I stopped going to a restaurant after the employees said I was a shitty person for not tipping a girl who walked the food to my car $5. It was a $15 order. All she did was walk 50 feet. I get $10 an hour to break my back all day. Fuck you.
A an European, where mandatory tipping is not a thing, I find this practice of outsourcing the payment of restaurant employee's salaries to customers absolutely stupid.
I really can't understand how either customers or employees are letting this go on.
If one isn't able to pay their employees a living wage they should just pick another fucking thing to do tbh.
At the very least this needs to be spoken out loud and understood by everyone.
The customer is forced to subsidize the employer and those that suffer from this, the employee, typically blame the customer. The employer is the problem here, not the customer.
The employer is the problem here, not the customer.
That’s the first place I would apply the blame to, but, also a little bit on the employee, for either not being able to negotiate their salary better, or for not being part of a union that can do the negotiation for them.
The employer should share the wealth better though, that’s for sure.
Employees actually fight to defend their tips, as they mean a much better income than the wage they could negotiate, even with unions. Customers are the most impacted here, and can’t do much to change anything, except either stop using the service altogether, or stop tipping.
Mandatory tipping isn’t a thing anywhere at all. And if it were, it wouldn’t be tipping at all…it would just be a component of the price. It’s socially expected, but not mandatory.
I also don’t know how people let this go on though. The craziest part is tippers think they have the moral high ground over a person who doesn’t tip, when in fact it’s the opposite. Tipping is fundamentally unethical.
Not true, I’ve been to several restaurants that have small print on their menu along the lines of “a gratuity of X% will be automatically added to your bill”, sometimes for parties over Y, sometimes after Z o’clock, sometimes just in general
Just consider that a “hidden fee”. You’re probably already paying hidden fees on your cellphone bill, ISP bill, flights, hotels and Airbnb’s. Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to get over it.
Gratuity is a fancy word for tip. It’s a separate line item, no different than if you’d written it yourself when paying by card, except it’s not voluntary.
My point is the actual definition of both gratuity and tip requires they be optional. Those businesses are using the word incorrectly, but that doesn’t change the definition.
As an European, I have made the mistake of leaving a tip… and I have been given a tip… and have talked to others who got tipped… and our consensus is that it’s an offensive way of attempted slavery.
If I do a job, I’m doing my job as specified, for the agreed upon price, take it or leave it. I’m not lowering the price to lure a customer, expecting they’ll suddenly appreciate my work so much that maybe they’ll decide to pay me more. If they don’t think I’ll do a good job from the beginning, they can go elsewhere. If for some reason I don’t do a good job, they can have their money back, that’s on me to make sure it doesn’t happen. If I did a good job, and they don’t think so, we can meet in court.
This whole thread is people railing against a strawman/implying they're somehow sticking it to businesses to justify their not wanting to tip. It's pathetic.
That anger would be better directed at the corporations who have used propaganda to get people to subsidize the wages of their employees further and further.
The person you’re shitty with is just trying to get by, same as you.
I mean, two way street wouldn’t you say? Even with that perspective I wouldn’t go back to a place that shames you for tips. I’ve never in my life heard of giving a tip for curbside pickup, every major restaurant chain is doing it free these days. By all means I’ll tip a driven delivery or waited table, but curbside pickup?
Then why would they direct their anger towards him for not tipping? It’s not his fault. It’s not like they’re forming a union and demanding appropriate wage. At this point, steadily increasing tips are just shifting more corporate responsibility onto consumers.
See, even this argument, while it makes sense in that I should utilize my money to further businesses I have moral agreement with, is another way to put the onus of paying a living wage to employees back onto me.
I sympathize with everyone pulling down a working wage, but… When I need vacation time or cost of living increases or healthcare, or whatever… Are food service personnel expected to drop what they’re doing and join me on the picket line?
The only solutions I can think of would be far more universal than me not visiting a certain taco bell or tipping 40 percent. There are billions of us. Maybe it’s time for a universal union or boycott brigade or something? Change needs to happen on a grand scale, not be argued about on Lemmy. But, we all have shit to do and it’s almost the weekend.
If there is a massive mobilization effort for enough people to stop tipping collectively I'd be on board but that doesn't exist. So the people refusing to tip yet continuing to frequent these establishments while claiming moral highground are just hurting hard working people. I hate tip culture too but to not participate on an individual basis is inherently selfish once you understand how the system works.
Comb this thread. Find one acceptable comment explaining why they refuse to tip and how their actions help in the slightest. I agree the burden shouldn't be on us but the solution isn't to turn it around on other victims of this system.
Isn’t it though? If the only thing keeping that whole system running is my subsidy, which, to remind you, is intended to be a gratuity based on how I felt about the services (which people seem to forget is what the definition of a tip was supposed to be based on rules we agreed on as a society), then why not remove it and let the system topple?
For what it’s worth, I worked deliveries for quite some time, and dealt with douchebag customers and muggings, etc. I never tip under 20 percent unless you do something to thoroughly piss me off. But posts like this are ridiculously entitled to money that I frankly don’t owe anyone based on social contract.
I think you’re missing my point, but in your defense, a lot of people are. My saying that stiffing people their tips is wrong does not mean I support the system of tipping. I would be very happy to remove it. But as it stands, it’s still the law of the land. It’s literally baked into US tax law. To not participate does not tear it down, it just punishes people who depend on it. So I don’t accept “I want to end tipping. Therefore, I don’t tip“ as a reasonable stance.
People are conflating my stance of “don’t stiff people on their tips“ with “I support tipping culture.“ That is not the case. Businesses should pay a living wage. This $2.13 nonsense is absurd.
I think it would be uncharitable to describe the crux of your argument as pro-tip given what you’ve said so far. Honestly, I’m in the same boat as you, since I still tip in spite of my own feelings about how it’s affecting us because I’m powerless to change current doctrine.
However, I would like to point out that your argument does come off as an appeal to Nirvana in my mind as it is essentially advocating we do nothing but maintain status quo because there’s no current perfect solution. I think we can both agree that if we all decided to cease tipping, this would not be an issue within a year (granted it would take untold amounts of human suffering in that short time). Of course, it also would work if we simply boycotted every establishment dependent on tips.
But, again, both of these solutions are completely dependent on us stepping in to change conditions for restaurant employees on their behalf.
To be fair, I’m somewhat in the weeds here. My primary opinion is that no one is entitled to a fanciful tip, and I’m not really here to destroy tipping culture. I’m just getting fatigued by ever increasing expectations.
I understand how it comes off as supporting the status quo, but I assure you, I do not. I am more pointing out that an individual not giving tips without any sort of a larger plan in motion is just cruelty.
To give a real world example, there are more restaurants here opening up that incorporate a service charge straight into the bill. They often itemize it very clearly for you and clearly label the tip as “additional tip.“ I’ve even had some servers point it out to us to make sure we see that. My response has been to seek out more of these restaurants when I can, because I want to reward that behavior and help institute a change.
The best thing I can do as an individual consumer is help support the restaurants actively trying to avoid tipping as we know it. It’s realistic and I get to not participate in tip culture without hurting the people who depend on it. Going “I don’t tip because it will get workers off their asses to find a better job or organize against their employers” (yes a real argument I’ve seen throughout this very thread!) is absolutely insane to me. All I can assume is they are looking for a palatable excuse for why they don’t tip without outright saying they simply don’t want to.
It’s just so ridiculous seeing all these people justify it while also saying they are totally cool to go to these places that expect you to tip. If they want to undermine these businesses then they have to stop giving them money. It’s a big ask! Don’t get me wrong. But refusing to tip and claiming it helps to end tip culture is absurd. To look at it from more from my framework: I’m not telling people never to go to these places, I’m saying “if you are going to go to them, then you need to tip.“ The only reason I’m even saying to not go to these places is because they are allegedly in favor of punishing these businesses. Well, stiffing servers their tips is not going to accomplish that.
I like how you talk, and carry yourself through this type of conversation. You word things in a way I could never come up with. If there was a way to subscribe to users’ comments, I would yours.
She probably got paid like $4 an hour to serve people food.
You’re not wrong for not tipping $5. She wasn’t wrong for wanted/needing/hoping for a 33% tip.
The employer is likely in the wrong for running a restaurant where it’s staff are specifically underpaid to put the burden on their customers to pay them so don’t go broke/stay broke.
Is there some world where the cost of increasing employee pay isn’t also going to “burden” the customer with commensurate higher costs for the service/goods? Getting rid of tipping is a fine idea for many reasons, but not because it’s a cost burden for customers. The customer will partially pay the wages of employees for services they use and goods they consume, either through tipping or increased costs.
The reasons to get rid of tipping is not to save customers money.
The burden I meant wasn’t the money spent itself but the responsibility to cover it directly.
In the context of wages not rising with the costs of living, employers increasingly are passing the responsibility to pay their tipped employees onto consumers, intentionally or not.
If the employer pays their employees a living wage and increases their costs, then they are taking direct responsibility. In that environment you don’t even need to eliminate tipping. Tips would be the bonuses they’re (culturally) intended to be.
So you’re not even actually talking about tipping at all. You’re just saying you want a minimum wage to be a living wage. Unless you’re implying that minimum wages jobs that don’t pay a living wage and that you don’t expect to tip are fine, and I’m confident that’s not what you mean.
It shouldn’t, no. But there’s a $2.13 an hour minimum wage for tipped employees. Employers have to fill the gap to $7.25 if tips don’t cover it, but the simple matter is the law facilitates the expectation customers pay tips.
In some states, if reported tips don’t make up the gap between the tipped minimum and regular minimum then the employer is required to cover the difference.
Dude don’t be an ass you know what I am saying. 43 states don’t do what you’re talking about. 7 do. That’s not “many” and many of don’t live in those places.
I mean, I don’t. I know people who have had to work terrible jobs serving food because there are work requirements to their medicaid benefits and such.
It’d be great if exploitative jobs were eliminated. But the legal minimum is generally what the market pressures businesses to run with.
So don’t work that job. Shit pay should result in nobody working there.
Oh yeah everyone can just go to the job store and get a new job at-will and there are absolutely no external factors that could impact that. Clearly they work for minimum wage + tips at a thankless job serving people like you out of their passion for the work.
If you're not going to tip out of some faux moral outrage against the practice then you shouldn't frequent the businesses that use tips to get around paying a living wage.
Naw, I’m just going to continue coming and not tipping. And then your employer will force you to continue serving me anyway lol, so you will. And despite this, you’ll side with the employer who forced you to serve the not tipping asshole guy. It’s actually pretty funny the mental gymnastics in play here.
Please point to where I ever said I support tipping culture. Because I can show you several comments where I explicitly said I don't. I'm saying your "protest" is ineffective and selfish.
The act of tipping itself supports tipping culture. Tipping culture literally couldn’t exist without people tipping and people tipping is what allows this culture to continue.
You’re not tipping is not helping to end tipping culture you muppet. You don’t give two shits about them. You just don’t want to pay a tip and are hunting for palatable excuses.
Tipping also doesn’t help end the tipping culture. On the other hand, not tipping is more likely to end the tipping culture, so I’ll just continue not tipping unless I think you deserve it.
And you’ll continue to get shitty service. You’ll be the last one served a beer/drink even if you were there before someone else, that side of ranch you wanted will come out when you have only one or two bites left (or better yet if you waited for the ranch to eat, when it’s cold), and my employer won’t fire me because I always show up on time and people who tip even halfway decently rant and rave about me. So you’ll stop coming in and then I don’t have to deal with your tip-less ass. If you like shitty service, keep doing you (or frequent places that don’t ask for tips).
The business transaction was between me and your employer. Not me and you. You are just their employee. I always pay my bill in full and have never stiffed anyone.
If your employer doesn’t pay you fairly, I’d suggest not working there. But I quite like the food so I’ll keep going, especially since how am I supposed to know if they aren’t paying you fairly? I’m not privy to your wages. And it’s not like the people doing the hard work of cooking that food or delivering the ingredients or cleaning up afterhours or even the people who physically built the restaurant itself give a fuck if I don’t tip. They probably prefer it. And yet, all those people work harder than you and play a much bigger part in my overall dining experience. But your work is also appreciated, so thank you. But no, I’m not tipping you if I’m not tipping the person who made this delicious meal in the first place or tipping the person who made this super comfortable chair I’m sitting on. It’s just not right and I have ethics.
You clearly have no idea how the industry works. In most places bartenders, cooks, and bussers are tipped out from the servers tips. They each get a certain percent of total tips the server made that night. So the person who made the food DOES get that tip you leave, as does the person who made your cocktail, and the person who cleaned up after you. So to say they prefer you don’t tip is utter bull shit. Get your cheap ass off that high horse. Your protest is nothing but you being selfish and grasping at any excuse to justify your shitty actions.
Ummmm I literally worked in the industry myself… which is exactly why I’m against tipping. I’m fully aware of the ‘tip out’ process. And you know as well as I do the vast majority goes to servers. And, at least in my experience, 0% went to after hours cleaning crew. And definitely none went to the chair manufacturer or the plumber who fixes the shitters. You can try to justify to yourself as much as you like, but it’s an inherently unfair system. Especially when assholes like me can just get away with tipping $0. Doesn’t seem too fair… and if anyone should be in favour of it, wouldn’t it be the assholes who don’t tip? They are the ones who directly benefiting from tip subsidized meals.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain how a system of inconsistent donation based income is better than a consistent and fair one… no one has even tried yet :(
It’s clear most of them have no idea how the industry works either; claiming bull shit like the cooks don’t care if they tip, that probably even prefer it that way since it doesn’t go to them. But the cooks DO get a cut of the tips! Just a bunch of selfish, delusional, cheap assholes.
No no, I’ll just complain to your manager if that happens… it doesn’t though in my experience. I don’t have any interest in getting you fired btw, but your manager will tell you to serve the customer since it’s literally the job they pay you for. You literally signed up for this. And if the manager doesn’t care, the owner will probably be upset with the manager since they are interested in making money and losing customers who pay in full wouldn’t help them make money.
So what next… a threat to spit in my food or otherwise biohazard contaminate in some other way so I stop coming in? Just because I paid full price for the items I ordered? Does that actually seem reasonable to you?
Oh you’ll be served, just last and slowly, so no I won’t be fired. Because again, in an industry with high turn over I show up on time and most customers leave me glowing reviews. So you’ll just continue to get shitty service to the point where you’ll probably stop coming in. Your order will be slightly (sometimes even completely) wrong, things will take forever to get to you. You’ll complain to the manger/owner, they’ll “have a talk with me”, but nothing will change and I won’t be fired. I guarantee you they’d rather lose one shitty customer than a good worker. And you can rant until you’re blue in the face about how if I do these things to you I’m not a good worker, but in an industry where tipping is standard and those who tip are getting excellent service, I am indeed a good worker. And since most people tip, most people get excellent service. You’re delusional if you think your non-tipping ass is getting me fired. You’ve clearly never worked in the industry. But please, enjoy your (probably cold) food and being the customer every server hates.
If my order is wrong/cold I’ll just send it back. You really shouldn’t’t intentionally waste food like that! Especially because your manager will make certain I get what I ordered, they always do. But hey, maybe if you make the wrong order something you want to eat yourself … you might get a free meal out of it or something. And I hope you do, since you aren’t being paid fairly.
Again, as I clearly said already but you missed somehow, I’m not trying to get you fired or in trouble at all. That is not even slightly my goal. I’m just trying to get the chicken nuggies I actually ordered for the price listed on the menu. And I always do, every single time.
Feel free to let me know the name of the restaurant and I’ll come prove it to you if you like. And I’ll even make clear I’m not tipping before I order anything.
The only way to get employers to change what they do is to get the employees and/or customers to make them change.
Customers can sue, boycott, give them a PR black eye that investors won’t like, etc.
Employees can unite, demand a fair wage, walk out, and/or form a union.
Note that making up for an employer’s refusal to pay a fair wage is not in the customers’ “job description.”
Unfortunately for the employees in tip-heavy industries it’s getting out of hand. Fuck employers making me pay ever larger tips so they don’t have to pay a fair wage and the associated taxes and benefits. It’s not moral outrage, it’s outrage at being fleeced at every turn so the people in charge can keep more money while fucking the rest of us.
Grow some balls and start a union, stop whining about pay while taking the customers’ hard earned cash because it’s easy to shit on them instead of taking a stand against the boss man.
All I'm reading is a sad attempt to create moral highground where there is none. Once again, I know you aren't so naive, so narrow-minded, as to believe that your not tipping someone is doing literally anything good. No way you believe it is helping to end tipping culture/improve wages. I know you don't believe that.
Or start talking about unionization. It might work or they might fire you and you might get unemployment or even a retaliation lawsuit depending on where you are.
The vast majority of jobs are not tipped positions, including food service jobs.
So of you aren’t gonna do your job well enough that people tip decently, maybe look elsewhere. Given performance is not a one to one, some people are shitty tippers no matter the service, but if you half ass a tip based job your gonna have a bad time, and yes blame falls on the worker too at that point.
From the way they vehemently oppose any attempt at changing the tipping culture, I’d say they collectively are partly responsible for not being paid a minimum wage.
What a ridiculously privileged point of view. Not everyone gets to choose what job they need to take in order to get by. Most people aren’t choosing to be in a shitty employment model, they’re choosing to not be hungry and houseless.
Admittedly, their anger would be wrongly directed if it’s at customers. It should be directed at the government that allows tipped workers to have a power wage that’s made up by tips and the companies that lobby to keep that system in place. Small businesses included. Pay your workers a good wage and tipping is no longer an issue.
But having the tipping system is a great way to shift costs, keep workers compliant, and foster anger towards anyone other than the business owners.
…Really? America has some serious problems no doubt, but I think the hyperbole just turns people away from any real chance you have at convincing them of your position.
Given that many actual 3rd world countries have health crises that are far more severe than anything in the United States, I really don't find the comparison very tasteful. The financial element is absurd and no one will argue that the American healthcare system is optimal by any means, but you really need to travel more if you think that it's categorically the worst in the world.
I agree that privilege plays a big role in shaping one's perspective on this, and to that end, again, you should travel more if you can.
What world is Russia in? We're in that one. We just have a higher GDP and level of tech. Russia speed-ran kleptocracy better and beat us to the end game.
No one said it was going to be easy. it’s also not an argument against tipping vs livable wages.
CUSTOMERS ARE NOT AT FAULT HERE. THEY DO NOT SET THE WAGE. THEY ARENT THE FINANCIAL MANAGERS. THEY ARE NOT YOUR UNION MANAGER. THEY ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY. THEY ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO PAY OUT GREEDY PEOPLE JUST SO THEY CAN AVOID UNIONIZING FOR MORE MONEY.
My main problem with anti tipping culture is that people seem to think they are helping by not tipping. You know what actually helps? Forcing real change by making their boss pay them more. Trust me, real and true, the people paying these workers don’t give a shit if you tip them or not. They will continue to pay them the same shitty wage until they are forced to pay them more.
I love how service industry seem to think their rights are beyond everyone else’s of forming a union. Here they passive aggressively expect customers to go and form the union on their behalf. It’s not going to happen. It’s never going to happen. Because it is wrong, unrealistic and irrational.
You are taking what I said a bit too literally, which to be fair I could have phrased it better, when I said that what I meant was let the employees know how much they are being screwed over, or boycott the business, etc. It’s not for normal people to pay a living wage, but not tipping only, and I do mean ONLY, punishes the employee. Not only do they not get to pay the rent this month but they either feel like they are bad at their job or that you are an asshole. Very rarely do they blame their employer even when they should.
Very rarely do they blame their employer even when they should.
And there in lies the fundamental problem with tipping. It only enables this misconception even further. And it’s the employer who benefits the most from them coming to their job so yes, it is on their boss to compensate for the value LIKE EVERY OTHER JOB.
I agree, but the employer isn’t going to care if they still get their money. The employer will be the same greedy SOB whether you tip or not. If you really want to do the employees a favor tell them to look for a job that actually pays them what they are worth instead of replying on the kindness of strangers.
I knew a cabbie who thought like this. He would get pissy about a small tip. Same asshole refused to tip at restaurants because “I work hard for my money and not just going to give it to anyone. You gotta wow me.” nobody ever wowed him. In fact, he was one of the worst people I’ve ever seen in a public eatery. He would turn his plate over and dump the food on the table and act like a self satisfied 5 year old if his food wasn’t right. We’re specifically not friends because I let him know what I thought of that.
If the service is poor, I still leave a tip. A nickel ($0.05) is usually enough to let them know that you did not forget to tip, and that you felt $0.05 was all their poor service was worth.
I live in a culture where tipping is not expected. For most of my life, there really wasn’t a way to tip, unless perhaps when paying in cash. Which almost nobody has done in decades.
If I got shitty service, I would tell the management. I don’t remember ever having to do that. It turns out that people can behave without people waving a bunch of bills in front of their eyes.
The issue with tips in USA is that they’re not used to reward good service, but the people getting tipped literally need them to live, cause they aren’t getting paid enough with their base salary.
So businesses need to just keep increasing payroll because the government let’s inflation run wild? At what point do we draw the line? If $30 an hour ends up not covering cost of living do we just raise it to $40? If businesses can’t keep up they should probably close, leaving more workers without a job. Hyperbole for sure, but hope you get the point.
If your business can’t afford to pay workers a living wage, it doesn’t deserve to exist. Full stop.
A business cannot exist without its employees and if its employees can’t afford to live on the salary it pays them, then it shouldn’t continue operating.
So your solution is to just keep paying workers more and somehow businesses will figure out how to magically make money appear rather than fixing the problem of prices continually increasing? Seems kind of short sighted. You should be concerned with a business being able to succeed because that means families are getting fed. What happens when no business can afford one employee? We all just starve? We should be trying to fix the source of the problem, not the symptom.
Spoken like somebody who knows nothing about economics. If your economy is growing, so are wages, so are costs, so are prices. No inflation = no growth. That’s why the US Fed targets 2% inflation. Below that, it tries to stimulate the economy. Above that it tries to slow it down. So prices are always going up and so are wages. That’s how it works in all the non-tipped industries, why the f should it be different for restaurants?
You should be concerned with a business being able to succeed because that means families are getting fed.
And that’s the problem. If I need to tip for the service workers to get enough money to live, then it’s on me to make the business successful by your definition, which doesn’t sound like the business is really succeeding. It’s succeeding because I’ve chosen to tip the right amount. I’m not going to withhold somebody’s wages just because service was poor: they need to feed their family. Let’s cut this “do a good enough job and I’ll tip good enough” bullshit out and make sure we’re actually feeding families?
So long as there is the option of unionizing, there is no excuse to belly ache. Most industries got underpaid until they unionized. Service industry is no exception. If they don’t, that’s on them.
It’s been a few years since I worked in the service industry (bar) in Canada. Tipping was never really controversial. Some didn’t like it, most tipped, even if it was the bare minimum of their change.
Whatever. You’d complain to your co workers occasionally, call someone a cheap bastard and that’d be the end of it.
I never saw much of this “$1 is not…” and so forth entitlement. Seeing this I’d just assume you were fuckong awful at your job. Canadians typically will tip just fine for good service and leave nickles for shit.
Enjoy the nickle.
But, all that aside, a livable wage and the eliminating of shit like living on your tips needs to end. It should have never been the case or wait staff would be working on full commission.
Were you paid $2/hr aside from your tips like is the minimum wage for tipped workers in the US? If not, you didn’t need to worry because you weren’t relying on them to pay your bills. American tipping culture sucks and ruins the experience for both customers and service staff, but it saves BUSINESSES money! So here we are.
That’s not how tax deductions work. Donating money to a charity at a register is legally still your donation, and you can deduct it from your taxable income. Businesses can only deduct donations made from their sales revenue. Giving a dollar to Make A Wish or whatever when you pay somewhere is not revenue a business can claim.
All charities have overhead. Go check Charity Watch or Charity Navigator if you’re concerned about one.
In my country there’s a law that gives you real medals if you donate OR FUNDRAISE for the --(redacted)–. The corpos do fundraisings like this all the time. Especially one big fat corpo ass.
They’re literally using your money to get recognition and fame, and funding --(redacted)-- so they can manipulate politicians and capitalists to keep you poor and oppressed.
So I either donate directly or don’t. I don’t join fundraisings unless it’s for a very close friend.
Maybe we all should stop going to restaurants. Seriously, do we really need it? We can cook at home or buy refrigerated meals in the supermarket if someone really can’t cook… Just until the industry collapses. Maybe what rises from its ashes will value the workers more…
Lockdown did kill a lot of restaurants; the ones that survived perfected takeout. It also produced a ton of ghost kitchens serving exclusively takeout.
Governments at every level opened their wallets literally to keep restaurants open.
I cook almost every meal at home myself and I get along just fine. This is a skill issue.
Lol, it’s not a skill issue, and this is an incredibly short-sighted take. My wife and I are not only capable, but quite enjoy cooking, and we still go out to eat frequently. There are a number of reasons to.
For one, restaurants are social. At least once a week we are getting out of the house to meet up with friends for happy hour. No one wants to host that at their house. The whole purpose is to go out. And no one on a first date is going to go to someone’s house for a dinner date.
For another, if we don’t want to put in the effort for a good dinner, the pre-made stuff from the supermarket is rarely a good substitute, especially as a regular meal. So much is just processed ingredients or allergens my wife can’t have. If we want a good, fresh meal, a local restaurant is gonna be better, and for something like an anniversary or even just a date night it’s definitely gonna be better than what we can make at home.
And that’s not because we’re not skilled. It’s because good food takes effort. I can and have made beef wellington, or sushi, or duck confit, but I’m not cooking at that level regularly so I’m just simply not going to be doing as good of a job as a professional cook. It’s fucking work and sometimes I don’t feel like spending 2 hours making an incredible meal after getting home from 8 hours at work.
Restaurants just have more resources and capabilities to make foods we simply cannot make at home. I do not have the time or tools to do 16 hour smoked pork. I can’t source fresh squid. I don’t have the equipment for Korean BBQ. Should people just be deprived of other cuisines simply because they can’t make it at home?
Restaurants also fill a critical need for people travelling, whether for pleasure or for work (but especially for work). Most hotels don’t have kitchenettes, let alone kitchens, so forcing the millions of people who travel for work annually in the US alone to either eat fast food, eat only cold food that doesn’t need to be cooked, or go hungry is unreasonable. And food is such a fundamental aspect of culture that denying the culinary experience to foreign tourists is depriving people of a valuable cultural experience.
From the other side, bars and restaurants serve a valuable role in providing (potentially) livable-wage jobs that require little formal schooling or training and are resistant to automation. For many people they can be a lifelong career.
There are more to restaurants than just shitty chains like Applebee’s, and more reasons to go out to eat than an inability to cook. The industry certainly has problems and could be improved in many ways, but the idea of abolishing it in its entirety is both short-sighted and problematic for a multitude of reasons.
If places to eat food made by people that know what they’re doing and have all the right equipment to do it went away, I’d never experience 99% of what’s possible in the wide span of our planet’s amazing cuisines.
If you think average home cooking or microwave meals can compare in any way, you’ve been going to the wrong restaurants.
Honestly, it just sounds like more lower class suppression. The higher classes would be able to afford their own chefs, but the rest of us would be cut off from the wide world of amazing food, and told that microwave meals are good enough. No.
Tear down those class walls, don’t build more of them.
Exactly… I go to restaurants only on my holiday and I tip only if I find the service worthy. For example I was in Greece and we tried 4 restaurants there and ended up going only to one cause you could really feel the difference. And even there we tipped not percentagely but as a final sum. 4 people, spent around 100£ and we tipped 10£. And the waitresses were so nice and happy, always smiling, they even hold “our” table for us later on. In other restaurants they looked at us like idiots as: really only 5£ tip…
I cant imagine paying 30£ for spending 100£ as a tip, that’s crazy.
To explain the joke: That’d be 30%, income tax is ~30% of your income, but “a good tip” is only expected to be 20% of the bill.
To explain my feelings on the situation: Idk Greece but for America where tipping is like, a thing, this just means you got the server to work for free since the dickheads you’re supporting with your business barely pay them. The business however got their money and couldn’t care less about the server. The only way to fix it would be for people to stop eating out and collapse the entire industry, otherwise they’ll just keep rotating kids out or finally take the jump to automation. Once the industry collapses and rebuilds maybe, but until then, not tipping only hurts the “little guy,” the individual server (or servers if they split tips), and is frankly scummy as shit.
Again, because if I don’t say it a good 300 times, I’m talking about America where the tipping culture is already pervasive, you Europeans have a different set up over there and that’s great, “we ain’t talkin’ 'bout you.”
The government doesn’t have to solve all your problems for you. It’s still on us, but culturally rather than politically. Honestly, especially with American deadlocked politics, it’s probably easier to change people’s perceptions yourself than to beg the government to force people to do what you want.
For instance, if one person says “know what? He’s right. I’mma learn to cook. Fuck restaraunts” to what I’ve said, I’ve made more of a difference than “pleeeeeeeeease pelosi do something, save us!”
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