I’ll gladly pay tips if it was a fixed rate and included in the meal and same for everyone. Leaving tips on customers’ discretion is stupid. There’s no guarantee for the outcome. Only one who benefits on this BS is the restaurant owner

@farah
To add to this, people who intentionally refuse to tip out of protest are making the problem worse. Not tipping leads to the worker having to quit to find a better paying job. They are then replaced by someone at the same or lower wage. Not tipping benefits the restaurant owner. It doesn't harm them.

If we want tipping culture to end, we need to boycott places where it is expected.

@farah what are your feelings about tips when dining?

@PhoenixSerenity @farah

Personally? If you put a 'service charge' on my bill, that's rude and I'm not paying it just on principle, at least not without arguing.

OTOH, if I'm in a lovely little bistro, and I get the bill with none of that crap, I will almost always offer *the server* a cash tip, and I'm probably in the situation where the owner/proprietor knows that I love the work from the kitchen, else I'd likely not be there, and then he and they will get a bump on the final bill, but - important - at my own discretion.

@bytebro @PhoenixSerenity @farah

In the US, the pay structure for food service staff is written *assuming* income from tips. They can get as low as $2.13 per hour as base pay in 15 states, and under $4 per hour in 11 more: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

So if you're in the US and not eating at a restaurant in a state with a higher service staff minimum wage, I think it's rude not to tip.

You have every right to be angry that the price on the menu is not the price you're morally obliged to pay for the meal. But the person who should suffer your displeasure for dishonest pricing is not the one in food service.

@firebreathingduck @PhoenixSerenity @farah

I absolutely get that. The minimum wage there is just derisory. If I were there these days (never going to happen but) I'd comply with the local norm, of course.

@PhoenixSerenity I tip anywhere between 17 to 20 per cent. And it’s not because of the goodness of my heart, because it’s the custom. I don’t like uncertainty and unspoken social rules

@farah @PhoenixSerenity

As an autistic person who has spent far too much mental effort tabulating the unwritten rules, my wife and I tend to over tip for exemplary service because we know there are plenty of folks who never tip and that tips are the only way for most servers to reach even the equivalent of minimum wage. On pick-up / carry-out orders, I sometimes ask outright who gets the tip (I have to have the spoons for that much unscripted social interaction). If they tell me that the staff gets to split it, I still tip (just not as much).

I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm just saying that "tipping" creates a mental burden that many people never even think about or notice.

The NT world is chock full of that.

Edit: thank goodness I can edit my Toots on Mastodon to fix typos.

@jrdepriest @farah @PhoenixSerenity I tip workers as much as I can because I know they're underpaid, but I resent their workplaces for making me do it. If the menu says it costs $5, it should cost $5, or at most $5+tax. And the worker should get a fair wage regardless of how generous the customers feel. In the meantime, while that's not the reality we live in, I try to be generous when I can afford to eat out.