Maybe it’s your job to avoid patronizing places that don’t pay their employees enough though?
I absolutely will pick the no-tips place given a choice, but I take issue with that wording. Basically every business pays as little as possible, by design.
I would happily pay more for my meal if it meant I didn’t have to tip. The benefit we get from not tipping is marginal compared to the benefit restaurant owners get by not paying living wage. Not to mention it’s added stress to the actual people doing the work because they don’t even get the guarantee of a decent paycheck.
And there is a choice, you chose to perpetuate the system that grossly exploits the laborer, I choose to have minimal participation in such a system. Want to take a guess which of the two actually has a chance to fix the system?
I suppose, but it’s really hard to separate. You have to pick a cutoff, which in the face of a world full of intangible wealth and costs is hard, and then if you come out with a number that’s too high you basically have nowhere you can shop.
There’s select industries that are super shitty, and I avoid those, but paying minimum wage for unskilled labour is a normal industry. (And, ironically, a lot of the fair-ethical-organic type businesses are super shitty themselves, because everyone wants to get paid extra and some will do horrible things to make that happen)
No, it’s not, however as a near-minimum wage worker myself, it is also not my job to cover a massive corporation’s lack of proper budgeting…
If you keep patronizing such businesses, why would they ever do that? They know they don’t have to in order to get your money. And it is the same with your own near-minimum wage job. You are working against your own best interests. Nothing will change while people are willing to give their money to companies that don’t pay their workers a fair wage.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against tipping if the person did a good job, but a company trying to guilt trip me into giving them a mandatory tip? Nah, that’s bullshit, it’s essentially “Oh, we can’t pay our employees enough, would you mind helping 🥺”. Outta here with that.