Good.
Tipping has gotten way out of hand and I’d be glad to see it go.
A lot of places ask for a large % tip now, and often it’s expected that you do so.
Why eliminate tipping? Just pay everyone $30 and put up cards telling the customers tipping is completely optional.
It’s probably wishful thinking, but I could see this possibly curbing some of the entitlement people can get when using a tip-based service. And that makes for a better work environment.
Tipping is ingrained in our culture so much that people will still feel obligated to. The best way to stop it is to take the tip line off the receipt entirely.
The article doesn’t go into details (great journalism people, high-fives all around), but it sounds like they eliminated compulsory tipping where gratuity is added to the bills automatically. If customers really want to tip for exceptional service, I don’t think anyone will stop them.
The way it works at Casa Bonita is that you pay for your meal first. Because of this, they realized that tipping was far worse than a typical restaurant when they did their soft open recently. Rather than change their process and have customers pay after eating, they opted to pay their employees more and just ditch tipping. If they kept it the traditional way the only one making any decent tips would have been the bartender.
The way it works at Casa Bonita is that you pay for your meal first
Tipping in cash is still an option though, isn’t it?
I remember my very conservative grandparents getting upset about the prospect of this. They claimed that if servers made a high wage and didn’t get tips that it would lessen their quality of work. They also called it “socialism”
Not surprised anyone would be upset. You just can’t reason with folks that the effort of work can very much depend on the wage. Someone making minimum wage versus someone making $30 per hour should not be expected to put the same effort in.
The system doesn’t make much sense if some servers are better than others, but make the same.
Most jobs work that way. A job has a set pay, and you can get fired or promoted. Tipping is unusual: A janitor doesnt get paid a different amount each paycheck because of how clean others feel it is this week. Cashiers who help you find things in the store don’t make more that day.
That’s what promotions are for.
Then it becomes a competition not in who can provide the best service to customers, but in who is able to look the best to the boss. If that means being fast and efficient, and not minding if you step on customers’ toes, then the customer experience will falter.
Somehow restaurants in countries that don’t have a tipping culture have managed to survive just fine without descending into total chaos
the restaurant asked employees to sign new contracts that offered hourly wages for servers and bartenders of $30 an hour, according to Axios Denver. The new contract said they would no longer receive tips to supplement their wages
The article doesn’t say anywhere that they can get promotions. It seems to indicate that all servers are $30/hr and that no other levels exist to ascend to.
In other jobs a promotion comes with more/different work, added responsibility. Would that be the case with “good waiters” vs “bad waiters”? I suppose on some level you could have the good ones handle more tables at the same time than the bad ones, but there’s a lot in that job that doesn’t scale that way.
There are plenty of service jobs that don’t involve tipping which manage to have a hierarchy of staff without it getting overly complicated. It would be a change in how we approach situations where we’re extremely used to tipping, but I don’t think there’s any actual barrier to doing so. Pay staff the equivalent of what they make with tipping today, raise the price of the service/good, and just completely eliminate tipping. Then we can stop being the weird country that expects to tip in every situation.
Base pay has to be the same. You get merit based raised after that. How will they know who’s better and who’s worse at first? They won’t that’s why base pay is equal for everyone.
Some employees have so much experience or other skills that they can immediately ask for a higher base pay but it’s not the average experience.