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You'll get a lot farther with people being kinder in their corrections of your incorrect presumptions if you vibe check yourself and cool it with the providing the enlightened eurobrain takes.

I don't know that my "presumptions" were incorrect. And I don't care much for kindness when we're talking about a system that takes from the poor to give to the rich.

I know the north american tipping system is a top-down broken trash fire. You'll find that I never actually endorsed the system, just commented on the reality of it. It's possible for someone to acknowledge how something works ("how it works" =/= an endorsement of functionality) while understanding that the system itself is negatively impactful to those inside it

Oh, and I'm pretty sure a vast majority of the upvotes you got on your comment are from people who actually think it does work.

Because, yes, "how it works" is an endorsement. I would never say "how burning coal to reduce CO2 emissions works". It doesn't.

"How it is supposed to work", or "how it is designed", aren't necessarily endorsements, but, yeah, again, nobody said that, and people really think it works: they think they are getting lower prices as customers, which they aren't, and that somehow, deciding themselves how much the service worker should take home is both a good idea and something that lets said worker have a fulfilling life, which it absolutely isn't.

Now, essentially, to break things down a little and reduce the amount of goalpost moving:

user "Zron" wrote that I didn't understand "how tipping works", which in actuality meant "how handling the cards happen over here", which is an entirely different thing.

Any monkey can tell "how tipping works", that's why the system is currently used. You take a price, multiply it by 1 + (tip/100) and you pay that. The seller gets more money than they were supposed to. And that is the way it works on the entire planet.

So the discussion at hand is about two separate topics:

1. How means of payment get mismanaged.
2. The "custom" of paying someone slavery wages, and expecting them to coerce random people into giving them enough money not to die.

So I'll answer in two parts:

I - Mismanagement of means of payments

This reflects a different view on trust. In Europe, different countries have very different customs about trust management and means of payments. For example, while, in Germany, you legally have to go to the police station within weeks of moving in a new place, to declare your new address, and have your German ID card show your current address always; in France, people have random addresses on their ID (where they were born, or where they lived years ago), and no one knows where anyone lives. As a consequence of that, in Germany, you only have to show your ID, but in France, you need to show recent invoices tied to your address (from the electricity or gas company, for example). Anyway, I digress.

I'm not an American, so someone else is free to correct me, but most of the US is still being introduced to chip cards. I believe there's still places where it's not exactly uncommon for the server to swipe for you.

Yeah so that is somewhat news to me. I'm aware of the "waiter swiping your card for you, it getting declined, and the waiter cutting your card in two" trope. I never realised that chips on cards were a European thing.

My point here is: your money, your means of payments. If you give those to someone else, then, practically, for all intents and purposes, it is their money.

They could overcharge you. They could copy your card's information and buy stuff online at a later date. They could sell that information to brokers on the dark net. Why would one do that?? Why???!

II - Paying people slavery wages

if you can't afford having employees, then don't.

Yes... I agree. I never actually endorsed the north american system though?

I believe you didn't intend to. I also believe a lot of those who upvoted you totally think you did.

When you write things like:

why would you start talking authoritatively on the deranged state of North American tipping culture when you dont seem to understand how it works?

It totally means:

1. "It works"
2. You (meaning me) do not understand cross multiplication
3. You (meaning me) are talking out of your ass

When all those 3 things are false.

I was missing information on how bad exactly it was with the mismanagement of people's means of payment (which I addressed above), and this is the only part that can be construed as me "not understanding" something (even tho, that would be incorrect: "understanding" and "knowing" are vastly different concepts, and not knowing someone is stupid doesn't mean that you do not understand what stupidity is).

See, my issue with all this, is: in my view, the only appropriate way to react to that system is to trash it. Anyone being even neutral to it kinda means some level of acceptance to me.

It is bad. Destroying families bad.

Oh, and:

But then, you are legally allowed to literally kill them, right?

Holy bad faith Batman

Not "bad faith". Just a totally unrelated, other American thing that I also hate. Gun violence. I added it as a cheeky joke, I never meant for it to be taken seriously in the present context, but it is still very real. Why is it still a thing, I will never understand. That, you can say, I do not understand.