USA tipping allowance anyone?

[PickwickPaperFile]

Does Anyone have any idea how much to budget for a couple of weeks travelling round in the US? Mix of staying in national parks and LA, mid range hotels will be eating and drinking at mid range bars, cafes and restaurants. Is 20% the norm? Don’t want to stiff people and equally don’t want to pay over the top unnecessarily. TIA.

When I’ve explained to British people that I still got taxed on my food sales with what my employers considered the minimum tip average (15% at the time, in the early 2000s) and so if I got tipped less than that I was essentially paying for a portion of their meal out of my wages, they started to understand it better. 15% is breaking even, more than that (ideally 20%) is what you actually earn, and less than 15% is not only an insult but taking money out of my pocket.

It’s an incredibly stupid and inhumane system but while it’s in place you’d do best not to shaft working class people just to prove a smug point as a wealthy tourist. If you can afford to travel for a foreign holiday, accept the local customs. If you don’t want to, don’t go there. Simple. But going to the US and bragging about how you didn’t tip (or tip well) is not the edgy ‘gotcha’ some people think it is.

Thanks @PurpleThistle7 Our state’s minimum wage is in the teens now so I’d naively assumed that other states were raising it to a decent level.

According to that page, PA’s minimum for tipped employees is now $7.25 so still on the low side.

But that’s not what they’re actually paid - that’s the minimum they need to get ‘with’ tips. And the ways they work out if people are hitting their minimums are problematic because the only way to do it is to calculate a percentage of their sales. So still hugely problematic.

Ah @PurpleThistle7 , that’s even worse.

We’re definitely lucky to live where we do. Last summer, DD was paid $14/hr in a restaurant plus her share of the tips so she did well.

Definitely better for the staff but of course the restaurant owner is going to have to bump the prices to cover this - it probably all ends at the same cost to the customers ‘but’ without the panic of staff getting unlucky with a bad shift or a bad table. I am lucky that I was never relying only on my tips to eat or pay rent as my then boyfriend (now husband) had a salary job so I was just paying university fees and my own expenses, but the stress is pretty intense if you actually need the money to pay your bills and have no other resources.

Well, that's what I would have thought too. $5 for one drink seems ridiculous.

I am all for when in Rome... but the system seems ridiculous to me.

For a start if establishments stopped serving such mammoth portions- the wastage must be massive- there would be more in the kitty to pay the waiting staff a better rate surely.

And if it is obligatory, then present that as the total owed rather than have this slightly moral blackmail thing going on.

A tip in Europe is a totally different beast.

"For a start if establishments stopped serving such mammoth portions- the wastage must be massive- there would be more in the kitty to pay the waiting staff a better rate surely."

But there's a real culture of getting a box and taking the rest home with you, if you can manage not to be a piglet about it and scoff the lot (challenging for me, for sure!) so one might actually think that a 20% tip is OK if you can get 2 meals out of it. Not helpful for tourists, I know, but good for those of us with fridges and a microwave who live here!

I have trouble too Irene being a. Greedy and b. Brought up to clear my plate.
But if they just served a normal portion....

If you think of a restaurant patron's table as an organism with various symbiotic relationships occurring among the various parties working in the premises and involving the table, the system will make more sense.

The chef/owner pays for the space, utilities, and ingredients, as well as local taxes and water/garbage charges.
The chef pays him or herself a salary out of the proceeds of selling the food cooked in the kitchen to the diners.
The waiter's role is to make sure the diners are comfortable, treated with courtesy/ friendliness/ be knowledgeable about the menu, and deliver communication to the kitchen and food back to the diners.
In turn, the waiter is paid a certain basic amount, as are the other staff (hostess, bus staff, wash up staff). It behoves the waiter to do an excellent job, because tips are often shared with the hostess, bus staff, and wash up staff. A waiter with an attractive manner who provides good service can make enough to live on and support others too.

The relationship between waiters and chef/owner t is not really an employer-employee relationship. The waiter is pretty much self employed within the restaurant.

Little fish / bigger fish, but the other way round, in other words.

Not necessarily because prices are actually keyed to cost. People would also insist on lower prices if servings were smaller (outside of the kind of fine dining restaurant where you don't expect leftovers). Americans know perfectly well that, say, the Cheesecake Factory (picking it because it's well known) has outrageous portion sizes, but it's a set of mutual expectations.

Serving size is also a cultural difference (not just in the USA but across cultures and in homes). In some cultures you serve exactly enough food because it's a sin to waste it and you'd offend the host by not finishing the meal. In others, the sin is for the host to appear ungenerous, so if there isn't food left over, it means you didn't serve enough. Neither is inherently better. Traditionally, in the latter, food isn't wasted but saved (though being able to waste food can also be a sign of the host's wealth). Apparently the popularity of take home boxes is declining and I wonder if this will affect restaurant portions at some point.

Just go to Japan, it's cleaner, the food is excellent, the people are very polite and tipping is a big NO-NO!

You might be right. The hotel room price is the price
plus
The resort fee
The local tax
The cleaning tips
not such a good deal as I thought!