King5News—SEATTLE — As customers start to feel the effects of Seattle’s minimum wage increase, some are asking why they should leave a tip.
Some restaurants have increased prices to make up for higher wages that they’ll pay their staff, and now there’s a debate over whether gratuities are even needed.
A photo recently posted to the social media website Reddit ignited quite a debate about the extra money you leave with your food bill.
A card, apparently left at a bar or restaurant, reads: “Why I don’t tip in Seattle,” and essentially tells the server that as food costs are driven up by wage increases, the customer chooses to no longer leave a tip.
“I’m never going to discourage anybody from tipping, I think it is still to be seen whether or not the public will stop tipping as much,” said Steve Habecker, who owns Norm’s Eatery and Ale House in Fremont.
Some restaurants, like Ivar’s, have made changes to their tipping policies. They’re telling customers that they no longer need to tip their servers or bartenders, because service is now included in the pricing of the menus. Customers are still welcome to tip, the company says, but it’s not as necessary as before.
Alicia Catlin is a barista who says some foodservice workers will always go above and beyond, and tipping is an incentive to do great work.
“I believe you should still have to tip, you’re still getting a service from someone who’s still working very hard to serve you,” Catlin said.
The Washington Restaurant Association is asking customers to be patient over the next few years, as businesses experiment and look for ways to adjust to these higher wage costs. They say tipping is not untouchable, and that it should be part of any discussion about changes that restaurants might be making.
The Seattle minimum wage is currently $11 an hour. For small employers, it’ll go up to $15 an hour in the next five to seven years.
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$15 an hour is now on the ballot in Tacoma. Beware Eastern Washington. The locusts are on the move.
Not a problem. Just stay the hell away from Seattle and all those freaks.
I gotta tip for em!
“Don’t vote for socialists!
They’ll destroy your fleabitten state!”
Oh, yeah, and: “Buy Low, Sell High.”
Sometimes I have to go to Seattle, Sunday is one of those days. We have reservations at a prime steakhouse and I’m going to see if I can get one of those cards to include with my payment. I hope they catch on.
We’re starting to evolve into the way they do things in England. Nobody tips there either because people either make an adequate paycheck or they’re on the dole. And the price tags in England include the tax; so you pay exactly the price listed on the tag, unlike the US where you know the tagged prices is just the baseline before you get fucked by taxes and other “magic” fees added on.
I never eat out because I can’t afford to tip. I make minimum wage and never get a tip. Tipping is the dumbist idea ever.
Yet another example of progs screwing people with middle/lower middle class jobs, trying to survive.
Metropolitan Grill?
They don’t take tips at the dumpster behind Wal-Mart …
try to get the chicken before the winos piss on everything.
The Met is good, this one is Daniel’s Broiler at Lake Union. Also very good.
I waited tables from high school until after college (damn psych/soc degree) from late 80’s into the 90’s. I usually pulled down about $20/hr. Base wage was $2.52, the rest was all tips. Busted my ass, made sure my patrons had everything before they even needed to ask. Was exhausted at the end of every shift but I made BANK. None of this pissing and moaning about not being able to make a living wage, because I did it, as a TEENAGER, and put myself through college at the same time.
I want to hit something now.
Another tip:
“Don’t eat the brown acid!”
In case you are not personally familiar with Seattle – this is the type of arrogance you are dealing with.
“Duranty was a chain-smoking, Scotch drinking vulgar sort of man who made no apologies for his admiration of Stalin. He was held in awe by other journalists, especially young female journalists. He did not fail to use the awe to his advantage, or rather their disadvantage. As Fascism rose in Europe, and Japanese jingoism emerged in the East, Duranty wrote glowing accounts of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. Almost single-handedly did Duranty aid and abet one of the world’s most prolific mass murderers, knowing all the while what was going on, but refraining from saying precisely what he knew to be true. He had swallowed the ends-justifies-the-means-argument hook, line and sinker. Duranty loved to repeat, when Stalin’s atrocities were brought to light, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” Those “eggs” were the heads of men, women and children, and those “few” were merely tens of millions.”
Stalin’s apologist : Walter Duranty, the New York Times man in Moscow,
by S.J. Taylor, (New York : Oxford University Press, 1990)
http://www.ukemonde.com/news/usefulidiot.html
Totally agree, especially in those places where you provide most of your own service. Beside a tip for taking an order and bringing it to the table is worth no more in a labor charge than $ .50 to $1.00. ( a question I have always had: the owner charges you a set price, via the menu, for the product you are getting. Nothing is listed for service over and above that menu price! I know it is a gratuity (free offering) but is still seems more like a scam than a legitimate practice)!
The ones crying the most about a ‘working’ wage are the ones that hardly work!
And that same “useful idiot” would have been one of the first to be lined up against a wall and shot once the commies had taken over. How STUPID do you have to be to assist your own murderer?
Wasn’t the whole point of tipping to make up for low wages? Now that they have $15 per hour, a “living wage,” why do they need the make-up dollars anymore?
I have seriously shifted with regards to how I tip: 20% is not automatic anymore and if the person did a shitty job I have no qualms about letting them know by way of a shitty tip.
there is a Daniels in Bellevue on the Eastside as well and they are not yet part of the socialist state of Seattle
A new thing we have noticed locally, I don’t know if it’s hit your area yet, is on the bottom of our bill receipt they now print out your tip options of 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% and the corresponding final bill amount.
We find it a bit sneaky-especially with the random taxes swirling around here. So, we put the amount we want- not what is suggested.
@Lisl We have gotten more stingy. Maybe because we sense attitude from many of the millennials who are the waitstaff. Cluelessness and rudeness amounts to not much of a tip. No more benefit of the doubt. We’ll save our money.
@USN Dude – I second the Metropolitan Grill. Best crab cakes on the west coast. Class joint & the ladies love it. May be expensive but it pays dividends.
@Tim – Don’t play the horses. Don’t shake hands with a French Horn player.
I made most of my living on tips going thru college working on a private golf course. Money was everything around there, service was key.. they pay a lot of money to be at that club and if you do a great job you were well rewarded. Of course, they kept the base rates very low, I was working for $4 per hour parking cars at night, but made about $25-$30 per hour after tips, and $30 to carry 18 holes as a double, but made $75 after tips. Raise that base rate and the quality of their service would disappear and they realized that which is why if you were a piss ant you’d make no money.
Illustr8r, I DID see that just recently! (At Olive Garden) I agree, I will tip what I like, not what anyone on some receipt says I should.
We don’t have tax here so it’s a bit easier on me if the walking calculator isn’t with. But one thing I do like a lot, too, is the little machine thingie where you can pay your own bill, plus there is some reward card for this restaurant (Red Robin), so like the 12th meal is free or whatever. I like this because then the server isn’t hovering over me and I can pay when I want–I loathe when servers slap the bill down when I’m still eating, especially when they say, “No rush.” I get that it’s not cool to spend three hours there, but when I’ve barely started to eat and they do that, me no like.
Although that thing has games on it that cost moula–and once it happened that games got on my bill on accident. The server was super cool and it was not a problem at all to get it removed, but just keep an eye out for that.
We still do minimum of 20-25% at our awesome local mom & pop greasy spoon Greek family restaurants. Smalltown, Midwest, U.S.A. has some of the best lemon rice, other soups and entrees around. Almost all menu items are homemade. We know they cannot pay top dollar to their servers so we make up for that.
The glory of these restaurants is that some of the same servers have been there for decades, and basically know what we want before we do. Kind of like Cheers. 🙂 Go a few miles north, and you get chain restaurants and servers with attitude. No thanks.
I’m afraid just about everything in Western Washington is a part of the socialist utopia. Whenever obama or hillary come to town for a fundraiser they are in walking distance of Bellevue, the swell little community of Medina. Some shit drinker named gates lives there too.
@PlainJane There is a great hole in the wall Italian restaurant near us that’s been around since 1961. The decor is from the ’70’s but there’s not a spec of dust to be seen. The waitstaff has been there forever too. The owners, who are in their 80’s, are still in the kitchen overseeing things and sometimes they’ll run the cash register (cash only, no debit or credit cards). We try to go every week (leftovers last for days!).
I love places like that. No kale or quinoa. Sauce, pasta and cheese. Yum!
Illustr8r, what is the name of the place? I would make a point of going in.
that’s just good advice, and it applies anywhere moonbats congregate.
Send me an email…I’m forever always in deep cover. 😉
illustr8r@rossandrevere.com
or a proctologist….
Yum! Sounds like my kind of restaurant. Please enjoy some gnocchi and think of me. 🙂
Or a Democrat.
I rarely have mixed feelings, but here goes…
I can imagine a young waiter hustling to make some money and get ahead in life, who doesn’t support all the leftist bullshit going on out there. I wouldn’t want for THAT GUY to get one of these cards. He’s not the problem.
I love the scam with tipping based on the total cost of the meal with alcohol. So if someone orders a bottle of $30 wine and someone orders a bottle of $60 wine, the second person is expected to tip double for exactly the same actual service.
Watch-out for the “automatic-gratuity” for larger parties…which used to mean 10-12 but now seems to have migrated down to 6 people…and their automatic level typically starts at 20%.
@Brian in BC – Used to eat at various “White Spots” in Van Kong & around BC. Food was overpriced but generally decent, the female servers usually fine – until I found out the entire operation below management was unionized.
Never left another tip & only went there when my date or some other member of our party was determined to go. What a racket.
Brian, I never thought of it like that. I rarely order alcohol when out because I’m always the driver, but if that ever changes, Imma keep an eye out for that.
That is similar to Obama giving the Iranians a nuke.