In other parts of the world, there is no tipping. This is because it’s expected for the employer to provide the employee a living wage, not statistics and an underground economy.
The thing is, America is culturally really influenctial. Here in Germany we have a wide variety of jobs that typically pay minimum wage. Some are service related, others aren’t. It’s roughly 20% of the workforce.
But we listen to american podcasts, watch your movies, your series and so on.
So waiters tend to get minimum wage + tax free tips, while cashiers just get minimum wage. Granted, tips are more like 10% here. I hate tips being an expectation.
Wouldn’t the whole system make more sense as a commission based wage scale that is tied to the price of the items ordered? A base wage that meets legal requirements added to an incentive tied to a percent of each item sold?
The variable percentage would be tied to how much the waiter sold and what items, which would scale with both the amount of work (on large tables) and the skill of the waiter to help the business move product and give the customer a good experience.
The balance point being selling as much as possible while providing the customer an experience they want to return to.
Any hard selling and under serving keeps people from wanting to come back and hurts the business. Any lack of care in service prevents additional sales that can boost wage earnings and prevents the business from not selling stock before it goes bad.
Discretionary tipping is dumb, even if you are a capitalist. There is a balance that doesn’t stagnate the business or create exploitative labor practices. We just don’t do it because we are a social democracy that has a systemic misunderstanding of when capitalism is good and when it is bad.
In other parts of the world, there is no tipping. This is because it’s expected for the employer to provide the employee a living wage, not statistics and an underground economy.
The thing is, America is culturally really influenctial. Here in Germany we have a wide variety of jobs that typically pay minimum wage. Some are service related, others aren’t. It’s roughly 20% of the workforce.
But we listen to american podcasts, watch your movies, your series and so on.
So waiters tend to get minimum wage + tax free tips, while cashiers just get minimum wage. Granted, tips are more like 10% here. I hate tips being an expectation.
Wouldn’t the whole system make more sense as a commission based wage scale that is tied to the price of the items ordered? A base wage that meets legal requirements added to an incentive tied to a percent of each item sold?
The variable percentage would be tied to how much the waiter sold and what items, which would scale with both the amount of work (on large tables) and the skill of the waiter to help the business move product and give the customer a good experience.
The balance point being selling as much as possible while providing the customer an experience they want to return to.
Any hard selling and under serving keeps people from wanting to come back and hurts the business. Any lack of care in service prevents additional sales that can boost wage earnings and prevents the business from not selling stock before it goes bad.
Discretionary tipping is dumb, even if you are a capitalist. There is a balance that doesn’t stagnate the business or create exploitative labor practices. We just don’t do it because we are a social democracy that has a systemic misunderstanding of when capitalism is good and when it is bad.