My fear at not tipping at literally every Square/Clover terminal (coffee shop, sandwich shop, etc) is that the employee...who almost always vigilantly watches to see if I tap on one of the unavoidable tip options...may seek revenge for me not tipping. Doing something to the food, drink, whatever.
I feel like the whole modern POS system customer UX is designed to make the act of not tipping feel so overt, miserly, and risky.
My rule there is that there will be no tipping until after a service is performed. It makes no sense to provide a range of tipping options for the predicted service that may be provided.
Exactly. I could get my coffee and drink half of it before i realize there is a dead bug in it, etc. I could go back and get another, but now my opinion of the service is negative. And why would I trust the next cup?
Ditto for tipping before you get in the cab. They could take you on a loop around the city, or drive you to a back alley and rape/rob you. You tip after you arrive.
Table service, taxi, and maybe bellboy schlepping heavy luggage to a hotel room -- and after the work is done.
I wonder what would happen if I refuse to interact with the terminal and ask the cashier to read it to me. Would they select a tip without asking? Would they be too embarrassed to ask me for a tip to my face?
Feels like punishing the wrong person, but it would be still interesting to test.
This is a weird fear. I worked in restaurants in college and a terrible cafe in grad school in a wealthy/old money-ish neighborhood. The cafe had terrible tips despite there being made to order food and tons of regular customers. We just made fun of stingy customers behind their backs. No one I've ever known in food service of the bar industry HAS EVER tampered with or spit in a drink/food. First and foremost, you'd be fired on the spot if anyone saw it. Also, food service people, and this may surprise you, also eat in restaurants.
It isn’t admirable, it’s just not a thing that anyone really did or does.
It seems to me that if someone takes your order and cooks hot door for you and a place you go to twice a week, it’s decent to tip at least occasionally. If staff knows your name and order and remembers details about you, but out always select no tip, that’s pretty anti-social.
I'll tip for an espresso beverage, because there's skill involved in making a nice cappuccino - at a minimum you need to be sure to foam the milk without boiling it.
There was a place (in Berkeley of course) where I was pretty sure that if the barista didn't like your tip, they'd boil the milk for you.
Why would the tipping screen have a negative sign? Not that I haven't encountered service that I wished I could've tipped a negative amount for . . . .
It doesn't necessarily need to be a '-'. Find a value for the tip that overflows the variable type, possibly. I'm not suggesting that this is likely. Curiosity above what code is running under the covers is all.
> Same with fudging credit card tips. I HEARD of that happening exactly once.
It happened to me a couple years ago. Got a copy of the receipt where they wrote their own tip, which I could trivially prove since I had a picture of the receipt as I left it. The bar tried to blame it on a random customer. Yeah, OK. Informed everyone in the big group I was with that the place tries to steal from you and have never been back. You have now heard of that happening exactly twice.
Imagine the number of people who aren't tipping throughout their workday. You don't matter to them enough for them to lay their livlihood on the line for "revenge", I promise.
Surely they can see the result of the sale after it has transacted though, right? Doesn’t the system that is used to ring the stuff up show the payment history for the order that’s currently being prepared?
In most foodservice jobs, there simply isn't enough time to scrutinize the receipt like that. There are exceptions, I'm sure, but my days waiting tables were infinitely more hectic than my days as a sysadmin.
There are a number of places in my city where if you add a tip on at the PoS, the employee will look at the amount and remove that amount of cash from the till and put it in the tip jar.
The better societal rule is to disallow tipped employees from receiving less than minimum wage. A better step yet is barring restaurant staff from receiving tips altogether. The marginal benefit from letting them accept the generosity of customers is far overcome by abusive employers leaning on the guilt of customers to pay their employees something to live on.
> The better societal rule is to disallow tipped employees from receiving less than minimum wage
This is already the case in California where minimum wage is $15.50 and many localities are higher. There is no exemption for tipped employees, regardless of how much in tips they may receive.
> The better societal rule is to disallow tipped employees from receiving less than minimum wage.
That's already the case. Tipped employees have to be paid the normal hourly minimize wage if their reduced wage plus tips doesn't equal out to minimum. This has been the law for decades.
It's not though - the restaurant pays the employee as low as $2.83 per hour. Restaurants should have to pay their employees the same minimum wage as everyone else, and anything the customers decide to give the wait staff should be extra (if tipping really should be legal at all)
I started doing flat rate tipping for takeout - $5. Not really getting any service other than cooking the food. I wish the entire tipping thing would just disappear. The staff should be paid a living wage. It should not be up to customers to insure that happens and staff should not have to depend on fickle customers to earn what they are worth.
I'm trying to figure out what the basis for this decision is, interested in your thoughts on this...
It's not about paying fair wages because as others have noted, takeout is being handled by the same people on the same wages. It can't be about taking the order, because again, takeout. Is it about bringing the food to the table? Because boxing up takeout orders or bringing them out of the kitchen feels pretty much the same to me. Is it about serving drinks? Well those are also in takeout/fast food/etc. Is it about asking how your meal is going? That doesn't have a direct equivalent, but is it worth tens of dollars to be asked how your meal is and reply "it's great thanks".
I'm only familiar with US tipping culture from the internet, the UK doesn't have the same, or I'm oblivious to it and don't tip. I've always found the tipping reasons a bit arbitrary though. I understand using table service as a condition in order to reduce the situations in which you're tipping, but it feels like the tipping needs to be connected to an explicit service, and yet from the above I feel like it isn't, so it's still arbitrary.
They aren't - all 50 states have laws to the effect that minimum wage is minimum wage. The states that also have a lower "tipped minimum wage" require the business to make up the difference if tmw + tips < mw.
Which makes tipping even more infuriating, since why single out service staff when Amazon warehouse workers have worse jobs at the same basic pay? Raise the minimum wage to something livable, make prices transparent, and be done with tipping.
Another commenter suggested that wait staff are taking takeout orders and packaging them up. I'm assuming they're not paid minimum wage for that portion of their work, so then it seems like this isn't the right basis for tipping or not tipping.
In the US servers are typically paid a much lower minimum wage like $2 an hour than a fast food worker vs. $7+ (depends on State/location). Tips are basically required to have a living wage. While they may be the one to hand you the takeout bag it feels a little silly to pay them 15%+ to have them hand a bag over and there was no expectation for it pre-COVID. Serving is a more time intensive task. Yes, it is kind of silly in general.
What's worse is where I live in Canada servers get paid the same but there's still this weird expectation to tip them.
Good point about the cleaning, but there's a lot of cleaning that happens without table service, including for example, clearing up mess at fast food restaurants where I'm sure tips aren't generally being paid.
Carrying plates is more work than carrying a takeout bag, but is carrying plates a few meters the thing that warrants tens of dollars? Hell to save $10 on a meal I'd happily collect it from the kitchen myself. Some places even do this with the little buzzers that go off.
I don’t normally eat at places where a single person is spending $50 per meal (assuming 20% tip). And if you have multiple people, depending on the type of food and the portion size that number of plates and glasses expands.
It’s worth noting that the tip is distributed amongst people who serve, so at a $50 price point that probably includes whoever made/recommended your drink.
I'm noticing a trend of utilizing mental gymnastics to frame what benefits them personally as altruistic. This occurs often with policy (like student loan forgiveness), but this is most obvious with tipping.
The staff are the ones who benefit from tipping the most. That's why the Starbucks union demanded it. Tipping does help businesses as well, but it's because of price discrimination rather than "panhandling". So long as you're a customer, they don't care either way. If you're happy to pay higher prices that get passed to employees, you should be happy to give that money to them directly. If you feel that tipping degrades your customer experience, that's a perfectly justifiable reason not to tip. Pretending that you're sticking it to corporations by not tipping just comes off as childish.
> I'll happily pay higher prices to support your staff.
So why is paying them directly more objectionable? I get the objections of people who wouldn’t pay who now feel coerced, but if you would pay a higher price, isn’t it better to send the money directly to the staff?
Tipping being like haggling is a feature, not a bug. It basically allows companies to price discriminate - they get maximum value from pushovers and people who want to "be nice", while not losing the customers who are more price sensitive. If you replace tips with increased prices, the companies will get less revenue - the pushovers will pay less that they did (in total) when tipping, and price increases will lose you some of the price sensitive people.
I have no doubt that owners appreciate the benefits of offloading business risk to their employees.
Heck, why not reclassify staff as independent contractors and charge them an hourly rate for the opportunity to interact with onsite customers? Now the local coffee shop is a two-sided marketplace!
This seems a bit disingenuous. If you know you always tip a dollar for a coffee (not hard for a lot of people on Hacker News), you can simply mentally add a dollar to the listed price. (also not hard for a lot of people on Hacker News)
How is this a personality test? Just price in the tip exactly like you would for going out to a restaurant.
No, your point was not lost; in fact, what you said is exactly what's so grating about "guilt tipping."
Think of it in terms of privacy. Whether I can afford to pay $1 or $5 or $50 for a cup of coffee is none of your business. I don't care if I'm destitute or a serial Powerball winner.
Suppose you stood next to a Starbucks cash register. As each person reaches the front of the line, you announce "you look like the kind of person who can pay more," or "yikes, you can barely afford that lemon-twist chai, here let me press the no-tip button for you." Can you imagine how you are making those people feel? No customer wins in that scenario.
Yes, buying coffee should be "trivial." Now it's been elevated, by design, to a public shaming.
I’d like to point out that restaurants can customize the default pct amounts to tip, and it’s a hassle in the moment to click “custom” then type in either a dollar amount, or your own percentage, whichever the POS system is designed to show. (Lately some places set the options to 20% as the minimum, as the article says) You don’t know what you’re going to get. The server can tell if you’ve tapped “custom” because it’s 3 or 4 extra button presses, whereas the default amount is one tap.
> they want to know the posted price, so that they can decide to buy or not
It's trivial to know the price of the coffee with tip: you just add one dollar. To make it sound like this is task is so difficult OP would sooner not buy a coffee seems disingenuous to me.
For your convenience, I've included the top two definitions of "disingenuous" below. I think the second one is particularly apt.
1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating.
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
- It isn't direct. If you click "20%" on a POS system at e.g. Starbucks which employee gets the tip? The one you interacted with? What about at a restaurant? The cooks? The dishwashers? What about the after-hours cleaners? Are store management getting a tip?
- It creates an artificial friction between customer and service-worker. For example there's someone a couple of comments up worried their food might get tampered with if they don't tip right.
- It creates stress/negativity in an otherwise pleasant/fun transaction.
- It makes published prices misleading, since the actual price is baseline + tip%
In the US the tip you leave may or may not go directly to the staff, depending on how much other people tip, due to the weird way minimum wage works for tipped positions.
If a position is classified as a tipped position the federal minimum wage is $2.13/hour. For a non-tipped position it is $7.25/hour. (Many states also have minimum wages but for the examples I'll assume a state where their minimum wages are not higher than the federal ones).
If the tipped employee does not receive $5.12/hour in tips (the difference between the non-tipped and tipped minimum wages) they employ has to pay the work the difference between $5.12/hour and the tips they got.
The effect of this is that it is as if the tipped employee was paid a base wage of $7.25/hour, and the employer gets the first $5.12/hour of tips left for the employee. Any tips above that $5.12/hour go to the employee.
> So why is paying them directly more objectionable?
Tipping on a POS system isn't paying them directly. Honestly, I have no idea if it even goes to the employee at all, instead of just into the company. With waitstaff I believe it does, because there's a long-standing system for that. With POS systems, who even knows?
happy to pay higher prices...instead of tipping. Tipping still supports the system, and there's way too many horror stories of managers/owners stealing tips.
It's just a bad system.
Just raise prices. Stop adding fees, pushing tipping, etc.
You and me both, but it won't happen for several reasons:
1) The kind of people who bitch about tipping actually just hate the expectation of it. They're the same people who bitch about the price of everything and how "no one wants to work" when there's a staffing shortage that inconveniences them. They want to keep things just the way they are so they can continue feeling rightously indignant for not tipping instead of admitting they just don't give a shit about labor.
2) Business owners love the system because it effectively means the customers who aren't jackasses subsidize the ones who are and they can pretend the cost of their product is lower than it actually is.
3) The US is a hellscape run by sociopaths that routinely and gleefully burns its people on the alter of mammon. Nearly everyone in a position to do anything about this situation is both 1 and 2.
> They're the same people who bitch about the price of everything and how "no one wants to work" when there's a staffing shortage that inconveniences them.
> “My suggestion is you do leave a tip, even if it’s small, at least it’s something,” said etiquette expert and author Jacqueline Whitmore, adding that she typically leaves a 10 to 15% gratuity for takeout services and suggests others give at least 10%. “The bottom line is this. Tipping is good karma … it’s never mandatory, but it’s customary.”
> It's 'customary' to tip for takeout? since when?
The customary thing now is to ask for a tip at every possible location, but preferably when you’re face to face to maximize the guilt factor. Digital payment devices in particular prey on peoples’ fear of social interaction.
Just don’t participate, or if you’re the kind of person who likes to call attention to stupidity in daily life, make a point of calling it out to the cashier, explain that you can’t figure out how to get past the screen, and ask them for help with putting a zero amount. Doing it loudly enough that the rest of the customers hear you is a must.
The only place I might tip for takeout is a local cafe/diner, which has a tip jar labeled "For the Cooks." It sits at the end of the counter between the cooks and customers. Depending on the cook, I might tip for takeout. (If I dine-in, I might tip the cooks, too; as well as the server.)
Keep in mind that at least in a lot of places, the servers are the ones packaging your food. Those are the people who depend on tips and while they're putting your food in containers they aren't serving tables, so they are likely missing out on tips there.
They should definitely raise that with management, and it should be appropriately compensated.
See what I did there? I correctly made it a problem between the staff and management, rather than making it the customer's problem. This is actually the answer to all tipping/under-compensation problems.
At the macro level, I'm not advocating for tips at all. I think it's a bad system.
But the reality is a lot of people rely on those jobs and have very little bargaining power as individuals. Most don't have the luxury of refusing a job, unlike the highly in demand people here. I don't think it's my place to deny those people income they depend on out of a principal. It'll hurt the little guy and make very little if any difference to the big companies.
If you asked just about any waiter if they would forego the tip system + reduced minimum wage for straight minimum wage, they will tell you no, because they'd make less money.
If a waiter can only make minimum wage then perhaps their labor would be more productive elsewhere. I've never felt like the job of picking up a plate from the kitchen and putting it on a table was all that useful, but I also get that there's more going on in a restaurant; making proles perform for money obviously confers some status on the payer.
It is privileged, because most of the people here aren't relying on jobs like this. Most of us are knowledge workers or professionals who DO have the clout to demand more money. This is something you can't do if you're a busboy or waiter. Maybe if all the busboys in America got together or something... Food service workers are effectively disposable in most restaurants.
And it is tone deaf. You're talking about an industry rife with worker abuses and wage theft. It's ok to be against mandatory tipping. Pretending the solution to workers not getting paid is as simple as "they should take it up with management" is ridiculous. Real "let them eat cake" energy.
Penalizing individual workers who rely on tips is not brave or effective.
Then they should demand higher wages.
And if that's too high a cost for the restaurant - they should raise their prices or close their business.
Tipping does not make sense, and makes even less sense for takeout.
10% seems reasonable to me - but every tip screen I've seen in the past year or so _defaults_ to 25% and forces me to select a lower tip amount (and if I want to tip less than 18%, I have to select "custom tip" and type in a number - 10% is never one of the defaults).
I've seen a wide variety, including some with 10%. There really aren't any standard configs -- there's a local coffee shop chain I go to with 3 locations, and I'm pretty sure each of their 3 locations has different defaults come up.
Since the automation of ordering with touch screens. Even restaurant staff would be embarrassed with such grifting of customers. But with touchscreens it easily becomes Sure, Why not?
I can't count the number of times that an employee -- usually at a coffee stand -- has clearly been required to point out the tip screen to customers and is incredibly embarrassed about having to do so. They usually lead off with an apology and some disclaimer like "It's totally optional, but..."
This tells me that the tipping has become crazy not because of the employees, but because of the awfulness of the employers.
Since never. It'll be a cold day in hell before I tip for something I had to truck my ass over to go pick up and bring back myself. This "etiquette expert," whatever the fuck invented job that is, can kiss my ass.
Feel like those responding with a date are the ones responsible for tipping culture getting out of control.
At least a waiter interacts with you multiple times in some way. There's a variable level to that interaction. Same with your barber (which is even more 'personal').
Takeout, you either got my order right or you didn't. Delivery, I got my order or I didn't. Starbucks? I'm not even sure what the logic is there.
Whitmore is just wrong. Not tipping a taxi driver is fine; but tipping them small-change is likely to elicit a stream of curses - because it's insulting.
It probably depends on how small the tip is, but you're right. Leaving a substantially undersized tip is a statement that you were unhappy about something. Leaving no tip isn't.
I may or may not have allegedly left a single penny as a tip at restaurants before for exceptionally bad service. Shoved down the credit card holder pocket thing so they had to fish it out.
Since always. If you're getting takeout from a sit down restaurant, even if you're not being served you're still getting service from the kitchen. The kitchen staff is tipped out by the front of house, so when you don't tip from takeout the front of house is tipping the kitchen out of their own pocket.
The definition of service is not "someone does their job". We should also recognize that food service workers are not, in fact, selfless and saintly as a collective group and have skin in this game.
I agree, the tipping economy in the US is corrupt and rigged to benefit the owners. Service employees should be paid a living wage. However, currently they're not, so while I would love to only patronize establishments that pay a living wage, that's not really an option. In the meantime, I don't take out my frustrations on the staff who are the victims of this system by short-changing them.
What variable is there in the kitchen staff's work that warrants tipping?
What you get from a waiter/waitress can vary tremendously. But a cook cooks. If they don't do the job well, you choose to eat elsewhere and the manager may choose to fire the person.
> What variable is there in the kitchen staff's work that warrants tipping?
Turnaround time, quality, order accuracy, etc. When you order from the server, they're the customer of the kitchen and depend on the kitchen's work to get their tips.
The kitchen gets paid somewhat better than the waitstaff, which is why it's not a 50/50 split with the waitstaff, but nobody working in a restaurant is getting a living wage except maybe the management.
I'd say tip is also needed for restaurant owners, building owner where restaurant is located, meat suppliers, greens supplier, cardboard box suppliers drivers of delivery trucks and so on. When it comes to restaurant everyone associated works for free.
Tips are a percentage. Therefore, they track inflation perfectly. Even without any changes a 15% tip today should still be more in terms of raw dollars than a 15% tip ten-years ago.
We're getting hit with double inflation: Literal inflation (causing tips to be higher at the same percentage) but on top of that percentage inflation.
This is something I miss about Europe. They just paid workers a fair wage, prices weren't misleading (by 20% or more), and there's no odd pitting customer Vs. [lower] workers going on. Feels like an intentional technique to deflect blame, get high margins via low wages, and to make it "those darn customers just aren't double-dipping enough by paying you AND me!!!"
Service workers are very pro-tipping. The problem they have is that all this is causing huge tipping burnout and making questions about how arbitrary tipping itself is gain popularity (e.g. why aren't I tipping the cook? Or for my oil change? etc). It is going to backfire.
Not always. Some tips are flat rates. It all depends.
And this is part of what makes US tipping culture insane. Not only are what's tipped and what's not essentially arbitrary, so you just have to "know", but the amount isn't even the same across all traditional tipping situations. So you have to "know" that, too.
I put a lot of blame on the new POS 'self checkout' style that Square and Toast popularized. These let you configure the system to default add the tipping prompt, and it detaches the service provider from the self consciousness of asking for a tip at inappropriate times. Previously, there were only a few times when a consumer would be prompted for a tip in an official capacity - i.e. from a server at a restaurant - now, it can be institutionalized with the push of an admin button in some backend web console that any finance person can push and configure.
I also hate how it's pretty evident when you're not picking any of the default options and are going for a custom amount. It's always obvious and it makes me feel guilty.
That's not how social interactions work. When you are right there in front of the person who will be receiving part of that tip, it is extremely socially awkward to do a low or no amount, even if in theory there was nothing to "tip". (No service, such as take-out)
The choice is right in front of you, and you chose the lowest amount. Is it because you're a jerk? Is it because you think people at (JOB) don't deserve a decent wage? Do you just hate less-wealthy people because you're a snob?
This is even worse if you obviously go out of you way to open another menu to choose a lower amount (going out of you way), and worse again if you are a regular at that business. (You're going to have to see this person again)
That's the kind of feeling I get when I'm facing a tip prompt. It's easier to suffer the monetary loss than the social pain. Even if it's just for a product and no service, even if the prompt amounts are ridiculous, even if it's for a massive multi-billion dollar company that should pay decent wages instead of laying it on me.
I hate it, it's awful, and I hope some day it changes. But I don't think it will. I feel like we're trapped in this now.
My local cafe started saying "we pay our staff well, no tips please" at the same time as putting the price up a little. Then, with nothing else changing, the tip screen starting showing up again. It just makes it awkward.
For me, it means the walk I used to take every day to get coffee turns into a walk to grab some groceries or something else instead - side benefit being that my latte art is getting better.
There are three restaurants that I know of in my town who have adopted this "please no tipping" policy. I love this. Guess where I eat when I go out for dinner?
Any place that tries to browbeat me into paying extra while pretending they're not panhandling will not be a place I become a regular at.
It's not socially awkward if you know youre right and theyre wrong and so you don't care. Grow a spine. You don't not tip because you don't care about them, because you don't think they deserve a living wage, you don't tip because you don't owe them a fucking tip.
This problem has become ridiculous, and has led me to completely revamp my tipping strategy.
I'll still tip for the things that traditionally have been subject to tips. Dining where I'm being served, cab rides, hotel housekeeping, etc., but I'll no longer be as generous in my tipping. And I will no longer add a tip at the point of sale no matter what.
Nobody else gets a dime except when some individual actually goes above and beyond for me. If a place insists on demanding inappropriate tips through PoS machines, I'll avoid going there in the future.
This tipping problem actively worsens my day. Enough is enough.
Another thought is to leave bad reviews on places like google maps and yelp. If you're already going to avoid them over it, it's only reasonable to communicate it so they know why they're losing business. My only concern would be to try to direct the brunt of the bad reviews to larger businesses, at least at first.
It’s interesting that you say, traditionally have been subject to tips, and mention hotel housekeeping. This was not common until relatively recently. I never tip hotel housekeeping since I grew up with it not being normative.
I wonder what tipping will be like in 10 years if this trend continues. I suspect though that tipping will slowly die as people are fed up with it.
Well, it was common when I was a housekeeper back in the mid-late '80s. The customary tip was $1 per day the room got cleaned. About 3/4 of guests would tip that. Ironically, the ones who didn't tip were almost always the ones who left the room trashed, which was completely backward. Leaving a room in good shape was considered as good as a tip by my fellow housekeepers.
I didn't bother to work out what the German meant, but the "eco-friendly" thing where you don't want them to change the towels every day took the form of a small, woven bag. I hung it on the door, and was pleased that housekeeping didn't come into the room at all -- I don't like my stuff being moved around.
When I left I noticed there were chocolate bars, fruit etc in the bag, one item for each day I'd stayed.
That’s interesting to hear. I traveled extensively in the 80s with my family and we never tipped and there were never sign suggesting a tip as far as I can remember. My tip is that I always leave the do not disturb sign on my door handle for the duration of my stay.
No, there's never a sign. Like with all tipping, you're supposed to just "know" somehow.
But (at least then -- I've noticed that things are a bit different now) there is usually a little card telling you the name of your housekeeper. That's where you're supposed to leave the tip (if you're leaving one). Money on the card was deemed a tip, money left anywhere else was deemed forgotten property and turned in (if the housekeeper was being honest).
Where I worked (at a Hilton), we had to clean 17 rooms per day. If every room left a $1 tip -- which never actually happened -- that would come close to doubling my wages for the day. It made a significant difference.
I see signs now asking for a tip in hotel rooms. Lots of tipping relies on signs. Like at the register stand where the iPad is swiveled around asking for the user to input a tip percentage.
By signs I mean things like you mentioned nudging one to tip. It’s not an overt sign stating it is expected but it is a sign letting you know that it is expected.
Can I just ask why the hell are cab rides expected to be tipped?
What is the "above and beyond" service being performed now that your phone does the navigation for you? Never had a cabbie help me with luggage either.
Just charge me $X per mile and don't bother me during my ride (some cabbies were actually asking ME for directions, when I already gave them the address).
That final store profiled who said "Personally, I view that the tip culture where we live has become part of the norm to the point where people don’t view it as any sort of pressure," and had not 1 way to tip but 2 methods of tipping and a "Good Person" test charity guiltbox complete with 2 QR codes to donate in case you "don't have any change", seems to be more tipping than actual store at this point, I mean the menu of things to buy is a fraction of the size of the tipping and charity guilt detritus.
What a nightmare, like something you'd see a comedy sketch of.
Glad to see a US article calling this out (even if it is the nypost).
With US multinational payment providers using this to shoehorn US tipping culture into other countries which previously had more sane (if still flawed) service payment norms, I'm curious to see if it results in a homogenization of cultures around the world (even negating cultures where tipping is considered offensive in favour of westernised norms) OR just a big ol' backlash. Fingers crossed it's the latter, but I'm pessimistic.
There is some old saying that good things travel slowly and bad thing very fast. So do expect this tipping culture to spread all over but not tons of good things from US.
Why doesn’t someone start a nice restaurant in the US that communicates to their customers that no tip is necessary, because the employees are being paid fairly?
There were few. Most famously like Eleven Madison Park and many Danny Meyers restaurant in NYC for many years. But now they have reverted back to tipping. Seems its just not possible in US.
I was out shopping with a family member over the weekend and found that the Rubicon had just been crossed: The checkout at a retail store prompted for a tip.
I didn't see it myself (we were at a Five Below and I didn't need anything) but it apparently came up on the screen after all the items had been rung up. Not that it even matters at this point, but as an added absurdity... this was in the self-checkout.
The funny thing is, I think I actually welcome this. I've become a tipping accelerationist now: Please, prompt me to tip at the bank. Not just the teller, when I log on to online banking. Prompt me to tip when I pay my electric bill. Let's see how far this can go before it all burns down.
I've got another one for you...
I was recently shopping online, and the company actually put a tip prompt in the checkout page! Not only is it self checkout, but there isn't even a retail store involved. Just a website. Wanting tips when you buy.
One significant difference between this new point-of-sale prompt for a tip, compared to previous customs is that this is now asking for the tip before you receive the product or service on offer. This means that you do not yet know how your service will be, but you are being asked to tip. Also, you now worry that if you do not tip, you risk a negative response - like slower service, or worse.
When we tipped for table service at a restaurant, or a haircut, cab ride, etc, we already had received the service and could tip based on our level of appreciation, without fear of retaliation.
I find myself avoiding a lot of establishments altogether. First the prices are insane, add the tipping thing and I leave these transactions feeling scummed.
Same here. We just don't go out to eat much anymore. After the inflated food (and especially drink) prices and the tip and the Employee Living Wage Fee and the Economic Recovery Fee and the "Newsom Hates Businesses" fee (I actually saw that at a rural CA diner), screw it. We've had it with this practice of trying to squeeze everything they can out of customers. These greedy local businesses can sink for all I care.
The issue is the possible in-person judgement associated with the tip. Traditionally a waiter will not look at your signed bill at your table. They didn't stand over you with a mobile POS system waiting for the tip. Generally those who receive cash tips do not count it in front of the customer. They will find out the tip amount, but not in front of your face.
But with the POS systems, its easy to tell how much someone tipped. Did they go left or right? Even if they turn around the system and don't stare at the screen, they can figure it out. They especially know when you put in a custom tip amount, which is assumed to be lower. Some even show the tip amount to the service person as they turn it back around. There is an pressure to push the center or rightmost amount out of nicety.
Exactly. People can argue all day about how silly normalized middle-class tipping is (very silly, IMO), but the thing is that clicking a "20%" button isn't even tipping. The implementation of the buttons on the bottom of the screen is offensively out-of-touch with the actual tradition of tipping, making it even more transparent a cash-grab.
In addition to the fact that the POS button is often clicked before the service takes place and in the presence of the server, another key distinction of tipping is that it's off the books. It's a gift from me and a specific person providing service. If I pay through some POS machine it's a gift mediated through Visa and the IRS and the company payroll.
This is what finally pushed me to that policy. I was getting bad service AFTER a generous tip. It makes no sense to support that paradigm. And I've heard of restaurants keeping the tips for themselves.
The only explanation I can think is that cash tips are often unreported or underreported on taxes. This underpayment of taxes moves the tax burden very slightly towards people who's incomes are taxed correctly.
You joke but when I was living in India, about ten years ago, my driver got into an accident with an auto (three-wheel motorized rickshaw) after dropping me off at work. The police had to be called because there was a dispute over fault and high tempers: in the end, all was resolved.
A few days after the event, I heard from the manager at the housing complex where I stayed that a gratuity was in order to the police officer who had attended!
> A few days after the event, I heard from the manager at the housing complex where I stayed that a gratuity was in order to the police officer who had attended!
Did he helpfully offer to collect the gratuity from you and promise to deliver it to the police officer?
Police would likely shy away as they are under such scrutiny. Postal employees are limited to $50/yr in tips. With most fire departments being volunteer, occasionally tips or donations rather are offered. These generally would go to the department rather than individual firefighter.
My stepfather was a postal carrier and was adamant that postal carriers need to refuse cash gifts, but could accept small gifts of other sorts around Christmas.
I assumed that he was saying what the postal code says, but perhaps it was more a local culture thing.
Point of sale extortion. You must tip or risk getting an ugly glare, incompetent service, delayed food, cold food, etc...
It is part and parcel of the general breakdown in civility after Covid. You don't have to go far online to see videos of thieves blatantly walking out of stores. Petty crime has gone up everywhere. Speeding cars are everywhere. Demanding crowds are everywhere.
I was in New Zealand last month where tipping is non-existent in their culture. I visited Tara Iti golf club while I was there. The waitress found out I was American and she asked me how much I wanted to tip when checking out. I asked her if it was customary, knowing it wasn't. She said no, but Americans often leave a generous tip. It was rather an uncomfortable experience. I felt guilty and caved.
I simply never tip. If I get asked for a tip before they've even done anything, I definitely don't tip. I'm not American so I just blame it on cultural misunderstandings.
I hear people discuss this issue all the time and the focus, like TFA, is focused on compensation and ‘labor demanding too much from consumers’. But consider that processing fees (at least in the US) are generally a small fixed fee of some cents + a percentage of the transaction.
Including tips in the default POS checkout flow has more to do with card transaction fees determined in large part by the transaction size, which creates a strong incentive to boost that transaction total in any way possible.
Similarly, do you ever wonder why everyone wants to you donate to a charitable cause at the grocery store all of the sudden as part of a similar flow in industries that don’t have a tradition of tipping? I suspect that card processors have discovered guilt is more effective than up-sales at increasing transaction size and has been a major driver of increased revenues over the past years.
Got my oil changed last week. At the end when passed the credit card machine, it asked if I wanted to give a 20%, 25%, or 30% tip. On an oil change, where the technician is certainly making market wages and not some lower rate meant to be augmented by tips. The madness has to end and I think the only way is via regulation. The free market is exacerbating this downward spiral rather than correcting for the idiocy.
I've seen this a lot lately. I never personally experience this guilt, but understandably a lot of people do when publicly presented with this choice. I'm not sure what the solution is, but the companies producing and providing these point of sale tablets have made it far too easy to request a tip in situations that have no business asking for a tip. I suspect that the option exists to disable it, but then we have a problem of defaults situation and only the most respectable business owner is ever going to consider losing revenue to make their customers feel better.
At any rate. No service, no tip. For me this means I near exclusively tip only at restaurants which I'd still prefer raises their prices and got rid of tipping culture.
> in situations that have no business asking for a tip
In my mind there's always only been 2 situations, tip everywhere or tip nowhere. Why tip your server who has really very few interactions with you, but not tip any other customer service worker? Most get paid far less than what a server ends up making.
Jobs that are customarily tipped (I'm thinking food service) have a lower minimum wage they're required to pay than other sorts of jobs. In those cases, the business owner is literally demanding that the customers subsidize their employee's wages.
I'll tip for those things because if I don't, it actively harms those employees. I'm 100% being extorted by the business, and I resent it greatly, but what else can I do (besides never going back).
> Jobs that are customarily tipped (I'm thinking food service) have a lower minimum wage they're required to pay than other sorts of jobs. In those cases, the business owner is literally demanding that the customers subsidize their employee's wages.
Tipped employees certainly have a lower federal minimum wage, although the employer is required to pay more if the minimum cash wage + tips doesn't hit the minimum for nontipped employees. It's specified as the minimim wage is $X and the employer can take a tip credit of up to $Y, if tips happen. If somehow tipping stopped universally, employers would simply need to pay full minimum wage.
Additionally, in many states, minimum wage is the same for tipped and non-tipped employees.
I mean, I dunno about a clean conscience, but you don't need to worry that they won't get minimum wage. Depending on your tip amount, it's still a big change to effective hourly wage.
> yet people still tip wait staff & minimum wage is over $16 an hour here.
Which is still a bit over half (adjusted for inflation) of what minimum wage was when I was in high school, and even then minimum wage was widely considered too low. But that's an entirely different discussion.
I worked minimum wage jobs w/out tips that were definitely harder work than serving. It was entirely too low to actually live on if I wanted to do anything, but walking to the grocery store/work and eating crummy food worked. I'd often just hang out and read at the book store for entertainment.
I think at this point some legislation needs to be made, otherwise every place that turns this "feature" off on their terminal will be at a disadvantage.
Meanwhile, politicians in the US are literally almost dancing with glee [1] as they vote down efforts to establish a reasonable minimum wage.
I don't understand this weird system where we all basically prop up corporate profits at the expense of voluntarily paying more by default.
I do tip occasionally at the counter due to social pressure, and honestly have felt scammed several times when the server didn't get my order right, or didn't even bother to write my name correct after getting the 20% tip from my card. It is pretty clear to me at this point that tips have nothing to do with service.
People that complain about this are pushovers IMO; the exact target demographic for these sorts of tipping UI elements. Those of us who tip as compensation for service don't have an existential crisis over it. Those who tip because it is expected are pulling their hair put and terrified that someone won't smile at them.
Just dont do it. If someone didn't bring food to my house, take my order at a table, or pour me an alcoholic beverage, they don't get a tip. The fact that they would expect one without doing these things is deserving of disdain, not the other way around.
Guilt tipping - that's exactly how I would describe my experience in Germany. I talked with someone who works as a waitress in a bar, and from her words, the customer is expected to tip 10% for good service. Her definition of good service was more of an average service when nothing went bad. And tipping should be limited only to the staff job, so the fact that more than half of the establishments in Germany accept only cash is not a valid reason to tip less apparently. And the most important reason according to her for customers having to tip was the fact that the waiters earn a minimum wage.
I find this whole thing ridiculous. The industry and the establishment owner managed to convince them that it is my duty as a customer to give them tips and feel responsible for them making a minimum wage.
a productive day at the NY Post posting flamebaity articles meant to pit workers / middle classers against each other, entirely ignoring the fact that the minimum wage they refer towards as disqualifying the need for tipping has not been raised in fourteen years and still places workers well below the poverty line.
I think about it this way: To people you are tipping, the accumulated money they bring in probably means a lot more to them than it means to you. I mean, I make enough money that a few dollars each time I go out doesn't affect my life at all. But it probably adds up to the people making $10/hour, and can make a big impact.
I don't have a problem with paying more. But don't guilt trip me into tipping! Just add it to the final bill. God I miss the WYSIWYG pricing scheme in South America. In Canada you have to add taxes and tips to the final bill. GTFO!
This topic comes up on hacker news time and time again, and it is always incredible to see the lengths people go to feel good about not tipping.
If you cannot afford to tip, don't. It's not required, and you are probably in a worse place than whoever is receiving your tip.
If tipping is a rounding error compared to your compensation, don't tip, since then you're just encouraging tipping, which is expensive for people not you. Remember - by not tipping, you're helping less fortunate consumers. It's the moral choice.
Tipping exploits the american culture of niceness: when one feels compelled to look nice even when it's against his interests and contradicts common sense.
> “I would say I felt more uncomfortable about it before COVID, but now I know the sacrifices that so many service people have made. So now I’d be more inclined to pay 20%,”
Are tips for counter service actually going to the workers or just directly into the profit line of the owners?
It's illegal in the US for any percentage of tips to go to owners or managers.
Now, it's the US, so wage and tip theft is abundant, and owners can pay the ~$2/hr "tipped minimum wage", thereby indirectly profiting from tips, but it is illegal for owners or managers to receive tips.
The correct solution is almost certainly legislation at this point... but if the guilt grows too intense, people will ignore the legislation and tip anyway because it will seem immoral to obey any such law.
The cultural norm will soon (if it hasn't already) become ineradicable.
The cultural norm will be to not go to restaurants anymore, and continue to clamp down on luxury items until the other costs of living no longer price us out.
Something’s gotta give, and it’ll be things like the restaurant industry that are the first to go. The slow evaporation of the middle class has measurable consequences.
I think a better solution is to increase minimum wages (or UBI, but that is less likely), such that people question why they tip, and/or cannot afford to tip.
I can think of SF and Seattle as having high minimums for service workers, but housing in these areas are so expensive the high minimums still don't produce a livable wage without tips.
Why would that change anything about tipping at all? This isn't driven by wage pressure that much, and relieving that wage pressure won't keep it from being a runaway cultural norm that spirals out of control.
Even if I were in favor of minimum wage hikes, I wouldn't think this would change it much. There was a picture the other day on reddit of a self-checkout kiosk asking for tips. Would minimum wage fix that one, do you think? If I get a soda at Sonic, the phone app asks me if I'd like to leave a tip. Can I be sure the employees even receive those? Will minimum wage hikes help guarantee the employees receive those?
When a waitress at the chain steak restaurant receives far above minimum wage in tips, will bumping her $2/hour wage to $12/hr be any significant increase for her? Will she start turning down tips and chasing people in the parking lots to give them back their $20s and $50s?
> Why would that change anything about tipping at all?
It would eliminate much of the extortion aspect of tipping. If I know that the employees are being paid a reasonable wage, then I won't feel that I have to tip them in order to help make up for their employer's skeeziness.
On r/antiwork, I see people complaining that they'd only find it possibly to live at some tolerable level with wages far in excess of $50/hour. They seem to take themselves seriously in that.
Thus, for any minimum wage below that, it would be fair to assume that they're still desperate. Doesn't this sort of insinuate that the tipping pressure would still be (too) high if they make less than that?
Plus, it always strikes me as grifty when I talk about a particular social/political problem and they jump in with "if you'd just do this thing I've always wanted to do for different reasons, it'd fix this problem of yours that has little to do with it!". Such people say such things not because they're sincere or that the two things are particularly intertwined, but instead because it's just another opportunity to push their bullshit.
There is no extortion in tipping. It is an entirely different phenomenon. No one is holding a gun to your kid's head, no one is threatening to release incriminating photos of you.
Instead, you're worried that a coworker or a girlfriend will notice you only left 18%, despite that being $25, and that they'll think less of you for it. And that would happen even if the waiter refused your tip. It won't be fixed by making the waiter need less tip income, supposing minimum wage changes could even make him need less.
Implementing a policy (at, say, Starbucks) to add a prompt to every point-of-sale interaction to simply ask for more money is corporate panhandling.
I'll happily pay higher prices to support your staff.