When it comes to tipping in the U.S., one thing is certain: it's a touchy subject.
It is customary to leave, at the very least, a 15% tip for hard-working servers, many of whom earn less than minimum wage and are often barely able to pay rent.
Unfortunately, many customers either feign ignorance or blame the server for food that didn't meet their expectations.
Unless a server is intentionally rude or completely incompetent at their job, they should not be tipped poorly as punishment for things beyond their control.
But because there is no universally acknowledged tipping protocol, and because he ran out of patience after being shortchanged, TikToker Ben Raanan made an impassioned public service announcement about bad tippers.
He didn't mince words when writing the caption for the clip, which instructed dining patrons to:
"Tip ur f'king servers."
Raanan, who saw nothing "cute" about lousy tips, addressed all the "bad tippers out there" in his rant, starting off with:
"For your information, $10 is not cute like it used to be. It's not the 1950s. It's not the 2000s anymore. Okay?"
He continued:
“Inflation means that ten dollars is not worth that much anymore."
"You can’t just leave a little cute five, a little cute ten for your server, and think that that’s like fun and cute. It’s not fun and cute."
He added:
“If your bill is like 50 dollars you can leave ten, that’s 20 percent."
"If your bill was 200 dollars and you leave me ten dollars, that’s five percent. That’s f'ked up. That’s a f'king insult.”
Raanan is done accepting lousy tips from customers and he encouraged other servers to speak out.
The next time someone leaves him a 5% or 10% tip, he said, "I'm going to say something."
“I’m going to be like, ‘Was there a problem with your service last time? Because you tipped ten percent, five percent, and that is not a good tip at all."
“I’m going to put you on the spot. Servers, we honestly need to start doing that. Because this is fucked up, people shouldn’t be doing that.”
He concluded by explaining how to calculate a 20% tip, which entails taking the bill total and moving the decimal point one space to the left and then doubling that number.
Not everyone appreciated his tone, and some advised him to air his grievances elsewhere rather than blaming customers.
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Meanwhile, those who live outside the country brought out the popcorn.
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Others suggested he needed to cool off a bit.
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Raanan spoke to Bored Panda via Instagram, saying that there is not necessarily a trend of intentionally bad tippers, but that some customers would leave small tips, "acting like they are being very generous because they don’t understand inflation."
To elaborate on this notion, he recalled:
“Like a lady handed me $10 for a $200 tab and was like ‘There you go honey’ with a smile on her face, and I genuinely don’t think she meant it in a bad way, I really think she thought it was a good tip."
“That’s why I made the video I wanted to raise awareness for people who don’t understand why tip is a percentage.”
Raanan continued explaining:
“Tips are our pay for our service. The bill is what you pay for the food, and the tip is what you pay for the service."
"The capitalist institution/the restaurant industry has convinced people that tips are optional for some reason, and I believe that reason is that people are happier paying for something when they feel like they’re doing it out of the kindness of their own heart, rather than being forced to.”
While we don't know exactly how much Raanan earns from his job, his frustration may be valid given the fact that the federal minimum wage for tipped employees is only $2.13 an hour, according to Patriot.
But perhaps there are more eloquent ways to get the message across.
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