But yeah, in the end, tipping is all about helping a profit maximizing business pay less to its workers more often than not. Think about this... if you saw this and I actually saw it... retail associates being paid $10 an hour. Also, the same advertisement was looking for servers and the advertised rate was $3.50 an hour plus they say their restaurant brings in an average of $3.00 per person per hour in tips for a total of $6.50 an hour. Which job would you go for now? the retail associate. What if the restaurant was doing $10 in tips? then, the server. See, even though I am a person that pays an average of 15% or so in tips if you add my aggregate pretax base total and aggregate tips, I still have to say that the short term effect of a tip given to a server is all about making them happy and making their efforts for the day worthwhile. But, in the long term, its all about subsidizing the restaurant because if the server isn't bringing in enough $$ and they know they'd be better referring to the ad I described above, they'd go there. Especially I have to say this is true in some restaurants and is rapidly growing where all tips are placed into a bucket and the bucket is evenly distributed among who is working. What would happen if the server quits because he or she is not getting paid enough? That means, the restaurant has to spend more $$ training their servers because turnover is higher. Quite possibly, they'd need to bring their wages higher. So, if you're a server or bartender and not getting paid enough, just look for another job. I bet this situation is in much more other places, especially with the economy just sputtering along right now. Then, this will allow for the restaurant to possibly increase pay or at least they'd have to spend more money training servers. |
