Reply to Bon Appetit article on tipping

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I totally agree about the quote. The restaurant industry is a mess right now. They don't know what they are doing and they don't understand their customer. At all. Here are various arguments I've heard from people in the industry over the last year:

- Customers should be asking servers how much they are compensated and whether service charges are going to staff, and basing tip on that conversation. This is nuts -- I do not want to spend my nice dinner out discussing the waiters compensation, and I definitely don't want to have to increase how much I pay for my meal in order to make up for a stingy owner, especially if I'm already paying a service charge. Work your employment contract out with your employer and leave me out of it.

- Customers should accept rude, slow, or inadequate service because restaurants are all short-staffed and people are burned out from Covid. But... customers are also burned out from Covid. They are not going to accept crap service, especially if they are paying higher prices due to inflation and service charges. I'm not even commenting on whether they should or not -- they just won't.

- Restaurants can't just bake cost of service into food prices because that would make the food much more expensive and then customers wouldn't come in. But then the argument is that the restaurants will still charge this amount that apparently would scare of customers, they'll just do it in a tricky way so the customer doesn't know until the bill arrives. And they think this is a valid argument. What the hell.

- Customers are all rude and unreasonable now and working in food service sucks. I have worked in both food service and other service jobs (retail, personal fitness) and I know that some customers really are terribly rude and unreasonable. So I do get it. But the truth is that if you can't find a way to deal with that, food service is not for you. When I see individual servers saying this, my gentle suggestion is to find another job (it's what I did). Burn out is real and happens in many public-facing industries. But when I see restaurant owners saying this, I don't feel bad for them. Don't go into this industry if you expect to be treated awesome all the time and for all customers to be wonderful. You should only be in the restaurant industry if you understand that customers are sometimes a PITA and still believe that you can find ways to deliver value and please them. Otherwise, get out. It's not for you.[/quote]

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