For instance in Atlanta, the minimum cash wage for a tipped server is $2.13 per hour. If tips combined with wages do not reach the state minimum of $7.25, the employer must make up the difference.

Asking from a place of genuinely not knowing; are there a reasonable number of places where non-tipped workers are employed in this sort of sector? If so, it might be really handy to put together a list, so people can more easily make the choice to go there, rather than stiffing staff who need the tips to survive.

I begrudgingly tip, but usually 10-15%, like it used to be. I don't buy into the current bullshit narrative of driving up the expected percentages, especially as prices rise as it is. Some might say I'm still an asshole for NoT pAyInG tHeM eNoUgH, but so be it.

So many tipped workers fight to keep being abused in this way, and I don't reward that, even if I support these post-slavery practices through cultural guilt alone.

I mean it's not an individual act here, it's starting to look like collective action. A mass boycott of tipping would force a crisis where workers walk out en masse. Euros are giving Yanks the push they need to build on this, with unions, a collective organization, strike funds. This is the only path towards tipping abolition, a relic of class oppression and a mechanism by which capitalists shift wage costs onto consumers, esp disgusting when we know attractive or white servers often receive more than equally skilled counterparts, deepening racial and gender pay gaps and fosters a power imbalance that enables harassment: 74% of female servers in the U.S. have experienced sexual harassment, often tolerated because their income depends on pleasing the customer.

Our rights have been bled for by hundreds of thousands over the years.

Exactly, so honour the people that paid for your rights with their blood, and fight your exploiter instead of picking fights with other workers.

10000 Men Named George

But base wage for those positions is also significantly lower than minimum wage because the tips are expected to compensate for it, so the ceiling is higher but the floor is also lower. So refusing to tip at all does kind of make you out to be the asshole.

Unfortunately most people are just trying to survive and don't really have the time or the energy to worry about the bigger picture.

Personally, I just split the difference and refuse to tip anywhere it's not already factored into the wage structure. It's not gonna change the situation but at least it helps hold the line.

Yep the the American job market is fucked, and it will be painful to change it especially when the people in charge are paid by the oligarchs.

One less painful way of moving away from tipping culture would be something like this: gradually increasing the base salary for workers, as I recall the minimum wage is below $3 for tipped staff. And then gradually decreasing the maximum allowed tip.

But the problem is: Show me a single state where the politicians would agree and then have the balls to go through with it while the oligarchs and supreme court will do everything in their power to keep the status quo.

Restaurants usually take the latter option. I’ve been to plenty of places that are down to the owner cooking and his wife serving, no hired staff at all.

Restaurants are never gonna pay more to the staff than they collect for meals sold. Most of the restaurant’s income (if they aren’t a fancy place that sells a lot of alcohol) goes toward paying for food, rent, and utilities.