Reply to Tipping/service costs in DC

Forum Index » Food, Cooking, and Restaurants

Reply to "Tipping/service costs in DC"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]And didn't DC just raise wait staff to minimum wage? I remember being paid $2.35 per hour, so the tips were the only way we actually made money, but now the minimum wage (which I assume is baked into the higher costs) plus a service charge (I'm the OP; it was added by the restaurant, I had no choice about it) plus the additional plea from servers (I've also received this).[/quote]

Yes! So it should means a reduction in the amount you tip. If baseline salary goes up, then tips should go down.[/quote]

I know these arguments have been beaten into the ground on this site but yes this should be obvious. Other obvious things that should not have to be debated regarding and industry that is literally based on the concept of customer service:

- It doesn't make sense for customers to decide how much servers should be paid. Customers only know a little bit about what servers are doing in their jobs and they generally don't even know what their base wage is or whether restaurants tip out or whether that server is great to work with or terrible to work with or always late or shows up early or whatever. Restaurants should determine compensation based on their business model and their intimate knowledge of what a worker actually does instead of asking customers with limited and imperfect knowledge to do it.

- Of course these costs will be passed on to customers. And presumably places that pay better will cost more. Customers get that intuitively and customers who want to support higher pay for servers can do so by patronizing those restaurants. Restaurants can even tout how well they pay employees. I am a devoted Costco customer in part because Costco has a long history of paying it's lowest paid workers pretty well and offering good benefits. Same with Room & Board. I do not actually have to be the person separately compensating someone in order to make a choice about giving my money to businesses known to have ethical and pro-worker policies and compensation.

- Tying tips OR service charges to bills by making them a percentage of the bill actually creates weird incentives and inequalities within a business and is unfair to workers and customers. Why should a server make more or less depending on how expensive the items ordered by the customer are. Does it take more work to bring a rack of lamb to the table than a BLT. And why should the customer pay a larger tip on a larger bill in cases where the larger bill is just due to expensive items and not extra service. During the debate over the tipped wage in DC one of the arguments I found compelling was how much compensation for service workers can vary depending on whether you are in a position or work a schedule that will automatically result in higher tips. And the workers most likely to get the jobs and schedules with higher tips are also more likely to be men and more likely to be white. Is a system where white male bartenders working Fridays and Saturdays at high end bars can make 100k a year but an immigrant woman working the same hours at a breakfast and lunch place during the week (a schedule that oh by the way is also conducive to being a working parent isn't that interesting) might not even break the poverty line an "equitable" system. No it's not. So stop telling me how invested the restaurant industry is in equity. BS.

- I want the restaurant industry to pay fair wages and have no problem whatsoever paying higher menu prices to afford that. What I don't like is being lied to or manipulated about the cost of food and service or having no idea where my "service charge" is even going or having a service charge imposed but then being told I'm cheap for not tipping on top of that or having to pay for service when I didn't even *get* service (because of QR ordering and self-service which as resulted in restaurants hiring fewer staff to begin with).

I don't trust the restaurant industry. They've historically treated employees very poorly. Now they are being forced to treat them better (good) but the response is to start treating customers badly. Uh okay customer service is entire point of your industry dummies. It's almost like it's an exploitative and poorly run industry that can't figure out how to make money without screwing someone over.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics