Shopping Discussion

Tip Shaming?

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cybersaga wrote: When I worked for Kelsey's, the servers had to give a percentage of their bills (not of their tips) to the kitchen and the bartender. So if one table didn't give a tip, their contribution to the kitchen/bartender for that table would come out of their other tips.
Isn't that illegal? if a server didn't get enough total tips to cover off what they were supposed to give they be giving money out of their wages. It has to be against the law.
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kr0zet wrote: Isn't that illegal? if a server didn't get enough total tips to cover off what they were supposed to give they be giving money out of their wages. It has to be against the law.
I would think that this is illegal as well.
It's basically a "forced" tip except that the server pays it, not the customer.

But maybe it's part of the agreement a server signs when they get hired.

This whole discussion is interesting, difference in wages between US and Canada etc..., but as a customer, I normally would not concern myself with that.
What other "service" does one get or purchase does one make where one thinks about the wages the service person makes and the tries to compensate with an appropriate (or no) tip.
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krs wrote: But maybe it's part of the agreement a server signs when they get hired.
Probably. If they sign a contract, and that's part of it, it's perfectly legal.

I was a cook, so I don't know what the servers have to sign.
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kr0zet wrote: Isn't that illegal? if a server didn't get enough total tips to cover off what they were supposed to give they be giving money out of their wages. It has to be against the law.
The server would always get enough tips to cover the tip outs. Tipping out from sales makes it easier at the end of the day. Otherwise you would have to calculate the percentage off of how much somebody tips for every single bill, which would be a massive waste of time.

It's not really part of an agreement or anything but the social norm working as a server. Just like how people are pretty much "forced" to tip.
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Feb 16, 2018
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someone16 wrote: The server would always get enough tips to cover the tip outs. Tipping out from sales makes it easier at the end of the day. Otherwise you would have to calculate the percentage off of how much somebody tips for every single bill, which would be a massive waste of time.

It's not really part of an agreement or anything but the social norm working as a server. Just like how people are pretty much "forced" to tip.
This. Tipping out is pretty standard everywhere. The amount of the tip out differs from location to location. Some places charge more, some less. The reason this is done is so the cooks and other staff who made your meal “enjoyable” benefit from the tip as well.

When you are tipping your server you are in fact tipping everyone, not just your server. Its been this way for a long time but a lot of people are still unaware this is how it is done.

It is perfectly legal and known as tip pooling.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/employees-t ... gratuities
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HghSsociety wrote: This. Tipping out is pretty standard everywhere. The amount of the tip out differs from location to location. Some places charge more, some less. The reason this is done is so the cooks and other staff who made your meal “enjoyable” benefit from the tip as well.

When you are tipping your server you are in fact tipping everyone, not just your server. Its been this way for a long time but a lot of people are still unaware this is how it is done.

It is perfectly legal and known as tip pooling.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/employees-t ... gratuities
As far as legality is concerned...this sound as if most chain restaurants don't qualify
Tip pools
Employers can withhold or take an employee’s tips or other gratuities if they are collecting and redistributing them later in a tip pool
Employers can participate in a tip pool if they:
are a sole proprietor (i.e. the exclusive owner) of the business or a director, partner or shareholder in the business and
regularly spend most of their time doing the same work as the employees who share in the tip pool, or other employees in the same industry that would normally receive or share tips
and re
so the cooks and other staff who made your meal “enjoyable” benefit from the tip as well
so if the meal is "not enjoyable" and one decides to leave $0.- tip, then the cooks and other staff still get the benefit of an "enjoyable" meal????
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krs wrote: As far as legality is concerned...this sound as if most chain restaurants don't qualify



and re


so if the meal is "not enjoyable" and one decides to leave $0.- tip, then the cooks and other staff still get the benefit of an "enjoyable" meal????
All restaurants can participate in a tip pool and virtually all do regardless of being part of a chain or not. The part that you are quoting is not in reference to the eligibility of the restaurant to be able to do so but rather a law that was passed. I believe the law was passed in the summer of 2016 . What was happening was some restaurants pooled the tips and the owner/directors took a share while doing nothing to earn that share. (i.e. absentee owner) so a law was passed that prevented this from happening. The part that you are referencing only allows owners/directors to share in the tips if they are actively doing the same work as the employees who share in the tip pool, such as waiting tables, cooking etc. not sitting in the back office doing paperwork or being an absentee owner.


That is correct, if you leave a tip of $0. the server is still required to leave a % of the bill to the cooks and other staff as a tip out as it is assumed that the meal was "enjoyable" and that a tip was left. The reason that this is done is because as it was pointed out by someone else the logistics of breaking down every tip from every meal would be a nightmare and to time consuming to do. On the surface this may not seem fair but if you flip it around you could ask is it fair that the server keeps 100% of the tip when a tip is left when he/she plays only a partial role in the enjoyment of that meal? It would probably be fair to say that if your meal tasted like total crap or the restaurant was filthy you would be inclined to tip less if at all but if tasted amazing you would be inclined to tip more, why should a server benefit solely from that via an increased tip when the server had nothing to do with the taste of a meal or the cleanliness of the restaurant?

We tip pool in our stores but myself and my partners do not take any of the tips even thou we are actively doing the same job. Our stores are a bit different in that we do not have servers and we share the tips evenly for every staff member, cook or cashier. You have to order from the cashier in our stores and then the back starts cooking it, same as Mcdonalds

Here is an example of a chain doing a tip out and increasing the tip out because of the min wage increase.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchene ... -1.4488144
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HghSsociety wrote: That is correct, if you leave a tip of $0. the server is still required to leave a % of the bill to the cooks and other staff as a tip out as it is assumed that the meal was "enjoyable" and that a tip was left.
This line of logic just serves to underscore the utter absurdity of the justification for tipping in the first place. Ostensibly tipping is intended to reward wait staff (and more recently all staff) for making the dining experience "enjoyable." Yet regardless the kitchen staff gets rewarded even if they were the ones who made the experience unenjoyable. Worse the server, even if they made their best efforts to mitigate the situation, are the only ones who get penalized.

What a f@#$ed up system your industry has created and now try to defend.
On the surface this may not seem fair but if you flip it around you could ask is it fair that the server keeps 100% of the tip when a tip is left when he/she plays only a partial role in the enjoyment of that meal? It would probably be fair to say that if your meal tasted like total crap or the restaurant was filthy you would be inclined to tip less if at all but if tasted amazing you would be inclined to tip more, why should a server benefit solely from that via an increased tip when the server had nothing to do with the taste of a meal or the cleanliness of the restaurant?
A simple solution would be to eliminate tipping altogether, pay everyone a fair wage like other industries are required to do, and adjust menu prices accordingly.

Oh wait, that wouldn't work because then you and your partners would actually have to do your job by taking a more active role in supervising staff, training them, coaching them and otherwise ensuring that your customers' dining experience really is "enjoyable."

TL;DR the restaurant industry, because they won't pay their staff fair wages, uses tipping and tip shaming to get their customers to make up the difference. This practice has been refined and fine tuned in subtle ways over the years so as to extract an ever increasing percentage of what the customer pays for their meals without any evidence that the dining experience has been made any more "enjoyable."
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Did anyone read the last line in the CBC article?
Stelios Lazos, Chief Operating Officer of Sunset Grill, said in an email to CBC Monday morning that
"All our staff are treated with respect and are well compensated, period," Lazos said.
So tipping at that chain is not required to supplement any of the wages which sort of doesn't support the 5% tip-out they implemented.

The article also suggest to me that the average tip expected is 5% BEFORE tax rather than the 15 to 25% AFTER tax which is preset on many pay terminals.
In fact, I have never seen one with a 5% option or even a 10% option.
So even with a 5% tipout a server is way ahead even with a 15% tip
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We were out last weekend for Mothers Day dinner and I noticed the tipping %s on the machine were set at 50% 30% and 18% and "Other"

It was my first time here seeing that. I do tip all the time so it's not like I'm cheap skating anyone. Corrected it to 15% immediately.
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May 12, 2019
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The tipping sham is real, if you go to any place in downtown, tipping starts from 20%. I mean tip is something given when you appreciate the service not something you force on everyone to pay. I usually pay 10% to 15% usually and for really good service i pay 20% max. i mean being a student and all i can barley afford going to a good restaurant and on top of that you expect us to pay extra tip and the treatment is same as any fast food chain!!!!
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krs wrote: Did anyone read the last line in the CBC article? So tipping at that chain is not required to supplement any of the wages which sort of doesn't support the 5% tip-out they implemented.
Of course. The more the industry twists its arguments in favour of tipping into increasingly intricate pretzel shapes the harder it is for them to defend the practice with any degree of logic. So the hand waving and other forms of obfuscation continue. Sometimes I wish that pretzel would turn into a noose around the necks of those who created it.
The article also suggest to me that the average tip expected is 5% BEFORE tax rather than the 15 to 25% AFTER tax which is preset on many pay terminals.
In fact, I have never seen one with a 5% option or even a 10% option.
So even with a 5% tipout a server is way ahead even with a 15% tip
That's not the inference I made.

"The document said the 5% tip out is evenly distributed to back-of-house staff such as cooks, helpers and dishwashers."

My interpretation is that the 5% applies only to non-customer-facing staff. Presumably the rest (10% to 15% of a 15% to 20% tip) goes to the servers.

Of course that's today. It won't take long for restaurateurs to hype up the minimum tip to 25% or more justified by some self-serving bullshit like, "...so we can tip out the same amount to the back-of-house as we do to the servers. That's only fair to everyone."
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Biscayne05 wrote: We were out last weekend for Mothers Day dinner and I noticed the tipping %s on the machine were set at 50% 30% and 18% and "Other"

It was my first time here seeing that. I do tip all the time so it's not like I'm cheap skating anyone. Corrected it to 15% immediately.
Is this a high-end restaurant?

I'm seeing 15%/20%/25% at Popeye's now...
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bylo wrote: That's not the inference I made.
"The document said the 5% tip out is evenly distributed to back-of-house staff such as cooks, helpers and dishwashers."
My interpretation is that the 5% applies only to non-customer-facing staff. Presumably the rest (10% to 15% of a 15% to 20% tip) goes to the servers.
Well yes.......
All I'm saying if the tips are evenly distributed to everyone who made that dining experience "enjoyable" and the amount has been defined as 5% of the total restaurant revenue, wouldn't that suggest that the average expected tip is 5%?

Otherwise, as you also stated, the servers will still get a much larger tip at the end of the day than the back of the house staff, so the tips aren't even close to being equally distributed.
So in the end, if there are 5 back-of-house staff (greeter, 2 cooks, 1 helper, 1 dishwasher) to make the math simpler, each gets 1% of each server's sales.
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rf134a wrote: Is this a high-end restaurant?

I'm seeing 15%/20%/25% at Popeye's now...
It's mid-high just depending on what you're ordering
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HghSsociety wrote: All restaurants can participate in a tip pool and virtually all do regardless of being part of a chain or not. The part that you are quoting is not in reference to the eligibility of the restaurant to be able to do so but rather a law that was passed. I believe the law was passed in the summer of 2016 . What was happening was some restaurants pooled the tips and the owner/directors took a share while doing nothing to earn that share. (i.e. absentee owner) so a law was passed that prevented this from happening. The part that you are referencing only allows owners/directors to share in the tips if they are actively doing the same work as the employees who share in the tip pool, such as waiting tables, cooking etc. not sitting in the back office doing paperwork or being an absentee owner.


That is correct, if you leave a tip of $0. the server is still required to leave a % of the bill to the cooks and other staff as a tip out as it is assumed that the meal was "enjoyable" and that a tip was left. The reason that this is done is because as it was pointed out by someone else the logistics of breaking down every tip from every meal would be a nightmare and to time consuming to do. On the surface this may not seem fair but if you flip it around you could ask is it fair that the server keeps 100% of the tip when a tip is left when he/she plays only a partial role in the enjoyment of that meal? It would probably be fair to say that if your meal tasted like total crap or the restaurant was filthy you would be inclined to tip less if at all but if tasted amazing you would be inclined to tip more, why should a server benefit solely from that via an increased tip when the server had nothing to do with the taste of a meal or the cleanliness of the restaurant?

We tip pool in our stores but myself and my partners do not take any of the tips even thou we are actively doing the same job. Our stores are a bit different in that we do not have servers and we share the tips evenly for every staff member, cook or cashier. You have to order from the cashier in our stores and then the back starts cooking it, same as Mcdonalds

Here is an example of a chain doing a tip out and increasing the tip out because of the min wage increase.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchene ... -1.4488144
30-50$/hr at an average restaurant chain? For just bringing food... Disgusting!

Engineers don't make that much and they built up this world after years upon years of studying.

And reading about the tip-out, then WHY exactly isn't ALL the tip put in pool and then tip out EVERYONE evenly (cooks, dishwasher, servers, etc). So all the tip left is split to EVERYONE currently working that shift evenly.

Is there a server mafia I don't know about?
Last edited by Messerschmitt on May 17th, 2019 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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bylo wrote: This line of logic just serves to underscore the utter absurdity of the justification for tipping in the first place. Ostensibly tipping is intended to reward wait staff (and more recently all staff) for making the dining experience "enjoyable." Yet regardless the kitchen staff gets rewarded even if they were the ones who made the experience unenjoyable. Worse the server, even if they made their best efforts to mitigate the situation, are the only ones who get penalized.

What a f@#$ed up system your industry has created and now try to defend.

A simple solution would be to eliminate tipping altogether, pay everyone a fair wage like other industries are required to do, and adjust menu prices accordingly.

Oh wait, that wouldn't work because then you and your partners would actually have to do your job by taking a more active role in supervising staff, training them, coaching them and otherwise ensuring that your customers' dining experience really is "enjoyable."

TL;DR the restaurant industry, because they won't pay their staff fair wages, uses tipping and tip shaming to get their customers to make up the difference. This practice has been refined and fine tuned in subtle ways over the years so as to extract an ever increasing percentage of what the customer pays for their meals without any evidence that the dining experience has been made any more "enjoyable."
Seriously? Who pissed in your cornflakes? I never defended anything. I simply answered a question and corrected a false assumption. Please tell me where I defended tipping.

We have several locations, none of which employ servers had you bothered to read my post. All of our locations are takeout and pickup. You walk to the cashier and place your order and the back of house cooks it. Think the exact same as a Mcdonalds set up.

Are you seriously telling me I don't do my job? You don't know the first thing about me or what my day to day participation is in my business. Perhaps you really are getting a little senile and are having difficulties in your cognitive abilities like you alluded to in a previous earlier post in a different thread.

We do just fine thank you. There's a reason we have double digit year over year growth in virtually all our locations and dominate our industry in our area and it's not because we don't do our job or train our staff properly or take an active role in our stores.

Also for the record I hardly ever tip. The only people I tip is at restaurants and it's never 15-20%. I might leave $5 on a $75 dinner tab. I don't agree with tipping and I'm in the industry.

And if your food tastes like crap, your meal is not "enjoyable" no matter how great your server is. So back of house is just as important as the server. One could argue more important because if your food is terrible you are not having an enjoyable time.
Last edited by HghSsociety on May 17th, 2019 9:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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bylo wrote: This line of logic just serves to underscore the utter absurdity of the justification for tipping in the first place. Ostensibly tipping is intended to reward wait staff (and more recently all staff) for making the dining experience "enjoyable." Yet regardless the kitchen staff gets rewarded even if they were the ones who made the experience unenjoyable. Worse the server, even if they made their best efforts to mitigate the situation, are the only ones who get penalized.

What a f@#$ed up system your industry has created and now try to defend.
Speaking for myself, as a customer, if the service is decent but the food is trash, I'd complain to the server and/or the manager and generally they would take the item off or offer a discount on the bill (which I imagine would reduce the "sales" and therefore the tip out). In fact usually if that happens, the server gets a normal (based on the menu price) tip or even a higher tip for trying to make things better. Obviously if it's the server's fault that it was unenjoyable, I'd just go after the tip. So maybe that makes some sense?
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Messerschmitt wrote: 30-50$/hr at an average restaurant chain? For just bringing food... Disgusting!
Probably more than that at dinner time if the restaurant is busy.
Last dinner we had out was $120.- for four, no alcoholic drinks. Tip was$20.-
Time to answer any questions about the menu, take the order and then bring the food was less than 15 minutes.
The waitress was serving several tables during the 1 1/2 hours we were there and kept busy. So I would suggest on average she would get at least $80.- in tips an hour during that time, plus of course her salary less any tipouts.
Breakfast is a different story, I typically tip at least 20% because the meals are only between $8 and $15, so for 4 people a total of maybe $50.- with a $10.- tip.
Waitress probably works just as hard, if not harder than at dinner.
I find people are less tolerant waiting for breakfast than for dinner, so the waitress has to hustle.
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krs wrote: Probably more than that at dinner time if the restaurant is busy.
Last dinner we had out was $120.- for four, no alcoholic drinks. Tip was$20.-
Time to answer any questions about the menu, take the order and then bring the food was less than 15 minutes.
The waitress was serving several tables during the 1 1/2 hours we were there and kept busy. So I would suggest on average she would get at least $80.- in tips an hour during that time, plus of course her salary less any tipouts.
Breakfast is a different story, I typically tip at least 20% because the meals are only between $8 and $15, so for 4 people a total of maybe $50.- with a $10.- tip.
Waitress probably works just as hard, if not harder than at dinner.
I find people are less tolerant waiting for breakfast than for dinner, so the waitress has to hustle.
I understand those tips in US, but why the same in Canada? Where they make minimum wage already? (AB already at $15 vs $2 in the US).

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