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A restaurant customer apparently decided an hour without service was enough to wipe out their server's tip entirely.
In a viral TikTok of a video reposted by Kagiso Sebediela (@kagisosebediela), an unidentified diner shows a $415 restaurant check from September 5. Instead of adding gratuity, a hand writes $415 again on the total line, leaving the tip at zero.
“I bumped into friends as I was about to leave. Called the waiter asked him why he hadn't asked me anything for an hour. Then when it was time to pay,” reads the text overlay. Sebediela's repost of the video has since amassed over 1 million views.
The clip launched a debate over whether poor service should mean no tip, and, more broadly, why restaurant workers' paychecks are so often tied to gratuity in the first place.
In a TikTok reply to Buzz News, Sebediela writes: “I think what's been fascinating about the response to the video is how differently people understand tipping depending on where they live.”
“My position is quite simple: gratuity should reward good service,” he adds. “It should not become a substitute for an employer's responsibility to pay and manage their staff properly.”
‘Your customers cannot be your payroll department'
In a follow-up TikTok, Sebediela, who describes himself as “a hospitality operator and consultant in South Africa,” weighed in on the conversation.
“Your customers cannot be your payroll department,” he says. The creator argues that tips should reward exceptional service rather than function as a substitute for wages.
“Why has gratuity become part of the labour model in the first place?” he asks. “A tip is supposed to reward good service. Maybe I've got it wrong. It is not supposed to subsidize your payroll.”
He also takes issue with the “transparency problem” of restaurants automatically adding gratuity to receipts without making it clear to customers beforehand.
But his larger point is aimed at restaurant owners. If a business is struggling to cover payroll, he argues, they need to “stop asking the customer to fix the problem” and instead “look at your pricing, your food cost, your menu, your scheduling, your productivity, your entire operating model.”
“If paying your employees the legal minimum wage makes your restaurant unprofitable, tips are not going to fix your problem,” Sebediela says.
How does minimum wage work for restaurant workers in the United States?
A few of Sebediela's viewers from the United States had a different perspective. Under federal law in the United States, employers can pay tipped employees a lower direct cash wage ($2.13 per hour) as long as tips bring the worker up to at least the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour). For that reason, tipping is often seen as a way to supplement servers' income.
If the employee's wages and tips combined fall short, the employer is legally required to make up the difference, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, though how exactly that's done varies widely by state.
@kagisosebediela Poor service, lack of present hospitality focused managers is going to kill your business! as a restaurant owner I would really focus on service training and monitoring.
Does bad service justify leaving no tip?
Many viewers sided with Sebediela's take, arguing that good tips should only come as a result of good service.
“My tip is based on overall experience beginning to end. It takes hours to earn income that we choose to spend in restaurants and other places. If you haven't done the work, I am not paying your labor,” wrote one commenter.
“Why reward bad service? I agree!” wrote another.
A third added, “I have worked in the service industry for over 20 years. If you want to be tipped, you need to provide good service. Tips are never guaranteed.”
But others disagreed, with some restaurant employees relaying how sometimes even if they provide great service, they still don't get a tip.
“If you can't tip, don't go out,” wrote one commenter.
“To be honest I tip out of sympathy because these waiters and waitresses be working 12 hour shifts,” wrote another.
The hundreds of comments arguing over the video summarize a long-debated issue: Who is responsible for making sure a restaurant worker gets paid when their tips are both their paycheck and their reward?
