I tried not tipping on a US visit. You can get away with it, but people will be angry.
It's just a silly local custom you have to put up with when in America.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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It's the way our tax system works. Employers have to pay taxes on payroll; they don't pay taxes on tips. By having customers pay servers directly, they reduce their tax burden.
Believe me, we don't like it either, but we are familiar with it, so there is little incentive to change.
Tipped employees are primarily paid directly by the people they serve. If you are not tipping a tipped server, you are declaring their work is worth less than minimum wage.
It is lawful to do that, but it is a real dick move.
It cannot be less than minimum wage, or the employer has to pay the difference. In some states there is no tip credit at all and the hourly wage must be at least minimum. Tipping still allows employers to keep wages low, but not that low.
By law, yes, but most restaurants simply do not care. Wage theft is extremely common.
You have to tip 20% of the bill minimum. You can round-up only from there.
It's considered very rude to tip less than 20% because in the US, most service workers are legally allowed to be paid less than the minimum wage ($2 or $3 per hour is not uncommon).
You should give $1 to a bartender for every drink you order. If it's an expensive city, you should give $2 per drink.
Yep, 20% is minimum these days. And if you're at a nice cocktail bar, it's customary to do a min 20% tip on your bill rather than a per-drink tip. Also worth noting that the wage paid by employers to waitstaff and bartenders usually disappears into taxes, and wage theft and refusal to pay overtime is common. People often have to give a percentage of their total sales to bussers and barbacks; this is called a tip-out, and it isn't reduced if tips are low. If a server has a really bad day with low tips, they can literally wind up losing money.
To those who don't tip in protest, you're not helping. Employers do not care. If they even notice, they're likely to just assume the server is bad at their job and 'discipline' them, and / or move them to a worse shift where they will earn less. All you're doing is forcing someone to work for you, for free, in a hellscape working environment, so that you can have a nice time. By doing this, you are making someone's life tangibly worse.
I've spent years in the US service industry at all levels; if you've never spent significant time in the industry, however bad you think it is, it's worse. Every job I've held in the hospitality industry has easily been more physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing than any professional role I've had.
If you look like a tourist you will not have much of a problem. I also live in a country where tipping is never done and when I travel to the US I never tip as I donβt agree with that system and Iβm not used to it. Nobody ever told me anything or complained
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Yes. You are actually the asshole if you donβt tip.