Mostly dunking on the upper post. Thread about tipping in /r/antiwork. The juxtaposition that happened here is something. Thread for reference.
Mostly dunking on the upper post. Thread about tipping in /r/antiwork. The juxtaposition that happened here is something. Thread for reference.
So much of this boils down to "Is my take-home pay sustainable?"
Like, I honestly don't give a fuck if my employer is paying me out of the receipts or the client is paying me directly. All I care about is whether I'm pocketing enough money to pay my bills. Top commenter clearly is. Bottom commenter... not sure this person has ever worked service.
I dated a girl who lived out in Tomball, northwest of Houston. She waited tables. Absolutely hated the Sunday crowd because they never tipped. So she was making min-wage after twelve hours on her feet and hated it. She worked it through college and then got "a real job", vowing to never do that shit again.
Meanwhile, I have a friend who does liquor distribution and is friends with a bunch of bar tenders and other service workers at high-end spots like Vic & Anthony's and Papa's Steakhouse. These guys bring home $80k+/year for a job they've been doing since high school working 3 days/week. They're what my friend calls "Lifers" and they treat waiting tables as a career precisely because of the money they make by way of gratuity.
It's two entirely different worlds. But the disparity isn't in wages v gratuity. It's simply high pay versus low pay.
Even then, lots of those "good" serving jobs are rare and hard to get. You need to be in a high class establishment that serves tourists, or a low class establishment that serves other waitstaff (always flush with cash).
There's also the fact that you have to manage your tax burden, I know tons of people that don't even make enough salary to cover their taxes on tips and end up underwater at the end of the year. You get used to it, but it really screws over a lot of newer folks.
When I was delivering pizza I made about $15/hr after tips and expenses. Would have been about $12/hr if I paid for the vehicular insurance that was technically required.
My girlfriend makes about $25-$35/hr serving at a fancy tourist place that does weddings, but scheduling is all over the place, so she might get 70 hour weeks or she might get 10 hour weeks. There's also a pecking order with the old heads getting all the good shifts.
Sure. Lots of trade off in the service sector all around.
I just get the sense that one's opinion of the field has far more to do with your own relative success in it than in the field itself. Like, the problem with tips isn't that you don't get a living wage. The problem is that lower class service jobs don't have clientele tipping generously.
Exactly, it's a system that keeps managers directly control wages of employees with shifts and sections. Literally dividing workers against each other.