Why I tip more, and why you should too (8 Viewers)

[Eriks]

In many cases that’s exactly what they are talking about. Restaurants, retail stores, etc.

Perhaps, but not in the case of dealers at casinos

 

[Budha]

Perhaps, but not in the case of dealers at casinos

True - touché - lol.

 

[Labrat]

I think I’d agree even for home games, assuming we’re talking about no limit or pot limit games.

Meh, if people are losing stacks in less than an hour, it's time to raise the stakes, IMO.

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I see people on here talking about their .25/.50 games with over $5k on the table and that just seems crazy to me.

 

[Jimulacrum]

This is not entirely accurate, and you need to consider the full picture. Do you know all of the various employee costs that employers are responsible for. It’s good research, I encourage you to explore it.

Line item out ALL of the employer cost per employee and see how much it cost the business per employee. Then calculate what your anticipated revenue would be, then your net take home. Then balance that out vs the personal risk you take against your savings, house, etc., to open and run a business.

It’s like everyone thinks every company and business owner is printing money and screwing their employees and it’s so tiring TBH.

Run some numbers for yourself and see. On Avg, the fully loaded cost for an FTE is about 40% over the total compensation. So basically a 1.4 factor, and it’s much higher for companies that offer good benefits.

Individuals have responsibility to make themselves marketable and to develop skills and/or education to do so. If a business is required to pay the same wage to a retail cashier as what a skilled trade earns that business will cease to exist. The margins in the real world just aren’t that high - despite what you might believe.

I get what you are saying here, but it doesn't change the fact that casinos are choosing to only pay their employees $X per hour when their employees are hired under the expectation that they should be making about $2X or $3X per hour.

The tipping is just a mechanism to get them from $X coming from payroll to $3X in their pocket. That mechanism doesn't have to be tipping. Customers would end up paying roughly the same in absolute cost in the end, if paying the employees properly were to be achieved through higher rake (or menu prices, or whatever). The only real difference is deception. Everything looks cheaper than it is because tipping is "voluntary" even though it's not really. Businesses have chosen to seize on this.

This only benefits the business and is clearly intended to benefit the business—which IMO is a gross abuse of the customers' generosity. Started off as people leaving a token of appreciation and has turned into many employers' primary way of funding their staff. As I said above, we should stop enabling this whenever we can (including not expanding tipping to cases where it's not already customary).

 

[ekricket]

I get what you are saying here, but it doesn't change the fact that casinos are choosing to only pay their employees $X per hour when their employees are hired under the expectation that they should be making about $2X or $3X per hour.

The tipping is just a mechanism to get them from $X coming from payroll to $3X in their pocket. That mechanism doesn't have to be tipping. Customers would end up paying roughly the same in absolute cost in the end, if paying the employees properly were to be achieved through higher rake (or menu prices, or whatever). The only real difference is deception. Everything looks cheaper than it is because tipping is "voluntary" even though it's not really. Businesses have chosen to seize on this.

This only benefits the business and is clearly intended to benefit the business—which IMO is a gross abuse of the customers' generosity. Started off as people leaving a token of appreciation and has turned into many employers' primary way of funding their staff. As I said above, we should stop enabling this whenever we can (including not expanding tipping to cases where it's not already customary).

We could go to a straight tipping economy, where it’s known that people are only working for tips.

I recently went on a cardplayer cruise. One of the dealers was answering a question about how much he gets paid. He said:
“We don’t get paid to come hete and deal cash. We pay for our own room and only make money from tips and tournament rakes”. This is in international waters.

 

[Jimulacrum]

if a game has been running over an hour, and there hasn't been a single rebuy or add-on, it is likely a bad game.

it is a unfair comparison to compare retailer and fast food workers to employees that have always been mainly tip based.

i'm unsure the history behind tipping, but it has been around all my life, and it is extremely unlikely it will go away.
nearly every employee involved in gambling is tip based, there will never be a time these companies fall to their knees and offer salary except for upper management.

The reason I compare these unlike things is to show that, as corporations price-gouge to infinity, employers are forced to pay more for non-tipped labor but not for tipped labor. Instead they, as usual, pressure the customers. Why do you think the standard tip for restaurants has rapidly grown from 10% to 15% to 20% and now on its way to 25%? They will keep pushing it as long as it keeps working.

If it stops working—which it will, eventually, unless there's a never-ending parade of people willing to pay 25%, no 30%, no wait 50%, on everything—businesses will be forced to come up with a better system. This is also the case if poker players keep tipping only $1 per pot, as has been customary for ages. Bumping that per-pot tip up only enables casinos to continue underpaying their staff while they take advantage of people's generosity.

You're falling back on an awful lot of "always" and "never" here, and I just can't get on board with that thinking. Things change. We shouldn't ever assume that they way things are now is permanent.

 

[casinochipper22]

@casinochipper22

all tokes are always appreciated!!! as a dealer, I'd say to any player, don't tip based on sympathy or guilt or some type of societal norm. Only tip if you want to and if your are getting good service. If any tipped employee has a problem with that, they should change careers. As for poker, a dollar a hand is great. A good dealer can crank out 30+ hands an hour. It all averages out. Plenty of stiffs in every poker room. And then "Georges" like @rustycheerio and @doublebooyah85 make up for all the shitty downs.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

i agree, but that isn't how it is here.



great points here.

if tipping extra every hand has a significant impact on the game long term, there isn't too much money being added to the table, ie: bad games overall. places I play I feel there is a constant flow of new players, and money being added. that extra $2 won't make a difference since that guy is buying back in for another $300.

yes, they are the card room or casinos employees, however, it has de-volved into tipping being the main source of income for all of them (mainly talking USA). this will NEVER change. they are supplying a service to make money, and by not switching back to a salary base, they will continue to thrive and increase rake.
do not punish the dealers, punish the casino and stop playing there if you don't want to support a 'toxic social pressure.'

if i eat, everyone who helped me, gets to eat too.

Gonna be honest here, I have no idea what card rooms and casinos pay their dealers. I suppose if I thought about it I would have realized that they probably make the majority of their income from tips. I don't play in casinos very often, so I just follow what the other players are doing when I am there. I do play in a local card room. Luckily, there is no rake. (supposedly illegal in Texas, even though I know that some do rake) Without a rake, I'm paying a daily entry fee and an hourly seat fee, so these are reasons not to increase my tipping. I tend to tip $1 or $2 depending on the size of the pot. I do recall one very large pot of over $900, and I was so excited that I tipped the dealer $10 for that one. I've done as much as $5 on some other larger (over $400) pots.

I feel that my tipping is sufficient and don't have any plans to make a change.

 

[Budha]

I get what you are saying here, but it doesn't change the fact that casinos are choosing to only pay their employees $X per hour when their employees are hired under the expectation that they should be making about $2X or $3X per hour.

The tipping is just a mechanism to get them from $X coming from payroll to $3X in their pocket. That mechanism doesn't have to be tipping. Customers would end up paying roughly the same in absolute cost in the end, if paying the employees properly were to be achieved through higher rake (or menu prices, or whatever). The only real difference is deception. Everything looks cheaper than it is because tipping is "voluntary" even though it's not really. Businesses have chosen to seize on this.

This only benefits the business and is clearly intended to benefit the business—which IMO is a gross abuse of the customers' generosity. Started off as people leaving a token of appreciation and has turned into many employers' primary way of funding their staff. As I said above, we should stop enabling this whenever we can (including not expanding tipping to cases where it's not already customary).

I do agree 100% that the tipping culture has gotten out of hand.

As with most things, it’s more complicated than what’s on the surface. It really took off post pandemic when the employment mkt was on fire and wages (lower end mainly) increased significantly due to overall labor shortages (ie - lots of people voluntarily on the side lines, etc).

Labor cost for small businesses went up a LOT. What a lot of folks don’t realize is that in many cases the “tips” you leave at retail stores, etc., don’t always go to the employees - lol.

It’s a tough time to own a small business right now. I’m glad I don’t - lol.

My parents closed their service based small business, closed their locations, let all the employees go, and just handle a small number of high value clients themselves. It just got too expensive to keep running and be worth the hassle for the return. They have semi retired and actually increased their Net by closing.

 

[Jimulacrum]

We could go to a straight tipping economy, where it’s known that people are only working for tips.

I recently went on a cardplayer cruise. One of the dealers was answering a question about how much he gets paid. He said:
“We don’t get paid to come hete and deal cash. We pay for our own room and only make money from tips and tournament rakes”. This is in international waters.

This is what service businesses would do, if they could get away with it. I had this same arrangement years ago when dealing at a less-than-licensed nomadic cardroom (read: people with a van full of poker supplies trying to stay ahead of the law).

Not only did I not get a base wage, only tips, but they tried to "tax" my tips like 20% when I cashed out too.*

Even better example: My wife worked for years on cruise ships for a base wage of $50 MONTHLY. The rest was all tips and commissions, which they found ways to prevent and claw away from her too. They get away with it by hiring people from outside of the "first world" and treating them like borderline slaves.

Corporations are, at their core, greed machines that do nothing but convert human activity into money. Leave them to run as they please indefinitely and they'll reestablish chattel slavery. We can't always control everything they do, but we can at least make the right move when presented with it. And chasing higher and higher tips forever isn't the right move.

Spoiler: *

Ultimately I told the dude there was no way I was letting him take a chunk of the not-even-that-great tips I'd just earned, especially after I just watched the rake suck up chips at a rate 5 times that much—which was going straight to the "house." I must have been pretty persuasive because he gave up trying immediately and never mentioned it again.

 

[Jimulacrum]

I do agree 100% that the tipping culture has gotten out of hand.

As with most things, it’s more complicated than what’s on the surface. It really took off post pandemic when the employment mkt was on fire and wages (lower end mainly) increased significantly due to overall labor shortages (ie - lots of people voluntarily on the side lines, etc).

Labor cost for small businesses went up a LOT. What a lot of folks don’t realize is that in many cases the “tips” you leave at retail stores, etc., don’t always go to the employees - lol.

It’s a tough time to own a small business right now. I’m glad I don’t - lol.

My parents closed their service based small business, closed their locations, let all the employees go, and just handle a small number of high value clients themselves. It just got too expensive to keep running and be worth the hassle for the return. They have semi retired and actually increased their Net by closing.

The one place where I tip more is when I order pick-up food from local restaurants, because I want to encourage them and their employees. I don't even tip that much, just $1 plus whatever coins would have come my way, but it's more than most people. (I use cash as much as possible because fuck the banks.)

When I order pick-up from publicly traded corporations, I don't tip anything. I don't want to encourage their employees or help offset any of their costs. In fact I ask for extra plates, condiments, and things just to cost them more money, and I don't do little niceties like putting fallen items back on shelves, cleaning up spills, or putting carts in corrals in the parking lot (unless they're blocking a disability space). In a perfect world these distilled-greed machines would not exist at all. I may not have much control over that, but I do what I can to exercise the bit of control I do have.

 

[SteveEH]

SOCIALISM!

 

[MrRossKeys]

A poker game shouldn't need multiple whales reloading for max buy-ins repeatedly just to stay afloat. If you want to look at it that way, the tips are burning through your whales' funding faster instead of burning through just the money on the table. Same problem, though, from a game-health perspective.


It will never change as long as people continue enabling it even as corporations continue scaling the currency to infinity.

Stop enabling it, however, and businesses will have to raise wages to stay competitive as inflation does its dirty work. Witness the increases in fast-food wages over the past few years. No one is tipping those people. Burger King et al have to pay more to retain labor. That's what we should want.


It's extremely toxic. Just look at where every thread on this topic ends up going.

You can't even have a conversation about it without someone resorting to this "If you don't want to tip, don't go there" argument.

Except I didn't even say I don't want to tip. I just object to the endless, toxic pressure to keep funding businesses' deficient payrolls. I don't think anything is gained from this, except for the businesses that are doing quite a bit better than 99% of their customers and employees.

All of these are really great points in my opinion. I feel this way about DoorDash and all of the other institutions that underpay and expect the consumer to tip to cover the actual laborer.

 

[doublebooyah85]

Tipping enables employers to underpay employee. Consumers are essentially funding the underpaid staffers wage.

Therefore we should reduce tipping, employer is then forced to pay more. However, to cover the new expense employer raises costs?

 

[ekricket]

Tipping enables employers to underpay employee. Consumers are essentially funding the underpaid staffers wage.

Therefore we should reduce tipping, employer is then forced to pay more. However, to cover the new expense employer raises costs?

I mean what else does any rational person think is going to happen? Unless with your minimum wage laws you put a product maximum price law its inevitable

 

[Budha]

Tipping enables employers to underpay employee. Consumers are essentially funding the underpaid staffers wage.

Therefore we should reduce tipping, employer is then forced to pay more. However, to cover the new expense employer raises costs?

Or closes

Hostess presents an interesting case study of very likely outcomes.

 

[Budha]

Corporations are, at their core, greed machines that do nothing but convert human activity into money. Leave them to run as they please indefinitely and they'll reestablish chattel slavery.

May I suggest Econ 101 - its powerful stuff.

 

[kmccormick100]

Completely disagree with this.

I do as well.

If a game has been running over 20min and there hasn’t been a reload or rebuy it’s not a good game

 

[Jimulacrum]

All of these are really great points in my opinion. I feel this way about DoorDash and all of the other institutions that underpay and expect the consumer to tip to cover the actual laborer.

DoorDash is a great example of the behavior I'm talking about.

I'll eat plain toast for dinner before I will order anything through those fraudsters ever again. They took it too far as soon as they started.

Same with the 3 or 4 other delivery middle-man companies that all seem to be operated by the same people, using the same shameless, rent-seeking methods that milk businesses, employees, and consumers alike while providing virtually no value.

 

[puglia82]

I have no idea what card rooms and casinos pay their dealers.

casinos pay very low wage.
Casino dealer it's a bad work: you work during nights and holidays. It's a work nobody wants to do

Here in Italy there are a lot of "dealer schools" who teach how to be a dealer with the guarantee of work outside Italy (mainly UK... Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Malta... or cruises). Dealer it's such a stressful work that britons, swiss, belgian don't want to do. So, an italian (usually from southern Italy) takes a sh*tty work for 1200-1500 euro a month. It's such a small amount of money in places such London or Belgium, anyway it's better than no working at all.

I visited one of biggest casinos in France, Casino de Enghien. At the cage you can read an advice in french: the sense was "dealer are paid only with your tips, be generous" etc. I learnt a new word in french "pourboire". Seriously?? You biggest casino in France, grossing a ton of money, don't pay your dealers and ask me to pay their salary?

So if you feel guilty or socially pressured, you can tip your dealer an be happy... I will never discuss how you spend your money.
Just don't bother me if I don't tip

 

[Labrat]

I do as well.

If a game has been running over 20min and there hasn’t been a reload or rebuy it’s not a good game

Then why waste time?

Just cut for stacks. *shrug*

 

[Jimulacrum]

May I suggest Econ 101 - its powerful stuff.

Instead of assuming I'm stupid, maybe look at the structure of the thing I'm talking about, specifically publicly traded corporations.

This distributed-ownership model strips away whatever moral and personal choices a single owner or small group of owners could make—for example, to maintain a certain character or to ensure that they're a net benefit to their communities.

A business owned by a million people has no such compunctions. When that many people own something, their overall interest in that thing is distilled down to what they have in common, and the only thing a large number of investors in a business all have in common is greed. They want to make as much money as reasonably possible out of the business. They don't care if it benefits the public or its employees or anyone else, as long as the investors perceive no harm to themselves. Their one and only unifying motivation is profiting from the investment.

It's not an accident that essentially every business that goes public turns into the McDonald's of its industry. This is what massively distributed ownership does. It turns everything into McDonald's and Walmart and vapid pop music. No character whatsoever, no regard for the deleterious effects of their business in the places where they operate. Just endless money-printing, limited only by what the law permits (minus what they can corrupt out of the way). Take the law out of the way and they'd reestablish chattel slavery in a couple generations, and the worst people you can imagine would be lining up eagerly to get paid to manage it.

The maximum-efficiency model is good for tightening up a ship. It's a great way to raise funds. But over the long term, left to run indefinitely, it turns what could be productive institutions into soulless rent-seeking machines that ultimately stop serving people and start abusing them for money. We as human beings should not want all of a society's businesses to be like this, and a sensible political system would have implemented a way to rein in this problem. Instead the problem has corrupted the political system.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

DoorDash is a great example of the behavior I'm talking about.

I'll eat plain toast for dinner before I will order anything through those fraudsters ever again. They took it too far as soon as they started.

Same with the 3 or 4 other delivery middle-man companies that all seem to be operated by the same people, using the same shameless, rent-seeking methods that milk businesses, employees, and consumers alike while providing virtually no value.

I disagree with a lot of what you have written here, but I agree 100% with this. Only time I have ever used DoorDash or similar was when my employer was paying the tab for me and my co-workers who were all working through a meal.

 

[rustycheerio]

Tip so well they call me George

that's great, this reference has probably gone over my head but at the poker room near me there is a guy named george who is a very generous tipper, ha.

 

[rustycheerio]

I do as well.

If a game has been running over 20min and there hasn’t been a reload or rebuy it’s not a good game

big difference between 20 minutes and an hour! sometime it takes time for a table to warm up...

 

[Jimulacrum]

I disagree with a lot of what you have written here, but I agree 100% with this. Only time I have ever used DoorDash or similar was when my employer was paying the tab for me and my co-workers who were all working through a meal.

I know a lot of what I'm saying is on the extreme end and unlikely to resonate with members of a forum focused on a luxury hobby. But it's how I feel and how I see things, after a lifetime of observation.

The main thing that's unique about DoorDash is how shameless and immediate the rent-seeking was. Usually corporations start off offering some value and then boil the frog slowly. With DoorDash it was so jarring that most sensible people felt burned right away. Setting up bogus menus with jacked-up prices compared to restaurants' actual prices was an especially risky move. It felt like fraud the first time I saw it. It still does.

But you'll see effectively the same model, if you look closely at many industries. The broader societal value disappears and the rent-seeking takes over. This is the nature of institutions whose only compelling motivation is collecting maximum money.

 

[rustycheerio]

I know a lot of what I'm saying is on the extreme end and unlikely to resonate with members of a forum focused on a luxury hobby. But it's how I feel and how I see things, after a lifetime of observation.

The main thing that's unique about DoorDash is how shameless and immediate the rent-seeking was. Usually corporations start off offering some value and then boil the frog slowly. With DoorDash it was so jarring that most sensible people felt burned right away.

But you'll see effectively the same model, if you look closely at many industries. The broader societal value disappears and the rent-seeking takes over. This is the nature of institutions whose only compelling motivation is collecting maximum money.

i've never used the doordash or uber eats, but from what i have been told it started off relatively cheap, to get you hooked, then slowly became 'rent seeking'.

 

[springbox]

In OR dealers aren't paid at all so they're tips only. I don't mind tipping a little more to account for that, and the lack of rake makes it easy to justify.

 

[Jimulacrum]

i've never used the doordash or uber eats, but from what i have been told it started off relatively cheap, to get you hooked, then slowly became 'rent seeking'.

I remember this being the case with Uber, the rideshare service. The food-delivery middlemen have been outrageous from day one, as far as I know, or at least they got there very quickly.

 

[Marius L]

This sounds like you aren't scooping as many pots per hour as you should be...

I tip $1/ hand to any hand I take down, even if it's just a raise and take the blinds, in which case I'm tipping 15-40% of the pot. On larger pots >$400 I'll usually tip $2

You tip when you just win blinds? That sounds expensive!