Everyone in this panel is underpaid. No change happens blaming one worker against the other. We’re all under the boot
I dislike this cartoon because of the way that the server is pointing angrily at the tip box. In reality, the servers are also victims of tipping culture. They deserve consistent and fair wages.
That will only happen when we stop tipping
Someones never worked in a restaurant before
IDK how common it is but in the sushi restaurant I worked at the server and the chef split the tip but you also had more than one chef, not that it changes the point of the comic much.
A “yes, but” like this, but instead all the countries where servers get a (relatively) decent wage vs America where tipping is mandatory.
every step is about 30% of the total cost so far
so, it might cost $1 to get the equipment for getting fish out of the sea (buying nets, buying ships, etc.)
- then, it costs 30c to pay labor to get the fish out of the sea, making $1.30 in total
- 30% of that is 39c for packaging so it makes $1.69 in total
- then 30% extra for processing it (cooking) which is 50c, makes $2.19 in total
- the waiter wants 30% tip so that’s 66c making a total of $2.85
every step seems to get more expensive than the one before it
Well yeah, because the waiter is getting a tip based on a percentage of the cost of all the work done before him.
First off, fuck this artist for implying that working in the service industry is not difficult nor requires skill.
Second, I make a very good living as a tipped worker in the service industry. There’s no way in hell that a small business owner could afford to pay a wage even close to what I make in tips.
There is an established system in place in certain industries the US and it works. Otherwise people wouldn’t do those jobs.
That being said, I don’t think we should be adding that system to other jobs. Everyone knows to tip your bartender. Not everyone is going to know that now you have to tip your supermarket cashier just for them make a decent wage.
There’s no way in hell that a small business owner could afford to pay a wage even close to what I make in tips.
Sure they could. All they’d have to do is set the prices to include what would’ve been your tip.
Yeah, customers are literally already paying that amount.
Even if they could there is no bar in the world that is going to pay its staff $50/hr.
As someone who lived off of tips for a a couple decades, I agree with all of this despite the down votes. It’s a skill. The people down voting would be flabbergasted by how hard the job is working in a nice, busy place.
Yeah but the waiters don’t have a living wage in the us without tips while the fishermen get paid –
Sorry I just got word that the fishermen are actually just permanently trapped on the ships and do forced labour out somewhere in the Pacific
there is slavery in the food industry.
Sometimes it’s children too
in parts of the US. if you want to be paid fairly in food service (and still complain about being paid unfairly because (1) no one is paid fairly in this HCOLA so technically yeah and (2) outside of payroll no one knows you’re lying) move to california. Minimum wage, pre tips, is $16.90/hr. All you tech workers probably don’t think a thing about it because your minimum wage is $27.63 (apologies but i can’t find the exact authoritative source, but this is close enough. look for the words “standard wage”) and has been higher than any other minimum wage in the US since computer workers legally existed.
edit: A. always forget the A
The source you are quoting is a US law that says tech workers don’t qualify to get paid overtime if they are on salary or if they are paid more than $27.63/hour. This has nothing to do with minimum wage, this is a law specifically made to not pay developers overtime for crunch.
I think you are misreading this rule. This allows an exemption to the time and a half pay minimum for overtime for highly paid people in a computer related field whose job duties are sufficiently executive or administrative in nature. If they are very highly paid (~$150,000 per year) the exemption is easier to qualify for.
The referenced section of the FLSA exclusively reduces the wage protections of people exempted under its rules.
i didn’t look too close at the rule i was finding as it’s been a while, but there’s a minimum wage for computer workers at which their employers are exempted from being required to give them certain benefits. I don’t see the financial logic in paying them less than that wage, but i never employed a ton of computer workers. it’s an effective minimum wage without being a minimum wage. de jure versus de facto
Everyone else in that supply chain gets a living wage, except maybe the chef who shares tips with the waiter. It fucking pisses me off when people bitch about the fact that they’re asked to tip an underpaid employee instead of getting angry about the fact that the employee doesn’t make as much money as anyone else in the first place.
Where the fuck is the restaurant owner who isn’t paying their worker a fair wage? Where the fuck are the politicians who put a loophole in labor law the allow this situation to happen?
The waiter is even being villainized in the last frame, jesus h christ. Fuck this comic and fuck you OP for posting it uncritically. I fucking hate this anti-worker propaganda so fucking much.
Nobody gets a fair wage but at least food service workers in my area get paid the same as everyone else (Seattle $21/h minimum). Tipping is rooted in racist class division and we really should be pushing to end wage exemptions rather than perpetuate a ridiculous sales-commission structure.
Absolutely!
But the people who say “just don’t tip” aren’t fixing anything.
If anything you should boycott the restaraunt.
In the US there are so few that prohibit tipping and pay a fair wage. I don’t think this is a reasonable solution either. Legislation is probably the best answer. Even with that it’s so incredibly engrained in American culture it would be really hard to break. It’s a total shit system though that is only becoming more and more prominent as a way for companies not to have to pay people and playing on a deep sense of guilty charity.
Well start with “places that pay a fair wage.” At least there, you can feel better about not tipping, or tipping solely based on service quality. Obviously any restaraunt will still let you tip if you want to, why would they stop you?
Yes, it’ll be hard to stick to only those places. It will limit where you can go and you’ll have to do research before going someplace new. But doesn’t any meaningful action require effort?
There are places like Sugarfish, that actually ban tipping. That’s necessary, because otherwise we still stay in that cycle.
They also are adding a 16% service charge, which is kind of like a mandatory tip, but they have a good reason for it.
The reason is that if they would put actual price on the menu they would be perceived at more expensive (people are dumb) so they impose this service fee to look competitive.
I prefer that approach. Ideally what should be done is as someone suggested is to ban tipping through a legislation.
I live in the US and I’ve worked in the industry since 2008, and I hate the anti worker framing of anti tip culture sentiment so much. I’m a cook but my wage is just as reliant on tips as the servers. The servers and the kitchen staff do equally important parts of the job of giving people a good dining experience. Servers do more than just carry food to the table in a quality restaurant, and there are hours of labor that go into every plate.
Furthermore it’s not always the employer’s fault that the pre tip wages are so low that tips are necessary. The industry involves several players outside of the restaurant itself, including landlords, purveyors, HVAC and sanitation services, and so on. All of them charge as much as they can get away with, which leads to razor thin margins for the restaurant, and labor is always the highest cost. Many corporate entities diffuse this cost in various ways but small scale places like the ones I prefer to work in don’t have as much room to maneuver.
If people had to pay the full cost of a meal that adequately supported the staff, it would likely be just as much or more as the same meal at a lower price with an adequate tip included (15-20%) and restaurants would struggle to stay open even more than they currently do because people would complain about the high prices.
I wish people would address the system as a whole, including the capitalist mode of production, rather than blaming the workers who are victims of this system. I’m opposed to tip culture and I wish livable wages were guaranteed for all forms of labor, but in the current reality we all live in, not tipping doesn’t do any damage to the system, only to its victims.
This doesn’t make sense. If the final check + tips is the cost for the whole service, just include the tip % in the base price and pay proper wages. Margins have nothing to do with this, it’s just exploitation, it’s offloading the risk of enterprise onto the workers.
You all have been brainwashed.
As I explained in my post, restaurants that do this struggle to stay open because people only look at the price and are less likely to want to pay it. Even places that keep prices the same and add a service charge receive many complaints and a drop in business. My source is that it has happened in multiple restaurants I’ve worked at.
I doubt you read my whole post because I also spoke against the system. I’m not brainwashed, I’m living in reality.
Edit: side note, all of capitalism is built on exploitation of labor, it’s the defining characteristic
Just gonna add a source to back this up:
The no-tipping policy lasted just six months at Chang’s Momofuku Nishi. Claus Meyer, a Noma co-founder, announced in February that he was ending the no-tipping policy at his own New York restaurant, Agern, after two years, citing slow business as a result of the higher menu prices. Gabe Stulman reversed course at his restaurant, Fedora, after four months without tips, telling Eater that guests were ordering less food than they had before.
People are dumb. Even if they should know they’re saving money overall by not tipping, they see a higher number and think it’s bad.
This could be solved by banning all tipping, then all restaurants would have to display the honest price upfront.
It would be better to just eliminate the tipped minimum wage and have everyone earn the same minimum wage (and raise that wage to at least $20 an hour). Banning tipping would be hard to enforce, and some people like throwing some extra change in their favorite barista’s jar every morning. But if everyone knows that they’re all getting a living wage, and your tip isn’t a lifeline to servers, it will actually feel optional.
People like this artist are why if I were ever elected President I would mandate 2 years of retail service for the entire population. They simply do not understand the stress of dealing with people in a customer-facing role in a service industry.
There was a study on job stress done a number of years ago now (I wanna say in the 2018-2020 range) by psychologists on determining the most stressful jobs, and much of the top of the list is what you would expect: firefighters, EMTs, non-active duty military, EOD technician, active duty military, etc. But the top 3 on the list, above everything else including jobs that have life or death situations, were all customer service related - baristas, customer support techs, wait staff, that sort of thing.
And the reason for this ranking was simple: jobs like bomb defusal, active duty soldiers, and firefighters are incredibly high stress but with long periods of little to no stress in between. A soldier is only on duty a few months out of the year, and in active combat for a small portion of that time. They have tons of low stress time to allow them to destress and heal from the time they spend fighting for their lives. Meanwhile, your average wait staff is in a medium to high stress environment of having to handle the abusive general public every day of the week, day in and day out. They have very little time to recover from a consistently stressful environment that only mounts higher and higher as the years go on.
As somebody who worked a job for 10 years that could basically be described as all 3 of the jobs in this comic rolled into 1 (I worked at a fish market), if there’s one group of people that I will bend over backwards to help have an easy time, it’s the kid at the grocery store, the cashier at Walmart, and the waitress at the restaurant. They don’t get paid anywhere near enough to deal with the shit that they do.
I worked half a decade in customer service, between restaurants and retail. I agree with the artist. just pay the fucking staff wages like every other service job, servers aren’t more special than any other service job.
I mean, I agree with you, but the comic comes off as complaining about wait staff “demanding” tips for doing their job when the other jobs in it don’t despite the fact that the waiters get paid a fraction of what the others do and are expected to make up the difference in tips.
It comes off as complaining about the workers being greedy and not the system that abuses them, and that’s what I was responding to. It’s the kind of opinion frequently held by people who act like “unskilled labor” is a real thing.
To me the issue seems to be that they are blaming the server for asking tips and not the restaurant for not providing a liveable wage to their employees.
2 year mandated retail service so people respect the job more isn’t the fix, though it might indirectly cause change, provide a real wage if lawmakers and their kids where subjected to it.
To me the issue seems to be that they are blaming the server for asking tips and not the restaurant for not providing a liveable wage to their employees.
Yes, that’s my entire issue with this comic. It seems like they’re upset about wait staff “demanding” tips for just doing their job, when the real issue is that restaurants don’t pay their servers what their job is actually worth. It’s often an opinion of people who look down on “unskilled labor” like service industry employees. Fun anecdote: airplane mechanics were considered “unskilled labor” throughout WW2 and into the early Cold War, when the profession was suddenly rebranded as “skilled labor” due to a pressing need for aircraft mechanics with the rising demand from fighter jets and airliners and a lack of people entering the field. There’s no such thing as “unskilled labor,” just undervalued work.
And my second bit that I always make about the 2 years retail service is that it would either destroy the country or make it a nicer place where people respect each other more, and at this point I don’t know which is better.
i would also add that what makes customer-facing jobs so stressful is that you cannot know the outcome. some people behave like assholes, demand to see the manager, then tell them that you did a bad job, and there’s nothing that you can do about it.
if you’re working as a bomb defuser, you either pull the right wire or you don’t. it’s simple laws of physics. you follow them, and that’s it. when you’re working with people, however, there are no rules. that’s what people don’t get. people seem to think that well, working with other people is just natural. however what makes it so stressful is that there are no rules. no matter what you do, you can always get shit on. that possibility drags on your brain and eats a lot of your energy.
The service I got was slow. I come here all the time, so i should know how things should be around here. My waiter sucks, I demand that he be fired.
[Paraphrased, but this is actual feedback I got the day before mothers day, when our dishwasher was broken. And yes, he stiffed me, because of course]
I’ve also had a father tell his children that “tipping is optional and they should be happy with 5%” after I spent an hour and a half busting ass for his family’s ridiculous requests. After taxes and tip out 5% can literally be less than zero into your waiter’s pocket, fwiw.
Y’all suck. I assume anyone I see bitching about waitstaff getting tips, or implying they dont tip, is an asshole, because IME those are the complaints of an asshole. Tipping culture in general is a whole other topic that there can be reasoned and nuanced discussions about, but if your take is “tipping sucks and I don’t have to,” then you are willingly taking advantage of a system that denies people of the fruits of their labor.
Am I exempt from tipping and the no tipping shame if I walk over to the chef to order and pick up the food myself? Because if the customers are the ones who must pay the servers a living wage via tipping, which is optional, that must mean the service itself is optional and I can do it myself.
Tipping presents a philosophical problem for me, and I just can not do it. Luckily, I live in a nation where its not done and service is not optional and I can not go to the chef to order my own food so the restaurant provides the service of a server (and pays them a wage).You make the exact same arguments that the Sovereign Citizens make.
You’re every bit the asshole that they are.
You’re every bit the asshole that they are.
You don’t even know me, but hey… whatever.
I am judging you solely off what you said, dumbass.
I mean Christ, do you people not have ANY reading comprehension?
Get a little angrier, you’re just not disdainful enough to be right yet. Insult them with the very first word and end the sentence with a nazi closer, maybe.
Sure, you could try to make a point, but why? Insults are all that matters.
p.s. you’re still wrong, throw a tantrum
We people?!
You’ve become plural, congrats! Big achievement.
Yes, but the author of this comic turns out to be a real moron. Third comic in the row that is just stupid.
Bro thank you for saying this. I was gonna say I’m starting to dislike this yes but person. No surprise since they’re probably popular on Instagram. Not many Instagram popular people that aren’t kinda stupid. Gotta be peddling stupid to appeal to a majority of that crowd tbh
Yes, but waiter are underpaid and should have a salary too.
… Apparently. This is too american for me to understand
No, you hit the nail on the head. A lot of Americans are fooled by this sort of anti-worker division propaganda. This is a conservative / right wing comic.
(I get it. It was just for the meme/joke)
Right wing propaganda is still right wing propaganda when packaged in a “joke” or as “irony”. You were correct to question it.
As wish many things American, it goes back to slavery. Tipped workers were a way for employers to avoid paying (mostly black) workers, effectively providing slavery-lite even after slavery had ended (Happy Juneteenth).
In any case, current U.S. labor law has specific carve-outs for certain tipped jobs that allow the minimal wage to be not the already unlivable $7.25/hr but the unsustainable $2.15/hr. Technically, employers are required to bring a tipped workers pay up to $7.25/hr if they do not report enough tips, but in practice employers encourage reporting incorrect tips and find reasons (if needed) to dismiss employees that do not report enough tips.
Fisherman, Sailor, Teamster, and Chef are not tipped positions. Waitstaff is a tipped position.
Tipped workers were a way for employers to avoid paying (mostly black) workers, effectively providing slavery-lite even after slavery had ended
It’s not just about being cheap though. It reinforces the idea that the worker is of a lower social status than the customer. The customer may, at their own discretion, choose whether or not to pay the worker a fair wage for the work they have done. That’s a very clear power imbalance.
my wife hates this but money burns a hole in my pocket. i inherited it from my dad. so while i contribute to the problem, it’s because a larger than average tip really brightens someone’s day. it means i can’t eat out as much, but that’s my problem not theirs.
And ironically one of the biggest proponents of keeping the tipped minimum wage was Herman Cain (who is black. Or was. He dead now).
please oh please phrase it Herman Cain (who is dead) it tickles so many ex-cultists on here’s funny bones
True but some states don’t have this distinction and it means servers actually make pretty decent money.
Yes and “tipping” has gone insane. Not just amounts (tho even when I was a child, my parents consider 10% the bare minimum) but also you get prompted to leave a tip for transactions that don’t involve a tipped position.
My experience is from one of the shittier states for workers (Arkansas), right-to-work effectively eliminates all union activity, the state would remove the minimum wage if it could, and there’s even people that want to make it easier for 14-18 year olds to work.
Outside of the US it’s a reward for good work
Inside the US its you directly subsidising the businesses refusal to even pay minimum wage.
So bitching about a higher tip is bitching about fair wages for work. You got an issue paying that, you take it up with the employer who has shoved the burden of paying their waitstaff onto you.
Stop being little bitches and unionise. Tip is not pay.
Exactly! Don’t like paying tips? Stop eating at those establishments.
One of the greatest achievements of restaurant owners was to pay waiters sub liveable wage and make them blame customers for it.
Waiter is the only one who gets their wage subsidized by their bosses customers.
Everyone gets their wage subsidized by the customers of the business (both B2B and B2C) they work for.
So, they all can ask for tips?
The money comes from the customer in either scenario, functionally there is no difference it flows from customer to employee regardless.
Edit: just to be clear, I am very much against the tipping culture in the US as it only benefits the employer and leaves employees at the whim of the customers mood. But all employee salaries are paid by the customers money in the end.
Yeah, but that’s not what subsidized means at all.
ARGLEBARGLE I LOVE YOU FOR BRINGING UP THIS POINT
No the definition is technically to be partially financially supported by public funds (I.e. government or other organization)…but that wouldn’t cover tipping from private customers either so…
No, you’re just wrong here and there is no technically.
You’re misunderstanding what public funds are.
They can all ask, I’ll still say no.
No, but we shouldn’t expect to pay less if they stop receiving tips and the employer pays them instead. I think a lot of people make this assumption. In reality it’ll be more like you don’t have to tip but your meal is 20% more expensive.
No one HAS to tip. Also the meal is priced at what the business believes the customer will pay.
7% more expensive in reality. labor costs are a lot in restaurants, but the big one is rent followed by utilities
there was a study on fast food prices rising in relation to the 15 dollar minimum wage hike. that’s where i’m getting my number from. also my ass because it’s me, but my estimates are usually spot on.
And we won’t pay less!
they stop receiving tips we pay the same
employer pays them insteadoops, forgot this part. restaurant owner makes 15% more money!To be fair, they will do the whole boiling frog pot thing. It’ll be easier to do with 7% inflation a year.
we’re currently1 at 4%/mo or 28% a year which is fuuuuun
1last i checked which was i forget but it was less than a year ago and the number makes krasnov look bad so meh.
Yeah, but now everyone’s running out of strategic oil reserves.
Are you saying the restaurant should charge more and prevent tipping or if you don’t tip you get hit with an extra charge? Or is it a different method?
Ideally, the restaurant should pay enough that tipping is not required (which does require them to raise prices). As a customer you would then be free to tip a smaller amount if you thought that the service was exceptional.
That’s how it works in the UK although a lot of businesses are adding a tip onto the bill in advance so that you would need to complain about the service to get it removed (technically you can just ask them to remove the tip without giving a reason if that’s how you want to play it).
I would like the charge to stay the same but the waiter still gets a living wage but it’s absurd to believe that will happen and may be unrealistic to expect that it should. I don’t know what profit margin any given restaurant has but none will give up 20% of profits and a lot may not be able to remain open if they have to. In any scenario the business would have to change beyond recognition. The ones who choose to adapt may just fire the waiters and have you order through a machine and then you don’t have to tip but that business model already exists in most fast food chains.
I would like the charge to stay the same but the waiter still gets a living wage but it’s absurd to believe that will happen and may be unrealistic to expect that it should
which is why it takes a change in law. california did it.
I may have misunderstood the question. Restaurants who have adopted no tipping add the 20% charge in one way or another. Either the food costs more or there’s a service fee.
(I get it. It was just for the meme)
Visit Canada where wait staff don’t have a separate minimum wage yet still we have American tip culture.
Canadian from Quebec here.
Yes, we do.
So is the fisherman and the cook.
Buy Fairtrade. Cook your own god damn meals. Pay FUCKING EVERYONE a livable wage. The planet is on fire and the like 50 to 100 people responsible are also the reason why nobody’s getting paid enough and why people are getting annoyed at servers asking for tips.
Happy cake day
Ya filthy animal
Ty
