this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
41 points (95.6% liked)
Ask Lemmy
41020 readers
355 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Tech Support
No Stupid Questions
You Should Know
Reddit
Jokes
Ask Ouija
Logo design credit goes to:
tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
wow. suggested tip in the US syart with 18%. i could NOT afford to eat out in the us
You could, you would just have to tolerate the side-eyeing. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Well, tolerate the side eye and be willing to screw over someone trying to pay their bills. Whether tipping should be the standard practice (it shouldn't) is a separate issue. The general expected practice is that you will tip, and tips are effectively a server's whole wage. It's not an easy or pleasant job. Going to a sit down restaurant with the intention not to tip, to make someone work for you basically for free, just makes you an asshole. Until we get rid of tipped minimum wage.
This comment is 100% correct and anyone voting it down should reconsider.
You don't have to like the situation, I don't like the situation... but if you don't tip at least 15% you are underpaying a server and meaningfully impacting their life.
Servers should be paid more by their actual employers and it's ethically wrong that establishments are allowed to underpay their employees just so they can offload that cost to the customer and deceptively list a lower price on their menu. That said, this is the current situation in the US, that cost is offloaded, effectively making restaurant customers the primary source of income for restaurant servers. They are effectively your employees now, so please, don't underpay your employees.
Morally you need to tip because of an immoral system. Capitalism at its finest.
We're all trying to pay bills, and I also work in the service industry. Such is life, I'm not gonna be a baby/asshole and demand someone to pay extra (because they're not underpaying or stealing, gratuity is basically charity and you're meant to be competent at your job regardless) because of the inequalities of my fucked up so-called society. If you get uppity because someone doesn't want to waste even more money on a night out just for free, sure, but I don't think this very emotional take is valid, and it's acceptable only in the US.
They don't work for me, they work for the restaurant owner who is offloading their salary onto me under guise of a "tip". Fucking leeches feeding off our working class and you act like we're the problem for questioning this predatory system.
I never said don't question it, I said it shouldn't be that way! But it is that way right now, and we are responsible for how our actions affect others, even in an unfair system.
I agree with everything you're saying, but you going to the restaurant and not tipping hurts the server, not the owner. They spend time and effort for basically nothing in return, and even if you disagree with the system in place you are still using it to get cheaper food (because resteraunt costs are subsidized by tips to staff) at the expense of someone who in most cases can't afford it.
It you want to hurt the owner in the short term, don't go.
Eventually of course this means less serving jobs, again hurting the server.
So the best option is getting rid of tipped minimum wage. Easier said than done, but it's the only real way to fix this.
You think we can?