I really can't wait for my pay cut when the self righteous know it alls like this person ruin tipping and leave me at the mercy of capitalist competition.

The people who take care of us in restaurants deserve a better system, and so do we.

Please don't speak for me, I don't want you to, I don't need you to, I'm doing pretty well developing my regular clientele, I need people to come back I treat them well and they take care of me. You really don't have a fucking clue about the industry.

I notice that all the people interviewed in this piece of "journalism" were owners of capital. Funny how not one worker was interviewed.

The chef Tom Colicchio is considering service-included pricing at one of his New York restaurants, paying servers “an hourly rate that would be consistent with what they make now,” he said. “I think it makes perfect sense. I’m not sure my staff is going to think it makes perfect sense.”

Because his staff would get fucked. The author and the owner of capital are going to base the rate of pay of what they claim, not what they make. Lets look at the authors assumption

The self-interest calculation may be different now. Credit card receipts and tougher oversight have virtually killed off unreported tips.

"virtually killed off" is a bit more than a gross overstatement of the situation but it's perfectly in line with the new pay scale that would lower the average tip for a worker and the average bill for a consumer with a service gratuity. Basically the whole sentence is nothing but bullshit but makes a good foundation for screwing the worker out of money they currently make.

Still, Mr. Kokonas said: “It’s worth it, because as soon as you grow to a certain size these days, and you’re high profile, everyone starts examining what you do. It’s not good enough to say, ‘These guys are making $100,000 a year and they’re treated really well and they have full health care.’ That’s irrelevant. It’s ‘Did they get paid overtime for their sidework?’ ”

I don't know where to even start with this passage. Some how not letting people get tipped will help the owner of capital get out of paying overtime? What? If you make good money you shouldn't get payed overtime? Based on service staff that make 100k a year we should eliminate tipping? I don't think that a server who makes 100K a year should be the basis upon which we should make any public policy, seems welfare queenie to me.

But forget the cheats; the suits have also reminded us that many employees share our tips. So, if we leave 10 percent to signal our unhappiness with our server’s tone of voice, we may be hurting other workers, from the host who seated us by the window to the sommelier who suggested that terrific Sicilian white, to the runner who delivered the skate while it was still hot. How much longer can we insist that it’s our privilege to decide whether we want to pay these people?

Oh shit, before it was terrible because none of the people besides the server got any of the tips in this bit of "reporting", now the same people who didn't make tips are not making more tips because the server was bitchy. Guess what, people tip on the basis of the quality of the food, weather they like the music, if the music was too loud, if the guy in the booth was obnoxious or not. The authors attempt to simplify a complex situation into inconsistent, contradictory and moralistic black and white is just a sign that the they haven't a clue about how the industry works or are to lazy to make coherent arguments that would benefit anyone but the owners of the business.

I work at a bar that has four classes of workers. There are bartenders, managers, and cooks and doormen. The bartenders just bartend, managers bartend and have some shitty administrational things they have to do, the "cooks" are really men/women of all work, they bartend and cook. These two classes of worker split tips equally with managers and cooks getting a small premium to their wagers (a buck or two) but our best bartenders also get a higher wage. Door guys only work weekends, they get tipped out of everyone else's pool and probably pull anywhere form $12-18 dollars an hour, significantly less than the rest of the staff, they don't really do all that much.

I could say a lot about how badly cooks get treated in the business. States that don't let owners pay tipped employees a lower minimum wage ensure that there is no money for back of the house. I don't think that the solution is for owners to gain control of the tipping system. Owners by and large are greedy fuckers who will screw their staff to sell another plate if they can get away with it. This is an aspect of the business that the author seem to have no knowledge of but hell if they don't have to pay overtime it must be well worth it.