[fnordpiglet]

Paying tips to a bar tender or waiter isn’t some sort of social anomaly. It’s customary. Whether that custom is wrong or not can be debated, but while it’s customary, it’s reasonable for people to expect customers to follow the custom. Going to a restaurant and tipping $2 is the sort of stuff that gets your food spit in and is reserved only for the absolute worst service - it’s worse than tipping nothing. That’s the custom, wrong or not. Trying to change a societal custom by screwing over the worker is wrong, it’s just punishing the person who can least afford your social stand against how the business pays its workers.

[notahacker]

"Customary" works both ways. If it's "customary", then we should probably also accept that the custom doesn't involve tipping as much as the article author thinks bartenders deserve if people generally don't tip as much as the article author thinks bartenders deserve.

And a former state labor official of all people should be blaming the employers for not paying a proper wage (and proposing regulation to solve that) rather than the customers for not making uncustomarily large tips to make up for them.

(Also, in most of the world it isn't customary to tip bartenders)

[fnordpiglet]

Ok, but sit back and ask yourself (if you’re in the US, which is the context being discussed and what they do in another society isn’t particularly relevant), do you tip at restaurants and bars? Almost everyone would agree they do.

The situation here is it’s a restaurant and bar that shows movies.

I wouldn’t expect to tip on the ticket prices, but it is surprising to expect to not tip full service waiters and bartenders.

I will be willing to wager $2 that the same people at a bar would tip their bartender as is customary in the US. The context mixture of theatre with bar is likely the cause of the anomalous behavior. And the authors point is: if you don’t want to tip your bartender at the theatre, then expect there won’t be a bartender at your theatre as they will work at a bar, where you would tip them.

That seems pretty fair?

[notahacker]

> And the authors point is: if you don’t want to tip your bartender at the theatre, then expect there won’t be a bartender at your theatre as they will work at a bar, where you would tip them.

Or maybe, just maybe, the venue selling the drinks at substantial markup could pay them properly rather than trying to extend the custom of staff wages being dependent upon the charity of customers to a venue where customers generally don't feel like tipping. You'd think a government official in a labor department of all people would get the idea that employers paying living wages should be the rule rather than the exception.

Tipping customs often vary according to venue, range of products served and how they're served (sometimes in nuanced ways that are baffling to outsiders). Honestly, I have no idea whether it's considered customary to tip at that sort of bar at that sort of venue in that state, but a complaint about making less than a dollar per hour at a supposedly busy event is a data point against.

[fnordpiglet]

I would note in a labor market labor has the option to work for the employer who maximizes the employees benefit. As you note the author is in a labor department and they meticulously detail all the reasons no one would want to work for this theatre. They use this as an explanation for why companies are complaining they can’t hire - because they aren’t competitive and make a hostile work environment. Instead, employees are exercising their at will employment rights and going to employers that offer reasonable work environments.

Which I think you’re agreeing with their point. The employer could fix the situation but instead just barrel ahead oblivious to the reasons their people are quitting. It wasn’t the managers, it wasn’t even the customers even though the customers weren’t awesome. It was the owners.

[BoiledCabbage]

And who created the odd mix? The movie theater company.

So instead of losing all of their staff, they should simply pay to retain them and post a "no tipping" policy upon entry.

It really is easy, but too people on HN will contort themselves into knots to avoid having any company have any accountability at all in any decision making.

[fnordpiglet]

Well, that is actually the entire thesis of the original link.

[tomrod]

Does the same logic apply regarding which products are purchased or boycotted for a societal improvement?

As a consumer, I make specific choices. If I am marketed a price, that should be inclusive. The change starts with my choices, since managers clearly are against setting high enough wages.

[fnordpiglet]

You can certainly not tip your servers at bars and restaurants, no one forces you to. You can be a one person protest. But you won’t change anything other than how little the server takes home. The business won’t even observe your principled stand, and they’re the one whose behavior you have to change. The only observer will be the worker who just doesn’t get paid for their labor.

[collingreen]

This is a depressing way to blame all the victims here and have no hope of making anything better.

It's like hospital owners openly saying they know nurses won't strike even if they don't get treated fairly because their patients will die and the nurses, as caregivers, won't let that happen.

The apathy toward a system that not just supports that kind of thing but very actively encourages and rewards it is brutal to watch.

[fnordpiglet]

Some restaurants have started applying mandatory tips. I think the right way out is to reward such places with your business. It makes sense for everyone. The servers get paid proportional to the volume of business, which they can impact positively through excellent service and upselling/cross selling, without having to grovel for the money. The patrons aren’t put in the position of deciding the tip amount, and if they are unhappy about service they can take it up with management and/or not return.

[paulmd]

Sure. That’s called “paying a living wage”, it was always an option.

Just advertise the prices with the fees included.

That’s the rub, restaurant owners want to advertise one price and then actually charge a bunch more once they know people are committed. And that’s something that the US is really bad about in general - sales tax is handled similarly poorly.

[Ekaros]

If food is spit on, I hope it can be proven and then restaurant can be permanently closed. Both the owner losing for not paying enough and the workers losing job for not doing properly.

This is where state should enforce capitalism by killing those badly behaving businesses.

[lsaferite]

> workers losing job

Spitting in food or adulterating it in any manner is a criminal offence. Losing your job should be the least of your worries.

[jaredklewis]

> Going to a restaurant and tipping $2 is the sort of stuff that gets your food spit in and is reserved only for the absolute worst service

How does that work? For table service you usually tip at the end after you’ve already eaten your food.

[fnordpiglet]

Right - as long as you never return or go to a restaurant where you’re known by one of the staff as “that person.” Customers reputations often precede them more than they realize.

[miki123211]

> Going to a restaurant and tipping $2 is the sort of stuff that gets your food spit in and is reserved only for the absolute worst service

Huh, I wonder how this works in restaurants attended by lots of foreigners. I knew America had a "tipping culture" and that 10-20% was customary, but I didn't know how bad not tipping was until this comment. Many clueless tourists probably know even less than I did.

[fnordpiglet]

Yeah the folks I know in the hospitality industry don’t like serving people from Asia and Europe for this reason. Right or wrong they view it as not worth the time and effort as the tipping rates are often considerably lower than Americans.

Likewise I’ve noticed when I travel internationally Americans get a great deal of service and attention because unlike the local population because it’s likely they will tip.

[zamadatix]

I've always tipped the customary amount but using the logic "it screws over the worker so it's wrong" feels like a bad litmus test for whether trying to change a societal custom is actually right or wrong. By this logic there would be no right way to try to end things like the custom of folks pumping your gas by pumping it yourself instead (funnily enough, still several states this is actually illegal) because it would screw over the gas pump employee. That doesn't mean it's right to not tip at a food joint in the US, it just means there's more to something being right or wrong than whether a worker is the main one affected.

To me, I don't think there is any way to change the custom beyond regulation. The incentives just feel too misaligned. The crowd of customers leans towards going to the place with the lower list prices, intentional or not. The restaurants will never collectively decide on their own accord to go against that flow themselves. The servers are never going to collectively force the restaurants to make that decision. Each option requires "everyone just decide to forever on operate this new way which forces no-tipping alignment all together" and that's just never going to realistically happen. Customers aren't going to form a long lasting collective which convinces the servers to press the business nor are they going to form a long lasting collective to boycott businesses directly. Businesses aren't going to care about anything but never optionally baking in higher prices on the menu since it's giving customers away to competition. What each group actually wants as a majority is irrelevant for something as minor as this. The only way it happens is if the majority are for it being regulated as such, which can happen with representatives deciding how the collective of restaurants need to behave.

tl;dr: I tip because not tipping isn't going to result in change, not because the only way to enact change is to make sure a worker is in no way ever affected during the change.

[fnordpiglet]

Yeah, personally I think the tipping culture is wrong and I don’t like people to feel they have to grovel for my pittance. It feels gross to wield that power over people. If they give bad service they should simply be fired, rather than having to earn that on each and every exchange. Some restaurants have started including tips without optionality. This feels right - it scales with the business volume. By making the business more successful, cross selling upselling and creating loyal customers, the wait staff wins. Probably the way to change things is to seek these restaurants out and make their business model successful rather than screwing over folks who are just trying to get by.

[demosthanos]

The concrete example (with photo) that he gave of a bad tip was this:

> On Christmas Day a family bought over $100 worth of tickets and food two days after Christmas.

I don't know how this family received their food, but it almost certainly wasn't at the bar from the bartender. Maybe it was delivered to them inside the theater as another commenter suggests, but it's just as possible that they got the food at the counter.

Further, the photo doesn't give any indication of how much money was spent on tickets vs food, which would be entirely expected to impact the tip calculation. If they bought $95 in tickets and one kid got some popcorn, a $2 tip is downright generous!

[fnordpiglet]

Yes, fair enough. However taken at face value, their point is if you don’t tip full service workers like waiters and bar tenders when they’re working at the theatre, expect they will quit to work at the restaurant or bar where you will tip them. Maybe they’re fluffing their article for clicks, but assuming they’re not, this is a pretty reasonable take. If they are, and it was as you posit it might be, well, shame on them.

My point was if you imagine yourself ordering $100 in food at a full service restaurant with reasonable service, do you imagine yourself not tipping? I think most Americans can’t imagine that. It’s customary.

[demosthanos]

No, I agree with your last point. I think the system sucks, but it's not fair to hurt the victims even more.

That said, I still think this movie theater is particularly shady on the tipping spectrum. The article calls out a family's food purchase and a kids' movie night as examples of bad tipping and implicitly criticizes the non-tippers, but it seems likely to me that the people involved had no clue that there was someone in the building relying on their tips that day.

The theater is guilty for blurring the line between tipping- and non-tipping locations, the patrons are just reacting as expected to the lack of clarity.

[fnordpiglet]

Absolutely I agree with you. And ultimately the article was about why everyone quit working at the theatre. It is entirely the theatres fault, and one way they caused their own situation was by not making the custom clear to the customer. If for instance tickets and food etc are billed together, it is tricky to know that you’re supposed to tip for the food but not the tickets and everything gets blurred. One solution is to make sure waiters and bar tenders bill their services independently.

Overall, I think the business model they have doesn’t work for labor, and they suffer the consequences by being unable to hire. To their point, it’s not about workers being lazy, it’s about the business owner making a work environment that’s untenable but expecting people to be grateful for the opportunity. The tipping was only one issue, amongst a lot of others, but it’s also the one that would have cost the owners nothing to resolve by simply clearing the ambiguity.