American Problem: Unreasonable Tipping Culture

YES,
BUT
TIPS

This is a split multi-panel comic divided into a 'YES,' section on the left and a 'BUT' section on the right. The left section shows all the labor-intensive steps required to produce a fish dish served at a restaurant: a sweating fisherman puts in effort fishing at sea, a commercial fishing boat transports the catch, a delivery truck ships the fish to the restaurant, and a sweating chef carefully cuts and prepares the raw fish for serving. The right section focuses on the only person in the entire process who receives customer tips: a waiter who only carries the finished dish a very short distance from the kitchen pass to the customer table, then points sternly at a tip box expecting extra payment from the customer. The comic satirizes the widely criticized American tipping culture, where front-of-house staff who perform minimal work related to food preparation receive extra voluntary pay from customers, while all supply chain and back-of-house workers who complete the vast majority of the work get no share of these tips.

This comic is part of the well-known original 'Yes, But' comic series created by Instagram user @_yes_but, as indicated by the watermark in the bottom right corner of the image. It was reposted to 9Gag via RSS under the title 'American Problem', referencing the uniquely high social expectation of tipping for even minimal service that is common in the United States, which the comic critiques.