B613❤️

THAT $75 MEAL IS NOW A $100 MEAL. THE PERCENTAGE DIDN'T NEED A RAISE. 🧾 An LA restaurant reportedly threatened to BLACKLIST six customers for questioning an automatic 18% gratuity. Six people who couldn't even sit at the same table. Two tables, two servers, one large-party fee anyway. "Okay, we won't charge you this time, but next time you cannot come here, we'll blacklist you." Blacklist me, Chad. Please. Put my name on the wall. Do it in neon. I'm done pretending this is normal. Let's talk about the screen. You know the screen. You flip it around, and it's already loaded: 20%, 22%, 25%. Three buttons, and the smallest one is bigger than the standard tip used to be. The "custom" option is in gray 8-point font at the bottom, positioned like a confession booth. And the kicker? It's calculating off the TOTAL. Including tax. You're tipping the server on the money that goes to the state of California. Gavin Newsom did not refill your water. Here's how I tip, and I've tipped this way since 1998: 🍴 15% on the food. PRE-TAX. 🍸 5% on the alcohol. Pouring a glass of wine is not the same labor as carrying four plates. 🚫 0% on tax. Not my tax. Not your tip. On a $100 pre-tax bill that's half food, half booze, that's $10. And before anybody clutches their apron, here's the whole scale: ⭐ Great service: 20% on the food. Same rules. Still 5% on the booze, still nothing on the tax. 👍 Average: 15%. 👎 Below average: 10%. 🚩 Rude? A conversation with your manager, and the math gets very simple. I have never once shorted a server who hustled. Not once. Earn the 20, and it's yours. Now here's the part nobody wants to say out loud. The percentage NEVER needed to change, because the percentage was already an automatic raise. In 1998, a nice dinner ran $40. The same meal today runs about $98, per federal restaurant price data. Food away from home is up 145% since then. At a flat 15%: 📆 In 1998: that tip was $6.00 📆 Today: that same tip is $14.70 That's a 145% raise. For the same job. For carrying the same plates the same thirty feet. Nobody asked the server to work harder, and inflation did the negotiating. So when the industry says 15% isn't enough anymore, what they mean is 145% wasn't enough. They want the raise AND the percentage bump AND the tax included AND a mandatory fee if you show up with friends. And now the tip is tax-advantaged on top of it. The new law lets tipped workers deduct up to $25,000 of reported tips from federal income tax through 2028. I'm fine with that. I like it. But let's not pretend that $14.70 is the same as $14.70 of taxable wages. Here's my offer, and it's a good one: Do your job well, and you get the 20. Simple. But I'm not funding a 25% default on a taxed total because a tablet guilt-tripped me while you stood there watching. And if the arithmetic is too hard, we live in the future. Set up a @grok prompt on your phone, snap a picture of the receipt, and let the AI do it: 20% of the food pre-tax, 5% of the alcohol, zero on the tax. Takes four seconds. We have robots landing rockets on boats. You can split a dinner check. And if that gets me blacklisted from a restaurant, honey, that's not a punishment. That's a coupon. 🦋