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dilly-dilly- t1_j6od124 wrote

Reply to comment by boulevardofdef in Looking for fine-dining restaurants that are good to staff by rhodyjourno

I would much rather have Den Den's style of just charging more for the food than get a 20% service charge after the fact.

What Gracie's is doing is just mandatory tipping.

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dantronZ t1_j6oq1zw wrote

I understand the concept of tipping, and always tip very well, but why can’t these places just pay their employees? There are actually places in the world that do this. Who made the rule that waitresses and waiters need to make such little pay?

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dilly-dilly- t1_j6oyki2 wrote

A lot of factors keep it from ever changing but I think it's just boils down to consumerism. Basically the same human psychology we play here with the 4.99 vs 5 dollars and not including sales tax in prices of stuff. Whatever way you can give a consumer a lower price before check out is ideal. It's not surprising America adopted this.

That steak isn't 18 dollars it comes with a 1.26 sales tax, .18 cent local tax, with a 3.6 tip. You'd feel too bad to get a soda if the steak was 23.04.

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anemonemometer t1_j6ohlog wrote

I agree, but I’ll also throw in that there are different schools of thought here. One is that tipping itself is silly. The other is that tipping is fine, but inequitable, since tips are correlated with how attractive patrons find the server to be. The flat charge addresses the second issue, while keeping the idea of a tip in place.

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MargaretDumont t1_j6olysp wrote

I think the effect is the same, it's just being called something else. In either case it takes the tipping decision out of the patrons' hands and makes it a cost built into the overall price, so that the income is reliable, predictable, and not reliant on the whims of the often hostile and/or biased public.

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