A decent living

[Bingee]

Tipping seems to come down to culture.

It seems that in the USA you pay your waiting staff a pittance to maximise profits and keep the headline price down.

In Europe I hope we pay our hospitality staff a decent salary and then tip on top for good service. It also seems from some comments that in Scandinavia tipping is not even a thing.
It would be good if the cruise industry page decent wages and didn't have all these back door add ons, but I am not holding my breath.

[tonyfsu21]

3 hours ago, Bingee said:

Tipping seems to come down to culture.

It seems that in the USA you pay your waiting staff a pittance to maximise profits and keep the headline price down.

In Europe I hope we pay our hospitality staff a decent salary and then tip on top for good service. It also seems from some comments that in Scandinavia tipping is not even a thing.
It would be good if the cruise industry page decent wages and didn't have all these back door add ons, but I am not holding my breath.

Or perhaps the US has the right method? What incentive does the staff have to go above and beyond when they are receiving a “decent salary”? Personally, I would always opt to take a minimal salary knowing I could more then make up for it with great tips due to hard work and dedication. As for the cruise industry, don’t hold your breath because it’s only going further in the wrong direction regarding staff inexperience, food inconsistency, excessive up charges. People are willing to pay much more for much less these days and the cruise industry has zero incentive to rework a system when they sell out just about every sailing. 

[TXcruzer]

9 minutes ago, tonyfsu21 said:

Or perhaps the US has the right method? What incentive does the staff have to go above and beyond when they are receiving a “decent salary”? Personally, I would always opt to take a minimal salary knowing I could more then make up for it with great tips due to hard work and dedication. As for the cruise industry, don’t hold your breath because it’s only going further in the wrong direction regarding staff inexperience, food inconsistency, excessive up charges. People are willing to pay much more for much less these days and the cruise industry has zero incentive to rework a system when they sell out just about every sailing. 

If you talk frankly to any professional waitstaff here in the states, or any forward facing crew on cruise ships, they will agree with you 100%.  They all do better in a cash based gratuity system (not the Royal Caribbean scam of auto daily gratuity)

[ScottD]

17 minutes ago, TXcruzer said:

If you talk frankly to any professional waitstaff here in the states, or any forward facing crew on cruise ships, they will agree with you 100%.  They all do better in a cash based gratuity system (not the Royal Caribbean scam of auto daily gratuity)

Absolutely. There's a reason people bartend in the US and do it for YEARS.  At the right place, it's a cash cow. My wife was a bartender for 20 years, she always said if they went to a no-tip\work for hourly wages model, she'd be out.  It comes with its ups and downs, but for every person who leave 50 cents on the bar, there's usually five leaving a 10 on the bar. 

[smokeybandit]

There's a reason cruise ship employees work the hours they do, because it is a good living compared to other options in their home countries.

[twangster]

3 hours ago, Bingee said:

Tipping seems to come down to culture.

Absolutely.  

3 hours ago, Bingee said:

It seems that in the USA you pay your waiting staff a pittance to maximise profits and keep the headline price down

There is much more to it.  There are elements of less government regulation and less government in our lives in general.   

At the end of the day it's also about total compensation but also motivating people to work.  If I am guaranteed a wage from society regardless how much effort I put forth why would I desire to work hard?  Socialism is a fine concept on paper until you bring the human into the equation.  America is more about individual freedom which goes hand in hand with capitalism.  To your point it is largely the overall culture.  We enjoy a lot of freedom, especially from government, but that includes not having government dictate things like wages for every position and every citizen.  There are ripple effects to less government that changes the landscape of so much more.   That is our culture.  

 

3 hours ago, Bingee said:

It would be good if the cruise industry page decent wages and didn't have all these back door add ons, but I am not holding my breath.

Tipping and cruise ship salaries are very different topics that are unrelated. 

The cruise industry as we know it exists largely due to inexpensive labor from less developed countries.  If that bothers you, you shouldn't cruise.  

In those source countries where most cruise ship labor comes from the wages offered by the cruise industry is very appealing and often much higher than anything available for the same people who are drawn to work in the cruise industry in their home countries.  On top of that they get to see the world while not paying for room or food.   In exchange they have to work and work hard they do.  That seems like a fair deal to me.  

It's not for everyone and some who give it a shot don't enjoy it.  Yet there are many who have embraced it and are putting their children into private schools in countries where public schools are a disaster.   Then they put their children in higher education so that their children have opportunities that are unavailable to the masses back home.  In the end they sacrifice a lot so that their families have better lives in the long run.  They do all this through many years of working on cruise ships.  I respect them for doing so.

They are not forced to pick this industry.  They work relatively short contracts measured in months.  If they didn't want to work in the industry they would soon have an opportunity to find something else.  There is no such thing as a multi-year contract, most are 5 - 7 months long with a few that are 9 - 10 months long.  Once that month's long contract is over they are free to choose a different industry to work in.  Yet so many come back and they sign up for another contract, and another contract.  That is a choice they make.  That is freedom.  

 

[TXcruzer]

1 minute ago, smokeybandit said:

There's a reason cruise ship employees work the hours they do, because it is a good living compared to other options in their home countries.

They will take home 1.5X-2X the average annual income of their home country on each contract.  That's a pretty great wage 

[twangster]

I see the EU in particular as being way over the top in government intervention.  A private company that makes consumer goods is not allowed to manufacturer a device the way they would like to, they must manufacturer the device to EU government specifications.  That is government out of control.  Where I come from that isn't a good thing.

If I want to create a device with a twangster port and my customers are happy to purchase twangster port chargers the government shouldn't be able to step in and dictate the type of port I am allowed to manufacturer.  Scary government.  

That's sure a different culture compared to here.   

Just as you can't comprehend our culture, I struggle to understand yours.  In the end it's enough just to understand it is a very different culture.  We are probably both thinking "Nice enough place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there".  

[PL8SWPR]

I would much rather pay $15 for a burger at a restaurant and tip the server $5 then be charged $20 for the burger.  As others have said, it creates an incentive for good service.  My wife is in the restaurant industry.  If you approached the servers working for her and told them they'd be giving up their $2.13 per hour plus tips in exchange for a straight $15 an hour, none of them would take it.  They do much better the way it is, especially since many of them just pocket the cash tips (avoiding the tax man).

[Allen2]

I started out in the service industry, and tips kept food on our table.  (Back then minimum wage did not exist). Then moved to the "back of the house" for straight wages.  Then: back to tips!  With tips I was rewarded for effort and friendliness.  Onward to management, and I still believed in tips for employees who wanted daily to control their own financial destiny. Later, ownership, and I still feel a tipping culture is the best.  A prior comment about good bartenders staying with the position for years rings so true!  Tougher today to avoid the IRS on tip reporting, though, with much of tips trackable through credit cards. I fully embrace "extra" tips for ship employees who go the extra mile!

 

[Zacharius]

2 hours ago, TXcruzer said:

If you talk frankly to any professional waitstaff here in the states, or any forward facing crew on cruise ships, they will agree with you 100%.  They all do better in a cash based gratuity system (not the Royal Caribbean scam of auto daily gratuity)

I fill in occasionally at a brewery near my house in the US (on the rare occasions I'm not traveling for work)...it's just kind of my fun thing to do a couple times a month, and a way to get some free beer Anyways, I will preface this by saying that our owner pays us a pretty good base pay of $12 to $16/hour (most of us fall at $14), and then tips on top of that (split evenly on a per hour basis for the tips made that day). I usually end up making about $35/hour on a Friday or Saturday, and maybe $27-$30/hour on a week day. I'm honestly shocked at how much I get paid just to pour beer/wine and make some cocktails. 

I also have a buddy who works as a sever at a very high-end steakhouse chain (I won't name it, but it rhymes with Smakital Trill) and he easily clears $100k/year in a pretty affordable mid-sized midwestern city. 

[Geezer Of The Seas]

I've got a theory regarding forward facing employees in American food service industry. I'm sure we've all noted (especially in a lot, but not all big name fast food franchise operations) the sudden solicitation for tips when paying for a meal. Coincidence or something else, this phenomenon seems to have taken root when the push for a $15/hr minimum wage began. What may be happening, especially in states that have adopted a  $15/hr minimum wage is hourly food service employees are being reclassified as 'tip eligible', which under IRS/state rules allows them to be paid a lower minimum. 30 plus years ago, but when I was working a part time gig in health services for a major Central Florida theme park, any wait staff employees we treated for a work related injury were receiving an hourly wage of about $2.30, considerably below the Florida minimum wage at the time.  

Wonder if this is a ploy to reduce personnel overhead?  

Sorry for the thread drift.............

[Vancity Cruiser]

3 hours ago, PL8SWPR said:

If you approached the servers working for her and told them they'd be giving up their $2.13 per hour plus tips in exchange for a straight $15 an hour, none of them would take it.  They do much better the way it is, especially since many of them just pocket the cash tips (avoiding the tax man).

Here in Canada it is even more lucrative. Waitstaff are required to be paid full minimum wage ($16.75/hr here in BC) and still receive 15-18% gratuities on top of that! 

[teddy]

Thank you for your replies @twangster  You are much more articulate (among other things) than I would have been. 

[TXcruzer]

4 hours ago, Vancity Cruiser said:

Here in Canada it is even more lucrative. Waitstaff are required to be paid full minimum wage ($16.75/hr here in BC) and still receive 15-18% gratuities on top of that! 

not from me, they wouldn't

[foxrunner]

I'm a father of two boys that put themselves through college without debt, because of the tipping culture in the USA. They hustled and worked a ton of hours. We live in a resort community so that helps. We are a solid middleclass family so received no financial aid.  My point is that without tipping the boys would have come out of colleges with tens of thousands $ in debt. They could have worked the back of the house for that safe hourly wage but again that would have meant student loans. Yes they did have some scholarships but they made it happen through hard work and tips.  

[bretts173]

Depends which way you look at it. It is either a payment for doing a good job, or a bribe to make you do a good job.

Some cultures take pride and just do a good job. 

[Xaa]

All pay is a bribe to do a good job @bretts173  Tipping just puts part of that bribe in the hands of the client.

I don't know of any culture that works for others without remuneration and just for the pride of doing a good job. 

[ckruetze]

Interesting discussion and as somebody has said already Europe vs the USA are just two different cultures. We don't have to like each others culture but we have to know enough about them that we can conform when visiting the other culture.

But there is actually one thing I really don't understand.
In a lot of the discussions the tipping in the US is made out to be better since in encourages a better service and at the same time allows the employees to take more money home. That's actually an argument that I as a European can understand even if I don't necessary share it.
However, if that is really the case then why is it limited to certain industries?
I would love a better service in the department store, at the car dealer, from the flight attendant, from my insurance company or the post office. Are all those services so good in the USA that you don't need to encourage better services through tips and do employees in those industries earn so much that they wouldn't want to earn more through tips?

[ChessE4]

1 hour ago, ckruetze said:

Interesting discussion and as somebody has said already Europe vs the USA are just two different cultures. We don't have to like each others culture but we have to know enough about them that we can conform when visiting the other culture.

But there is actually one thing I really don't understand.
In a lot of the discussions the tipping in the US is made out to be better since in encourages a better service and at the same time allows the employees to take more money home. That's actually an argument that I as a European can understand even if I don't necessary share it.
However, if that is really the case then why is it limited to certain industries?
I would love a better service in the department store, at the car dealer, from the flight attendant, from my insurance company or the post office. Are all those services so good in the USA that you don't need to encourage better services through tips and do employees in those industries earn so much that they wouldn't want to earn more through tips?

Great point, as was OPs and others who tried to explain. Getting back to cruising, let's  just embrace the point that cruisers should be culturally sensitive wherever they travel and respect local customs since they are guests. Or just stay on the ship. We can't fix governments; we can be good world citizens.

[TXcruzer]

1 hour ago, ckruetze said:

Interesting discussion and as somebody has said already Europe vs the USA are just two different cultures. We don't have to like each others culture but we have to know enough about them that we can conform when visiting the other culture.

But there is actually one thing I really don't understand.
In a lot of the discussions the tipping in the US is made out to be better since in encourages a better service and at the same time allows the employees to take more money home. That's actually an argument that I as a European can understand even if I don't necessary share it.
However, if that is really the case then why is it limited to certain industries?
I would love a better service in the department store, at the car dealer, from the flight attendant, from my insurance company or the post office. Are all those services so good in the USA that you don't need to encourage better services through tips and do employees in those industries earn so much that they wouldn't want to earn more through tips?

That is an excellent thought thread, and makes perfect sense.

 

In America, your examples of department store worker, car salesman, and insurance agent are all commission based jobs, so in many ways there compensation is tied into performance just like a tipped position. ( I do not know if commission based salaries exist in Europe).

With regard to the other  positions, I am sure we have the same amount of sub par performance from certain individuals as you do.  Generally speaking, firing someone in this country is a relatively easy thing to do.

[Xaa]

1 hour ago, ckruetze said:

However, if that is really the case then why is it limited to certain industries?

This I don't know.  In some of your examples, those careers here are commission based where the pay is low and the bulk of the income earned through commissions but those are paid through the employer, the client only impacts that in their decision to buy/not buy.  The commission and bonus structure is such that those willing and able to do the most can earn the most.

I'm not sure if a tipping culture is better or not better.  I've only lived in one and just visited the other side of the coin.  It is just something that is and certain benefits of it can be seen to be sure.

[smokeybandit]

You guys forgot one of the most prominent commission-based jobs out there that gets discussed here just about every day: Travel Agent