More restaurants embrace trend of putting health care surcharges on diners' checks

[niztheundead87]

this is as idiotic as tipping is

[psiko74]

this is as idiotic as tipping is

i agree, tipping should be a reward for a job well done. Servers think they are owed a tip for taking your order.

[niztheundead87]

i agree, tipping should be a reward for a job well done. Servers think they are owed a tip for taking your order.

Optional maybe but mandatory is what has ruinned the system for them.but what is more disturbing is most Americans think this is normal

[Molis]

Who cares. Its like $3 on a good size check.

Go get mad at something else

[Zelk]

I heard from every European that I've met they don't tip at restaurants in Europe. Is this true? I know they tip other people like delivery men.

Well in the UK it's normal to tip waiters and I've never heard of anyone giving a delivery driver a tip

[Cracked]

Same as tipping, it's just guilt trip extortion. The only thing I really hated about the US when I lived there. Put the goddamn price of the service on the menu.

[Uko]

I personally hate all these "tips" and "health care" charges for going out to eat. I would honestly rather pay more to know exactly how much I am going to spend knowing the workers were paid proper wages than be expected to do the employers job and pay his staff. While they say the charges are for health care is there really any way to know that is what they actually are spending it on rather than just pocketing it. At least with a tip I could just leave it in cash on the table and know the employees are getting it. IMO tips should be for service above and the duty of the job instead of a guilt trip assumption because the employer is a cheapskate.

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tipping is completely optional. Don't feel guilty for tipping low or none at all. If you don't feel the service was worth 20% tip, don't tip 20%.

While it is optional if you don't tip and ever go there again I would be careful of you food cause that's how you get gross stuff done to it. Its only optional in the sense that as long as you don't get caught something isn't illegal. If the employee isn't getting enough in tips and the employer has to cover the difference they will be fired for not doing a good job because tips are pretty much expected for even the laziest worst job done.

[Rapti]

I heard from every European that I've met they don't tip at restaurants in Europe. Is this true? I know they tip other people like delivery men.

This is false. But it is not mandatory to tip or ask to be tipped and no waiter will go loco on you like in the States.
We tip, but only when service was really good (and food) and not just "what you want? Ok. Heres your food, give me a tip".
(hint: prices are simply a tiny bit higher and often waiters/cooks get a small % from days sales - not in all places)

[Tazr]

This is stupid just as mandatory tips are. Glad we dont have this crap here in Europe

What Europeans keep forgetting is that American workers don't have the protections (or cost of living wages) that they do. Restaurant owners are allowed to pay their workers well under minimum wage - and that minimum wage is already not a livable wage, so the workers are surviving (sometimes NOT surviving) off of these tips.

Only American CEOs, CFOs and the like have any kind of protections. They can assault or rape women, or run a company into the ground, and get a massive "gold parachute" on the way out - on top of the millions they've already made off the workers' backs. Capitalism at work (for the rich).

[Malaky]

I heard from every European that I've met they don't tip at restaurants in Europe. Is this true? I know they tip other people like delivery men.

No tipping whatsoever in Italy.
No, not even delivery men.

It's not mandatory or culturally expected anyways, it can happen if the guy/girl did some work worth of notice, but that's the exception and not the rule and personally I never saw it happen from me or my friends/acquaintances.

[Video Games]

Thats all well and good, but the entire industry needs an overhaul

[exochaft]

I would not patronize these places. Charge enough to pay your workers fairly or fuck off. DOnt guilt me into paying your workers a fair wage and for their health care.
No, I do not eat at many restaurants.

Couple of things on this. A "fair wage" is so arbitrary that everyone has a different opinion, if one at all besides the phrase just being rhetoric. Even if one could agree on one, the value would vary greatly in the US because each state's cost of living, economy, etc. are vastly different that it makes more sense to think of the US as a union of 50 different countries or economies. However, that's not even the bigger point, as these waiters and waitresses are voluntarily working at these establishments... if the pay/compensation was unlivable for their situations, they wouldn't be working there. Find another job or create your own (current job market in the US is insanely good atm, too). You can do people's and business's taxes part-time like me!

Most people have this view of some evil restaurant owner rolling around in gold like Scrooge McDuck, and that's not the case for almost every business owner out there. Again, most owners I've run into (and have done taxes with) try really hard to keep their businesses running with extremely small profit margins, and they will try to pay their workers as much as possible. However, bills need to get paid, and if they cannot get paid the business will fail. On that same line of thinking, if the employees are not happy with their pay/compensation... it's not slavery or indentured servitude, they will just leave and the business will fail. The balance will be that employees get paid enough that they are willing to do the work while the owner makes enough to deem it worthwhile to operate the business, that's it.

All the misconceptions I see in this thread stem from the what businesses are for: business are there for the owner to create wealth for the owner, not create jobs. Jobs are a happy side-effect of people making businesses, not the other way around. The great irony is that being a proponent of minimum wages and saying things like "If they can't afford to pay workers a 'fair/living wage', they should just go out of or be put out of business" is actually being a proponent of big business and large corporations, as such changes and viewpoints impact them the least while being massively punitive on small businesses. Let the market figure it out, as it will respond if you keep the government's tendrils (aka, welfare programs and cronyism with big corporations) out of it.

As a slight aside, I absolutely loathe doing healthcare tax stuff after the ACA, it's so asinine and convoluted, and it hides the actual costs of things. If people knew how much employers actually tend to pay to cover employees with the plans they're allowed to supply, asking for 3% based upon the background calculations for coverage and income of waiters/waitresses is a drop in the bucket. I deleted part of my post because it got rather long and technical, but if people didn't have taxes taken out of their income in the background throughout the entire year, they'd be shocked at how much they actually pay in taxes. Finished up someone's return today, and it was the first year they didn't contributed to taxes throughout the year and wanted to pay on April 15... last year they got around $1000 as a return, this year they paid $12000 in taxes. Irony is, they paid less taxes this year (despite their understandable freakout at how much they had to pay despite not making much money) due to deductions, but their perspective on taxes changed when it didn't happen in the background. Imagine applying this to things like insurance premiums and healthcare costs, and you'd have some seriously miffed people.

[IIamaKing]

tipping is completely optional. Don't feel guilty for tipping low or none at all. If you don't feel the service was worth 20% tip, don't tip 20%.

Tipping is optional if you are fine with a person earning ~3$ an hour.

[niztheundead87]

Tipping is optional if you are fine with a person earning ~3$ an hour.

or you know be like the rest of the world and pay normal wages

[IIamaKing]

or you know be like the rest of the world and pay normal wages

Almost like my first post said

Charge enough to pay your workers fairly or fuck off

So, yes I agree.

[unbound]

Why not just raise your prices 3% instead of just saying, hey this is what we're doing? Sounds like they are trying to charge more and give themselves a pat on the back for it.

lol

So, the restaurants are doing what the vast majority of businesses are doing. Why do you think there are posters at Walmart and Target talking about how much they give to the community? It isn't out of the kindness of their hearts, but about PR. They give up a tiny fraction of their profits, but the advertising effect results in them making more money because of the increased customer traffic who think that shopping there is a good way to benefit their community.

It probably doesn't even cost those restaurants 3% of revenue to cover their employees. Heck, I work at a large corporation, and my health care benefits are identical to what you can pick up on the exchange (aka Obamacare) for the same cost; so guess what that means? My corporation is either contributing absolutely nothing on my behalf, or our negotiator is a complete moron (I put the odds at roughly 50/50...anyone who tells you that corporations are efficient are definitely morons).

[psiko74]

Tipping is optional if you are fine with a person earning ~3$ an hour.

not my problem, i'm not their employer.

[niztheundead87]

Restaurants in the US are a baffling concept to me, why on Earth do you accept the fact that customers have to foot the bill for employee's wages through tipping and other bullshit. But for some reason that cost doesnt fall on the owners? If you cant afford to pay your staff a decent wage in one of the most stressful jobs, then you shouldnt be in business.

the most baffling thing is how they feel the need to tip other workers too such as pizza delivery.

[nymphetsss]

Dumb, waiters and waitresses deserve barely minimum wage. Your skill is to write like 5 things down , enter them into a computer and then carry a couple plates/cups to my table , yeah you totally deserve 30$/hour hah

[Rasulis]

If it works for the restaurant then keep doing it. Why would it be better than increasing prices 3%? Because now the business is obligated to spend that 3% on health care for their workers. I'm a Republican with numerous Libertarian views and voted for Trump and like what he is doing. I would recommend never quoting anything out of SF as it's a city going under. They have an extremely high cost of living, homelessness, and declining tourism. It might be the next Detroit.

Cost of living high? No surprised in a city where over 30% of the households have over 1M in investable assets (not including residence) and one in twenty household make over 587k in 2018. Those are insane numbers btw. Only 7.2% of households in NY have over 1M in investable assets. Only a few rich retirement enclaves in Florida come even remotely close to that. As for the 95th percentile income, it is the highest by far in the US.

Declining tourism? Not even close. 2018 was a record smashing year for the city. San Francisco drew a total of 25.8 million visitors to the city in 2018, an increase of 1.2% compared to 2017. Total visitor spending for 2018 amounted to a whopping $10 billion, an increase of 2.3% over 2017's.

Going the way of Detroit? Not likely. Detroit had the big three and one industry which only control the domestic US market. SF has over thirty S&P500 companies and thousands private and public companies. They range from tech, marketing, finance, oil, energy, health care, biotech, manufacturing, agriculture. You name it, they have it. Their tentacles, I meant reaches, extend around the globe. Every time somebody, anywhere in the world, use Uber/Lyft/Airbnb/Doordash, watch advertising on Google/FB/Youtube, watch a movie on Netflix, somebody in SF is making money.