The Rule of ReciprocationFollow

Probably not, but they're allowing me to be a lazy **** and stay in my car. I don't tip at a drive-thru because the workers don't actually have to come outside and bring my food.

What's the point of Carside to Go anyway? Are you meant to park there and then order, and hang out in your car while they make it? I mean, I've ordered take out from Applebee's before, but I phone it in, and then go pick it up. I just can't really see a situation where I'd make them bring it out to me.

I actually tip often for take out, especially any place I go to frequently. Actually, I almost always tip on takeout. I know most people don't, but it's a habit. I tip less most of the time though, like a flat dollar or two rather than a percentage.

We have a dining room here at work and I only really ever get take out, but I almost always tip. They know more than anyone else in this place. I'd rather stay on their good side. Besides, sometimes, when I've gotten really busy and forgotten to pick up my food, they have hunted me down to give it to me.

I tip take out but always am unsure if I just pissed away money when doing so.

As an ex-server/bartender, I don't feel the need to tip the server that brings my food out to the car. A., the server is most likely still waiting tables and this is considered part of her section or duties, just like running food to tables that aren't hers are; or 2., this is the server's designated job for her shift and she's probably making at least minimum wage for the shift.

1. If you have to bust out a calculator to determine if rather or not paying tax or a tip at McDonalds or Chilli's is within your budget, you my friend are an idiot with no concept of the value and/or spending of money.

2. Unless you're carrying cash, which you probably aren't at anything better than a fast food joint, you will have extra money on you. So, if 22% ( %15 tip and %7 tax) above your spending budget makes any significant impact on your overall financial situation, then once again, you are an idiot.

For example, if your budget were $100, you would be spending $22 in tax and in tips. If $22 is a big deal to you and to your budget, then you should have taken that $22 to Applebees or Burger King and not spend $100 on food. Which, again, would make you an idiot.

Since I don't remember what it was you said that prompted my response, then no I don't realize that.




Again. Only vaguely remember the options (perhaps if you were going to make an entire post about how I was wrong to disagree with something you said, you could have included the statement in question? Just a suggestion). I'm not sure what Papa John's selling point is. Great pizza at a great price? Something like that. You get that the point is to maximize profits for the company though, right? I mean, they wouldn't make "great pizza" if they didn't think they'd make more money doing so then making "crappy pizza". So coming in and saying that they could make up for paying their servers more by making better pizza is kinda moronic (ok, maybe I am starting to remember).



Uh... Okay. Maybe I have to hold your hand through each step of the logic. The reason they "maintain their servers" is so that they can "maintain sufficient quality of service for their customers". If they had no requirement to do the latter, then they could just fire waitstaff at will and hire the next random person walking down the street to take over the position. Get it? If my customers don't care about the quality of service, then there's no reason to pay more for my servers.

How did you not get that?



Ok. But we're back to the "you get the random guy who walked in off the street" problem. At the risk of being obvious (too late!) if there are more random people walking in my door to be hired as servers than my competition will take from me *and* they can all do just as good a job as the guy who quit to go work for my competition, then I have no reason to pay my servers more either. Cause there's another guy at the door willing to do the same job just as well. My servers leaving to work for my competition only hurts me if my servers are better than someone I can get off the street to replace them and my business will suffer because of it.

If those conditions are not true, then we're back to me having no reason to raise their wages. I know this sounds cruel or whatever, but if your labor can be replaced trivially by anyone walking down the street at a rate sufficient to ensure work coverage, then you can't demand a higher wage. It's like trying to charge $100 for a rock anyone could pick up for free off the ground. No one's going to pay that.



True. But my comment was specifically about the skill level of the server though. If I refuse to pay my skilled servers as much as my competition, they will leave to work for my competition. I will then have to hire a less skilled server willing to work for the lower wage. Thus my service will be poor compared to my competitor. Thus, people will not be as willing to pay as much for the meals I'm serving. Thus I will lose money and thus I will have an incentive to increase the wages for my servers.

Why is this so hard for you to grasp? Employers will tend to pay their employees what they think their employee's labor is worth to them. Employees will tend to only work for employers who pay them what they (the employee in this case) think their labor is worth. If they are overpaid, the employer will lose money because they're paying more than the labor is gaining them. If they are underpaid, the employer will lose money because the skilled employee will leave to work for someone willing to pay what their labor is actually worth.

Obviously, this is complicated because it's all based on what the employee thinks his labor is worth versus what the employer thinks it is. Either or both of them could be wrong. But the more accurate each side is in assessing that value, the better off they are in the market respectively. So there really is an incentive for them to be relatively accurate. It's not a perfect method to determine the value of labor, but it's better than any other method. At the end of the day, your argument seems to rest entirely on an assumption that these market forces don't work and will somehow always conspire to ***** over the employee while benefiting the employer. The reality though is that the employer is just as likely to overpay an employee as underpay them. The system works. And frankly, as I've asked several times, what alternative do you suggest?

That's crazy talk man! You should either be willing to pay your budget plus whatever other tax and tip costs there are, or just go home and cry like a little baby or something. Cause no one can actually do something like ballpark the total cost of a night out or anything and plan out what they want to do based on that. There's no middle ground between "willing to spend any amount of money" and "not willing to spend any money at all".

You should know better!

"Ball-parking" a price is EXACTLY what I've been saying the whole entire time.

Thank you for finally admitting that you're wrong!

I know that I can go in to Wendy's with $20 and get any meal that I wont. Therefore, as long as the meal is a good value, I'm not concerned about tax because I know it will be less than $20. No need to calculate the tax.

That concept applies to EVERY restaurant.

This might not be the most stupid discussion you guys have ever had, but godDAMN it's close.

I skipped it because it's not clear to me what you are asking (technically, you didn't ask a question anyway). You agree with me that the consumer is going to make a comparison between the cost of the meal and the quality of the meal. Great. But then you say "They are not going to pay more for an item just because you (the employer) has to make up the difference of your waitstaff. They will simply not pay for it and/or go somewhere else.".

I honestly don't know what you are trying to say here. I tend to skip posts like this from you because I don't want to play 20 questions trying to figure out what you mean. I don't know what you mean by "you (the employer) has to make up the difference of your waitstaff". And honestly, I don't think it matters. We agree that the customer wont pay more for the meal than what he thinks it's worth. It doesn't matter what caused the meal to cost more than what the customer thinks it's worth, so what's the point of this statement?

If the cost of the meal is higher because the employer has to pay his waitstaff a higher base wage, and that increase is sufficient to make the customer not buy the meal, then that affected that decision. But that's what I've been saying all along, so ... what?

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The main point I think we've been disagreeing on all along was that I said that it doesn't matter what makes up that total cost. Let's imagine these conditions. In all cases assume the quality of the meal is identical and the limit the customer is willing to pay is $32.

1. Waitstaff pay is based on a lower minimum wage and tips are expected. Meal costs $25, plus $2 tax, plus $4 tip. Total cost $31. Customer will buy the meal.

2. Waitstaff pay is based on a normal minimum wage and there are no tips. Because of increase cost for wages, meal now costs $29, plus $2.40 tax. Total cost $31.40. Customer will buy the meal.

3. Waitstaff pay is based on normal minimum wage and they're paid tips. Meal costs $29, plus $2.40 tax, plus $5 tip. Total cost is $36.40. Customer will not buy the meal.


This is what I was trying to get you to understand from the beginning. The total cost affects the decision the customer makes, which in turn affects the employers profits (which in turn affects his employees pay, but lets not get ahead of ourselves). You made a claim very early in this thread that whether waitstaff receive tips or not does not in any way affect the profits of the employer, so it was somehow unfair for the employer to pay them a lower base wage because they were receiving tips. But case #3 clearly shows that this is not true. The total cost only stays below what the customer is willing to pay if the employer either pays a full standard wage *or* the waitstaff gets tips, but not if both are in effect.

It does "cost" the employer if the waitstaff receive tips because it affects the cost that the customer is actually paying for the meal, which in turn affects that decision. Every dollar that the tip increases the bill is a dollar that the employer has to reduce the base cost of the meal by in order to get the same number of customers to buy it. This is really basic supply and demand stuff. The sticking point is your insistence that tips somehow don't count when customers decide if something is worth the cost.

Once you get past that little silliness, it's pretty obvious that tips affect the employer just as though he'd paid them to the waitstaff out of his own pocket. Each dollar of tip is a dollar that he can't charge for the meal. I don't know how many different ways I can express this same very basic economic concept so you can understand it. I think that everyone else gets it, but not you. I'm not sure if you honestly just don't get this, or if you're being deliberately obtuse, but please stop and think about this before responding. Think the whole thing through. Don't jump to an assumption about what I'm saying and then go off on a tangent. Look at those three cases. See how they prove what I've been saying all along.


I can only lead a horse to water. It has to take the drink itself.

Edited, Dec 14th 2012 7:07pm by gbaji

I don't believe anyone actually said that though. I brought it up only as an illustration of the different cost models when purchasing food. I also mentioned going to the grocery store, but you'd never assume I meant that you buy food in a grocery store to avoid paying a tip at a restaurant, would you? There are a host of reasons one might choose to obtain food one way or another. Cost is one factor. Convenience another. Time another.



Most states (all?) require that the employer prove that the average hourly wage after tips is still higher than the state minimum wage in order for the lower minimum wage to be legal. So the whole "but that's the minimum, so they should always be paid the minimum!" isn't really a good argument. Now, if you just want to argue that waiting tables is tough work and they should be paid more, then that's a fine argument. Completely subjective, but absolutely fine one to make.



Yup. It happens. Hell, I've been out to eat with cheapskates. It's painful to sit there are watch someone just rounding the bill for a whole table to the next ten dollars and thinking that's a sufficient tip. But on the flip side, I'll bet your boyfriend has plenty of stories of people giving really great tips as well, right? I've brought this up earlier in the thread, most young people gravitate to wait positions because they are broadly considered the best pay you can get as a still relatively unskilled laborer. That's because of the tips. It's always interesting how often people make the argument that waitstaff are underpaid because of the whole lower base minimum wage thing, but it's really rare to have someone actually say that they made really crappy pay when they were waiting tables. Sure, individual stories of the "bad tip", but overall pay is much better than they could get elsewhere and they know it, even with the lower base pay.

At the end of the day, isn't that the bigger issue? I just think that it's a bit misleading to make a huge deal about a technical pay level while ignoring the actual pay that waitstaff get.



Yup. I tend to tip well as well (and try to make up for the idiots I know who don't). I tend to tip 15% (rounding up to some convenient value *after* that calculation). I will tip more if the service was particularly excellent, and I'll tip less if it was particularly poor. But it's really got to be me being pissed off at something the server did for it to be that bad, and that's honestly only happened once. I've had a few occasions where other factors in the restaurant were so horrible that I simply never returned (just bad food, bat atmosphere, etc). I usually try to let the staff know why I'm never coming back, but I don't penalize the server for things which often aren't his/her responsibility.

And sometimes, as I've mentioned in this thread, it's not a matter of the food not being good, or the service not being good, but that the price for what you get just isn't worth it. There are several restaurants that try to be high-end and charge high-end prices, but really don't have high end food and service. Fancy tablecloths and nice uniforms doesn't transform $20 food into $50 food. Sorry, it just doesn't. I know that for some people decor and ambiance matter more to them than the food, but I'm a food guy. Those other things are nice, and I'll pay a bit more for them (cause I know it costs more), but the food really needs to be better for me to be willing to pay more. And "better" does not mean a pretty presentation with small portions to make people think it's fancier than it really is. That's pretentious crap that I can't stand. Yes, I'm looking at you Wolfgang!