SEATTLE — Restaurant owners, customers and staff have long railed against the tyranny of tipping, but like a love affair gone bad, it has proved difficult to quit.
Now, prompted by a spurt of new minimum wage proposals in major cities, an expanding number of restaurateurs are experimenting with no-tipping policies as a way to manage rising labor costs.
Here in Seattle, where the first stage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage law took effect in April, Ivar’s seafood restaurants switched to an all-inclusive menu. By raising prices 21 percent and ending tipping, Bob C. Donegan, the president and co-owner, calculated he could increase everyone’s wages.
“We saw there was a fundamental inequity in our restaurants where the people who worked in the kitchen were paid about half as much as the people who worked with customers in front of the house,” Mr. Donegan said.
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7 comments:
All servers should be paid minimum wage and tipping should be done away with, like in other countries.
What incentive will the server have to provide more than minimal service?
Also, the people in the back of the house don't have to put up with the bad customers.
The server should be motivated to do their job to keep it, just like any other job. Use customer reviews as an evaluation.
At many restaurants, the waitstaff is required to give a percentage of their tips to the kitchen staff. The server has to pay the taxes on the full amount of the tips, as kitchen staff are not considered "tipped employees". So it's a tax free bonus.
Requiring a server to subsidize someone else's wages is outrageous, but that's what it is. Restaurants will often pay the kitchen workers $8 or $9 an hour, and expect the servers to kick in the rest of their pay.
Absolutely unethical, immoral and wrong. Pay people according to the value they provide in service to the business, and let their performance sort it out.
Restaurant owners (I know a couple of them) are right up there with the rich slumlords in Salisbury.
PLEASE stop saying "I'm barely making it!" when you live in an eight bedroom mansion, buy a new Benz every year, take 4 vacations, and pay your wait staff $2.35 an hour. There's a credibility issue that even Forrest Gump could see.
If they could get away with paying them fifty cents an hour, they would. If they saw a dollar on the sidewalk, they would try to kill you for it rather than let it go to someone else. If they could make their customers pay their labor costs, they'd do that, too.
Oh, wait. They ALREADY do that. In addition to charging you $30-60 for a steak and a salad.
It's pretty sickening to hear wealthy people complain that they aren't getting RICHER fast enough. Its even worse to hear them complain that if they have to pay more than $2-3 an hour they'll will suffer beyond belief. They'll have to start mingling with the "regular folk", getting germs and all that.
Driving a Audi instead of a new Benz, doing their own grocery shopping and only having 30 pairs of shoes. Oh my.
As for the guy who said he's going to raise prices 21% so he can increase "everyone's wages", is he going to give the waiter a 20% wage increase?? Even 15%?
Answer: hell no. He'll increase HIS wages by thousands, and pay the wait staff $3.00 an hour. He still likes those heated leather seats. And that 5th vacation? Looking like Hawaii, here we come!!!
If you can't tip stay the hell home...tight ass
Im pretty sure he tips, but feels the way I do. Why is it my job to pay your help? Im paying for the meal. Any tip should reflect my gratitude for exemplary service, thats all.
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