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Keller said he's changed the system so customers with reservations have to pre-pay for drinks, including a service charge. "It's just to protect our staff,"
So, customers not paying tips is forcing the business to pay a living wage, as well as incorporate wages into the price model of products rather than leave it as a hidden morality tax?
Oh, The horror. /s
I find service charges pretty horrifying. I would like the number on the menu to be the number that I actually pay when I cash out, and service charges don't do that.
I've lived in the US for decades and I would like this too. The whole tip culture here is stupid. Just include a gratuity for the staff by default. Or better still, pay them a living wage like most other countries.
Sounds like a good "problem" to me. Fuck tipping. It all originated from slavery also.
It really obscures costs to the consumer who is required to do math every time. A $20 meal plus tax plus tip lol. So stupid. Just post the price for the thing and be done with it.
Yeah, it's dumb. One of the many things we do differently than the whole rest of the world in service to the civic religion of capitalism.
It's worse than that. It comes from racism and slavery. When you started having folks freed up from slavery who were doing jobs like being a waiter, Rich folk set the system up under the guise of saying good service gets good tips, but really it allowed them not to pay them. And so they had to work really hard for whatever tips they could get.
And that basically continues today. The system is absolutely bullshit.
No? They are just going to mandatory tips that are included in the check.
In other countries that's called a service charge and is usually included in the price of what you buy and is given to the employees via a thing called a wage
They won’t pay a living wage. That is just wishful thinking. They will just replace staff that quit, and continue to pay them nothing.
The price on the menu isn't anywhere near the bill the expect you to pay at the end.
Bill = menu-price + taxes + 20% tip
(where 20% is just a rough average)
Should be the employer paying their employee for doing their job, not the customer
America is a broken country that rewards the rich few and has no empathy for the rest
This is just one symptom of that
Exactly. Also just write the price you got to pay, including tax, service, the whole. Just the full price!
(Either that, or I wanna see a full break-up of the costs /s .... how much the farmer charges, transport, wholesale, sellers cost & profit, taxes ... everything)
These days I've seen people trying to push 30% to 40% as the minimum tip. Either that or they sneak it in with service charges or gratuity fees with a suggestion of a 25% tip on top.
Taxes not included is insane.
Yeah the combo of tips + taxes is enough to throw any european off. 13% where I am, so mentally disregarding the final price presented and then adding 33% on top of that is a huge difference than paying the number the items added up to on the receipt, and then tipping if the service was excellent.
I think State taxes are lower than my provincial tax generally, but its a big shoft mentally. You have to fundamentally accept and financially reward a system that considers underpaying its employees completely normal and actively resists improvements for those employees.
i do not tip the tax.
North americans are so stupid that some restautants tried in canada and the US to simplify things
menu-price = food + taxes + 20% tip
Final bill ends up being the same price as before but people saw bigger number and freaked out...
They'd rather be lied to by the menu price and then scammed for tips at the very end rather than have clear and transparent pricing....
I dont want to live on this planet anymore
a while ago, I wanna say 2010ish, the new CEO of JCPenney had a bold new vision for the brand. Instead of things being marked up and then perpetually "on sale," what if they just... marked things as the price they are? Sales collapsed by 25% and the company lost a billion dollars in a single year.
There is a reason things are the way they are, no matter how stupid they look. Consumer psychology is a trip.
Edit: and the thing is this probably works on the reader of this comment as well. Consumers, when asked, will say they prefer transparent pricing structures. But their real world behavior is the exact opposite.
Well, the US are the only country i know of that shifts the responsibility of making sure employees can have a home and food from the employer to the costumer. In central Europe, we tip when the service was excellent, but not by default, and only when being waited at a table.
I live in Central Europe too but I have almost the opposite experience. The way I see it is that tipping culture is way worse in the US but we were always bad here aswell and we're inching towards them every year. Honestly I also doubt that service industry people are not getting fucked almost everywhere in Europe.
THIS. I enjoy tipping for good service, when it's above-and-beyond. But a living wage shouldn't depend on a surprise tax levied 100% of the time. I worked as a waiter and I was pretty good. I enjoyed the tips I earned, but I worked in a country where the wage for a waiter was the same as a cook, and tips were excellent gravy for me and the BoH heroes who made me look good.
Everyone hates tipping, but this won’t affect US tipping culture at all. Paying staff almost nothing and making them depend on tips is allowed by US law. As long as that doesnt change, businesses will always pay their staff as little as they can get away with.
Businesses here are not nice. If a waiter can’t make rent, then its time to fire them and hire another waiter. Which they can do because most states have at will employment. So you can fire anyone at any time, for any reason. No notice needed, and you dont have to pay them any compensation.
This is why its always interesting when people (especially from europe) think that not paying tips is going to cause some kind of transformation. We are a corporate country. If you dont go after the business owners, there will be no change.
FFS, it's called a price for a reason.
If it were up to me I would turn the fucker around. Maximum listed on the menu, and if the customer behaved like an actual human being instead of an entitled prick, their final bill would be reduced by up to 20%.
Don't worry American citizens are also confused by the expensive tipping culture in the US. I still maintain 15% for a good job, 10% for a mediocre job, 5% for anything below. Giving above 15% is just subsidizing the pay the employer should be giving. It's a symptom of the fact that wages have stagnated for over 50 years. The pay that once supported someone and even a child is now far below the poverty line for even an individual. So instead of increasing pay to match what it once was many businesses have turned to aggressive tipping over just increasing the prices of their service / products.
Me as someone not from the US: why would you pay even 10% for anything below exceptional let alone a mediocre job? I am not going öt subsidise their employer.
Irl, culture. 15% is becoming an insult but is still normal or acceptable most places. If you ever want to return to a restaurant and not have your food tampered with its best to keep with some agreeable norm. At 10% I wouldn't suggest being a frequent visitor anywhere for your health and wellbeing. To zoom out a little, there's been no country I have lived in where the culture was 100% agreeable even to the majority. We're all policed in some way or another by it.
I, a US citizen, am also confused by tipping culture in the US.