As a recent employee in the food service industry, I cannot fully explain just how eye-opening the experience has been so far, but I can tell you just how much we’re doing wrong. The tipping system in general is silly, and servers would likely be better off having a constant hourly wage, but alas capitalism strikes our system because, well, ‘Murica. Employers get staff who are paid an extremely small hourly wage and don’t have to worry about giving them benefits. How much do these underpaid staff members make? The national average for servers is currently $5.00[2]; however, many servers that I’ve encountered make as little as $2.30 an hour, and employers can get away with it simply due to the wonderful system known as tipping.

Tips are those nerve-wracking add-ons to your bill that typically are accompanied by a stream of questions. Whom do I tip? How much do I tip? What standards do I go by? These anxiety inducing questions are proof enough that it’s terrible for employers to leave the paying of staff to the customers. The guidelines are nonexistent, except of course when they aren’t. A little tactic restaurants will sometimes use is including the tip amounts on the receipt: 10%, 15%, 20%, the three percentages you have to consider when thinking about how much you should give to the person who took your order. “Tip based on the quality of your service,” they say, but someone who believes a waiter’s service to be excellent can sometimes still leave a 5% or less tip[1]. The standards people use won’t necessarily be the quality of service; it could just be how much money they have to spend. There are occasions in which even the best servers can be left with nothing at all, just because whoever they were serving might not have money to spare.

And people shouldn’t have to dig in their purse, check their bank account, or pull out their phone calculators to figure out how much of what they bought should go to the servers.  It puts way too much pressure on everyone, especially if someone might not have the means to tip properly. That server’s ‘fake’ attitude (that everyone so loves to mimic) is caused by the fact that people feel like they constantly have to act their best when their money is at stake. This is their livelihood, and the service industry is playing with it, simply because they want the most profit for themselves. And if they can do that with cheaper labor, they will do it.