Fear! The answer is fear.
Fear by tipped labor that price adjustments in response to loss of tips will not make up for the tip income - maybe taken in part by the employer or just process not raised to the commensurate level.
Fear that higher wages that are fully taxed will be less than tips that are partially or fully undeclared and go untaxed.
Fear of posted prices. Customers subconsciously Fear the $20 entree becoming a $30 entree even if they consciously know they already pay $30 for it in the end.
And I suspect a subconscious societal Fear that if the burden of low traffic staffing is shifted from restaurant servers to restaurant owners, many won't survive and the restaurant industry will drastically shrink.
Someone Memento tips in terms of originally being intended as an extra bonus. Doubtful. Tips are a way of shifting risk away from restaurant owners and onto labor. An employee at a restaurant earning only a wage needs to be paid that wage for every hour they are present, regardless of whether their are diners paying to be served. In modern times, tipped staff have been paid an extremely low hourly wage and rely on tips to make up the difference. But when customer traffic is low, they make little in tops while the business loses little in labor costs for having them there, such that those tipped staff assume a chunk of the business risk. I imagine that this is a tradition that dates back a long time, and perhaps the work was all tips and no wage.
The spread of tipping is essentially an outgrowth of that original sin, a shift of business risk to desperate employees dressed up as higher income.
It sucks but it's hard to conquer a mad fear.
Fear by tipped labor that price adjustments in response to loss of tips will not make up for the tip income - maybe taken in part by the employer or just process not raised to the commensurate level.
Fear that higher wages that are fully taxed will be less than tips that are partially or fully undeclared and go untaxed.
Fear of posted prices. Customers subconsciously Fear the $20 entree becoming a $30 entree even if they consciously know they already pay $30 for it in the end.
And I suspect a subconscious societal Fear that if the burden of low traffic staffing is shifted from restaurant servers to restaurant owners, many won't survive and the restaurant industry will drastically shrink.
Someone Memento tips in terms of originally being intended as an extra bonus. Doubtful. Tips are a way of shifting risk away from restaurant owners and onto labor. An employee at a restaurant earning only a wage needs to be paid that wage for every hour they are present, regardless of whether their are diners paying to be served. In modern times, tipped staff have been paid an extremely low hourly wage and rely on tips to make up the difference. But when customer traffic is low, they make little in tops while the business loses little in labor costs for having them there, such that those tipped staff assume a chunk of the business risk. I imagine that this is a tradition that dates back a long time, and perhaps the work was all tips and no wage.
The spread of tipping is essentially an outgrowth of that original sin, a shift of business risk to desperate employees dressed up as higher income.
It sucks but it's hard to conquer a mad fear.