Should every profession have the freedom to receive tips?

Certainly not! People on salary and those in the professions should never accept tips.

Ehh I don’t know. Like I get where your coming from in a way. I’ve been in none tip based jobs and have had people offer to tip me because I helped them so much but I’ve always felt the need to decline, I just didn’t feel right about it even when they insisted. The difference with servers and jobs like that is we literally depend on your tips for any income at all. I know it’s different in other states, but in NJ when you’re a server you make 2.13 an hour. Without making tips you make nothing since your paycheck pretty much gets voided every week due to taxes. I kinda feel like if people were tipping all professions they’d be less likely to tip those who actually depend on that money.

When does a “tip” become a bribe?

I think it would be an excuse for companies to pay less.

Freedom to receive tips? I think all service jobs outside of public/government service probaby should be able to receive tips. I think in America they probably legally are, but the company might have a policy against accepting tips.

Employees in a position of power and decision making probably should not be allowed, too much room for bad things to happen. Especially public service jobs in our government, as @Adagio says, too close to bordering on bribe.

I have a better Idea: Pay everyone properly and make “tips” unnecessary.

@ragingloli So, would you make receiving tips illegal?

Not if that person doesn’t provide a direct service to customers. And not if that person is paid more than enough for what they do already. Who the hell would tip a CEO, and why?

I don’t know about the legality of accepting tips; but I am fairly certain that accepting tips is against the ethics code of my healthcare profession, and even if it weren’t, I would still refuse the occasional patients who try to tip me.

@hearkat Would you think for all healthcare workers? What about Aides? And, does it matter to you if they work in a hospital setting or do at home service?

Personally, I think tipping, regardless of how much, to whom and for what types of service, should be strictly a personal choice. However, I think it’s an outdated tradition—but then so is not getting paid a fair wage.

No. If anything, there should be less tipping.

Tipping is meant to be a “thank you” for a job done exceptionally well. If someone goes above and beyond the call of duty.

I suppose you could say I receive “tips”, as a support staff person for a small marketing company. Some of our reps send us small gifts from time to time. Organic coffee from their roastery, or whatever. When I work a week in the call center alone because someone is sick and someone else is on vacation, apart from the overtime I get for not taking lunch periods, they’ll order me in lunches and there might be a pair of movie tickets in the envelope with my paycheck stub.

It’s not much – just enough to let me know that what I do is appreciated.

The fact that some people have to rely on a customer to pay for the business’s services, and THEN pay for the services of the employees of that business, is rather disgusting.

When my husband worked in a large chain restaurant kitchen, this was a common practice:

Waitstaff and bartenders get minimum server wage, plus tips.
Those tips were pooled so every server got the same amount.
BEFORE the servers were paid out, the tip pool was used to pay for the restaurant porter and maintenance staff.

So, not only do these waitstaff get no pay, and have to basically beg for alms at the tables of little league teams and church youth groups, they have to pay the wages of other employees out of those alms.

It’s disgusting. If I’m honest, knowing how servers are paid (or more accurately, NOT paid) makes me not want to eat at restaurants. I want to eat a meal and enjoy myself, not have a moral battle with my budget because I feel pity for the underpaid college student carrying my ravioli from the kitchen to the table.

@Seek_Kolinahr I especially hate that a waitperson has to share their tips with busboys and bar tenders, and others. When a customer tips a waitperson, I don’t think most people are thinking about the tip being split, they are thinking only about the service the waitperson gave.

@Seek_Kolinahr / @JLeslie when I worked at crApple Bees you had to tip the bartender a certain percentage of your total drawer at the end of the night. Not a percentage of tips made but a percentage of how much stuff you sold even if you didn’t sell a single alcoholic drink. There were nights were I made next to no tips(my town blows like that) and had to give the little I did make away to the bartender who didn’t help me in any way what-so-ever. I didn’t last long there…

@uberbatman That sucks! I hate Applebees anyway, the food, not the people, I wonder if most of the chains work that way?

@JLeslie I have no clue. I only worked there for like a said a little bit and from that experience refused to work at any other chain/corporate places. I’d rather work in a small family owned place then a chain any day.

@uberbatman Do you live in the south by any chance? I hear more people complain about how much people tip or don’t tip in the south than anywhere else I have lived, but I think it might be more of a small town big city thing? Or, maybe there is no rhyme or reason at all.

I can see the logic of a certain percentage of the drink business going to the bartender, because why should the bartender get screwed if the waiter was not good at his job overall? Still, the system has too many negatives no matter how “fair” you try to make it.

@JLeslie I’m from NJ. My town however has a lot of old money and these people it seems rarely want to tip. Working one town over made an amazing difference as to how much I was making.

The annoying bit to me was the fact that the bartender would constantly make more than the servers just on tips from people sitting at the bar and then we would have to hand them over more money. At the restaurant I work at now everyone makes their own tips and they don’t share with anyone. It seems to work out fine.

@uberbatman The wealthy didn’t tip? That’s awful. Where I recently lived that was not the complaint I heard, but they did complain about certain groups not tipping. I also had wondered if there was some sort of left over lack or value for people who “serve” or are in the service business. It wasn’t that it was the majority who didn’t tip or tipped very low, it was still a small percentage, just big enough that it was noticeable and people made generalizations.

I can’t understand why a bartender would make money on the food sold, that just isn’t right. My husband and I don’t drink, so that would mean the waiter is getting royally screwed.

@JLeslie It’s the whole old money thing. The people in this town have a lot of money but they are SOOOOOOOO incredibly cheap it’s not even funny. And yea there were a lot of generalizations made by people, x race doesn’t tip or foreigner don’t tip etc but I honestly never noticed any trends in that sense. I think it’s just people get stiffed and look for the thing that makes the person that stiffed them the “other” as a way to explain why they didn’t tip. I’d just as often get screwed over by people that were the same race/sex or whatever classification as I did by people who weren’t.

They have the freedom to recive them, but in some cases not to keep them, due to ethical terms of their positions.

No, not every profession should have the freedom to receive tips. Julius Caesar divorced Pompeia, saying that his wife “ought not even to be under suspicion.” This is a bit much, of course, but it does seem to me that something in the area is still true. As a teacher, I don’t think I should be taking tips from my students (or their parents). Nor does it help to say that I should be free to receive them, but not keep them. This is a distinction without a difference.

If someone hands me money just for me to hand it back, I might as well have not received it in the first place. Moreover, it would be better for me to have refused the offer from the start so as to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I have many wealthy students—or at least, students from wealthy families—but I don’t think I should be taking tips from them no matter how good a job they think I did during any particular semester.