I'm assuming you received health care, vision, dental, a pension or 401K, and paid vacations. I also assume none of the restaurant workers around TV or FL for that matter get any of those benefits. Most restaurant workers don't even get 40 hrs per week as then their employer would have to pay them additional benefits.

Tips
 

T- to
I-insure
P-prompt
S-service

The tips are not built into the prices everywhere. Have you seen them broken down on your receipts? It is amazing sitting back in this community and watching the old misers under tip, I feel bad for those servers. No wonder why it is so hard to get help in the services industry.

Tips are optional. If they are built in to the menu price, they are not tips.

Prices
 

Yep, started about 4-1/2 years ago.

Is every job supposed to have a living wage?

Including part time and starting jobs?

Or are some jobs not meant to be careers?

ALL prices are up.
 

I find it strange that none of the responses I've read comment on the fact that a 2020 dollar is now worth eighty cents.

Would you wait on multitudes of people, some of them aholes, for several hours for $14.00 an hour?

I always tip.....usually 20 percent, but I get the uneasy feeling that I am being exploited. I agree with the OP that restaurant prices have gone up a lot. Traditionally, the tip percentage was 15 percent. At that percentage, with considerably higher prices, the tip amount has already been increased.

During Covid, we all dug deeper to help those who were struggling.
Now 20 percent (or higher) is seen as an entitlement, no matter what level of service is given, and you are being guilt tripped into paying it, often with computer screens.
I have recently noticed at many restaurants that the "suggested tip" on your receipt begins at 20 percent and goes up to 25 percent. (no more 18 percent)
Further, I have also noticed that at many restaurants, the suggested tip is based on the total bill, INCLUDING TAX!
Why would you tip 20 percent on the tax?

Last, did you know that the proposed "no income tax on tips" is ONLY for CASH tips?
And why should it be exempt? It's income!
Have a nice day.

IF a waitress averaged $13 an hour for forty hours a week, that would be about $25,000 (before taxes) a year, which is less than I earn in Social Security payments, and my Social Security is much less than half of my yearly income. I earned $25,000 a year my first year as a tenure-track professor with a Ph.D., back in 1986. My family and I were renting an old apartment for $460 a month. Try to find an apartment for that price today!

Waitresses may not be well-educated, but they can work full-time and still be at the poverty level. It’s hard to be hopeful about life with an income like that.

I usually dine alone, yet I take up a table that could provide a tip from four people. Accordingly, since moving to The Villages, I’ve made $10 my BASE tip. If 20% of the check is greater than $10, I pay the greater amount. Otherwise, I tip $10, even if the meal is $13, and even if I’m at a self-service buffet where the waitress is simply refilling my water glass. If I’m having a dinner with other people and we have separate checks, I also tip $10. I’m not sharing this to brag but to show a way for those who have plenty to reward hard-working people who are living on the edge. It’s not a way to earn one’s way into heaven. I’ve been blessed, and I want to bless others. I want to say thank you.

Thanks for sharing!
Oh boy!!! I can see the "You must tip us MORE no matter what level of service you get" wait staff people lining up to reply!
I don't tip to help compensate...never have...never will. I tip for good service. I tip more for great service. Of course, that's my choice. What anyone else does is theirs.

Note that the Federal poverty level for one person is $15,650 per year.

Well said, 100% agree. Tipping is the only way for them to make decent money. Without people tipping it will be even more difficult than it already is to find good restaurant help.

That's awesome!! We tip very well too. We're not rich by any means but we like helping others do better. Especially if the server is excellent and hard working. Good servers deserve a good tip. 20% is the minimum. 15% went away years ago.

McDonalds
 

At McDonalds you go to the counter and pick up your food, it is not delivered to a table by someone who is catering to you, and cleaning up your mess.

People who don't tip look for any excuse not to, bottom line is they are just cheapskates.

Question - If the minimum wage in Florida is $13 per hour, why should servers at a sit down restaurant get a 20 percent tip, when fast food restaurant servers usually get no tip?

The entire business plan of most restaurants is faulty!

What other business requires the patrons of that business to pay money to supplement the pay check of the business's employees? Can you imagine "tipping" a car dealership for the good service provided by the dealership's employees? Can you imagine the dealership suggest that they could no longer afford to pay a liveable wage to their employees if the patrons were unable or unwilling to "tip" their employees? How totally ridiculous!

So, what is the answer? In Europe, I have had it happen that when I go to "tip" the server, many are genuinely insulted that I would do such a thing. Their employer pays them for doing a good job!

I am appalled at certain restaurants that I have frequented that add a special charge to my bill to address the fact that they have to pay their workers a liveable wage (this has occurred primarily in states which have upped the hourly pay of servers). When the restaurant does this, they should realize that my patronage ends with my payment of that one bill.

In my opinion, a restaurant should charge what it needs to charge to cover all of their expenses of operating the business including their employee's wages. Obviously, the menu prices will have to increase. A patron pays a business for the entirety of the costs the business incurs plus a suitable charge to patron for profit!

So, maybe the solution is to not tip. The immediate impact will be on the servers. They will soon look for other employment. But, ultimately, the restaurant owner will either have to increase prices to cover the employee's wages to a living wage or go out of business. I have no problem with less restaurants if it means the cessation of paying slave wages and then relying upon the largess of the restaurant's patrons.

By the way, please consider what the minimum wages permitted by statute really amount too. A wage of $10 per hour means a gross annual pay of about $20,000 before taxes. A wage of $13 per hour equates to an annual wage of $26,000. Could you survive on either amount? Why should we expect serves to live on these amounts? It is time to increase the minimum wage for all employees to an amount sufficient to provide a liveable wage. And yes, all of us patrons, across the board, would have to pay what it actually costs for a business to stay in business!

After living in TV for four years on thing is very evident, people here are cheap. They will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a house blindly. When it comes to paying for paying for dinner and tipping its like they are living on a welfare budget.

I agree, since tips are usually calculated on a percentage of the bill, as prices increase so do tips. I haven't increased my tip percentage due to life being more expensive for the worker, I keep my tip percentage the same since I know the worker will receive more due to the increase in the price I am charged.

Basically, at 20% tipping, the server must serve five customers in order to take in enough to buy one meal. That stays the same even if the price of the meal doubles: at 20% tipping they would still make enough to pay for one meal by serving five customers.

I would tip 20% on the bottom line including tax because: 1. it is an easy number to find and doesn't require additional math in my head; 2. I tend to tip enough to make the final charge an even dollar amount; and , 3. the amount of additional tip that comes from tipping on tax is negligible to me.

This will come down to the IRS definition of "cash tip" which is very likely to include credit card tips. Otherwise, the law would have had to specify "tips in the form of cash, credit card payments, debit card payments, or check." Better to use the term "cash tip" since the IRS already understands that term to mean what we all think of as any "tip."

Question, are YOU willing to do that or any other job for $10.00 a hour? Can anyone live on $10.00 an hour or $14.00 . I say get real.

Maybe so. However, prices at comparable restaurants OFF THE VILLAGES seem to be considerably less than Villages, especially FMK restaurants! We should vote with our $$$ and become patrons of businesses that don't seem to be trying to take advantage of us!

A lot of posters are saying that they do tip generously. But I find it difficult to believe that many people are actually happy with the current tipping tradition. If restaurants eliminated tipping altogether, I think most people would applaud that decision. But this will never happen because the restaurants are the ones who benefit most from tipping, not the customers or the servers.

Tips
 

Wait staff rely on tips as income and soon they will be tax free. Be generous to these hard working and underpaid service workers.

Tipped employees in the Villages area don't work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. They usually work 4-6 hours a day, 3-4 days a week. They're not trying to make a living wage off that one job. They might have a few jobs, or a second job, or maybe their waiter job IS their second job. Or they might be supplementing their spouse's income, or they have social security checks, and want to keep working but need to work only part time because if they earn too much at their job, their social security checks get cut off. Some of them are students who -cannot- work a full time job because it would interfere with their studies.

Meanwhile, Florida minimum wage is $14/hour, not $13/hour.

Meanwhile, my household annual income is under $60k for two people, including a pension and two social security checks, and we do just fine here.

That is a myth. Rated:

F-Fake
A-And
L-Largely
S-Semantically
E-Erroneous

The Origins of Tipping | Snopes.com

I am not happy with the tradition and I would like to see it go away but I don't expect that to happen. No one would be happy with it, not the customers, not the owners, and certainly not the servers.

Just thinking about the customers, many will balk at the higher prices even if they are just 20% higher. A $16 burger and a $8 beer seems about right but at just 20% more, a $19 burger and $10 beer seems expensive. The total amount paid, $31 (the former with tipping and the latter without), will be the same but many customers won't recognize that.

The customers will see the higher prices and will spend more time at Publix, the owners will see a drop in business (at least initially, people will get bored with Pub subs), and the servers, at least the better ones, will see a drop in compensation.

Getting away from tipping is the way to go, I just don't see it happening any time soon.

Wait staff isn't working full time. They are shift-workers. They're not TRYING to earn a living wage, at that job.

First of all, it's $14/hour, not $13.

Second, fast food workers don't serve customers at their table. They don't return to the table to see how the customer is enjoying their meal. They don't refill your water glass, they don't bring you a ketchup bottle for your fries. They don't order the bus boy to take your salad plate off the table so that you can serve the entree. They don't tell the chef that you loved/hated the frisee salad with sea foam and avacado gelee drizzle. Fast food workers press buttons on the register as you go to THEM to place your order, they take your money, they might answer a question about what comes with the thing you're ordering, they try to upsell a "meal" if you're only ordering a sandwich, and they put your completed order in a bag or on a tray and set it down on the other end of the counter, where YOU pick it up, bring it to your table, and deal with all the trash yourself.

In some restaurants, they don't even do that much - you order on a kiosk and they just bring your the order in a bag (such as with Sonic).

Fast food workers do a lot more than that behind the scenes (cleaning the dining room, refilling the ice bin, filling up the napkin dispenser, wiping down the counter, etc) but the customer-specific stuff is very limited, they don't "serve" you at all.

In addition, fast-food workers are all regular minimum wage (or better) workers. They are not tipped employees. Their boss is REQUIRED to pay them the full minimum wage, or better. Their boss is allowed to allow tips at the restaurant, but the pay rate must be exclusive of tips.

Employers of tipped employees may pay a lower minimum, as long as the end result meets or exceeds the state regular minimum inclusive of tips.

Tipping is absolutely out of control. There’s no way I’m going to tip for pick-up, or self-service, or cafeteria type restaurants, and the little Apple Cash register screen or tip jar isn’t going to guilt me. And the push for the 30%+ tips that we started seeing during COVID need to go away.

For a sit down place, yes. We start at 20% and adjust according to service. It’s rare that I leave no tip, but I=e gone as low as 5% for crap service.

That said, a good server is worth their weight in gold. Dealing with the dining public is almost a contact sport, and I wouldn’t want to deal with the rude, arrogant, demanding, nasty people out there.

My original post was to say if a person sole employment is a server at a restaurant working at $13 an hour full time 52 weeks a year their total annual income would be $27,040. So, you might believe tipping should be abolished, but at that income they will most likely be able to apply for government food subsidies, which means you will be paying the tip anyway.

I was in Europe last year and almost no Europeans tip. Or if they do, it is usually a euro or two.

That is because the tip is included in the price of the meal. The same with sales tax. If you go to a restaurant in Europe the price on the menu is the price of your meal. No 23% surcharge (15% tip plus 8% sales tax).

If Europe can do it, why can’t the USA?

That's a pretty big generalization about a whole lot of servers.

Many posters suggest that being a waitress is about the worst job in the world.

Are there minimum wage jobs that are worse than being a waitress in an air conditioned restaurant?

So if I got to my favorite restaurant, they add on a 22.5% tip on top of tax. If I order a glass of water and burger then the server gets screwed. If I order a cocktail, the seafood tower, a bottle of wine, and a steak, then I get screwed. I know it takes a little more time for the server to service a table with drinks and appetizers but still, it's not even close.

How can we do this so it's fair?

Joe

According to FSU HR and the US Department of Labor, Florida minimum wage is $13 right now and will become $14 in a few months on Sept 30.

If the restaurant is adding the "tip", it is not a tip. Tips are optional and the amount is determined by the customer.

This is not an included tip. As restaurant owners in GA, the law was always that the server be guaranteed minimum wage. The server was required to “report” their tips daily in order to assure the state/Fed’l that the server was paid minimum wage. This has always been the way it’s worked, even when wages were $2.10/hr (or less). Only the dollar amounts have changed. Don’t stiff the server. If you can afford to pay the price charged for the meal, you can tip the one busting it to get food, and every little thing you think you need after your food arrives, to meet your expectations and making your dining experience pleasurable.

I am not advocating elimination of tips but let's cut the Myth of poverty.

First, people chose that occupation, not for $13/Hour, but for the opportunity for the tip income. As one poster indicated from firsthand sources, that tip income can average $250 to $300 per day. At the lower number that equals $65,000. Add to that the Tipped Minimum wage ($8.98/Hour) $18,000/year for a total of $83,000.

Further these poor people have garnered an upcoming bonus of no tax on tips. That gift was given to these folks at the expense of the rest of us. By that I mean that what they don't have to pay, we have to make up.

Not all tipped wait staff receive that level of tips. Depends on the restaurant, location, level of business. But the best staff tend to get the best jobs. You are likely to find lower paid in rural areas , diners, etc

Not saying that even the example mentioned above is ideal, but I would guess there are many residents of the Villages that don't currently have that type of Income.

While we have typically given Tips in cash, it would seem that we were enabling staff to understate Income. No real reason to do that anymore.

The tip is based on quality of the service , the normal % of 20 was the standard throughout the industry, I tip the 15/20% range more if service better. Good servers deserve a good tip poor food , any other iss ue in the restaurant is the managers concern . I don't consider what the restaurant makes or the servers base pay is. The service received and the value of the meal portion served are the guidelines.

what will become when "no tax on tips" takes place? Would be nice if everyone could work and not report their income to the IRS.
Previously worked in the restaurant industry - made more income as a waiter - then full time in an administrative position where all income was reported to IRS.