Angel!
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Post by Angel! on Jul 20, 2012 16:48:00 GMT -5
Whether the high money comes from the customer or the restaurant, high end restaurants will expect high quality servers & will pay to get them or the restaurant will suffer. Exactly, and my point is that these restaurants will either go way up or way down in quality. If they didn't have great food/service to begin with, they're going to sink to the lowest common denominator if tipping goes away. If they were already a great establishment, they'll raise their prices high enough to retain their waitstaff and stay afloat. The result? No more middle-of-the-road restaurants. You can either have a super expensive great experience or you can have a really shitty cheap one. I like my middle ground. DH and I don't pay $200 for a meal very often but when we do, I want to be able to count on the fact that they are expecting higher than average tips and working harder than average for them. That logic doesn't make much sense at all. Middle of the roads restaurants won't disappear, they will just pay middle of the road wages attracting middle of the road servers, which is what they already have.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 16:54:55 GMT -5
Basically, I feel like there are approximately three kinds of restaurants (sure, there might be some overlap or depending on how you feel about service, you might put a restaurant in one category and someone else would put it in another):
1) Low end restaurants where you don't need to know jack shit as a server, and 10% as a baseline is fine. You're not going to make tons of money there and you're not going to advance much.
2) Middle end restaurants, where the waiters are expected to have SOME knowledge and offer skills to create a somewhat better experience than low-end restaurants offer. You don't need to be HIGHLY skilled, you can pick it up, but you do need to be a good server otherwise your tips will be shit and you probably won't last long.
3) High end restaurants, where you can't even get through the door if you don't meet dress code. Waiters know their shit, they offer a terrific experience every single time, and the food is good enough to justify obscenely high prices. The restaurant could arbitrarily switch to a "no tip" system at any time and basically, the clientele would stay the same.
I think there actually ARE a few restaurants in category #3 that don't allow tipping. If I'm not mistaken, those restaurants DO offer servers salaries - because again, they can pretty arbitrarily raise the prices high enough to cover the average tip and people will still eat there - that's the same price they would have paid anyway.
I think out of the three categories above, #2 is most heavily dependent on tips. If we did away with tipping, I think category #2 restaurants would go away. Those restaurants would either fall down into category #1 (most), they'd be "bumped up" into category #3 (very few), or they'd go out of business.
And my point is that I like category #2 restaurants. So I don't want tipping to go away.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 16:55:12 GMT -5
What?!? Why? It doesn't make any damn sense. They'll stay exactly where they are now. They'll raise their prices by 20% (which most of us are already giving them anyway in the form of tips), raise the pay for their servers, and the whole thing will be completely transparent to us since the total price will stay exactly the same. If anything it'll make eating at lower end places cheaper since minimum wage, which is what most of these servers are actually worth, is way less than 10-20% of the bill.
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973beachbum
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Post by 973beachbum on Jul 20, 2012 16:55:15 GMT -5
Whether the high money comes from the customer or the restaurant, high end restaurants will expect high quality servers & will pay to get them or the restaurant will suffer. Exactly, and my point is that these restaurants will either go way up or way down in quality. If they didn't have great food/service to begin with, they're going to sink to the lowest common denominator if tipping goes away. If they were already a great establishment, they'll raise their prices high enough to retain their waitstaff and stay afloat. At which point they'll be far too expensive for the average Joe, the way SUPER high quality restaurants are right now. The result? No more middle-of-the-road restaurants. You can either have a super expensive great experience or you can have a really shitty cheap one. I like my middle ground. DH and I don't pay $200 for a meal very often but when we do, I want to be able to count on the fact that they are expecting higher than average tips and working harder than average for them. The rest of the time, I'm fine with a mediocre experience. This is my real disagreement. The best experiences we have had eating out were at some of the cheaper establishment where dinner was about $15 a person. The waiters were wonderful and really seemed to enjoy interacting with the customers. The worst experience I ever had was at a restaurant that cost $300 a person. I am still shocked they weren't killed earlier in life because of how obnoxious they were. They may call themselves knowledgeable but I call them condescending blowhards. Truthfully the girl that runs the Wendy's drive through deserves more money than they do.
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hoops902
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Post by hoops902 on Jul 20, 2012 16:56:14 GMT -5
Though I think it's interesting that what so many people claim to not like, the hovering, etc, is a direct result of our tipping culture. Act super interested and always be there to get big tips. In fact it's why I said Denny's is worse than McD's. No one at McD's hovers over me staring at me as I eat. Interesting, I don't think I've ever been hovered over at Denny's either. Usually the bill comes with the food & your lucky if you ever see them again. At least at Mcdonalds I can refill my own drink instead of wondering where the hell my waitress went. I get either total abandonment, or they check in 35 times with "just wanted to make sure everything was excellent, smile, wink".
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973beachbum
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Post by 973beachbum on Jul 20, 2012 16:57:48 GMT -5
Interesting, I don't think I've ever been hovered over at Denny's either. Usually the bill comes with the food & your lucky if you ever see them again. At least at Mcdonalds I can refill my own drink instead of wondering where the hell my waitress went. I get either total abandonment, or they check in 35 times with "just wanted to make sure everything was excellent, smile, wink". Maybe she thinks your cute.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 16:58:04 GMT -5
Middle end restaurants could do the same thing that high end restaurants do. Raise their prices 10-20% and pay a middle salary to their wait staff. The really good servers will still go work at the high end places, the shitty ones will work the low end places, and the middle ones (who are already working at the middle end places anyway) will stay there. Still no change. Except that now the employer is paying the servers instead of having the customers do it, so he probably cares a little more about weeding out the crappy ones.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 16:58:36 GMT -5
The worst experience I ever had was at a restaurant that cost $300 a person. I am still shocked they weren't killed earlier in life because of how obnoxious they were. They may call themselves knowledgeable but I call them condescending blowhards. Okay then. I really love eating in high end restaurants, and I've NEVER found the waitstaff that serve them obnoxious. $15/person, I'm not expecting much. Just bring me my food please.
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Angel!
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Post by Angel! on Jul 20, 2012 17:01:35 GMT -5
What?!? Why? It doesn't make any damn sense. They'll stay exactly where they are now. They'll raise their prices by 20% (which most of us are already giving them anyway in the form of tips), raise the pay for their servers, and the whole thing will be completely transparent to us since the total price will stay exactly the same. If anything it'll make eating at lower end places cheaper since minimum wage, which is what most of these servers are actually worth, is way less than 10-20% of the bill. There is no reason for middle of the road to disappear. Low end restaurants will pay minimum wage or probably a bit over. Mid restaurants will pay in the $30-$50K salaries. The high end ones will be the $70K+ salaries. There is no reason to think a middle of the road restaurant would suddenly start paying their employees crap. They know good staff + good food = good restaurant. Some might be so short-sighted to see that, but most that are run well will continue to be middle of the road. That is how they rose above the level of Denny's in the first place, they had standards for their wait staff & good food.
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973beachbum
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Post by 973beachbum on Jul 20, 2012 17:02:15 GMT -5
The worst experience I ever had was at a restaurant that cost $300 a person. I am still shocked they weren't killed earlier in life because of how obnoxious they were. They may call themselves knowledgeable but I call them condescending blowhards. Okay then. I really love eating in high end restaurants, and I've NEVER found the waitstaff that serve them obnoxious. $15/person, I'm not expecting much. Just bring me my food please. There is a place down the road that serves the best crab cakes for about $15. The waitstaff is fantastic and the food is local and fresh. They even cater to kids by bringing them a bread basket first or their food before everyone else's if you ask. Yeah it was a real trip to pay that bill for eight of us knowing I would have enjoyed running the waiter over with my car. Honestly the food was good but not mind blowing and considering the price it really should have been at least excellent in my opinion.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:02:38 GMT -5
Middle end restaurants could do the same thing that high end restaurants do. Raise their prices 10-20% and pay a middle salary to their wait staff.
But I don't think they would. For a lot of middle end restaurants, that would mean cutting off a huge percentage of their target market. Some people would recognize that it comes to approximately the same dollar amount in the end, but a lot of people would simply say "Pfft, I'm not paying an extra 20% to eat there, screw that."
Restaurants would have to go through a process of trying to gauge the market and outbid their competitors. Tons of restaurants wouldn't survive this process. They'd either charge too much, more than their food/service warranted in order to retain waitstaff, alienate their customer base and go out of business, OR they would try to appeal to the customer base by NOT raising prices as much, in which case service would suffer because a lot of the waitstaff would leave for greener pastures. Which, in turn, would also alienate their customer base.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:04:45 GMT -5
There is no reason to think a middle of the road restaurant would suddenly start paying their employees crap. They know good staff + good food = good restaurant. Some might be so short-sighted to see that, but most that are run well will continue to be middle of the road.
Eh, I don't think it would be quite that simple. Gauging the market is a TRICKY thing to do, and restaurant profit margins are already thin as hell. Trying to get to the sweet spot where you aren't losing customers and you're still retaining good staff without going out of business in the process would be very difficult.
(I'm not saying a "new middle of the road" wouldn't eventually emerge, but it would take awhile.)
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:05:59 GMT -5
There is a place down the road that serves the best crab cakes for about $15. The waitstaff is fantastic and the food is local and fresh. They even cater to kids by bringing them a bread basket first or their food before everyone else's if you ask.I'm not saying all low-end restaurants suck DH and I pay more than $100 for a meal maybe six or seven times per year. Most of the time, we go to low-end places. Some of them are quite good. But also, my expectations are way lower.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 17:12:34 GMT -5
We already pay an extra 20% to eat pretty much everywhere. You aren't paying an extra 20%. If anything the only message the customer is going to get is the big "No tips please, serving you is our pleasure" signs that'll pop up everywhere. Most people will probably view it as a 15-20% discount on eating out.
We're talking about a $5 burger being $6. A $20 entree being $24. A $50 steak being $60. It's not a huge price shift. And you know going in that you don't have to factor in a 10-20% tip. I think you're overestimating how much impact it would actually have.
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Loopdilou
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Post by Loopdilou on Jul 20, 2012 17:15:34 GMT -5
Some of the best service I've ever had has been at places where I pay under $10 a person... the converse can also be said. Low end, high end is a false paradigm, because only a few high end (and I mean really high end mostly in large cities) have really well trained wait staff.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:16:40 GMT -5
We're talking about a $5 burger being $6. A $20 entree being $24. A $50 steak being $60. It's not a huge price shift. And you know going in that you don't have to factor in a 10-20% tip. I think you're overestimating how much impact it would actually have. Perhaps. I've been wrong before. But let's not forget that you're a judgmental asshole
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 17:21:21 GMT -5
True.
You're also forgetting that customer habits are hard to break. Even if restaurants put in the no tips signs and started paying servers a salary, I'm willing to bet that it would take years for customers to stop actually leaving tips. There won't be any servers running for greener pastures, because they'll probably make more during those transition years than they ever have before.
ETA - You ever seen those little old people that still think a couple quarters is a big tip because it was back in their day? When we're the little old people, we'll insist on leaving a 20% tip in a place that pays their servers a six figure salary. All the young whipper snappers will be rolling their eyes just like we do when we see granny get out her change purse as the bill arrives.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:26:49 GMT -5
Even if restaurants put in the no tips signs and started paying servers a salary, I'm willing to bet that it would take years for customers to stop actually leaving tips.
I agree, so it would be pretty unattractive if your bill was 20% higher than it used to be and you felt compelled to continue leaving a tip anyway "just in case," wouldn't it?
You might keep going to the same restaurant out of habit, but I bet you'd start going less. I would.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 17:28:13 GMT -5
To me personally? No. I hate leaving a tip now, so I'm not leaving a cent if I see a no tips sign.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:29:25 GMT -5
Oh sorry, I meant if you were one of those morons who would leave a tip even when told not to that you were just talking about in your post
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 17:32:08 GMT -5
Yeah, being on of those idiots would suck. However, that's another thing that getting rid of tips has going for it. It would potentially add a stupid tax to restaurant bills. I think this country would be in a lot better shape if we made stupidity more painful instead of constantly trying to protect people from their own.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:32:49 GMT -5
Well, there's that. You know I can't argue with anything that has to do with making stupid people pay out the nose for stupid choices.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 17:41:30 GMT -5
Ha! I've found your cryptonite!
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:48:10 GMT -5
Found? Did you lose it?
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 17:50:26 GMT -5
Not really, but I have to celebrate finding your weakness now that we're arch enemies and all. I almost added a maniacal laugh at the end of the post.
Oh, I'm the evil genius in our duo obviously. You're the kind of lame hero.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 17:59:08 GMT -5
Oh, I'm the evil genius in our duo obviously. You're the kind of lame hero.
Well, it didn't take too long to get you to admit YOUR weakness now did it?
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 18:02:49 GMT -5
I'm the evil genius, I'm supposed to monologue and give up all my secrets. Duh.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 18:17:22 GMT -5
I don't even know if it's worth my time to be your archenemy. I kind of like a bigger challenge. You're the kind of villain who self-destructs with barely any help from his foe.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on Jul 20, 2012 18:34:04 GMT -5
Self destructs??? By my count I'm winning or have won all three arguments we've gotten into since this whole arch-enemy thing. I'm starting to wonder if I'm just fighting the side kick and the hero hasn't show up yet.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 20, 2012 18:53:19 GMT -5
Hmm, you must have a different definition of winning than I do. By my count, there's only been one contest between us so far and I won it.
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