It is very interesting. I worked in restaurants for many years and I never knew a server who made less than the back staff - usually they made several multiples of their pay in a night.

I assume it's because servers (and I was one!) feel generally more empowered when it comes to their pay; they think complaining will accomplish something (strengthen social norms to tip), while kitchen staff know that what they get is what they get.

No doubt server pay varies wildly, but I worked at a cheap buffet essentially just bussing tables and I never made less than kitchen staff and sometimes made up to 6x what they would make in a shift - usually about 3x, and management directed that we report the minimum amount possible, to get out of their payroll tax contribution, I assume.

On top of that, employers are in fact nominally required to pay the difference between their tipped wage and the "real" minimum wage if they don't get enough tips (for some reason this isn't commonly known) to make the difference, but that situation is probably rare enough that businesses skate by without fulfilling their legal duty. [1]

Frankly, I liked waiting tables and I'd do it again if it paid as much as programming. It's not all that crappy. :) And at the same time, I have a lot less sympathy for servers than I used to. Save your sympathy for the people who are paid minimum wage and don't get tips. Yes, that server is getting $2.15 instead of $7.25, but a) the business is required to make up the difference between $2.15 + tips and $7.25 and b) no server I have ever heard of, anywhere, is making less than $7.25/hour with tips.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

This is what I find interesting about the situation, and why I see tipping as a cultural rather than ethical imperative. If it was about poverty or social justice, it is a terribly inefficient way to go about fighting those battles. If instead you theorize that Tipping is largely about smoothing interactions between those of a higher economic class and the people who immediately serve them, the whole thing makes more sense.

Even taking class out of it, tipping when you are out drinking kind of makes sense like "hey thanks for working so I can go have fun. Here is a little extra so you can treat yourself when you are off work." The idea is to make it less awkward for the customer to drink in front of someone who is sober and working, Because that is kind of an awkward situation for many folks

Is there a possibility for smoothing out this social awkwardness that didn't involved monetary value?

Is there a way for society to make these jobs appear simply as a job and not some exchange of money for this psuedo caste system I am placing on you while I eat my salmon?

I am generally curious. I don't eat at restaurants for this reason. I have no interest in being involved with this human interaction. Which is a shame because food is my life...

Sure, there are plenty of places where you Walk up to order and pay and then walk up to get your food, and tipping norms seem super different there, I would assume because it seems a lot less like you are being directly served. If we are running with my model, the idea would be like they are manufacturing your food and you are buying it, rather than someone coming and serving you at your table.

If you are in the South bay, try dish n dash for super good food sold in that style.

To be clear, I am not super clear on tipping norms in that case, but observationaly, most people seem to tip a lot less, and some people just tip the change.

These types of establishments are the places I'm finding myself if I decide to go out to eat these days. Me personally, I come for the experience of the food, not the service.

I much prefer this system too!

This is interesting. I am also in the same camp except BOH. If I could get paid to cook for living with the same pay I make now, I would do it in a heartbeat

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12393551 and marked it off-topic, because most of it turned into a nasty spat.

All: we ban accounts that repeatedly post the ugly sort of comment seen below, so please don't post those.

Unfortunately the fine subthreads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12393884 get punished with the rest. I feel like a teacher making everyone stay late after class.

Not everyone has a choice, for example if you had kids at the time then living in your car would be unacceptable. Meanwhile, restaurant patrons make a choice to eat somewhere where tipping is customary.

If you had kids then you wouldn't need to live in your car because the government would volunteer to pay your rent.

Great news for the 2.5 million homeless kids in the US.

http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20141117/homeless-ch...

Yeah, that was a stupid comment. My experience was basically that while living on a minimum wage job my coworkers who had kids were way better off than the rest of us. Agitating because they were the people who really seemed to care the least. Even with their kids they only wanted to do the bare minimum.

Clearly that isn't always the case though, thalami you for pointing that out

Its nice that you think its that easy. People who have never been poor for very long seem to bizarrely overestimate the welfare state.

Most people that fall into financial hardship can either pay the same bills you do or end up homeless. Some portion of the long term disadvantaged can eventually find their way into programs to help them out after years of waiting.

My experience with it first hand was that people I had worked with who had kids had a higher standard living than I did, and couldn't have been struggling that much since they still had money for cigarettes alcohol and weed, whereas I would barely be able to pay my rent and eat and couldn't afford air conditioning. I'm sure that isn't always the case though, I've probably just had an unusually bad experience with the people I've happened to know.

Was it not your choice to have the kids?

I'm tired of this cultural excuse of "what about the kids!"

If you chose to have kids, either explicitly, or through choice of recklessness, you deserve to own up to your decision. If you can't, or won't, that's what CPS is for.

Let's stop giving people excuses just because they brought another person into the world. In fact, lets hold them to an even higher standard for choosing to invoke a LIFE without themselves being able to support it.

> Jesus you're a prick.

Whoa. You can't comment like that here regardless of how much of a prick someone is, or seems. Please don't do this again.

You can't comment like this on HN. We ban accounts that do so. Fortunately you've posted other comments that are fine for HN, so I'll read this thread as the sort of derailing that happens to most of us from time to time.

Comments on HN need to be civil and substantive. Heated rhetoric is neither, and personal attacks are right out. When you're hot under the collar, please cool down before posting.

I shared my opinion, and was attacked for having that opinion. You, or he, may choose to disagree with that opinion, but calling me a prick is bound to insight a response.

I don't normally make posts like that, but I'm also not normally attacked.

Ok, but you still can't respond like that. The rules apply regardless of whether someone else started it or was behaving worse. Otherwise everyone would have an excuse for everything, since it always feels like someone else started it.

Understood, I'll refrain from responding in that way in the future. In retrospect, I do realize that I shouldn't have said anything.

Thanks for understanding. Believe me, we know what the frustration feels like. The internet, including HN, is crazymaking sometimes.

Peoples situation changes in ways that can be hard to predict. People die. People get sick. People get divorced. Peoples family members become ill. People run into expensive legal issues. People have unplanned pregnancies and aren't willing to abort.

Most of the US isn't in financial position to weather more than temporary hardship without shit falling apart. Other countries deal with this by providing a safety net paid for by the increased earnings of all those who don't crash and burn and thus contribute in the end far more to society.

People who hold views like yours instead waste their breath telling others that they shouldn't pursue the single strongest biological imperative.

In sane societies people that make an effort to contribute to society ARE stable enough to have kids. Your view is warped by our warped society.

Imagine the kind of world we would live in today, if every form of self restraint was written off on the basis of biological imperative. Would you want to live in that world?

Truly, how dare I advocate for personal responsibility when it comes to perhaps the single handed most powerful decision any person has - to bring an innocent life into the world. How dare I even suggest that we hold each other to a higher standard when choosing to raise a child. What an insane notion, that while we human beings can put a man on the Moon, and land a robot on Mars, we should be able to consider our financial well being before copulating.

Ordinary people that work for a living ought to be able to have kids. As stated in nations with more sane safety nets not being upper middle class isn't synonymous with being financially and socially unstable.

When better than half your population has a small but non trivial chance of ending up in the gutter something is wrong.

The people that are hard up are people who differ from those who are getting by only small sets of circumstances.

I think we both agree completely, that working class people ought to be stable enough to have kids, and that any society in which that isn't the case likely has something wrong. I believe I've already mentioned that it is of my opinion that there is much wrong with our society, and the basis of that belief, stems from this point exactly. Working class citizens ought to be able to raise a family, but far too often in this country, they do not have the resources to do so.

That however does not remove personal responsibility from the equation, and it appears this is where you and I differ. I believe that bringing another human being into the world is a decision that should not be made hastily. It's one of the rare decisions in life, where every ounce of forethought and planning should be utilized. That is another HUMAN you are choosing to invoke, so you had best be sure you can care for that human and provide them a great shot at a happy life. Sadly, working for minimum wage as a waitress at Denny's probably isn't going to cut it.

Not surprisingly, I'm a strong proponent of things like raising the minimum wage, and universal health care. While I believe in personal responsibility as a fundamental value, I also believe your society should provide safety nets and support systems, to assure that everyone has a shot at raising a family, and being happy.

If you live in a place where you know your servers are paid less than they spend on gas and don't tip on the premise that they should have made better life choices congratulations you are a terrible person. You could just factor that into the cost and decide if in total the experience is worth it or you could cook your own food.

They are getting unfair pay in some places, thanks to bullshit laws that give them a truly ridiculous minimum wage.

No they aren't. Read the law. A server's hourly wages with tips will always be at least the federal minimum wage.

Did you make the throwaway account just to congratulate yourself for sustaining yourself with food bought by welfare/others instead of working for a living?

Yours is showing too, along with an unhealthy dose of smugness. GP literally chose to be homeless instead of licking the boots of the wealthy for table scraps, which is a degree of courage above and beyond what could have been expected of him, but it was still courage. Saying that his ability to do this is privileged, is like claiming a man who saves a baby from a burning house is showing his able privilege: true, technically, but grosly unfair and an underhanded way of attacking him.

Why do you eat at restaurants that don't pay staff enough? If "some people" treat service workers badly, and you know this because you've seen it, why don't you tell "some people" that they're acting like pigs?

After the Spanish civil war was underway, tipping was made illegal within the Republic, and George Orwell reports that one of his first experiences "was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy". They had it absolutely right. A business model where staff get paid whatever their customers feel like moves all the financial risk from the rich business owner to the poor worker, emphasises the class differences between the two, and is generally a practice which anyone left-wing enough to be using the word "privilege" should find abhorrent.

> Yours is showing too, along with an unhealthy dose of smugness. GP literally chose to be homeless instead of licking the boots of the wealthy for table scraps,

Personal attacks and ideological rants are two of the things least wanted on HN, so please stop posting them.

Sorry, dang. Posting this wasted a small but irretrievable part of our lives and was a bad decision all round.

Please remove this chain of comments, or the whole account, if you want.

I agree - having to rely on the kindness of someone with more disposable income - or worse, the shaming of another person - for your income while the business owner gets to keep more money as profit is abhorrent.

This is something I had no clue about and will make a note to look into later.

Thanks!

I had to resist the urge to break into uncontrollable laughter when you compared living in your car to saving a baby from a burning building. Since this is a throwaway I strongly suspect you are your own cheerleader. Let me see if I can take you down a peg.

A man who chooses to live in his own car instead of taking a servile job is presumably still in need of food to sustain him. You are basically glorifying living off other people instead of working for a living.

It's a ridiculous comparison, given in response to the ridiculous assertion that homelessness is a privilege.

At the end of the day, at some point someone says "these working conditions are too shitty and I'd rather go look for something else". That person sets a lower bound on working conditions for people who aren't able to leave so easily. Saying "how dare you not work for a pittance with all the other poor buggers trapped on a wage where saving is impossible" is blind; calling it privilege is wilful stupidity.

> I had to resist the urge to break into uncontrollable laughter

Please don't comment like this here, even when another comment seems outrageous. It just makes the thread even worse and breaks HN's civility rule.

ok

We've banned this account and will ban what we believe to be your primary account if you do this again.

Really that's kind of a matter of what "choice" is, but without getting too deep into that discussion, my observation has been that it's driven more by a toxic culture than anything else. I was a minimum wage and food service worker until quite recently, and having worked with many different people that's been my observation. A lot of people "stuck" in that position have been so indoctrined in their own victimhood that they get caught in a negative loop of ruining their own lives and blaming everyone and everything else around them for it. And some of them just plain don't give a shit. And there are some others who manage to get past it, and they're the ones who often manage to make things better for themselves and end up around lower-middle class. Certainly not great, but it's a huge difference. But in my opinion our coddling and infatalizing people isn't really helping the underlying cultural problem, it's making it worse by creating its own kind of privilege, which is basically a freedom from most forms of responsibility aside from having to obey the law.

It's very bizarre to me that the younger generations are learning to throw shame at people for not being in bad circumstances, particularly given the mixed-at-best results shaming produces.

It honestly blows my mind especially since I was describing a somewhat bad circumstance I was once in.

Granted my initial response was somewhat hostile. Nonetheless, I don't understand my own generation sometimes.

Based on the current political landscape, I think it's fair to say that the primary outcome of the shaming is rage