was tipping at restaurants common in the old days?

[HudsonHawk]

I am appalled at the stories that circulate locally about how poorly sports professionals, entertaining at our local places, tip. An entitlement mentality? Certainly seems to show a narcissistic disregard for 'the little people'.

My experience with sports pros was all over the place. I once worked a restaurant near the local NBA arena, and on game nights, sports pros were regulars. Some tipped well, others not so much. I waited on Evander Holyfield once. He was very friendly, and wasn't a great tipper, but not the worst one either.

 

[LuvMyMan]

As far back as I can recall, tips are left for good service from any "server". If I have had poorly given service at a place to eat, or anything that a person would think about tipping, then no tip is going to be left. But for the most part the majority of wait-staff do not have much of an hourly wage. So far, most States allow lower wages for a wait-staff person due to their being able to collect a tip along the way. But even as it has been mentioned, the "tips" are even taxed....to me that is not right at all. Tips should be exempt from taxation, just my personal take on that.

I have no normal percentage of a tip per say as to the amount the bill has come to....I think we here have left $50.00 tips when having a long meal in a place, and the waiter or waitress was super good, friendly, and helped add to the dinner/meal by giving proper opinions as to the menu, things like that. Typically however, $5.00 or $10.00 works for the average place you would pick to eat at. No tip means you are VERY non-happy with the service. Worse yet, some people will leave a glass of water "upside down" on the table if they are really very unhappy about the service and the meal itself.

Both my Husband and I will attempt to have light conversation with any wait-staff that seem to have something going on that is distracting them....if they have some serious issues at home, (sick child, etc.), then we tend to have more compassion for their possible mistakes and will not always refrain from a normal tip left for them. If you run into a really rotten wait-staff person, well, you can even make the comment to them when you are paying the bill, that some improvements on what they do would have arrived a tip to their pocket rather than a table only holding dinnerware that needs to now be washed!

 

[HudsonHawk]

Tips should be exempt from taxation, just my personal take on that.

Why do you feel that form of income should be exempt from income tax? Do you feel any cash payment for services should be exempt, or only "discretionary" payments?

 

[Feraud]

In Preston Sturges's 1942 film, The Palm Beach Story, a thinly veiled Rockefeller named John D. Hackensacker, (played by Rudy Vallee), states "Tipping is un-American."

If memory serves, in the 1936 film The Petrified Forest there is a sign in the diner that reads "Tipping is un-American". Or was it The Grapes of Wrath?

Does anyone know the reasoning behind this? To state something is un-American points to more than just a cultural habit of not tipping.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I believe it had to do with multiple factors. HudsonHawk mentioned negative associations attached to the aristocratic origin of (what was at the time) a European custom, which was most definitely part of it. Another component was that tipping probably struck folks steeped in a culture Puritan moralism and Horatio Alger rags-to-riches tales as charity

 

[HudsonHawk]

If memory serves, in the 1936 film The Petrified Forest there is a sign in the diner that reads "Tipping is un-American". Or was it The Grapes of Wrath?

Does anyone know the reasoning behind this? To state something is un-American points to more than just a cultural habit of not tipping.

Tipping was seen as contributing to a certain class structure, and a servile attitude, something late 19th and early 20th century Americans were desperately trying to eradicate.

 

[sheeplady]

I would gladly pay higher food prices rather than tipping if servers got a fair wage. Whereas some servers can make a very decent living off of tips, this is only for highly skilled servers in good restaurants with generous clientele. (It's less dependent upon the "level" or "fanciness" of a restaurant but on so many other things, I'll leave it at that.) But it can also leave lots of servers coming up dry.

I hate management tip stealers. I heard a rumor that a restaurant I used to visit was stealing tips (notice, I said used to) and I did some digging. Sure enough, it was confirmed. It is lower than low to steal tips from your employees. For the longest time I thought that a cash tip was a way around this, but apparently management was stealing these tips by collecting the vast majority of them off the table before the server got to them. So unless you directly handed the server the tip, chances are the management got it.

I tip generously, unless the service is bad. Now I often have my daughter with me (or us) and she makes a mess, even though we don't stay in a restaurant if she is misbehaving. No matter how I wipe the table down or pick up the bits off the floor and the high chair, there is more work for the server. The minimum is 20% for that level of cleanup, as long as the service was reasonable. If the server makes a big deal out of my daughter- gets her a special bendy straw, brings us the bill immediately so we can dash before she throws a fit- that increases to 25-30%. If s/he goes above and beyond doing things like bringing her a special treat, bringing out little silverware, talks her up- that increases to at least 35 or even 40%. We don't eat at expensive places, so on a $20 or $40 bill I don't mind adding a $5 to $15 tip. Servers work hard and it is a tiring, hard, and often thankless job.

Lots of people don't want to be the server that waits on the table with the little kid who's going to make a mess. One of the few places we go to regularly the servers say they "fight over" who gets us, and that's because we make it worth their wild to wait on a table with a little kid.

If we can't afford it, we don't eat out or eat out less.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I hate management tip stealers. I heard a rumor that a restaurant I used to visit was stealing tips (notice, I said used to) and I did some digging. Sure enough, it was confirmed. It is lower than low to steal tips from your employees. For the longest time I thought that a cash tip was a way around this, but apparently management was stealing these tips by collecting the vast majority of them off the table before the server got to them. So unless you directly handed the server the tip, chances are the management got it.

In every restaurant *I* ever worked in, the waiter was their own cashier, so we collected the money, credit cards, etc. You reconciled with the house at the end of your shift. There was a record of how much food you ordered, and you had to produce a combination of credit card receipts and cash totalling that amount. Everything over that amount you kept. If you had more in credit card receipts than you owed the house, you were given the difference in cash right then. That was one of the best things about being a waiter; you essentially got paid every day. The *only* way management could have stolen tips was by picking up cash off the table.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Sounds like you worked at reputable restaurants, HudsonHawk, but I'm sure this goes on. For instance, in San Francisco there have been (many) scandals involving the Healthy SF program, whereby a small surcharge is added to restaurant tabs to help fund health insurance for the restaurant staff. Unfortunately, more than a few unscrupulous restauranteurs have been caught pocketing as much as 90% of these surcharges as "administrative" fees.

Tipping was seen as contributing to a certain class structure, and a servile attitude, something late 19th and early 20th century Americans were desperately trying to eradicate.

This is very interesting and understandable within the context of that time, but still strikes me as alien. I've always viewed the restaurant transaction as having two components: my tab pays the establishment for goods (food and drink) and my gratuity pays the staff for services rendered (serving and cleaning). I find it hard to not leave a tip, even if my service isn't great . . . to me, not tipping feels to like cheating someone of their rightful compensation. If the service stinks, I just don't go to that place again . . .

 

[Edward]

If the service was bad enough that I would consider not tipping, I can't see me going back somewhere at all...

I am appalled at the stories that circulate locally about how poorly sports professionals, entertaining at our local places, tip. An entitlement mentality? Certainly seems to show a narcissistic disregard for 'the little people'.

On the flipside, Bill Murray is known to tip exactly the same amount as the full price of the meal, however expensive. That's never been in the mainstream press, nor has he ever acknowledged it, but it's said by everyone who claims to have served him.

In Singapore, as in most Asian cities I've visited, the tip in a restaurant is automatically added in the form of that 10% "service charge". I also tipped my driver in Singapore, as it was expected.

Yes, that was theo ther one, I remember now... cabs.

I definitely prefer a service charge (as long as I'm sure the establishment treats its staff fairly). I have leftg a small tip on top of that before now, but that was where the waiting staff went especially out of their way on my lady's birthday, and the service charge on the bill seemed on the low side as well for the UK (10%).

Yes, in the US, you are required to pay taxes on tips, just as you are on any income. When I was a waiter, there were places where you had to claim your tips, and others where the restaurant simply witheld a certain percentage with the expectation you were getting tipped, whether you actually received any money or not. So theoretically, one could have to *pay* to work there, though I don't recall that ever actually being the case.

Seems a bit harsh when the minimum wage is so much lower in that field, though if they evened that out I wouldn't necessarily have an issued with it.

But it does bring up another point about peoples' philosophy on tipping. If you poll folks about how much they tip, most will say they tip 15% minimum and more if service is good. But reality is far different. If a waiter averages 10%, he's doing pretty good. For many people, they feel your service is worth a certain amount, say $2.00. So if they have a $10 meal, they'll leave a $2 tip. If they and their date eat a $50 meal, they'll leave $2. If they and five of their friends ring up a $600 bill over the course of four hours, they leave...yep...$2, which is why a tip is often automatically included for larger parties.

That does seem a shame, though I can understand there being an upper limit in people's minds.. Certainly over here, a £20 tip would seem a lot to most folks even on a meal that cost, say £220. I've never worked a job where tiping was regular, so I may have a different perspective on this, but I think I'd have considered that a large tip irrespective of the percentage. I wouldn't try and pay less than the regular % in the US, though, knowing the tax set-up.

As for building the tip into the price of the meal and simply paying the waiter more, I'm fine with that in theory. I'm paying the same price either way. But it's worth noting that in places (at least in the US) where the tip is included or where the waitstaff make more money, the service suffers. In California, for example (particularly San Francisco), service in a restaurant is generally awful. There is no incentive for the waiter to be on the ball or provide any real service. Which is why the practice continues in the US. While the idea of tipping may seem aristocratic, the "everyone gets paid the same regardless of how well you do your job" attitude doesn't exactly fit the American idea of a meritocracy either.

There's al ot of ways you can argue it, certainly. TBh, over here I don't see the same difference between tips / service charge places, but that may be in part because of a broader difference in tipping culture.

I hate management tip stealers. I heard a rumor that a restaurant I used to visit was stealing tips (notice, I said used to) and I did some digging. Sure enough, it was confirmed. It is lower than low to steal tips from your employees. For the longest time I thought that a cash tip was a way around this, but apparently management was stealing these tips by collecting the vast majority of them off the table before the server got to them. So unless you directly handed the server the tip, chances are the management got it.

I've gotten now that I'm not shy about reaching cash to a waiter / waitress if I want to be sure that it goes to my server. I agree that restaurants which "steal" tips are morally bankrupt; if I knew of somewhere doing that I'd avoid going there.

In every restaurant *I* ever worked in, the waiter was their own cashier, so we collected the money, credit cards, etc. You reconciled with the house at the end of your shift. There was a record of how much food you ordered, and you had to produce a combination of credit card receipts and cash totalling that amount. Everything over that amount you kept. If you had more in credit card receipts than you owed the house, you were given the difference in cash right then. That was one of the best things about being a waiter; you essentially got paid every day. The *only* way management could have stolen tips was by picking up cash off the table.

That's the Germanic system (though the difference is, of course, tips given and expected there are much lower, but then they are entitled by law to a higher wage, so it balances out). There's a lot to be said for it, I think.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I *always* pay cash in restaurants, and I always leave the exact price of the meal along with an even sum for the tip, and I hand it directly to the waitress. No credit cards, no messing around, and she doesn't get stiffed.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Seems a bit harsh when the minimum wage is so much lower in that field, though if they evened that out I wouldn't necessarily have an issued with it.

From what I've read, studies and audits indicate waitpersons average around $11-12/hour, well over the minimum wage, when tips are included. And tips are just considered income, like anything else, for tax purposes. They're, of course, subject to the same exemptions and whatnot as well. Overall, a waiter position is considered to be quite a bit better than a minimum wage job, with some at higher end restaurants being downright lucrative. But there is always the unknown part of how much you're going to earn on a given day.

 

[sheeplady]

From what I've read, studies and audits indicate waitpersons average around $11-12/hour, well over the minimum wage, when tips are included. And tips are just considered income, like anything else, for tax purposes. They're, of course, subject to the same exemptions and whatnot as well. Overall, a waiter position is considered to be quite a bit better than a minimum wage job, with some at higher end restaurants being downright lucrative. But there is always the unknown part of how much you're going to earn on a given day.

And that also depends on if you get a walkout too. Many restaurants around here take the meals of walkout's out of the server's salary. Which always seemed very unfair to me.

What is the server supposed to do, physically prevent the person from leaving and get charged with assault?

 

[Guttersnipe]

From what I've read, studies and audits indicate waitpersons average around $11-12/hour, well over the minimum wage, when tips are included. And tips are just considered income, like anything else, for tax purposes. They're, of course, subject to the same exemptions and whatnot as well. Overall, a waiter position is considered to be quite a bit better than a minimum wage job, with some at higher end restaurants being downright lucrative. But there is always the unknown part of how much you're going to earn on a given day.

This is theoretically true, but in practice tip income ends up being taxed at higher rate. While the IRC treats tips as ordinary income, many employers use employees' hourly base rate to calculate payroll withholdings, leaving the employee responsible for a greater proportion payroll taxes, once tip income is considered.

 

[HudsonHawk]

This is theoretically true, but in practice tip income ends up being taxed at higher rate. While the IRC treats tips as ordinary income, many employers use employees' hourly base rate to calculate payroll withholdings, leaving the employee responsible for a greater proportion payroll taxes, once tip income is considered.

Employers are required by law to include tip income when calculating payroll taxes. They cannot only consider the hourly rate for either the employee owed or the company owed portions. So if this happening, it's highly illegal. Secondly, that doesn't change the tax liability of the employee. The employee owes the same, both in income tax and in payroll tax, irrespective of how much the company withholds. It's not as if the company can shift it's portion of the payroll tax liability to the employee, forcing the employee to pay more.

 

[Bad Co]

I was in the restaurant business all my life before selling my stores . Anyone that thinks the employer isn't paying their servers a living wage is lost in political correctness , any server worth their weight can easily earn between 60k to 125k a year .
In fact I had 4 servers that worked for me between 7 to 10 years and retired off the income they made those years
Most servers don't claim all their cash tips leaving the restaurant to make up the difference in wages so that they can get the unearned income tax credit somewhere around another 10k
Any good Waffle House server can knock down between 700- 1400 per week plus their weekly paycheck

 

[Bad Co]

What your saying is correct however if the server enters a different amount than the cash tip they actually made then all the restaurant knows is what cash tips they report plus the credit card tips if that amount doesn't equal 15% of their gross sales the restaurant has to make up the difference in taxes and wages

 

[Bad Co]

One can quote any statistic they want I've had 17 restaurants and have lived the life for 35 years
The math speaks for itself example 4 tables 10.00 ticket average 16 seats turned only 8 times is 1280,00 in sales x 15% is 192,00 tips
now if 30 % of that is cash tips that's 57. 60 lets say the server only claims 15.00 in cash tips and pockets the 42.50 for the day the restaurant has no way of knowing
law states the restaurant bring the wages up to 15% of sales overall the server just got a 42.60 a day rise x 6 days restaurant pays on a gross pay of 1152.00 for the week server got an extra 255,00 for the week these examples are generalities and most places pay out the credit card tips in cash to the server nightly but
one can see when the ticket average jumps to 50.00 per person
Now granted some establishments require severs to tip out to bussers and cooks but that was not a policy at my stores
and by overall means by years end
Savvy server choose to collect nightly and want their checks zeroed out every week and all go to taxes so that they can get a large refund and possibility the unearned tax credit

 

[Fastuni]

One can quote any statistic they want [...] any server worth their weight can easily earn between 60k to 125k a year

A dream job. Don't you think these figures are exaggerated?

I go ahead with statistics: all statistics to be found put the US averages (depending on state and restaurant type) at between 20k to 30k for waiters. Sounds much more realistic.

Even when accepting the proposition that the statistics are way off or that there are "unclaimed tips" consistently matching the wage (highly unlikely), we'd come up to 40-60k at the maximum.

This would fit with the 49k figure stated at a career-website for some Houston waiters.
There are going to be a few who earn more than that, but 60-125.000 Dollars as a typical salary for any server? Please...

http://www.bls.gov/oes/CURRENT/oes353031.htm

 

[Bad Co]

A dream job. Don't you think these figures are exaggerated?

I go ahead with statistics: all statistics to be found put the US averages (depending on state and restaurant type) at between 20k to 30k for waiters. Sounds much more realistic.

Even when accepting the proposition that the statistics are way off or that there are "unclaimed tips" consistently matching the wage (highly unlikely), we'd come up to 40-60k at the maximum.

This would fit with the 49k figure stated at a career-website for some Houston waiters.
There are going to be a few who earn more than that, but 60-125.000 Dollars as a typical salary for any server? Please...

http://www.bls.gov/oes/CURRENT/oes353031.htm

Then you set at your computer ,read and believe your stats
I will believe what I have seen and paid and we will have to agree to disagree
Please!!