to higher wages is incompatible with recognizing that there are disadvantaged people in low wage jobs? I mentioned nothing of bootstraps.
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[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:109, topic:5743”]
Did you customarily refuse tips during your food-service days, since you didn’t feel you had earned them with your unskilled monkey labor? Or did you use them to, like, live on?[/quote]
I used them, as anyone else would. What’s your point? How does that negate the fact that a broader and more valuable skill set is the best way to better wages?
No doubt, but being highly educated isn’t enough, is it? So, what are employers looking for, how can you garner those skills or offer them a greater value than the next guy?
Why is it that some seem incapable of accepting that a person can be sympathetic, understanding, and supportive of those who find themselves in trouble, while at the same time advocating that they attempt to work to better their situation? The two ideas are in no way contradictory.
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Yuh. I worked in food service for years, a few as a bartender, and I was totally disgusted by this story.
… and then came to the comments to be disgusted by all the people going “GAWD! These stupid poor people! Why don’t they just stop being poor? Not complaining about their compensation would be a start!”
Tipping is about employers finessing employment laws so as to shirk their responsibilities to their employees, full stop.
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I don’t tip at places like McDonald’s or Starbucks (I say “like” because I don’t actually go to those two places anymore for a variety of reasons) because the company makes way too much money for me to do the thing that they are too cheap to do. Actually I try to avoid the big corporate places for that very reason. I tip small businesses if there is a tip jar and they give good service, particularly if it is apparent they are not the owners. Food trucks aren’t usually bloody expensive, they are what small, non-corporate, non-mass-produced, food usually costs. Just because McDonalds or Starbucks can use their giant leverage to give their counter staff, supply chain, and growers as little money as possible doesn’t mean they are paying a fair wage. They use their size to suppress competition from smaller companies. And here in the US they have the great accomplice of private, for-profit, healthcare to make it impossible for a food truck to give health benefits.
And I agree with you, I tip 15-20% and I hate that we allow employers to pay staff so little and not offer healthcare and sick leave. Universal health care and a real “minimum” wage would make this country a small business superpower.
I just wish all employers would pay their goddamn staff a fair salary, set their prices appropriately to cover service and leave me out of it.
That will take mass real production halting, scab killing, strikes. They food industry owners (and customers for that matter) won’t accept it without a huge outpooring of blood. I agree that this is necessary; working for tips is fundamentally dehumanizing, but it won’t be easy.
Most food trucks here in Vancouver (Canada) are run by the owners; the proprietors serve and cook. When they first appeared (they are a relatively new phenomenon), most of them lacked tip jars. Now, a lot more of them have tip jars.
It seems to me that, given the assumption that a food truck is a well-run business, the prices are properly set such that you can make a profit selling your food at the listed price sans tip. The sudden appearance of tipping jars seems more like a social engineering ploy than anything else. They make more money and are happier, but you should not feel an obligation to put money in the jar; the business plan was designed without the jar. If it gives you the warm fuzzies, go ahead and put something in the jar, but don’t feel as if there’s some kind of 10-20% formula that goes toward it. You don’t tip the dude behind the counter in a bakery, there’s no reason to tip the dude passing you your food in the truck.
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Wall St. workers that are cheap shits? I wish I could be surprised. And the ones in San Francisco who stepped in, instead of telling their own Wall St. shills they should have tipped, are just as disgusting.
The traditional retaliation for chronic low tippers and asshole customers is spit in your food. I’ve seen it happen. I think you may have a similar tradition in the UK, but you are not aware of it. Tipping, and treating the help like your old friend is . . . like paying protection.
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There isn’t much “sympathetic, understanding, and supportive” in this statement:
If you find yourself unable to negotiate for fair wages with the person who actually employs you, and depending on the kindness of strangers for rewarding you to do a simple task is unacceptable perhaps you should develop a skill set that would allow you to escape both those situations.
Rather, it’s pretty condescending to imply that it maybe just doesn’t occur to all those waiters and pizza delivery drivers and food truck cooks that maybe they should just apply themselves and work toward their own betterment and improve their employability prospects. People who toil for low pay at jobs they don’t necessarily like may not need to be told by the likes of you or me that maybe they oughta work toward a way of getting out of that crap job and into a corner office somewhere someday.
“What are employers looking for?” I’m damned lucky to have the job I have, with relatively short hours (for now) and relatively high pay (all things considered) for the amount of education I have (not much). But there’s a stack of resumes waist-high near the filing cabinet by the fax machine for young and hungry people with fine educations who’d love to do what I do, could learn the basics of it in less than a week, and every one of whom could become passably proficient at it in a manner of months. They all wait for a vacancy to open up for the chance to compete with each other (scores of them!) for a job I could give them based as much upon a series of coin tosses as on careful interviewing. How will they stand out from each other? Colorful ink? Fancy fonts? Where I work it’s all who you know because a zillion people want one of a dozen or so jobs available once a year, and if you’re reduced to pulling resumes off the pile because everyone else’s niece or cousin has already been hired into the mailroom, you’re just hoping a decently sunny personality will come shining through on a phone interview because every last one of the resumes is completely interchangeable with the others.
Not every industry is as competitive as mine, but these days many are. Jobs have been scarce for a while. And I really don’t think you need me to tell you that, nor do I believe that The Will To Succeed is all anyone will ever need to triumph.
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