Wow, NJSue. You certainly met a lot of Europeans if you can speak for them all. 
What about Americans walking into holy churches and opera houses in shorts?
I agree with you on that NJSue…my sister-in-law knows very well what waiters/ bartenders earn here and always tries to stiff them here.
There was an influx of European tourists coming to NYC a few ears post 9/11 hen the dollar was weaker than it is now. Many local restaurants automatically added gratuity to all bills because their staff was being stiffed for tips.
Re gas in NJ: I don’t tip. The only exception is when the weather is really bad; I will sometimes say, “I don’t need change, thanks” when it’s very cold or pouring rain and the gas station attendants are obviously miserable.
" A bit off-topic, but can someone say what’s the protocol at gas stations? I live in PA and always go self service, but when I’m in NJ, it appears they only have full service. The attendant usually tops off the gas to the next dollar - so if the charge comes to, say, 32 bucks, do you add anything to it if you pay in cash? Thanks. "
NJ resident here, where we have no option for self serve gas pumps…
We don’t tip for pumping gas , but if on some rare occasion an attendant were to clean your windshield, that might warrant a tip
The guy was interviewed on CNBC, and he said that his biggest concern was not hiring qualified waiters but hiring qualified cooks. Anyone can wait a table. Ask a random person to whip up a perfect medium-rare steak… and you will see. Under the current system, all recorded tips are supposed to be shared with the kitchen staff (surprise?), but if the waiter gets his tips in cash, guess how much of that would go to the cooks?
If you always tip 20%, why should you be concerned if your bill already has that built in? I would be happy to see Joe the tip evader pay his share. 
I don’t see how restaurants that aren’t making much money are going to “pay a living wage”. Restaurants fail all the time and most don’t generate that much cash.
Restaurants are required to track and report and withhold on tip income. To say it’s about “evading taxes” is a slur.
Sure, everyone should just charge more! That will go over just great.
Do people not understand how resistant Americans are to higher prices? A huge part of the nation is adamantly against raising the minimum wage or, in many cases, no minimum wage at all and yet the “solution” to tipping, which isn’t an actual problem, is to pay more? What planet does that come from?
The basic argument about the evil of tipping is that cheap people don’t want to tip. They often don’t. My kid would tell you that. I could tell you that from another part of my life. There are hordes of cheap people. It is apparently such a burden to their souls that rather than just not tip they argue they shouldn’t have to tip. But since the alternative is paying more for their meals or haircuts or whatever … they actually won’t want that either.
Of course I can’t speak for all Europeans. I am just very tired of the stream of superior-toned sanctimony about American culture streaming westward from the other side of the pond. I am equally critical of poorly dressed American tourists;) However, they aren’t hurting a low-wage worker’s livelihood and then proclaiming their superior virtue and worldliness in the process.
I don’t consider waiting tables to be on par with practicing medicine, law, and teaching. Waiting tables is not a profession. It’s an occupation. People in professions should not accept tips because, in theory, they are not doing it just for the money.
TRUST ME. If it weren’t for the money, I’d retire tmrrw.
I guess I’m thinking of the traditional definition of profession (law, medicine, teaching, clergy, military, etc.); a calling that goes beyond the profit motive. I’d be outraged if anyone in a traditional profession allowed herself to vary the quality of her performance for a client based on anticipated compensation. But in the business sphere (not traditionally considered a profession), you get what you pay for, right?
I’m not actually that invested in the tipping model. But I suspect that most critiques of it (not all) are based on cheapness. I’d be fine paying a 20% surcharge on my restaurant meals for good service (if indeed that’s what it would go towards).
It is not at all uncommon in the medical profession for someone to not accept patients with certain insurances, eg. medicaid, only because the compensation could be significantly lower than for other payers.
Cutting hair is a profession. I know people who do it, who run salons or who have a chair at one. They can’t charge more because customers would go elsewhere but instead rely on tips because if they satisfy the customer then they get rewarded. This isn’t hard to understand: except for the few places that sell “luxury” through the signaling of higher prices, if a hair cutter didn’t allow tipping but instead charged what he/she needs to make, the business would go to the other hair cutters with a lower apparent price. And bluntly, if you don’t tip properly, it becomes more difficult to get an appointment because you’ve demonstrated to the hair cutter that you’re not worth the time.
Lawyers do this: argue about the bill or slow pay it (or don’t pay, which happens fairly often) and so you don’t return their calls. People seek discounts on legal bills all the time. They argue about the costs of copies and messenger fees. In fact, part of the fee structure at a firm - or in any practitioner’s office - is the need to cover the deadbeats, the collection problems, the discounts that clients demand. And lawyers often give discounts, often because they are hoping for future work. (And there are plenty of conversations about clients who just aren’t worth the time.) In other words, all sorts of work involves a form of negotiation in which prices aren’t what they appear. Tipping is a version of that: the actual price of a meal is the face price plus taxes plus a tip. There’s a naive view that somehow it can magically turn into a fixed price event. And I say magical because there’s no way you can enforce this across all restaurants, which means places will compete by showing lower prices without a service charge: would you then raise your prices faced with that?
I recently dined in an Oakland, CA restaurant that added 20% service to the bill (there were signs in the restaurant and on the menu). When the bill came, the service charge was split out into 16% for Lift Up Oakland and 4% Gratuity. I asked the waiter, and he said the Lift Up Oakland surcharge was to assist the restaurant in paying all employees the new $12.25/hr minimum wage that went into effect in Oakland earlier this year (for now, the highest in the US). He said the other 4% goes directly to him. Sort of made me feel strange - I know that at many restaurants, the tips are pooled, and shared among the non-serving staff, thereby raising their wages.
I wonder how it all works out with this new thing - CA labor law doesn’t allow tips to factor into minimum wage so it’s a re-allocation of sorts, but I can’t believe the waitstaff only netted 4% under a tipping scheme. Seems like everyone is going to do a little better except for the waiters.
I agree that waitstaff should be paid a living wage…but I want to go on the record…minimum wage is NOT a living wage.
No, most critics of tipping prefer to have a fair income for the waiter built into the price of the meal.
The NYT is also reporting on the no-tipping policy announcement by Danny Meyer
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/opinion/stirring-up-the-restaurant-world.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/dining/danny-meyer-restaurants-no-tips.html
NYT Op/Ed: Why Tipping is Wrong
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/opinion/why-tipping-is-wrong.html
(I’m making the most of my new online subscription to the NYT 
)
I didn’t know tips went up to as much as 30%! I don’t want to tip 30%. I appreciate the service waiting staff provide but I don’t think it’s worth 30% at all. To me, the food is worth about 60%, physical restaurant ambience about 30%. The service? 10-15%, certanly not more than 20%. I leave just under 20% tip. I didn’t realize I was being cheap.
Bunsenburner, I agree with your Swedish guest. As a hostess at home, I never clear the plates until the last guest has finished eating. Doing so would disrupt the conversation, make the guest feel hurried, and bring the meal to a precipitous end. The same is true when dining in a restsurant. I’m not sure that waiting for the last guest to finish eating before clearing the plate is a cultural difference; I think it’s more that we’ve forgotten our manners.
Tipping is prevalent for everything else in other countries, why ban it for food?
I leave 20% standard tip, as long as the restaurant is full service. If it is partial service, I’ll leave 20% if they are very attentive (like checking drinks frequently for refills and seeing if the food is okay and so on).
I’m not sure how good service would need to be for me to leave a 30% tip, but on occasion we will consider the value of the food - if the food is high quality and cheap, and the service is very good, we might tip $10 on a $30 food order. Anything towards the mid to expensive range, we won’t tip more than 20%.
I am sick and tired of the living wage argument. If you want everyone to make a living wage, then you MUST pay unemployed people a living wage too, right? How dare you make them subsist on less than living wage? And you have to pay people who are in training a living wage too. And developmentally disabled people. And people without a HS degree. And a kid just out of HS living at home with no debt or expenses.
Time was, if you wanted your family to do well, you worked two jobs if you had to. You didn’t make other people pay for you to make a living wage doing something that a 10 year old could do (yes, I’ve seen 10 year olds work a register for their family, down the shore and on holidays when staff was short). My dad pumped gas at 10 years old. I started working at 14 years old.
The only REAL way to deal with a lack of a living wage is to start making it about LIVING and less about WAGE.
All we are talking about is ONE specific case: the case of the single parent with young children. A single parent with young children likely has to work full-time, plus pay for childcare.
What is the difference between that single parent with young children, and the single person with no children? Childcare costs, which include both care while the parent is working, and actually paying for another person in the household who cannot work - food, clothing, etc.
That’s where we have to solve the problem from the top down - medium and small businesses need to pay into a fund to help their minimum wage workers who have families. The government administers the fund so that only those with young children get the full benefit, and those with older children get less of a benefit because older children are in school.
I see no benefit to raising the minimum wage, other than a COLA based on a SINGLE YOUNG employee with NO dependents having enough money to save up to move away from home in several years. When my nephew got his first paycheck, $8 per hour * 40 hours per week, that was $320 * 75% = $240!!! He thought he had won the lottery!!!
Yeah, if you change my 18 year old nephew into a 30 year old woman with two kids under 5 years old, who can’t keep a job for more than a year because she had kids on her own, now you’ve got three people living on $240 per week. Now put it into a city, and the rent might be $500 per month at best. $460 to pay for dressing for work, travelling to work, feeding three people, and trying to save something for emergencies. Maybe even taking care of an elderly parent.
I don’t want her to suffer, but I don’t want my nephew to be pushed out of a job because now that job is $15 per hour and they wouldn’t dream of giving an 18 year old that job, and those $15 per hour employees are being worked twice as hard. The answer is to have the government subsidize people who made life choices that make them not eligible to “grab the American dream”.
(not to mention, birth control should be free for those making under $50,000 per year so there can be an active choice to have children or not)
It is HIGHLY likely that a college graduate with four-year degree in the sciences will make between $15 and $20 per hour to start. That should not be on par with someone cleaning toilets, or taking a food order and punching a picture of a Big Mac, or sweeping up after that person who cuts hair. I don’t suggest ANYONE have kids who is making less than $40,000 per year unless they can live with their family to decrease expenses. But I don’t have an issue with charging corporations a fee to support those families.
In my area, a person making $50,000 per year cannot afford childcare for two kids and live in a house. They would be lucky to rent a cheap apartment, likely far from their job. That, my friends, is TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS PER HOUR. The ONLY way we can help people as poor as that, living in the NYC metro area or somewhere else expensive, is to offer them free child care paid by the government, which is in turn paid by corporations so they can keep their minimum wage employees.
No benefit or cost to hire a single person with no dependents vs. a married person with four dependents. Everybody pays a little so that we all benefit, instead of a few companies paying a LOT through increasing minimum wage, or decreasing minimum wage employees and overworking them.
^ This! Forget tipping… Customer service is in the dumpster here in the US. My wife and I are constantly surprised at how bad it is. I would be more than happy to pay higher prices for better service.