Tips are for the Tipped
By Jim Bauer
@porwest (91088)
United States
October 14, 2022 8:36am CST
There are many restaurants and other businesses that sometimes get caught up in inappropriate use of tip money, such as a recent story about an Asian fusion restaurant in Goldsboro, North Carolina who was forced to pay workers $157,000 in back pay for keeping a percentage of worker's tips after they were investigated by the Department of Labor.
This is something I will never understand.
I do not even support the concept of "shared tips," where wait staff must share all of their tips and are paid a split amount based on the total of tips collected. As well, I do not support tip sharing that occurs to compensate other staff like bussers, cooks and dishwashers.
It is simply not what the tip is for. At least not from the perspective of the guest paying the tip.
A tip is offered commensurate with the level of service provided by the waiter or waitress. For me that is period, end of story.
Yes, part of the tip is also to compensate for the lower pay wait staff typically receive. And as guests, we fully understand that when we sit down for a meal. But a tip is also relative to the level of service, and therefore is an incentive for the wait staff to provide the best customer service experience they can be afforded.
Bussers and cooks and the other people related to getting my meal to the table are important. But they should be paid a standardized wage and because their job is different, should not be allowed to partake of any of the tips rightfully earned by the wait staff. The front-line person.
Businesses who engage in this sort of thing, if I know about it, are places I will avoid simply because my tips are intended for the person who has, in my view, earned the tip I give them.
In "shared tip" situations, there may be horrible wait staff who are benefiting from the hard work and stellar service of good wait staff, and in no world do I find this acceptable nor fair.
At the end of the day, from my perspective, no one is entitled to a tip that is not earned.
10 people like this
9 responses
@marguicha (223107)
• Chile
14 Oct 22
I agree. But we have here some restaurants who have shared tips. And it is not fair. Here I give 10% tip normally to a waitress but will not give a cent to those places where you have to stay on a line to receive your food on a tray, look for a table and finally clean the tray on a carbage can. That is no service.
3 people like this
@porwest (91088)
• United States
15 Oct 22
Here, tipping is a limited thing. We generally tip baristas, wait staff, food delivery drivers, hotel bell staff, airport shuttle drivers, taxi drivers or Uber or Lyft drivers, bartenders and things like that. The typical tip in the United States is 20%.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (223107)
• Chile
15 Oct 22
@porwest The typical tip here is 10% but not to taxi drives or Uber.
1 person likes this
@RebeccasFarm (89873)
• Arvada, Colorado
14 Oct 22
Yes tips would not be necessary if people were paid on merit too.
1 person likes this
@RebeccasFarm (89873)
• Arvada, Colorado
15 Oct 22
@porwest If they are making good tips, I can see why.
When I did hairdressing I made great tips but would have preferred to just have a living wage.
1 person likes this
@porwest (91088)
• United States
14 Oct 22
I don't mind tipping, and generally speaking waiters and waitresses, even bartenders—most people who work in part on tips—earn far more money than if they were paid a straight wage. In many polls among restaurant wait staff in particular, when they were asked if they would prefer to get a higher hourly rate and cut tips out, they overwhelmingly said no.
1 person likes this
@porwest (91088)
• United States
15 Oct 22
@RebeccasFarm You'd have to go back and do the math, but I suspect you'd have made less money if you went to a simple wage.
1 person likes this
@Marilynda1225 (82789)
• United States
14 Oct 22
I don't believe in shared tips. When I give a tip I want it to go directly into the pocket of my server. I agree that the bussers, cooks, etc should get a decent wage and not be included in shared tipping.
1 person likes this
@Marilynda1225 (82789)
• United States
15 Oct 22
@porwest 20% is a good tip. I tend to overtip since I know how hard it is to rely on tips
1 person likes this
@porwest (91088)
• United States
16 Oct 22
@Marilynda1225 During the pandemic, to delivery drivers, I was tipping 25%. I have since returned to 20% as my standard.
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (121604)
• Gainesville, Florida
14 Oct 22
Shared tips sounds like something liberals would support.
1 person likes this
@Namelesss (3365)
• United States
15 Oct 22
@RubyHawk The rest of the staff generally earn at least minimum wage. Waitresses/waiters generally only earn about $2 and hour. They literally work for the tips. The only time the wait staff earns minimum is during training.
3 people like this
@FourWalls (68100)
• United States
14 Oct 22
I’m totally against shared tips, too. I’ll tell you something else that I’m seeing more and more that irritates me: tip jars in fast food places where the workers make $13 an hour. When I worked as a waitress at age 18 I made $2.13 an hour wage and everything else was tips. (And you know what? Nearly 45 years later, the minimum wage for wait staff is STILL $2.13 an hour.) Tips are to offset that “tip credit” that restaurants are allowed to take, NOT to give people making nearly as much as I was at my final job more money.
1 person likes this
@lovebuglena (44549)
• Staten Island, New York
15 Oct 22
We tip for the service we get so I never understood the concept of paying a certain percentage of the total bill. Whether I order a $10 entree or a $50 entree I get the same exact service so why should my tip be much more just because I order a more expensive dish?
@dgobucks226 (35621)
•
14 Oct 22
I tend to agree with your overall viewpoint about tips going to those who earned them. In the restaurants world I imagine business politics plays into how tips are structured, although I am only conjecturing as I have no first-hand experience myself. Waiters/waitresses are assigned stations/tables and although efforts are made to distribute seating to accommodate all staff, circumstances might "tip the scales" in favor of one wait staff member over another. Things like how busy a day/night it is, a customer's insistence in sitting in a particular area, or how quickly clientele turns over while dining might disproportionately affect earnings of each employee. So, perhaps there are reasons for shared tipping and if staff disagrees, they can work elsewhere.
Here's a story I can relate to you about the restaurant business you might find both interesting and amusing. My brother worked as a bus boy to help pay his college expenses during summers and he was a hard worker. Waitresses are supposed to share part of their tip for assisting in cleaning off tables and helping with customer service. Well, there was one waitress, who would stiff my brother on tips trying to pocket as much tip money for herself as possible, even trying to bus the table herself. Of course, when they were really busy my brother's s help became very much needed by this lady to turn over the tables quicker and to not get overwhelmed. Well, my brother talked to her about being stiffed but she continued to do it, so finally he just would not bus her tables. She quickly changed her attitude about the importance of bus boys when she found out she could not do it all herself. 
1 person likes this
