So what’s?
"a study by the Economic Policy Institute showed in 2009 that a family of four needed $71,913 a year to make ends meet on Long Island. By now, that would be $75,000.
In 2010, 409,063 out of more than 935,000 Island households had income below $75,000. But if they were families of four making more than $23,050, they weren’t poor enough to be eligible for many types of government help."
From a 2012 article about my part of metro NY: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/editorial-raise-poverty-level-on-li-1.3731636
I know nothing about salaries in Great Britain relative to housing sales prices, rents or property taxes, all of which consume half or more of too many folks’ income here.
It is very problematic to conflate the two ideas (tipping as a reward for service, and tipping to supplement the income of someone who is not paid very much) and use both to make actual tipping decisions.
Because at the end of the day, you won’t know what any individual who you might tip actually makes. And you will inescapably be wrong when you tip someone because you think this person makes $xxx, when they actually make $yyy.
If you tip someone because they do something good for you, then that’s fine. But if you then can’t get over the fact that that same person might be making what you perceive as an exuberant salary as a result, it will just cause no end of stress because you’ll be focusing on something you can’t know. And you might inadvertently take it out on the server based on a false assumption you would need to make to alleviate that stress.
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StoneSoup
That’s where it gets tricky making economic comparisions (and, yes, I know that’s exactly what I was doing).
Our government has just established the national minimum wage for over-25s at what it describes as the “living wage” at £7.20 an hour, equating to an annual salary for fulltime staff at £15K ($21K). As you point out, it is then difficult to equate across continents without knowing what financial support they might be eligible from the state and the relative cost of living - a goodly number of low income British families live in social housing (owned by the local council or other not for profit organisation).
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Very good points indeed. However, currently, we live in a society where the two ideas are intertwined. Afterall, we don’t simply tip to reward the waiters and waitresses. We also tip because tipping is a significant part of their incomes.
We don’t tip wait staff because they do an excellent outstanding job. We tip them for any average job. In fact, less than that. Even if we experience a poor service, we will still likely to tip 10%. Very recently, I receive a pretty poor service, and I still tipped at 10% (the last time I tipped this low was more than 4 years ago – just to let you know that even in exceptional poor cases, we still feel the need to tip). Basically, tipping is a must. The question is only how much.
Good point. Except we are in fact making this assumption regardless, we make the assumption that waiters and waitresses will starve to death without out 20% tip. Either way, we are making an assumption.
But in both cases, you are altering your tip amount based on their level of service (excellent, fair, or poor). You aren’t thinking about how much salary that person may be making to determine your tip amount. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
I have never made an assumption that a waiter would starve without my 20% or 10% tip. If I’m at French Laundry I generally assume that the waiters are doing well enough for themselves, yet I’m happy to pay a very good tip for very good service.
If someone shows a write up that says that the California legislature put the $15 minimum wage in place because they expected customers to stop giving tips, then we all might start doing that. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Some individuals may decide to stop tipping in protest and are free to do so, but that seems to be more of a protest vote based on a desire to mandate that waiters don’t make too much money.
Not true. If I really don’t account for “how much that person make”, then I would have walked out with 0% tip for poor service (zero service). But we don’t do that because we think “well, that was a poor service, but that person still need the tip to pay the rent and bill…etc”
The fact that we don’t pay 0% tip – proves we do believe that tip is a requirement – a requirement for them to survive.
I don’t think people said that we stop tipping right now. I think some say: Can the standard tipping % go down?
Remember that a long time ago, 10% tipping was the standard, and then 15% became the standard, then 20%. Now, it is said that 25-30% (in big cities) is the standard. The argument for tipping % keeps going up is that tipping is becoming a requirement for survival. Pay wage alone is not enough.
““Suggested” gratuities can run to 25 or even 30 percent, a number that might have been laughed off just a few years ago.”
I’ve commented on this during old Chowhound discussions about service comparisions between low/no tips societies and high tip societies (effectively America & Canada). It has always struck me as most odd that many Americans will hardly vary their usual tip even in the light of the most awful experience. As such, I take the view that servers have no financial incentive to do a great job all evening when they knwo they are going to earn almost as much by taking it really easy.
I am guilty of that. Even when I was giving that 10% tip (for poor service – I won’t go into details), I was like… well, that is kind of not nice… maybe I should give 15%. Well, but if I give 15%, she may not know it is an intentional low tip, she may just think I am cheap. So I actually had to debate myself into giving 10%.
In my entire life, I have only tipped at 10% twice. I hope this illustrated how poor she was.
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I’m not sure there is much substantive difference between thinking of a tip as a sliding scale from 0-20% and a sliding scale from 10%-20%. We probably differ in that I think of a 0% more as a “screw you for not living up to your service obligations” because it is lower than the American cultural norm (of 10-20%), rather than “I am keeping you mired in your poverty.”
I think if the primary rationale to tip someone is to ensure they don’t starve, then you can find any reason or excuse to get yourself out of that obligation to tip. This legislation might be just one of many. Others can be “that’s a nice watch you’re wearing, you obviously don’t need my tip” or “I’ve heard this restaurant pays a nice wage, you don’t need my money” or “I’m going through tough times too, we all have to just tough it out.”
However, I think that rationale takes the American custom of tipping away from being one of a reward for service, and more of an analog to giving a handout to a beggar on the street. I don’t think that is what at the heart of the the American custom of tipping.
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Yes, but what is the real rationale that 0% has become unacceptable. Culture alone does not explain it. If you start tipping 0% tomorrow, people wont’ simply say you are “culturally unacceptable”. They will tell you one step further that you are not paying a living condition.
But we do. How can that not be the case when majority of the server’s income is based on tip. Except for a few cities, the minimum wage can be as low as $2.13 per hour. Not sure who can survive on a $2.13 per hour wage. Tipping at 0% is not simply against a custom.
More than half of the people here are talking about a “living wage”. If you want to debate the rationale of a “living wage vs tipping”, then I am sure there are plenty people on this board who are much more qualified than I am, and feel much stronger than I do.
The equivalent of US$30K.
Among people I know, I’ve not found that to be true.
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No.
See my earlier post. responding to StoneSoup.
I was replying to this.
I have never heard anyone talk about not paying a living condition. It’s irrelevant to the issue. How do you know how much any particular waiter is making, or how easily that person can manage their life?
I have heard many times that 0% is a pretty harsh statement. The norm is to always leave something for service, unless the service was really bad. I don’t see any relationship between that and denying someone a living wage. If that were the case, then the scenario would feel more like giving money to a beggar on the street. I have never thought of it that way.
There are numerous other posts above about living wages vs tipping.
Let’s go through a few things. First, there is “tip credit”. Second, because of tip credit, a waiter or waitress can earn a much lower paid wage (say $2.13 per hour) than the federal minimum wage ($7.25). The argument is that the tip makes up this difference. Third, $2.13 per hour is quite different from $7.25 per hour, so the tip is often expected to make up a big portion of the total compensation.
This is one step beyond personal opinions. Our laws take a stand and recognize this condition. Tipping is to be counted toward a minimum wage as well as a living wage. In my opinion, it is not entirely realistic to completely separate tip from living/minimum wage when in fact it is such a huge factor.
I don’t see how this is similar to giving money to a beggar.
Tip credit doesn’t exist though in California.
http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/05/13/tip-credit-bill-falls-in-california-assembly/
Agree. I think this is why the original post was made. Since California is unlike many other states, should our attitude toward tipping be different.
Well I actually think you have it backwards. The tip was never setup to be a mechanism to circumvent minimum wage. Instead, the tip is a reward for service.
Now, once it was clear that in the US service workers were getting tips, the government decided that those tips could be counted as “salary” in such a way that they could allow a waiter to earn less direct salary than minimum wage.
In California and other states, this “tip credit” approach has been illegal for years and tips has not been used to reduce direct minimum wages paid to workers.
But even where “tip credit” is used, employers are required to make up the difference in cases where employees don’t make enough tips to get up to minimum wage. Employers cannot claim more tip credit than what the waiter actually received.
So if what you really care about when tipping a waiter is whether the worker is getting a minimum wage salary or not, you shouldn’t need to. If you feel inclined to tip 0% once you know that the worker has at least a minimum wage salary, then you can freely do so today, regardless of this legislation.
