It's worth noting that servers at restaurants are required by law to make minimum wage. If their actual wages (the minimum the employer can pay them, called the "basic cash wage") plus their tips do not bring them over minimum wage, then their employer is required to make up the difference. So if nobody tips, the business winds up having to pay more.

So you're likely hurting both the worker and employer, and making it more complicated for both of them.

Specifics (basic cash wage value, etc) vary by state.

Anecdotally, from my friends who work in the service industry, this is also a law that is often simply ignored -- so in lean shifts, workers can go home with less than federal minimum wage. Not a good scene.

Your efforts make you feel good, but on your scale are useless (tipping, not tipping, whatever). Not a judgement in any way.

The only meaningful help is broad scale fiscal policy support.

I'd be willing to pay more taxes to help the economy, but most people are against this. In the mean time I do my part by eating out more often and visiting small businesses.

I can't figure out if your posts here in this thread are in jest or are serious. Please excuse me if they are in jest...

> I'd be willing to pay more taxes to help the economy, but most people are against this

They are against this because paying more taxes does nothing to "help" the economy. Where do you think tax money goes? It doesn't go to people's bank accounts to pay for rent, groceries, car payments, utility bills etc. or any of the places that would directly contribute to the economy.

> In the mean time I do my part by eating out more often and visiting small businesses.

And as already discussed below - you are also screwing over the employees at those businesses. Quite literally costing them money they could make by serving someone who will tip... so they can, you know, pay for rent and contribute to the economy.

>you are also screwing over the employees at those businesses

Not to open this argument but it's not the patron's job to ensure the staff are paid appropriately. If servers don't want to run the risk of not being paid at least minimum wage, they should ensure their conditions of employment guarantee it and the business should reflect it in their prices.

It's literally the same thing, though.

$30 Hamburger, or $25 Hamburger + $5 tip.

With the latter, you at least get to decide how much to tip - and if you received awful service, you have some recourse/feedback mechanism.

I have yet to see anyone suggest donating to food banks. Anyone can complain that the government should do something, but if you're not willing to volunteer your own disposable income, you shouldn't expect others to. The average software engineer can probably feed an additional family of four with no effort.

Dude, food service workers are paid poorly and tips are an expected part of their meager comp.

So consumers are expected to accept a guilt trip to make up the difference and enable businesses to meagerly compensate their workers?

Y’all keep acting like we’re stupid but without collective action at scale or a large cultural change, all you’re doing by not tipping is making some poor persons night miserable.

If you're tipping when you're against this practice, you're doing a disfavor to everyone. IMO more people should stop tipping.

Eating out more often doesn't help if the workers don't get paid.

Maybe as a start you can try both paying for food and tipping, especially if you claim that you're growing wealthier while others grow poorer.