Why I tip more, and why you should too (2 Viewers)

[Budha]

Caesar’s and MGM are not mom and pop shops.

Nobody is expecting hyper large massively profitable organizations to pay their hourly workers like CEOs. Paying them a salary that didn’t depend on me augmenting so they have a roof over their heads and buy food would be nice.

You’re right, and then they’ll close the poker room and reallocate that space to higher margin tables, slots, or video poker - lol.

 

[Bill_Man618]

This sounds like you aren't scooping as many pots per hour as you should be...

I tip $1/ hand to any hand I take down, even if it's just a raise and take the blinds, in which case I'm tipping 15-40% of the pot. On larger pots >$400 I'll usually tip $2

This is my standard as well.

 

[Bill_Man618]

FWIW I have a friend who is a winning rec player and was a dealer for a while (as well as both his parents dealing). He got a $5 tip from a pro that played often and commented to me that it was a very good tip as tips that high significantly hurt win rate over the long term. He also tips $1-2 per hand depending on size and more in unaries home games as the dealers deal for tips and aren't paid to come. But, anything more than $1-2/hand is a lot imo

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

I agree with the last sentence of that first paragraph, but I don't agree that the answer is "obviously" the prices have to be raised.

I've been a small business owner with employees and contractors for 15 years. I didn't raise my prices to address better performance by better employees... I wrote a robust policy that I shared with the entire team that explained rate increases for the higher performing employees. They knew exactly what they needed to do per customer interaction to achieve the higher rate, and what the review process would look like to determine if they were hitting those metrics.

Took a hell of a lot of energy and effort to achieve, but this was what I thought would be best to incentivize fairly without passing that cost to my customers.

(Maybe this isn't achievable at scale... maybe it is... ultimately I believe there are creative ways to figure this out)

Seriously???

You cherry picked three sentences out of a very long post and took the third sentence WAY out of context to try and apply it to the last sentence of the previous paragraph. You can't possibly think that's what it was meant to apply to. C'mon...

What that last sentence does say, that you completely ignored, was that there is no way that a restaurant can go from the current system where 80-90% of their wait staff's pay comes from tips, to a pay structure where the restaurant is paying 100% of their pay out of just the proceeds from food and drink sales, and telling their customers that they no longer need to tip, without raising menu prices.

If you would like to refute that, please give it your best effort.

 

[DMack]

BRING IT ON.

Ever been to Venezuela?

Why is it fair you get to have a seven figure home? I want some of that.

 

[drdr]

if a game has been running over an hour, and there hasn't been a single rebuy or add-on, it is likely a bad game.

it is a unfair comparison to compare retailer and fast food workers to employees that have always been mainly tip based.

i'm unsure the history behind tipping, but it has been around all my life, and it is extremely unlikely it will go away.
nearly every employee involved in gambling is tip based, there will never be a time these companies fall to their knees and offer salary except for upper management.

All it takes is change to fair work laws. Bring America into modernity.

 

[drdr]

This is what service businesses would do, if they could get away with it. I had this same arrangement years ago when dealing at a less-than-licensed nomadic cardroom (read: people with a van full of poker supplies trying to stay ahead of the law).

Not only did I not get a base wage, only tips, but they tried to "tax" my tips like 20% when I cashed out too.*

Even better example: My wife worked for years on cruise ships for a base wage of $50 MONTHLY. The rest was all tips and commissions, which they found ways to prevent and claw away from her too. They get away with it by hiring people from outside of the "first world" and treating them like borderline slaves.

Corporations are, at their core, greed machines that do nothing but convert human activity into money. Leave them to run as they please indefinitely and they'll reestablish chattel slavery. We can't always control everything they do, but we can at least make the right move when presented with it. And chasing higher and higher tips forever isn't the right move.

Spoiler: *

Ultimately I told the dude there was no way I was letting him take a chunk of the not-even-that-great tips I'd just earned, especially after I just watched the rake suck up chips at a rate 5 times that much—which was going straight to the "house." I must have been pretty persuasive because he gave up trying immediately and never mentioned it again.

Change the laws, force corporate accountability. Like done elsewhere in the world.

 

[MrRossKeys]

Seriously???

You cherry picked three sentences out of a very long post and took the third sentence WAY out of context to try and apply it to the last sentence of the previous paragraph. You can't possibly think that's what it was meant to apply to. C'mon...

What that last sentence does say, that you completely ignored, was that there is no way that a restaurant can go from the current system where 80-90% of their wait staff's pay comes from tips, to a pay structure where the restaurant is paying 100% of their pay out of just the proceeds from food and drink sales, and telling their customers that they no longer need to tip, without raising menu prices.

If you would like to refute that, please give it your best effort.

Welp, sorry if you think I took something that you said WAY out of context when I dang near quoted your sentence lol!

But thanks for the clarification. I think a few things:
1. 80-90% of wait staff's pay coming from tips..... the % may be different depending on the establishment (I have 2nd hand knowledge of quite a few of my friends who communicate that it is closer to 40-60%)

2. Going to 100% pay from the restaurant and telling customers they no longer need to tip are two totally different things, and definitely not what I was proposing by any stretch. My point is, the expectation that the restaurant is paying 100% of the wage of the worker should be the standard, even if it isn't or never will be. The tip should always be optional and based on service provided + value to the customer who gives the tip. The restaurant should not calculate a workers wage based on proposed tips that the server receives.

If restaurants treated servers as independent contractors then I could imagine a world where servers paid a fee to the restaurant and then charged a wage to their customers, like how it works at hair salons and barber shops. But the fact that servers are employees, their entire wage should be paid by the restaurant. My point to your point was that this doesn't automatically mean that if a restaurant went with this model that they would have to raise their prices. I'm saying, there are ways to pay these servers without hiking up the price to a degree that customers would suffer in their ability to choose these items vs other restaurants serving the same items.

No offense was meant when I cherry picked your sentences. I love cherry's though.

 

[drdr]

All waitstaff is paid less than minimum wage by the employer, obviously they are not taking home less than minimum wage.
When I was in the game many years ago it was like $3 per hour, paid by the company.
I know many waitstaff making a hell of a lot more than minimum wage, but that's not my point.
My argument was that the employers should be the ones paying the salary not the customers.

Back to the OP, I think most dealers get paid min wage + tips. This seems ridiculous to me. The casino should pay these people a real wage, refuse tips, and keep all that money in play. Its not like they can't afford it.

In Australia it is illegal to tip dealers. This is to prevent collision/cheating. Dealers are instead paid a wage, supported by federal Fair Work laws. It's great!

 

[Labrat]

I'm still trying to figure out who to tip in the self-checkout lane.

 

[drdr]

I'm still trying to figure out who to tip in the self-checkout lane.

Don't the robot things ask for tips now?

 

[MrRossKeys]

I'm still trying to figure out who to tip in the self-checkout lane.

Shhh. They'll hear you and start getting ideas...

The funniest thing to me is when I order food online and drive to pick it up myself and there's a prompt asking for a tip. There's no server in this situation, but yet ALL the restaurants ask for a tip before letting you pay. It's absurd.

 

[Labrat]

Shhh. They'll hear you and start getting ideas...

The funniest thing to me is when I order food online and drive to pick it up myself and there's a prompt asking for a tip. There's no server in this situation, but yet ALL the restaurants ask for a tip before letting you pay. It's absurd.

Completely agree.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Shhh. They'll hear you and start getting ideas...

The funniest thing to me is when I order food online and drive to pick it up myself and there's a prompt asking for a tip. There's no server in this situation, but yet ALL the restaurants ask for a tip before letting you pay. It's absurd.

Probably calculated to take advantage of people who tap-tap-tap their way through menus without thinking, and secondarily people who feel guilty refusing.

I've seen online food ordering platforms have you set to a default tip even when you're doing pick-up. Last one I saw was easy to miss because it's rolled into an omnibus tip/fees/taxes line. You have to dig through a menu and manually change if it you don't want to automatically tip—get this—twenty frigging percent by default, on an order you're placing on a device and then physically going to the store yourself to retrieve from a countertop.

Like DoorDash, GrubHub, and all the other sketchy food middlemen, upon running into this I immediately decided never to do business with them again.

 

[bergs]

You’re right, and then they’ll close the poker room and reallocate that space to higher margin tables, slots, or video poker - lol.

Boston Encore tried to until the MA gaming authority stopped them.

So they opened like 11 tables available from Thursday through Sunday 8 hours a day and $11 rake. I may be off slightly on the details here but it was sadly very close to that.

 

[RichMahogany]

@RichMahogany yes this is currently changing at one point it was like most states could do this but now many states have outlawed this and force places to pay minimum. I suspect that at some point almost all states will ban this.

https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/#:~:text=Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware,subminimum wages for certain residents.
Something like 35 states have a lower tipped wage than the state minimum according to this data, but I read an article that said that as many as 20 states were voting on banning the lower tipped wage this year, so who knows.

Also,
There are many studies that dispute the idea that tipping increases service quality.
The funny thing is that a common thread in this research is that the customers feel that tipping increases service but the servers state that the tip is just a small consideration in the quality of service they give. Things like workload, stress, and the complexity of orders all were more influential than tipping in determining the quality of service they provide. Kind of interesting to look at the two perspectives on tipping and quality of service. There were also considerations given to level of service determined by the perception of a good or bad tip. So maybe a young couple, or people who are dressed poorly receiving less service than a well dressed older couple. Obviously this is based on some preconceived bias by the server but it is something servers sited as a factor in quality of service. Remember we tip after the service is rendered so servers may be acting on perceived tip amount not actual tip amount.

Here is one of the studies that speak to this, not sure if you need a research gate account to read it but at least you can see the abstract.
Gratuity: A Contextual Understanding of Tipping Norms From the Perspective of Tipped Employees. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.
Seltzer, Richard and Holona LeAnne Ochs. 2010.

I’ll try to take a look at it later.

All of that is true to a point, but I guess I don’t come across it much anymore after 20+ years in. Luckily at this point I tend to work at places where you won’t get hired unless your knowledge, skills, service, and personality are top notch

 

[Jimulacrum]

Boston Encore tried to until the MA gaming authority stopped them.

So they opened like 11 tables available from Thursday through Sunday 8 hours a day and $11 rake. I may be off slightly on the details here but it was sadly very close to that.

Sadly, I never got to check out that room before Covid. Then I didn't want to go play with masks and plexiglass. Then they made the rake 10% to $10 plus drops or whatever it is now, so I'm probably never going.

Even at some higher limits, a cap of $10 ruins the game.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Welp, sorry if you think I took something that you said WAY out of context when I dang near quoted your sentence lol!

That's not what out of context means. Yes, you quoted what I wrote correctly. But you left out a huge chunk of my post, and the comment you made regarding what I wrote had very little to do with the actual meaning of what I wrote. Ergo, you took it out of context.

But thanks for the clarification. I think a few things:
1. 80-90% of wait staff's pay coming from tips..... the % may be different depending on the establishment (I have 2nd hand knowledge of quite a few of my friends who communicate that it is closer to 40-60%)

I feel really bad for your friends then. They must work at really crappy restaurants where the patrons don't tip. My percentage came directly from my son who waited tables at a mid range steakhouse. His hourly wage was $2-something and he averaged around $20 something an hour in tips. So yeah, 80-90% tips.

2. Going to 100% pay from the restaurant and telling customers they no longer need to tip are two totally different things, and definitely not what I was proposing by any stretch. My point is, the expectation that the restaurant is paying 100% of the wage of the worker should be the standard, even if it isn't or never will be. The tip should always be optional and based on service provided + value to the customer who gives the tip. The restaurant should not calculate a workers wage based on proposed tips that the server receives.

Well, not tipping was the entire point of my post. The part that you did not quote in your reply. Maybe you didn't even read that part? I was replying to other persons here who proposed going out and not tipping as a way to "stick it to the man." So my post proposed a possible solution that I had been kicking around where I opened a restaurant that would pay the wait staff a percentage of the tabs they served in lieu of expecting the customers to tip. And that for this idea to work while also competing against other restaurants that continue to only pay their wait staff the legal minimum, then "obviously the restaurant would have to raise menu prices."

If restaurants treated servers as independent contractors then I could imagine a world where servers paid a fee to the restaurant and then charged a wage to their customers, like how it works at hair salons and barber shops. But the fact that servers are employees, their entire wage should be paid by the restaurant. My point to your point was that this doesn't automatically mean that if a restaurant went with this model that they would have to raise their prices. I'm saying, there are ways to pay these servers without hiking up the price to a degree that customers would suffer in their ability to choose these items vs other restaurants serving the same items.

No offense was meant when I cherry picked your sentences. I love cherry's though.

So in your scenario, the entire wage of the wait staff is paid solely from the revenues generated by the menu items, and I assume you still want your employees to earn as much as they earned before primarily from tips, and you don't want to raise menu prices, right? Then where does this money to pay these wages come from? I guess out the generous pockets of the business owner? Because he doesn't have any of his own personal capital wrapped up in his business, so he doesn't deserve any of the profits. Yes, I said his business. Sorry, but your math doesn't work. And very few people invest in businesses with little to no prospect of profits.

 

[Moxie Mike]

Every dealer should have a minimum level of acceptable skill.

Of course there has to be a base level of competency. But that is determined by their employer, not the patrons of the casino.

I think dealers that do deserve tips are dealers who smile, are pleasant, interact with players in positive ways, shut down negative habits (like players talking in other languages during a hand, etc), and overall add value to the game itself through their individual personality or contribution. I'd pay tips just to keep a dealer at my table that makes the game more pleasant to play.

OK so by that logic, say you sit through a dealer's entire shift at your table and don't drag a single pot. Are you still tipping them at any point? I.E. do you muck your cards and then fling them a toke?

But... there shouldn't be an expectation that players need to tip in order to pay the wage of dealers. That's different than "we should or shouldn't tip good dealers." I think we all should tip good dealers.... I just think the definition of a good dealer is different for everyone.

It's more of an etiquette thing. I personally don't give any consideration to what a person is going to do with their tip money when I leave a gratuity - no matter the arena. After all, they're the ones choosing to work as bartenders or waiters or poker dealers... plus I don't know their situation. So to me it's not about 'paying their wages', it's a token to 1) express appreciation for a job well performed; and 2) a signal that continued good performance will also be rewarded.

Case in point, when I order takeout, I often have to make meal modifications because my wife has a diary allergy. So I'll often place the order online, and then immediately call the restaurant and speak to the manager because it's imperative that whomever receives the order takes it seriously. So I always put a tip on the order because I'm creating extra work for them.

 

[MrRossKeys]

That's not what out of context means. Yes, you quoted what I wrote correctly. But you left out a huge chunk of my post, and the comment you made regarding what I wrote had very little to do with the actual meaning of what I wrote. Ergo, you took it out of context.

I feel really bad for your friends then. They must work at really crappy restaurants where the patrons don't tip. My percentage came directly from my son who waited tables at a mid range steakhouse. His hourly wage was $2-something and he averaged around $20 something an hour in tips. So yeah, 80-90% tips.

Well, not tipping was the entire point of my post. The part that you did not quote in your reply. Maybe you didn't even read that part? I was replying to other persons here who proposed going out and not tipping as a way to "stick it to the man." So my post proposed a possible solution that I had been kicking around where I opened a restaurant that would pay the wait staff a percentage of the tabs they served in lieu of expecting the customers to tip. And that for this idea to work while also competing against other restaurants that continue to only pay their wait staff the legal minimum, then "obviously the restaurant would have to raise menu prices."

So in your scenario, the entire wage of the wait staff is paid solely from the revenues generated by the menu items, and I assume you still want your employees to earn as much as they earned before primarily from tips, and you don't want to raise menu prices, right? Then where does this money to pay these wages come from? I guess out the generous pockets of the business owner? Because he doesn't have any of his own personal capital wrapped up in his business, so he doesn't deserve any of the profits. Yes, I said his business. Sorry, but your math doesn't work. And very few people invest in businesses with little to no prospect of profits.

The comment I wrote had everything to do with the point I was trying to make. I'm not fully for or against your statements, so why do I need to make a comment based on something you meant but didn't say? I quoted your post, then I responded to part of it. I didn't respond to all of it because it wasn't relevant to the new information I was sharing. Not sure why it's so important that my words reflect what your original point was, when your original point was well articulated on its own.???,

My friends live and work in California. The restaurants are not crappy by any stretch. The patrons do tip. Their base pay is much MUCH higher than $2 an hour, so that would explain why their total pay isn't 80-90% tips.

The money to pay the wages for employees who serve customers should 100% be built into the prices of the food that is served. The idea that prices must be raised in order to cover the pay of the staff is a generalization that doesn't match the reality of many situations. I say this with confidence because in addition to running my own business for 15 years I spent the 13 years previous to that as general manager or assistant general manager of many retail establishments. I have unique insight, and in some cases had oversight into how the revenue for a location was spent (payroll vs utilities, vs marketing vs etc etc). If restaurants wanted to go 100% pay and no tips they could do so without raising their food prices if they really wanted to. Maybe this statement isn't 100% true, but it is not 0% true as I believe you are claiming.

Once again, maybe there are different aspects to this such as demographics, location (California vs Texas, etc), and there are definitely different economics at play with chain vs. mom-and-pop locations, but if we need to actually break out math then give me a few hours to break it down. Until then, saying my math doesn't work is once again a generalization that might only include your perspective and not a larger (or different) part of the landscape.


EXTRA: Your comment about competition is interesting. I frequent two different establishments... one with a $68 ribeye steak and another with a $26 ribeye steak. Both taste delicious. Both have a nice enough waitstaff. Both places seem to be doing well in terms of revenue. The first place will cost $200+ for 2-4 people to eat while the second place comes in around $80-$120 for 2-4 people.

The tip for the first place is consequently around $30-$40 while the tip for the first place is $15-$20.

If the 1st location decided to do away with tips they wouldn't need to raise their prices to stay competitive, as they are already in the higher price range of cost and profits.

If the 2nd location decided to do away with tips and raise their prices to adequately pay 100% wages to the waitstaff, their ribeye steak would increase in price by say $20 to $46. In this scenario they are still more affordable than the 1st location, and actually a bargain for me compared to spending $68 + tips at the first location. My point is, being competitive is not just about price, but perceived value + convenience + price.

EXTRA #2: Since we're talking mostly hypothetical scenarios, I'll weigh in on the idea of everyone not tipping to try to force restaurants to pay their people.... I don't think that will work unless there was some high-level-unified-nationwide-strike that got popular on social media and news sites. If people stopped tipping at a particular Red Lobster, those workers would quit because the tips aren't good... and sadly new workers would fill those positions because they need work. The pressure wouldn't be so much on ownership as it would be on the waiters.

Fixing the problem has to start with the mindset of ownership to treat their workers with dignity and pay them a fair (or better than fair) wage and figure out a business model that can sustain that stance while building profits. I tried to do that with my little company. I believe it's totally possible for all the service industry... but what's their motivation when it's been working and beneficial to their bottom line thus far?

 

[MrRossKeys]

Of course there has to be a base level of competency. But that is determined by their employer, not the patrons of the casino.


OK so by that logic, say you sit through a dealer's entire shift at your table and don't drag a single pot. Are you still tipping them at any point? I.E. do you muck your cards and then fling them a toke?


It's more of an etiquette thing. I personally don't give any consideration to what a person is going to do with their tip money when I leave a gratuity - no matter the arena. After all, they're the ones choosing to work as bartenders or waiters or poker dealers... plus I don't know their situation. So to me it's not about 'paying their wages', it's a token to 1) express appreciation for a job well performed; and 2) a signal that continued good performance will also be rewarded.

Case in point, when I order takeout, I often have to make meal modifications because my wife has a diary allergy. So I'll often place the order online, and then immediately call the restaurant and speak to the manager because it's imperative that whomever receives the order takes it seriously. So I always put a tip on the order because I'm creating extra work for them.

All good thoughts. My point is that, in your takeout order situation, the tip is based on the extra work created... but dealers, waiters, and bartenders are all doing their job with no extra work created. It is built into their job to do it well. If I was asking dealers or waiters for an accommodation then sure, I'd tip extra.

And yes, sometimes I will give a tip to a dealer I think is awesome at the end of their shift at the table, whether I've won a hand or not during their stay.

 

[puglia82]

Boston Encore tried to until the MA gaming authority stopped them.

So they opened like 11 tables available from Thursday through Sunday 8 hours a day and $11 rake. I may be off slightly on the details here but it was sadly very close to that.

it's no longer the case
https://www.encorebostonharbor.com/casino/poker

 

[bergs]

it's no longer the case
https://www.encorebostonharbor.com/casino/poker

Hey if I raked $10 I’d be open 24x7 too.

 

[allforcharity]

I think many of you are not seeing the forest for the trees. Typically, table games run by dealers are loss leaders unless the house has ways of increasing the vig e.g. more rake in poker, less payout ratio in blackjack, triple-0 roulette wheels, etc.
Casinos make most of their money on slots, and will continue to do so, and will always try to maximize their floor space % with these machines.