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I make $1 above minimum wage in Los Angeles, so I'm wealthy in a global sense but poor in a local sense. I just live a frugal life with few expenses or vices beyond gaming and smoking, and that's what enables me to tip generously and give to mutual aid groups. I probably eat out less often than the average American, and I don't own a car, but I'm OK with losing those things. I am able and willing to make those sacrifices, so I do so. If you're not able or not willing to make those sacrifices, that's your choice, but don't take the consequences of your choice out on the people who are on the bottom rung of society. That's just gross.
Tipping 15% isn't "taking your choice out" on anyone. 15% is a fine and normal tip.
Maybe it used to be decades ago when we first formed our opinions about this stuff, but times have changed since then. Rent has done nothing but go up, while the federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009 and the federal tipped minimum wage has been $2.13/hour since 1991. That 15% you gave in 2010 was used for cigarettes and drinks after work, maybe coffee the next morning, maybe putting a little bit into savings or paying for college. Today, that 15% is used for rent. Rent and gas. Rent and gas and maybe childcare. Tipping more than 15% is our way to actually tell someone that they deserve more than just the necessities--and I don't mean telling them with words or with comments on Lemmy, I mean telling them with action.
I can't bring my self to encourage people to work stupid fucking jobs that pay $2.13 or whatever. Have some fucking self respect.
Whether you respect them or not, those jobs still must exist until they are automated away. Casual dining and fine dining restaurants can't operate without servers--if that was possible, The Invisible Hand Of The Free Market would have eliminated that position centuries ago.
I'm saying they need to have some respect for themselves and refuse bullshit ass pay like that. And the vast majority of civilized nations have servers just fine without tipping/bull shit poverty wages. Service is better too.
I understand what you're saying, and what you're saying is only concerned with individuals, not systems.
What I'm saying is that regardless of how many individual people turn that job down, the job listing at that wage will still exist. Eventually, someone who is down on their luck will become desperate enough to take it because they don't have any other options left.
They could be homeless people trying to afford the deposit on an apartment, or single dads trying to pay for field trips for their kids, or ex-cons locked out of conventional employment trying desperately to earn an honest living, or college students trying to buy one used textbook, or even uneducated twenty-somethings trying to build work history so they can stop working for tips.
All of those desperate people, the people who have no choice but to tolerate the wage that you have too much self-respect to accept--they deserve nice things too. Their boss is a greedy, insufferable bastard who is willing to pay them the minimum that he is legally required to. If he could pay his employees less, he would do it in a heartbeat. By refusing to tip, you are climbing in to the same boat he's in, no matter what ideology you shout as you clamber over the gunwales.
Again, the vast majority of places don't have this issue of tipping at all.
Capitalism brutally forcing people into work they would otherwise not choose sadly happens almost everywhere, but tipping does not.
If all you're going to do is repeat ideologies while ignoring material conditions, then that's your call, but I'm done spending my time with you if that's your choice.
I didn't ignore the material conditions you stated, I actually reaffirmed them.
You however did ignore my point about the rest of the world who manages without tipping.
Bro is an idiot without an ounce of empathy who has clearly never had to work a service job a day in their lives. I’m with you ms docrime