The waitress of $ 100,000 a year is not a myth: some hard truths about tips in Canada

Last month, a widely publicized Reddit message complained that a Vancouver liquor store is now asking its customers to tip their purchases. "What's next, the terrifying grocery store?" Said writer OutrageousCamel.

Obviously, this is the right time as a country. Tipping, an extremely irrational practice in the best of cases, is starting to enter new frontiers of madness.

Nearly 40% of Canadians want tips removed and restaurants such as Earls are beginning to experiment with new anti-tip policies. Despite this, the practice only seems to become stronger.

And it's far from being a harmless tradition. Below, some hard truths about the state of the tip in modern Canada.

Some workers are extremely well paid
In 2014, the Canadian job search site, Workopolis.com, interviewed a former waitress who had already exchanged the $ 100,000 after tax equivalent per year. Kate (her real name was concealed because she had escaped the tax on much of that income) was working in a hotel bar and was saving up to $ 6,000 per month. month in tips. "Sometimes I rented in a shift," she said. This is an anomaly, but it is not uncommon for bar waiters or fine dining establishments to obtain salaries well above the Canadian median. Bruce McAdams of the University of Guelph is a veteran of the restaurant industry who has studied the effects of tips on Canadian restaurants. His data showed that when tips are counted, the average Canadian server earns about $ 30 an hour – some choose the "Kate" quick pay. These are salaries equivalent to those received by a registered nurse. one of the most lucrative jobs in Canada that can be obtained without post-secondary education. Server salaries are particularly high in Canada because tips are often superimposed on the high minimum wage. In some US states, restaurant owners' salaries do not exceed $ 2 an hour, making servers almost entirely dependent on tips. But in Canada, the lowest absolute minimum wage is $ 9.45 in Quebec, with Albertans earning up to $ 15.

… while the back of the house staff makes it less than half
A cook usually works longer than a waiter. The waiter and the cook have to deal with the very stressful world of restaurant work, but the cook has to do it while undergoing burns, cuts and, occasionally, vengeful lobsters. In addition, unless most servers are installed, a cook may have industry-specific training, such as a cooking school certificate. Despite all this, cooks usually earn $ 15 an hour at $ 30 an hour from the server, said McAdams. "The waiters earn twice as much as the cooks and our argument is that they do not create twice as much value," he said. Many restaurants try to spread wealth with tipping rules in which a server pbades some of its advice to the kitchen. But even that usually only generates an extra dollar or two per hour for online cooks and cooks in preparation (overturn policies are also known to be exploited by dishonest managers). And that's where talking about tip reform becomes risky. Servers currently benefit from a system in which they receive a disproportionate share of salary and any removal of tips will almost certainly result in a system in which much of that benefit will be lost.

There is almost nothing rational about the compensation of the tip
Lawyers are paid at the hour. Taxi drivers are paid per kilometer. But when it comes to servers, there is often little or no rational connection between the services that they render and the tip received. Opening a $ 100 bottle of wine and a $ 30 bottle of wine requires the same effort, yet at a rate of 15%, one tip is $ 15 and the other is $ 4.50. The three-second action of a bartender who breaks a bottle of beer should bring in $ 1. Meanwhile, the complex preparation of a hot lemon and water brings nothing. "It's just an irrational custom deeply embedded in our culture," said Marc S. Mentzer, a professor at the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan, who has written a tipping history. Icelanders believe in fairies, Spaniards unleash bulls for entertainment and North Americans.

The tips amounts do not really change according to a good service
The generally accepted (and completely false) tipping history is that it is an acronym for "ensuring promptness". Thus, by keeping the promise of extra coins, the customer badures that his server is hurrying a little louder than usual. "Tips are service-related, but only weakly," Wm., Economist at Cornell University. Michael Lynn, one of the world's leading tipping experts, has e-mailed the National Post. His data shows that a meager two percent of diners change the amount of their usual gratuity based on performance. The most influential factors in the amount of tips are factors such as the attractiveness of a server or the amount of tip that the customer is used to paying. This is corroborated by the Canadian data. A survey conducted in 2016 by the Angus Reid Institute revealed that only 9% of Canadians deviate from their usual package if they receive a good service. However, most servers seem to tragically ignore that their amount is in the hands of a cruel fate. According to Lynn's findings, about half of the waiters still mistakenly believed that working hard would give them a bigger tip.

Mandatory tip is on the rise
In the meantime, an increasing number of institutions are completely renouncing the optional nature of tips. Automatic bonuses (usually 18%) were reserved exclusively for large tables. In this way, a waiter could have his time monopolized by a large group without risking being left out if the group concealed the tip. But automatic tips are now appearing in resorts, hotels and even airport carriers. It often happens that a drunk client pays a tip on his last bill without realizing that he had already been charged with it. "Of course, it's a big surprise at 3 in the morning and, of course, I do not look at my bill at three in the morning," said a Toronto enthusiast at CTV after discovering that She had tilted the balance in the "party" costs.

The creep of the tip is real
In a publication last year, radio host Amy Beeman detailed an average week in Vancouver's life: she was asked to tip in her coffee up to 25%. The same prompt appears again in a self-service frozen yoghurt restaurant. Finally, she was asked to tip the liquor store. "Asking me to tip you when you have done nothing to deserve a tip is so aggressive in your mouth," Beeman scoffed. The culprit in all this is the electronic payment machines. In a similar era of cash or manual credit card dispensers, it would have been extremely difficult for restaurants to provide their customers with a list of "expected" tips. But ads as high as 30% are now a standard feature of electronic payment systems. "Pressured by time, and faced with the challenge of calculating a more usual gratuity of 15% on the fly, many people simply select the highest default options," reads in the badysis of the National City Bank. Meanwhile, payment companies are encouraging payment companies to increase their revenue for every additional dollar generated by the system. Square, a device that turns any smartphone into a digital pay station, has become a particularly insidious agent for freaking out tricks, delivering hints at tips on farmers' markets, craft shows, and even cookies. guides. In addition, these electronic tips are often charged in addition to the sales tax. This is a detail that is easily overlooked, but it allows you to spend huge amounts of money on the advanced economy. For example, for a tip of 15% on a $ 100 bill, the tip of the tax is $ 1.95.

Speaking of taxes, many waiters do not seem to pay them
Tips are one of the most satisfying forms of income. Rather than making a bad check or adding zeros to a bank account, wait until the staff leaves their job with much of their earnings as bundles of bills. The Canada Revenue Agency requires that servers report all tips as taxable income. But every time the CRA checks servers to see if they are telling the truth, they find thousands of dollars that are not found on T1 slips. A 2012 ARC blitz on 145 servers in St. Catharines, Ontario. discovered that all had hidden part of their income, and that half of them did not report any tips. The total tax evasion was about $ 12,000 per server. This partly explains why the United States has completely got rid of the concept of trusted servers. The US Internal Revenue Service now requires employers to estimate total income after the server tip, and then withhold taxes from the total amount.

This promotes discrimination
A group of middle-aged women usually do not give bad tips. A group of young men from Bay Street usually do it. A French tourist does not usually tip. A Texan tourist does. Servers quickly discover tip demographics, and one of the hidden consequences of tips is that they result in clandestine discrimination among servers. Server discrimination is something Canadians in border regions know too well. "As a waiter, you fear Canadians," New York waitress Bethany Wyatt told Syracuse.com in 2015. Canadian tourists still have fewer tips than their American counterparts, some restaurants in Vermont have even adopted a policy to reduce mandatory tips. The server finds some reason to think that he is facing a table filled with Canucks. Meanwhile, customers distinguish the servers. A 2008 study by Michael Lynn even revealed that in the United States, black servers were generally less in demand than white servers – even when they did so by a black clientele.

That's tearing up restaurants outside
By the early 1900s, the average North American restaurant manager would have regarded with deep distrust anyone trying to tip his waiter. "There would be a bribe for serving an unusually large portion or the best cut of meat," Mentzer said. A century later, Canadian restaurateurs complain of a practice that completely consumed their business model. "Almost anything that is bad in a restaurant, I can show you how the tip plays an important role," McAdams said. Inventory control? A manager can find servers channeling drinks and desserts free of charge to the guests in order to reinforce their tips. Seats? Servers can start greasing the hostesses' palm to direct the sharpest tables to their section. Tipping installs an underground economy in the workplace where servers are encouraged to act in ways that are often not beneficial to the restaurant as a whole. In a TEDx 2012 conference, McAdams noted that one of the biggest drawbacks of gratuity is that it effectively punishes customers who spend more money. "Are you going to charge people more for service when they spend more on your restaurant?", He said.

The "toxic" tipping culture is real
To see the most perverse consequences of the economic economy, look no further than some famous corners of Montreal. According to the list of online restaurant reviews, the Quebec metropolis is full of establishments where waiters actively ask for tips, lie to customers that it is illegal not to forbid service and to confront customers. if the amount is not allocated to them. their taste. In this Reddit article published in 2017, a Montreal bar customer explains how he paid 10 per cent for negligent bar service and ended up receiving a presentation on how the reversal is done in Canada. "I guess the reason he felt the need to describe the situation in Canada is that I'm a brown guy," wrote user CookieMonster1997. In the realm of shoe stores or A & W stores, one can not deny that these types of ugly confrontations do not represent a steady and predictable cost for doing business.

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