Why should we tip?

Yep the software was Toast. Even the terminology of "check" on there is very US.

Thankfully it was optional and we weren't chased down the road for not tipping 22 bloody percent. I'd love to know how many people feel like they need to tip that amount, for grand service.

CC companies and payment providers take a percentage of the transaction amount in processing fees. When you tip staff using a card, you’re also tipping Elavon/Visa/Mastercard. Which is fine - they provide a service and it’s convenient for the customer. But staff get more out of a cash tip.

Where was that?

That is sketchy. I worked in various restaurants/pubs/hotels and it's always weekly. Doing it monthly is nonsense, there's no way it could be divided up fairly. Dividing up tips can also cause issues with staff. Why should the lazy rude fucker who generates no tips due to poor attitude get the same as the friendly, efficiant worker who generates loads? Should the chefs get tips? That's why people prefer cash because thay can hand it to the person serving their table so they can put into their own pocket. I hated dealing with tips when I was a manager I used to designate that job to the most senior staff member who did it nightly.

I don't want to name names, so let's just say it was somewhere between six hundred and sixty six, and eight hundred and eighty eight.

All of the kitchen staff are tipped in the US, and in a lot of places here too. Wait staff are expected to share a portion of their tips amongst the kitchen staff, with the chefs getting the highest proportion and it decreasing down the lines to the kitchen porters. It's called tipping out and it's extremely common practice.

Ok. Fair enough.

Having been on both sides of the kitchen door, I really don't think the general public are a good judge of what went into them having a good time at a resturant.

A lot of it is just the general vibe like the quality of the food whether they like the menu the chef put together, the ambiance, the company they're with and whether they're celebrating or just staying overnight for work, all of which are totally outside the waiters control.

Good service is also pretty wooly. If you need to eat quickly, speed = good. And that can depend on how busy the kitchen is. If you want an attentive server to suck up to you and be your friend, then the time they have to do it will depend on the rota and how many tables they have to serve.

So customers do some kind of subconscious calculation and sum up the experience and express it by either tipping the waiter or not. In other words, whether it's a good experience for the customer, it's probably outside the waiter's control

I mostly agree. I'm not cross about the standard of service in most places. It's usually fine and the job gets done.

But I'm still not sure what people mean when they say going above and beyond the normal level of service. What does that usually look like?

Well, I'll repeat what I just said. Tipping should only occur when the waiting staff has done more than just the basics of the job they chose to take on, because the punter is already paying for that. And sure, it can be hard to quantify, but you know it when it occurs.

Now that could be making extra efforts to see to the customer's needs, whatever that might be. Or just engaging in banter and making the customer feel that they're in a place that values their custom. But just bringing someone their food and a drop of wine and then the bill is not something that deserves a tip of any amount because that's already factored into the bill that the customer is handing over money for.

Leaving aside restaurants for a moment, let me tell you about the industry I work in where tips are the ONLY reason to do the job.

I'm a driver-guide, one of the people in the shiny cars vans and small Merc buses you see outside all the 5* hotels.

We guide small groups of 99% US visitors around this country every day. Some are self employed but most of us work for companies.

We spend about 120 nights a year away from home with basic subsistence covered. We are virtually all Irish born mostly male and 40 plus with a previous career and life experience which is a basic prerequisite for the job. Many of us have multiple qualifications in terms of guide badges which cost thousands for the course, college degrees in history, archeology, literature, food or other related fields. Our various driving/limo licenses cost thousands to attain and significant money to keep active. We have to have a particular personality who likes to learn, to teach, and to chat, and of a sophistication level to be engaging to seasoned or jaded travellers who have been everywhere and seen it all in diverse continents with the best guides in the world. We have to know how to dress ourselves sharply, stylishly, and to maintain those expensive suits/casuals at our own expense.

We also have to be humble enough to pick up rubbish, hair, chewing gum, nail clippings, used tissues, to clean vomit off carpets and the doors of cars. At the end of every day we have to wash shammy and hover the car van or bus.

Some of the places we sleep ourselves are disgusting, and there was a period when broke as a joke back around 2013 a few of us slept in the buses.

For all this we get paid less than couriers. Minimum wage if we worked 8 hours but usually we work 10 or 12. No overtime, No holiday pay (in many cases) no job security as it's seasonal, we work sometimes 30 days on the trot because it's seasonal. Our wives threaten to leave us and our kids don't cry anymore when we go out the door. We are winter people who exist to live during Irelands winter, and we buy expensive winter sun holidays for our families in an effort to make up for not being there from March to Nov.

We eat fast food, take no exercise, miss every GAA match, get fat, eat out until we crave a boiled egg, - the highlight of our week is repetitive shyte talk with other drivers we meet weekly in Killarney or Dublin Airport or Cong.

Tips are the sole reason we do this and to get them we have to be amazing every single day.

The tips are sometimes 100 a week and sometimes if you're very good, 1500. We are always chasing the 'big one'

We're hustlers, showmen, actors, fixers.

My wages for 7 or 8 months of this hell are about 25k.

It's the best job in the world, and the worst, the most destructive, it's fun and it's boring, annoying, exhilarating, awful.

The guests are mostly lovely, interesting, respectful, but sometimes rude, cheap, or condescending.

We have no power or agency in the result of this effort.

To pay someone of our knowledge level properly without tips would be at least 60 to 70k for 6 or 7 months. The market can't sustain that. It won't sustain that, and if tipping were to be banned, we'd cease to exist and foreign born drivers (or driverless vehicles) could take them around with an audio-guide of a long dead Irishman with a 'funny accent' who could tell them about what they're looking at providing the GPS had them in the right place for that pre-recorded segment. I wonder if he'd be able to find a bathroom anywhere on this island in 10 minutes though.

So tell me again about tips, - those of you who earn 3 to 5 times what I do, work about half the hours, and know little or nothing about your own country.

I double dare you....

As I said, it's great and awful - like many jobs, but the level of knowledge required (to be brilliant at it) is astronomicaland endless. It can't be paid for in wages.

I agree about childcare, - although I give the bigger portion of my weekly tips to a child minder.

Ultimately there aren't many other openings for people with the particular skillset to make a years basic money in 7 months.

In truth, many of the people at this are retired on a pension or have some other income. Few of us support a family out of it.

Not complaining, just fighting back against people who have a guaranteed and often comfortable wage railing against tipping.

I find that those most against nixers and tips are high earning PS workers.

What? All of us who do this? Leave en-masse?

The thread is about tipping.

I gave an example of a job where it's crucial - to counteract the many comments of 'workers in Ireland are paid properly' made by people bitter over cash tops.

That's all.

Also - if there was something which paid (on aggregate) as much with the same skillset, closer to home I'd already be doing it. Tourist offices pay about €300 a week with guaranteed 3 months work a year...

People's push back against tipping isn't about being "bitter". The company a person works for should pay their staff a decent wage. It shouldn't be expected for the punter to hand over an extra charge out of their pocket to augment shit wages being paid out by a stingy company…

…especially to the tune of 20 fucking percent extra.

And if you're in a job were a reliance on tips is "crucial", then yes, it's time to move on.