Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for November 23, 2023

Once, a young man finished his meal at a restaurant. He looked at the bill and put cash on the table, leaving a tip of just three cents. As he was walking out of the establishment, his waitress notices the tip and calls after him, “you know, I can tell a lot about a person based on their tip.”

The man stops and turn around, oh, what does my tip tell you?"

The waitress smiles sweetly and holds up the first penny, “This tells me that you’re frugal.”

“Why, yes, yes I am” He replies.

She holds up the second penny, “And this says that you are a bachelor.”

“Yes, my whole life. That is true as well,” the man replies.

“And the last penny tells me that your father was too!” She throws the pennies back at him and walks off.

The fact that a tip is needed for the wait staff to even make ends meet is what i find offensive about the whole tipping thing. It is meant to be “did that person do a good job” not “I hope they can afford food with this tip”

Accountants tend to get paid enough to live on.

Hey, here’s an idea. Tips for cartoonists!

Here is a comment as a response to someone who thinks that the tipping practice in the US actually works to incentivise the waiting staff:

In Germany, as in the rest of Europe and many other countries, wait staff earn at least a minimum wage and usually more so that they do not need to rely on tips to be able to afford to live. The service is at least as good as in the US. And there is no pressure to tip. People generally tip around 5 percent. It is more than enough and it is not the toxic and dehumanising atmosphere that is prevalent in the US. I don’t go to restaurants in the US anymore if I can avoid it because I find it disgusting how both staff and guests are treated so that the restaurant owners can make more money off their backs.

Just pay your staff a living wage.

I hate going to restaurants. Not only do I get much better value for meals I prepare myself, but having worked as a busboy I considered tips as a demeaning form of “baksheesh.” IMO

Tips are supposed to be a “curtesy” not a “requirement”;

What I am not liking is how tipping is getting out of hand. I go to a sandwich shop and get a sub. They turn the card machine around and say it is going to ask me a question. People in a sandwich shop make minimum wage or more (around here you cannot get people to work for less than minimum wage). I do not tip those people.

I once saw a wealthy acquaintance tip the waitress prior to the waitress taking our order. She was SO happy! She was the happiest person at the table! For the rest of the meal she ran like a bunny. So plan to give your waitstaff personnel a generous tip at the beginning of the meal so that everyone is happy!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I worked as a short order cook while I went to college. I started out at the minimum wage of $2.00 per hour. The waitresses made $1.50 per hour, but were expected to make it up in tips. Most of them probably ended up with more than the cooks made. I moved on to other things after college, and don’t know what it’s like now, except that the minimum wage is a bit higher.

A tip is not quite automatic, but if the service is so bad that I wouldn’t leave one at all, I’d be saying something to the manager before I leave. I only recall doing that once, and I don’t remember the specifics now.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone !

If your total tab comes to $60 and you stiff the server then the restaurant still has to report to the IRS an assumed tip (taxable wage) of $10 (not sure of %) so the server will have to pay an addition $1.20 income tax on wages they never received.

Restaurants are one thing, and you’ve all covered that pretty well here. Imagine my surprise when the card scanner at the local marina offered a “suggested” tip level of from 15% to 25%, for the dock hand, with my fuel bill. Considering the cost of fuel today and the size of our boat’s tank, at 20%, she would have received $25 for the effort of handing me the end of a hose. I asked what she would consider fair, and to her credit, it was considerably less. I had noticed that the previous boat’s total was still showing on the diesel pump, and it was well over $1000. Good money, if you can get it.

Yeah, accountants generally make plenty as it is.

Tipping a seems to be a prevalently American thing and it is NOT law. If waitstaff and other human services were paid decent wages, tipping would not be necessary for them to take home fair pay (says the biggest tipper out there….).

There is a trend with devices to read credit cards to add a tip. I normally tip 20% and round it up or even add an extra dollar or two. I had a son who worked tables and he often got “stiffed.” So, since I can afford to be generous, I am. Most waitstaff do enough to earn it. However with the new payment systems, it’s too complicated to add a customized tip, so I just click the 20%.

Tipping has gotten out of control. I don’t mind ( too much) tipping servers, my hair stylist, and pedicurist ( especially the pedi person) but I don’t feel I need to tip someone just for handing me my to go order.

Always remember: You don’t tip, wait staff do spit.

…no mask…

It’s a Long Way to Tipperary!

I worked in a small-town restaurant when I was in nigh school. Many of the customers didn’t tip, or left a quarter. And we had to put our tips into a shared jar at the end of the shift and trust that the owner was actually adding them into the waitstaff’s paychecks.

What was the reason they always paid wait staff service workers $2/hr and made them grovel for tips? Other countries don’t do that.

I was thinking of making and selling a tip meter. It’s like a taxi meter, except the dollar amount on a large display runs backwards. It may make the wait staff work faster to a point, and then you get thrown out of the restaurant.

The phrase “living wage” has been mentioned multiple times in these posts. People use it as if it is a fixed amount of money. It’s not. What constitutes a Living Wage differs regionally, due to the overall cost of living. Even if you try to normalize that number, people’s expectations of what will be included in a “living wage” will differ. A busboy who claims they are not earning a living wage because they cannot buy a new Lexus has unreasonable expectations. (An exaggerated example, but you get the point). People in skilled trades are more valuable to their employers than people who are unskilled, so they earn more. If legislation tries to raise the minimum wage of a farmworker to match that of an electrician, the electrician will end up getting a raise — and you have created pressure for inflation. “Minimum wage” jobs were never meant to support a family. Most were entry-level positions, meant to expose young workers to the structure of employment —not to be careers. There is not, can cannot be, an equality of outcome.

Most suggested tip charts start at 18% now

Waite staff are generally way underpaid, granted but the other side of the coin is $10 for a single hamburger and $100 or more for a decent sit down meal. Someone has to pay for higher wages.

Tipping is based on the outdated idea that porters, wait staff etc don’t actually work for the hotel / restaurant. Back in the early 19th century, that was often the case – they would be freelancers / hustlers trying to earn a buck by doing chores for wealthy patrons of the establishment (with the income inequality back then, a wealthy person’s pocket change could feed a poor person for a week)

I usually tip 15%. If the service person is willing to exchange three sentences of polite conversation, it goes up to 20%.

Before WWII my dad played basketball on a Catskill Mountains resort team. The hotels had games as part of the entertainment. As part of the job he had to work as a waiter and serve 3 meals a day, getting up at 5 AM. He was paid entirely in tips. There were pools on the total score of the game. The teams would collude on the score, placing bets in the pool through a guest who got a percentage.

Here’s a wacky thought, pay them a living wage; and then let tips be what they were intended to be, a reward for good service.

Technically, this sign would be noting a service charge. The IRS generally outlines tips as being non-compulsory, and the amount (including zero) up to the consumer.

Do like they do in communist countries, tip before food…

I tip because the staff needs the money. I tip big when I like the service.