Reply to How much do you tip a massage therapist for a 60 minute massage?

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[quote=Anonymous]I work at a membership based clinic.  I would love to do away with tipping.  Seriously, it's a big pain in the butt white knuckling it when it comes to my finances.  Though I love what I do, and I love helping people, let's face it, I'm there to make a living and sometimes relying on people's generosity and whims I fall short financially which is very stressful.   An unhappy therapist isn't going to be as effective as a happy one, they'll burn out like a light bulb and you will feel it in their touch.  I make $18/hr now from my work place and I can comfortably do somewhere around 20 massages a week, but due to people who feel the world owes them for existing I often have to do far beyond what's comfortable for me.  Anyway I would love to be paid $40 an hour and know that that was what was coming to me for 20 hours a week.  20 hours a week would probably save me from some of the lower back pain, shoulder pain and headaches that I sometimes find myself working through only to wind up getting stiffed.  Anyway, I digress.  Some things would have to happen probably because the clinic isn't going to take a measly $20 for my hard work, they're used to taking 70% and giving me 30.  So what would probably wind up happening if we did away with tipping and paid the therapists a liveable wage which is not reliant upon consumer generosity is that we would have to take 18 and divide it by 60.  We come out with roughly 30%.  So if we paid the therapists $40/hr and membership based clinics wanted to keep their split at 70%, they'd be looking at having to double their price because $40 is 1/3 of $120.  Those would be the cheap guys.

So in essence we could do away with the unspoken obligation to throw at least a $10 or preferably $20 bill to the poor guy or gal who busted their asses to make you happy by charging you double of what you're paying now.

OH and if you think 20 hours a week is nothing in terms of a work load, you try doing several consecutive deep tissue or sports massages.  You try to empathize with 20 different folks about their aches and pains, depression, anxiety and chronic issues and then get back to me.  Believe me, if you can't empathize or relate to folks, you won't last through your first year in this profession.  As for the massage itself it's not just a rubdown, it's a full body exercise and you don't get to pause for a rest for 60 sometimes 90 or even 2 hours straight.  Then you change your sheets and do it again.  Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, but I don't love my hard work and good intentions being abused by either employers or clients, and I don't love seeing it happen to other folks either.  [/quote]

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