In America, at least in restaurants, employers are allowed to pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees. So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.

Let me put it another way for my foreign friends - if you are dining at a restaurant in America with table service, you need to consider (at least) a 15% tip as part of the base cost. If you can't afford that, then you can't afford to eat out, choose a different option.

Then why call it a tip? The cynicism is just unbearable. If it's a tip people are going to have the option of opting out, disregarding any unwritten social norm that contradicts the actual word used.

Why then 15%? Why not $10 per hour of service for all tables assigned to the waiter?

Why chef who is actually prepping your dish got fixed rate but pretty girl should get percentage of the total bill?

If I order a $100 bottle of wine, should I add $10 for the delivery from wine room? And extra 5$ for the opening? And $5 for refill?

I love that we're just like "so FYI we decided this particular class of worker is okay to pay less than a living wage but to compensate if they do really good at their job, we're going to make it a social norm that people pay more than their bill costs and they keep the difference."

Wouldn't it make far more sense to just pay them a living wage and charge what that costs and be done? It's genuinely the only part of eating out that annoys me is it ends with a math quiz.

> In America, at least in restaurants, employers are allowed to pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees. So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.

This actually varies state by state. In Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington the minimum wage does not change tipped vs non-tipped. Also in other states if the pay after tips do not meet the state minimum wage the employer is required to make up this difference.

If you actually look at the data tipped employees make significantly more vs median income in countries with tipping than without.

> If you can't afford that, then you can't afford to eat out, choose a different option.

I think this works if we're talking about a full restaurant, If we're talking about a mostly empty restaurant then even a 5% tip is money that the server would have not otherwise had, pretty certain they'd choose more money over less.

> So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.

Actually, if tips don't bring tipped minimum wage to minimum wage, employers are required to increase pay to minimum wage.

> you need to consider (at least) a 15% tip as part of the base cost

No, I don't need to do anything. Restaurants are free to charge a service fee and state that plainly on the menu, as many already do. Otherwise it's optional and I will treat it as such.

Nah. 10% is standard, 15% is they did something good besides what's expected, 20% is amazing.

But I personally have chosen a different option because it's just exploitive all the way around. The business trying to exploit it's employees, the employees exploiting customers (10% being pushed up to 15%).

It this lower wage true for states like California?

I would not be surprised if those poor waiters make more money than their customers.

Americans pride themselves on their rugged individuality but deep down it is all very collectivist.