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mrwrong

What's with this tip culture??

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Now I have to ask.

I live in Sweden and around here everything has a fixed price.
Haircuts, movie tickets, tandem jumps and so on. Hell even taxi rides has a fixed price... (NOT government controlled) Before someone starts screaming about communism...

The only thing here that is common to leave a tip is at restaurants / coffee shops / etc and then only if the service was good enough....

How come this "culture" of tipping for everything (that's the impression I've got) in the U.S.???

This is a serious question for you U.S. peeps....
“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.” - George Bernard Shaw
He who dies with the most toys, wins.....
dudeist skydiver # 19515
Buy quality and cry once!

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Now I have to ask.

I live in Sweden and around here everything has a fixed price.
Haircuts, movie tickets, tandem jumps and so on. Hell even taxi rides has a fixed price... (NOT government controlled) Before someone starts screaming about communism...

The only thing here that is common to leave a tip is at restaurants / coffee shops / etc and then only if the service was good enough....

How come this "culture" of tipping for everything (that's the impression I've got) in the U.S.???

This is a serious question for you U.S. peeps....



There really is no explanation except "that's the way it's done." An American could just as easily ask why it is NOT done in Sweden. That's the thing about cultures - within a culture, it would never occur to people to do otherwise, and other cultures' customs seem odd by comparison. It's like asking why the food, or clothing styles, are different from one country to another. They simply are.

To illustrate: in the US, almost everything that you buy retail has a fixed price, too. Unless you're buying a vehicle or something like that, you would not expect to walk into a store and haggle with the shopkeeper over the price of food, or clothing, etc. The price on the price tag is the price you pay. If I walked into a shoe store at the mall in the US and tried to haggle over the marked price of a pair of shoes, they'd look at me like I had 2 heads. Yet in some other countries, haggling for everything is expected, and the locals laugh at the Americans who simply pay what's on the price tag. So it's all a matter of cultural differences, that are really not explainable otherwise.

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interesting practice

what doesn't seem to make sense, in restaurants the tip is generally determined as a % of the bill, if dinner for 2 at a cheap place is $25 and at a better place it is $50 the tip is twice as much

does it take twice as much work to serve plates at an expensive place?
Give one city to the thugs so they can all live together. I vote for Chicago where they have strict gun laws.

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Thanks... This was the best explanation I've ever got regarding this ;)

“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.” - George Bernard Shaw
He who dies with the most toys, wins.....
dudeist skydiver # 19515
Buy quality and cry once!

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Also, another thing to consider... we have what's called "minimum wage", which is the lowest pay anybody can earn, by law. Currently, I think it's $7.25/hr. However, wait staff at restaurants, by legal exemption, don't get that much. They depend heavily on tips to make up the difference. I don't know why that is, but maybe to make our meals affordable?
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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Currently, I think it's $7.25/hr. However, wait staff at restaurants, by legal exemption, don't get that much.



Seriously???? :S
That little????? :o:o:o:o

WOW.... I'm stunned.... I mean I know about the minimum wage thing but not that it was THAT low.........


Okay a whole new light are shining on this "tip thing" for me now....

Thanks Billy..
“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.” - George Bernard Shaw
He who dies with the most toys, wins.....
dudeist skydiver # 19515
Buy quality and cry once!

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We get to travel quite a bit and it's not just an 'American' thing.

In many places however, the 'gratuity' is already figured into the bill when you get it...some tourists often don't realize it and add yet another 15%. :S

I'm curious though, is there generally a difference in the amount tipped between men & women?











~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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Okay a whole new light are shining on this "tip thing" for me now....



But wait, there's more...

The majority of minimum wage earners do not get tips. Tips in the US are generally reserved for a situation where you get personal service from an individual.

People you tip on a regular basis - barber/hair stylist, bell hops at a hotel, delivery people for food or flowers (but not UPS or the mailman). The idea is that these people can improve your experience if they put out the extra effort, and the tip is for the extra effort.

People you tip at Christmas - in the US some will tip people you work with on a daily (or almost) basis, but youdon't tip every time you see them. The mailman is a good example, the UPS guy if you use UPS alot and you get to know the guy, landscapers/snowplow guy, maybe your dry cleaner, newspaper delivery guy, or if you take lessons of any kind (or your kid does) the instructor. These are a cross between a tip and 'christmas bonus' but it's along the same lines.

People you don't tip - fast food, most retail stores, doctors, lawyers, cops, etc. Many fast food places and every coffee shop has a 'tip jar' in the counter but it's really a 'please toss your change in the jar' and the money is split between all the employees.

Finally, the waiter/waitress situation - the min wage is $7 or $8 an hour, but wait staff at a sit-down restaurant only get paid $2 or $3 an hour, the rest is made up of tips. You sort of have to tip at least 10% of the bill for the waiter/waitress to go home with about min. wage. The customary tip is considered to be 15%, and most people will go uip or down from there based on the service.

If it's the basic level of service, the basic 15% tip applies. If you feel like the waiter was lazy and slow, maybe you leave 10%, or if they really did a great job and were clearly working hard, 20%, 25% or 30% is the way to go.

At very cheap restaurants, sometimes the % is higher. If I stop for lunch and the bill is only $6.00, I'm not going to leave 15% (90 cents). The least I'll leave at any place is $3 or $4.

At very expensive restaurants, 15% still stands as a starting point, and yes you could end up tipping a waiter $50, ut if you're going to a place where you could drop $300 on dinner, you can afford the tip.

The basic idea is that tips are related to the service industry, and generally those recieving the tip don't make a very high wage. With tips included they end up making a living. Some make a better living than others, but it's always less than the people who are giving them the tips.

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In many places however, the 'gratuity' is already figured into the bill when you get it...some tourists often don't realize it and add yet another 15%. :S



When I made the mistake of taking a vacation in the Bahamas once, (and only once), the tip was included in the bill. And after experiencing the worst service I had ever seen, it was obvious that was the only way they could ever get tips.:S
"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

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I would never tip in an expensive restaurant. I'd only tip at places where you know that the waitresses don't earn much, because it's basically the only job an unschooled woman can get, and make a living on, reason of which is probably because of the tips. Then again I'm not American, so I could be wrong.
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane"

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Umm....my nephew is a waiter in a VERY nice Chicago restaurant, he made 90K last year!



Of course he did. You can bet that the salary of his average customer is well above 90k per year, which is why I threw that line into my post.

The other factor is the cost of living. 90k in Chicago is one thing, 90k in Topeka, Kansas is another. I've heard that dog walkers in NYC make 70k per year, but that's barely enough to split a one bedroom apartment with a roomate in NYC.

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Umm....my nephew is a waiter in a VERY nice Chicago restaurant, he made 90K last year!



Of course he did. You can bet that the salary of his average customer is well above 90k per year, which is why I threw that line into my post.

The other factor is the cost of living. 90k in Chicago is one thing, 90k in Topeka, Kansas is another. I've heard that dog walkers in NYC make 70k per year, but that's barely enough to split a one bedroom apartment with a roomate in NYC.


You have a good point, however I'm betting quite a few making less than 90 eat there as well. ;)










~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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Currently, I think it's $7.25/hr. However, wait staff at restaurants, by legal exemption, don't get that much.



Seriously???? :S
That little????? :o:o:o:o

WOW.... I'm stunned.... I mean I know about the minimum wage thing but not that it was THAT low.........



Hm, than you would be really shocked to know hom much is my hourly wage... [:/] And I`m college educated :S

Here we tip at the restaurants and in places where wereally like the service. And most of the people leave the change...
dudeist skydiver #42

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I would never tip in an expensive restaurant. I'd only tip at places where you know that the waitresses don't earn much,



Like I said above, because of the tips, restaurants are allowed to pay the wait staff something like $3 an hour. The rest of their income (aka all of it) comes from tips. $3 an hour is the same for every restaurant, regardless of the cost of the food.

Here's another thing to think about - waiters/waitresses get tips two ways, cash or added on to a credit card bill. When they get cash, it's theirs to keep, but they are supposed to report their earnings to the government and pay taxes on that income. Each waiter/waitress will report as much or as little of that cash as they want, and pay taxes on that amount.

When you add a tip to the credit card, the restaurant collects all of the money from the credit card company, and gives the waiter/waitress the cash amount of the tip. That income is now on record, and since the restaurant was involved in the process (with written records of it all), the restaurant will often times report that income and withold the taxes from the waiters next paycheck. So the $3 an hour gets used up paying taxes, and often times the 'paycheck' from the restautant is almost zero.

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That sucks to hear mate.... :S


Ever considered working abroad?????
That college education got to be worth even outside of the borders...:)

“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.” - George Bernard Shaw
He who dies with the most toys, wins.....
dudeist skydiver # 19515
Buy quality and cry once!

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Currently, I think it's $7.25/hr. However, wait staff at restaurants, by legal exemption, don't get that much.



Seriously???? :S
That little????? :o:o:o:o

WOW.... I'm stunned.... I mean I know about the minimum wage thing but not that it was THAT low.........



thats the big difference between minimum wage and collective agreedments (the way we do it here).
minimum wage says one wage minimum for everyone, agreedments has different wages for different jobs.

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That sucks to hear mate.... :S


Ever considered working abroad?????
That college education got to be worth even outside of the borders...:)






[Rant]
Plus, I`m very good with "computers and stuff". Still, it`s very, very hard for us to get visas and papers for working in western world countries. It sucks. But if you want to sneak in on the tourist visa and work under the table... [:/]

[/Rant]
dudeist skydiver #42

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Most restaurants/bars now report tips for the employee at about 11 or 12 percent of sales, regardless of what was actually received. A tipped employee's taxes are based on those reported tips. Tip less than 10% and it actually costs a server/bartender to serve you.....The days of unreported income in the service industry have slowly been coming to and end......[:/]

I'm behind the bar at Sloppy Joe's....See ya in the Keys!

Muff 4313

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Most restaurants/bars now report tips for the employee at about 11 or 12 percent of sales, regardless of what was actually received. A tipped employee's taxes are based on those reported tips. Tip less than 10% and it actually costs a server/bartender to serve you.....The days of unreported income in the service industry have slowly been coming to and end......[:/]



i thought about that too, if you get the tip in cash, how does that work with pension or unemployment funds?
maybe that is completly different from here, but here both pension and unemployment funds are based on your income, so working under the table has a very negative effect on those parts.

EDIT: if your employer does not report the tips as you said

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I been told in locales where the waiters and waitresses are paid below minimum wage, their IRS wage and earnings statements assume they make at least minimum wage in tips. For example, if you're paid $4 an hour, and minimum is $7.25, the IRS will tax you as if you made $3.25 an hour in tips. That's huge.:S

These days everyone seems to have their hand out. Even my favorite fast food places have the ubiquitous tip jar. I'm waiting for the practice to show up in the grocery store checkout line.:|

In China, they've discovered the tip as well. I remember the tour guide walking up and down the bus aisle with a list on her clipboard, making sure everyone had paid their tips to the bellhops at the hotel before we left in the morning. It didn't seem to matter to them that everyone's luggage was still sitting in the hallways of the hotel, uncollected and certainly not on the bus. They were going to get their tips.:|

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