‘You got to pay for this knowledge’: Former server says you are obligated to tip if you ask workers even 1 question

If figuring out how much gratuity to leave restaurant workers has you scratching your head, one creator has some tips about tips.

“I feel like the tip discourse has reached the mainstream of TikTok, so I wanna talk about it,” said Horace Gold (@horacegold) in a recent video that appears to have been deleted from the TikTok app. Prior to being deleted, the video had almost 93,000 views and more than 7,000 likes.

Gold made the video as a response to creator @poorandhungry, who posted about their frustration with being asked to tip on small items like ice cream cones.

Gold explained in his video that he worked as a server for several years in Los Angeles. 

His first rule: seldom tipping on takeout orders.

“They’re putting it in a bag. What am I tipping for?” Gold said.

The second guideline, Gold said, only applies to states like California, where servers are getting a “livable wage,” which they define at $15 to $17 plus tips on top. (If you’re in a state like Alabama? “Just tip them,” Gold said.)

“I look at that hourly wage like work you do for the restaurant whether there are customers and guests inside or not,” Gold said.

He continued, “If a guest asks one question—one question—you’re getting tipped, because we don’t learn that information for free, b*tch.”

“You gotta pay for this knowledge. You’re tipping for that knowledge,” Gold said.

Commenters had a lot of opinions about tipping.

“A lot of places, like coffee & ice cream shops, I will give change if there’s a jar. But to ask for tips on the iPad?? no,” one person said.

One viewer wrote, “I tip everyone so they can have a treat after work.”

Another comment read, “Most to-go workers make the same hourly as servers, so if they don't get tipped they make essentially nothing.”

“I work for $2.13 hourly and when people don’t tip they don’t understand how seriously this affects me,” someone commented.

The Daily Dot reached out to Gold for comment via Instagram direct message on Tuesday and did not receive an immediate response.

According to a guide published this year by U.S. News & World Report, current etiquette calls for a 20% tip at sit-down restaurants and 10% for quick-service restaurants. You’ll find no shortage of opinions about tipping on TikTok; take the creator who recently said they would no longer tip over 15%.

One commenter wrote on Gold’s TikTok, “Currently working in a country where the idea of tipping is wild. It honestly is so funny how we’ve been tricked into thinking tipping is normal.”

There’s a thorny history to tipping, including wealthy Americans in the mid-1800s wanting to seem aristocratic and people post-Civil War using tipping as an excuse to not adequately pay people recently freed from slavery, according to Time magazine in 2019,

The legality of the practice across the states has gone back and forth over the decades, according to Time.

Currently, the federally mandated minimum cash wage for tipped employees is $2.13, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

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