Or you could just increase minimum wage (unions help with that!) and get rid of tipping culture. Because fucking with peoples livelihood because your muffin took a bit long to come out is insane.
Most places in the world with reasonable minimum wages /actually/ use tipping as a way to reward good service, as opposed to an additional, morally mandated tax. Under a higher minimum wage, good servers would still make plenty if their service was truly worth compensating extra for, wouldn’t they?
Are you speaking from actual experience? I was a server for several years, and virtually everyone made 1.5 to 2 times more than minimum wage from tips. A few made triple minimum wage. The employees that were not tipped such as hosts made half what their tipped counterparts took home. Tipping is GREAT for workers in my experience.
Is that sarcasm? The alternative to tipping is not servers at Olive Garden getting paid $20/hr in straight wages. If people want to advocate for servers and bartenders, they should make sure that what they are pushing for will actually make food service workers better off. Serving isn't a great job, but it's far better than many other service sector jobs, and there are people who raise families waiting on tables.
It's incredibly frustrating to hear well-meaning but misinformed progressives argue for policies that would make the lives of people I worked with and respect much harder.
No, it's not sarcasm. If a business can't afford to exist without abusing workers by paying below a living wage, that business's business model needs to be rethought. If that means people don't get unlimited breadsticks and have to pay a little more on the check, then that's what it means. And, I do mean "a little more": McDonalds workers in Denmark make at least $20/hour, get excellent benefits, and a Big Mac costs a whole $0.27 more than in the US.
Tipping sucks. The expectation that people work a full time job that does not also carry the expectation of being able to fund them existing and continuing to show up for work sucks too.
You've made the same, "but a few are doing great" argument made above.
If a waiter makes less than minimum wage from tips, the restaurant has to make up the difference. In these situations, the restaurant's margins are so thin that they'd be receiving minimum wage anyways.
