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
A “yes, but” like this, but instead all the countries where servers get a (relatively) decent wage vs America where tipping is mandatory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Yes, but the author of this comic turns out to be a real moron. Third comic in the row that is just stupid.
Happy cake day
Ya filthy animal
Ty
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.
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.
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.
So is the fisherman and the cook.
It’s because everyone except the wait staff gets paid a living wage. The waiter probably gets paid $2.75/hour because the shady restaurant owner wants YOU to pay the rest of their employees wage for them.
The problem is not overly entitled wait staff, it’s tipping culture in general. Any other job would pay at least normal minimum hourly wages.
I’m not sure if that is the reason. In Ontario there is no separate minimum wage for servers, it’s $18/hour. But servers expect 20-25% tip.
I keep seeing this repeated in the comments. Apparently no one on Lemmy has actually worked in a restaurant before (because you’re all bots?), otherwise you’d know that a lot of cooks, dishwashers, etc don’t make a living wage either and split tips with the front-of-house staff. It’s not just the wait staff.
My point still stands though that it has nothing to do with overly entitled wait staff as the cartoon would suggest but an issue with tipping culture and the restaurant industries unwillingness to pay anyone a living wage
I’m not trying to single you out, like I said it seems like everyone here has the same misconception. But even if your point could stand on its own, it’s weakened when you support it with an unrealistic example. It hurts your credibility.
I may have overgeneralized because the cartoon was so silly in its implication that the wait staff are somehow cheating fishermen out of tips
Correct, except for saying everyone else is getting a living wage. I bet most of them are not. Still higher than the server.
Every step of that chain is nickel and dimed. Only the public facing employees get to ask for tips.
You ask wait staff if they prefer a stable wage or receiving tips. The overwhelming majority of them will want to keep tips.
It would be better if we eliminated tips overall and paid fair wages. But the people who directly benefit will still fight you on it.
People also choose individual lines at the cash registers rather than one shared line that splits into the next available opening. It doesn’t matter that it’s better on average, human intuition is really bad at statistics.
But the people who directly benefit will still fight you on it.
Is that still true? Even back when I has tipped workers as peers, their attitudes were mixed. If you have any polling data, that would be appreciated – but, I don’t have any data either, just vague memories.
I’m admittedly talking from a personal experience living in a HCOL area that does not have a lower wage for wait staff. Wait staff are paid $17.13 at minimum here and that’s before tips.
So it is area dependent. Probably.
When I had tipped peers, wait staff got $2.15/hr + tips. It certainly changes the calculus.
Having worked in food service, and having many friends who do, I don’t know a single person who would rather keep tips. The majority have openly talked shit about tipping. Everyone I know hates tipping except the management that benefits from it.
Holy fuck I’ve got a friend that will die on the hill that you (customer) should tip, and generously every time. Given his experience with it, I agree to a point, but only because he willingly chose to dig heels into that job for better or for worse. I do tip because I feel it’s earned in most cases. I just don’t agree with being over the top about it for sure. Part of that is his personality too… And the more I think about it; fuck that guy.
I live in a very HCOL area and that probably has more to do with attitudes on tipping anything. Wait staff in this area can easily earn wages that are much, much higher than minimum wage with tips.
For example, the state in the US I live in does not have a lower base pay for wait staff. They’re making at minimum $17.13 an hour before tips.
And that’s why. For a lot of states they’re making like $2.75 before tips.
Plus, it’s also very relative to what exactly you are doing. A decent bartender can pull like $200+ a night on a weekend in tips.
Yep which complicates the conversation because all wait staff aren’t the same.
So you have bartenders in big cities scoffing at the idea of eliminating tips while there’s waiters in small diners barely surviving on minimum wage.
Plus then there’s the variance of the individual. If you’re naturally good with people, you’re likely to get tipped better. If you’re a pretty young girl, you’ll probably make decent money even if you’re not good with people, etc.
It’s such a complicated situation to talk about.
Which is why I think tipping should be eliminated.
Small correction, $2.75 an hour against tips. In a lot of states it’s legal to withhold that $2.75 once they’ve made more than that in tips per hour. They only have to guarantee that you make minimum wage they don’t have to actually pay you it If you’re getting it paid by somebody else.
While the waitstaff has particular challenges in U.S. labor law (lower effective federal minimum wage), it is not safe to assume any of the other workers in the chain are still paid a living wage either.
Ok but some people argue for paying tips outside the US too where this isn’t the case.
I have also heard owners ask about making a service charges mandatory instead of optional. They don’t like it when I point out they will now have to pay tax on it and try to ask about any other options in the POS software. No, if must be optional or tax must be paid.
The waiter probably gets paid $2.75/hour
In a specific country
All of the people in that comic get paid for their labor. The server doesn’t.
Everywhere in the world the restaurant pays the server for their labor, in the US they make the customer do it and guilt them of they don’t.
So pay the server then!
I agree. Some US states do just that.
Though for this comic I’m just pointing out how the server is being singled out and shamed without the context of how their labor is compensated in comparison to everyone else in the comic.
Damn everywhere in the world the server works for free except in USA they get tips for salary. Why do they even work as servers in the rest of the world without tips for paid labor? Are they retarded?
They’re also required to be paid minimum wage in the US by the restaurant if tips don’t cover it
Minimum wage being below poverty in the US is, of course, a separate issue
It’s required, but ask any servers you know how often that actually happens. Last restaurant my friend worked at would carry over tips from previous days in their books so it’d look like they made exactly 7.25 an hour every time. Only reason they got caught is because they always made it exactly 7.25 an hour on those days.
They got a meager fine and were told to pay the money back. They filled for bankruptcy rather than pay out like $4000 in back pay. If you or I had stolen $4000, we’d be in prison. A business does it and it’s a slap on the wrist and a quick bankruptcy and reopening under a new name
In a lot of the US, service workers are exploited similarly to how overtime labor goes without compensation.
Say if someone works 12 hours in a shift, but remains at or under 40 hours for the week, they don’t get any OT. It only kicks in after 40 hours.
The same goes for a server working full time. Without even needing to cook the books, a server could work a few $40 weekday shifts then one busy $300 weekend shift. Rather than being bumped up to minimum for the weekday shifts, the weekend shift is counted against their overall pay and they get nothing. The weekday shifts eat the tips from the weekend shift.
All perfectly legal.
The servers I know all end up with way more than minimum wage, but I completely agree any restaurants getting away with that should have to pay at least 10x the stolen wages, and all court fees, plus a fine that is a percentage of their revenue
they must be retarded if they’re working for free as slaves when they clearly could be working for tips.
dude, would you use a different word please? i have had a rough past with it. you usually make good points and i like upvoting you
yes, but they all get paid way below the value of their labour.
The Server gets paid exactly the price they agreed to when they took the job
Ahh, they agreed to it! Perfectly acceptable then
Well if they all said “I’m not working for that shit wage” or they joined a union, did literally anything at all. NMaybe they would get paid more. Instead they do nothing, and bitch
Nevermind that Servers make more money than every single person in the supply chain. I don’t understand why everyone feels so bad for them. Ask any of them if they would rather work back of the house. Forget about logistics, or in agriculture?
Source: I was a server for almost a decade.
This excuse for worker exploitation has always baffled me. 1. The contract was signed under duress: “Take this shitty job or continue to be unemployed.” Consent made under duress is not consent. 2. It was agreed to under an extreme power asymmetry: If you refuse the job, your family will have to go hungry, but the company will easily find some other desperate soul to fill the position. 3. I haven’t even begun to touch on all the class, racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination that workers face.
There’s nothing even close to meaningful or fair negotiation under such conditions.
deleted by creator
Servers are just sales people. Their pay is commonly not from wages when in corporate world built up by commissions. Tips are effectively commissions but rather than an agreed upon amount from the employer it’s with the buyer. I hate both equally.
Sales commissions are still paid directly from the business’ account. Why do restaurants not have to pay their “sales people” directly?
Not always. There are sales jobs that are 100% commission, but I’m the same way they do have to ensure you are paid a minimum. The person making the exchange is arbitrary.
No sales person was ever paid directly by the business’ customer. It’s always paid from the company’s account.
Yes and this was stated in my initial message. Thanks for reiterating?
Ok, If I squint really hard I can kind of see where you were trying to say that. Let’s just consider my comments to be a clarification rather than a correction.
I’m good with that. It just wasnt my main point so yeah was a little undersold in the message, but it was included because is important for context. Thanks for bringing it to light.
Tips were introduced because employers refused to pay their newly freed slaves.
I dislike tips as much as probably any of us here. I have worked for tips, and distinctly remember how much I wished I could just make a consistent amount that basically came to the average even at a loss of what I was making with them. There were tipped jobs I was working that I made well over some of my first jobs in software engineering even when I worked at fine dining. I still wanted that stability at a loss. Now it’s been a few years removed, but my sentiment remains the same. I’m not saying they should be paid $15/hr or something here but this holds for any job; any person should be able to pay the median low end apartment without gov assistance, should be able to save or invest, should be able to afford food, and a second bedroom for a child with only a single full time job. I want that amount as the low bar even if it’s through the form of welfare but they should still be able to invest in their futures to some degree. This all of course assuming they are semi competent with finances, but I’m not talking high level.
That made as the assumption yes fuck tip systems and fuck commissions. Why am I including commissions when it’s the employer that pays unlike tips? Because of the reason these two are kinda similar both of these jobs incentivize the individual to perform better for higher pay. In theory and practice when averaged together this holds true. It benefits both the company and the individual; at least on paper. This does also leave room to exploit and abuse. Usually this is seen with people in sales who look out for themselves only and will exploit the system even if it costs their peers. For example insurance sales in the US they get some commission or deal as long as the deal is sold. It doesn’t matter if that feature they sold it on was non existent or years in the future they made that sale and get the perk of commission at least for a while until they get canned when the customer realizes what happened. Serving tables isn’t exactly like this but there are things an individual can be rewarded for that may hurt others if they are unwilling to share certain burdens because it lowers their bottom line like idk filling soy sauce containers after hours. They should be getting paid some higher rate of course but that rate is often much lower than what they make with tips so they may not want to do it.
So I do see a practical reason for tips and commission, but I feel they both are bad for different reasons and should not be expected.
See this way capitalists get to underpay workers
Nah, all of the people in that strip are underpaid. Tipping waitstaff is a mechanism to tie their ability to feed their families directly to sycophantic ass kissing behavior. It’s essentially a way for the rich to know they can get dancing monkey entertainment anywhere they go.
I mean it literally started so owners wouldn’t have to pay POC waiters, the rest was just added bonus
But yes everyone on a wage is underpaid
Well yes, the owners didn’t want to pay black waitstaff, but also tying it to patron tips meant that they had to perform fealty and fawning and “good humor” under abuse in order to get paid. It’s both a way to underpay and a way to control and break the spirit.
There’s really only two classes: Us and them… And if you’ve got less than 10 million, you’re probably one of us.
Everyone in this are a worker, the guy we don’t see in this comic (edge fund, financiers and owner) are the real problem and this comic artist seems hell bent to hide this
I have spoke to owners complaining that they want to make service charges (tips) mandatory, then cry that they have to pay tax on it if they do that. “But can we just change the text instead?” - No.
