EARLY ACCESS: Tipping Culture
Added 2023-04-14 16:00:06 +0000 UTCVIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/x1Vc4vVH7EA
Hey everyone, it's Early Access day and this weekend's video is one of those kinda "broad topic" videos I feel like I haven't done in a while, but was definitely fun to tackle. It's not particularly based on a current event, but I don't think I go a week without seeing a post on social media where service staff are complaining about their tips, or customers are complaining that tipping has expanded to too many services and is out of control. SO, I've tried to cover as much as possible in 10 minutes. Enjoy!
Buckley looks at "Tipping Culture", after a Tweet goes viral where a woman complained that Europeans visiting the US "only" tipped her $70 on a $700 bill and were too "cheap". Should customers be responsible for paying the staff's wages? And do we take for granted the fact that the average person has access to services that only the very rich had in days of yore?
Comments
When I was working in ice cream nobody wanted pennies, so that explains a lot.
DemonPossesser
2023-04-19 02:16:43 +0000 UTCOf a tip? Back in the day that was the insult tip. A handful of pennies in the bottom of a glass that still has some liquid in it. That's the "we hated the service" tip.
Adam Buckley
2023-04-19 01:40:23 +0000 UTCBuckley, is $0.01 enough?
DemonPossesser
2023-04-17 01:18:43 +0000 UTCOnce again, America has proven to be the backwards bog of the world. Nowhere else in the developed world do employers not pay their own staff… but then again, nowhere else in the developed world do mass shootings frequently happen and then you get slapped with a massive medical bill for being unfortunate enough to have been shot.
Ash Archer
2023-04-15 22:10:41 +0000 UTCReferencing both Bully McGuire, and Happy Gilmore .. Buckley is my new man crush. No homo lol
Oscar Nunez
2023-04-15 08:44:02 +0000 UTCWhenever I see a picture of a Starbucks order that is as long as the cup is tall, I keep thinking there is some extra "cream" in it. Made with love... so to speak.
Shaka, When the Walls Fell
2023-04-14 21:08:02 +0000 UTCHahahaa oh my god, such a fantastic video. It's amazing how consistent you are with both broad and specific videos. Aside from the absurd wage slave mentality tipping puts us in, I think that takeout and restaurant culture have gone way out of control in cities, since it can be so detrimental to our health both physically and spiritually. That's probably why we are still complaining when we get to live "better" (I think "living better" should be switched to "living with an easier time being lazy") than past royalty. Most people I know prepare little to none of their own meals, and then wonder why they struggle with their physical and mental health.
Serena
2023-04-14 20:06:56 +0000 UTCI’m actually a huge fan of these broad topics videos. The part with king Henry cracked me up. But with regards to tipping, I took a “food in American history” class in college where we studied the origins of tipping. One of the first traces of it comes from the first class cars of the Pullman rail lines where wealthy white passengers would tip the mostly black serving staff. They weren’t paid an actual wage and the tips they got from the passengers were barely enough to sustain enough to sustain a family
Miguel
2023-04-14 18:31:26 +0000 UTCWhat's kinda funny is that... I actually think I should be tipping the cooks more than the servers. Yes, I know being a server is a hard job. But like, if we're tipping "based on service", that service is like 80% on the kitchen staff that I'm playing Telephone with through the Waitress. When I say "I'd like a steak, medium, with mashed potatoes and veggies", that actually coming out in a timely manner, and accurately, is highly dependent on the person cooking it. If it comes out in 8 minutes and I go "wow that was really fast", why am I giving the SERVER credit for that? The cook's the one who did it quickly! But anyway, aside from that I entirely understand what you're talking about. But on the other side of it, you have too many servers who, if you ask them "ok, what if you got $20 an hour, and tips went away, would you be happy then?" saying "No, I made $90 on a table once and I turned it over an in hour, I don't want to lose the chance of doing that!" so they don't actually want tipping to go away, they want customers to keep up with this ridiculous "pay me 20% of the cost of your meal for bringing you your meal" tradition.
Adam Buckley
2023-04-14 17:54:38 +0000 UTCTip sharing should be illegal. We're not even pretending the tips are for the staff anymore. For tip sharing to work, the *restaurant* has to accept the tips. Then they dole out those tips as wages. *If you're lucky,* there's a little money in the tip pool after wages have been deducted. On the rare occasion that happens, it gets split with a bunch of extra people who the customer never intended to reward - leaving the original server with practically nothing for their effort. The original laws that allow tips to count towards wages are bad enough. Tip sharing makes things 100x worse. Worst part is most restaurant staff seem to have been fooled into believing tip sharing is actually good for them. Too many will aggressively defend the practice as it's used to rob from them. They should be demanding competitive wages instead! Also, I worked at Subway as a kid and we were expressly forbidden by corporate from accepting tips. We did anyways, but we couldn't have a tip jar. I think I made about $10 in tips there over the course of 3 years. How things have changed...
Branden Lange
2023-04-14 17:11:31 +0000 UTCTipping depends so much on which state you are in because they have different laws about server minimum wage. For instance in Washington state, servers make the same minimum wage as other jobs and tips are on top of that (how I think it should be). Whereas in some states servers only get paid $2 an hour by the establishment wtf. In that case tipping is made mandatory by the system, but I really wish everything was just included in the price of the food/drinks.
Megan M
2023-04-14 16:54:07 +0000 UTCAlso, to clarify, I am on the same boat as you with the "am I for or against tipping?" Yes. Though I see tipping as a ridiculous way for someone to make the bulk of their earnings, we are so deep in the system that I never see it changing. So, if we still want service, we gotta keep tipping.
Justin Hudson
2023-04-14 16:44:54 +0000 UTCI was interviewed last year about leaving the restaurant world and the tipping culture was one of the things I brought up. I was interviewed for hours over the course of 3 days, but only for a 2 and a half minute video, so the tipping part didn't make the final cut. I discussed how tipping has many negative effects that a lot of people might not think about, especially considerable amount of drama and despair between coworkers. I discussed my experiences in other countries like New Zealand that doesn't have tipping, but I have had phenomenal service despite the "incentive" of a good tip. Anyhow, here's the link if interested in the rest of the video. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2022/01/18/chef-switches-careers-amid-the-pandemic#?cid=share_clip
Justin Hudson
2023-04-14 16:32:03 +0000 UTC
