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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I'd prefer to pay a higher price than tip.

When I book a service I want the transaction to be as straightforward as possible. I want to know the price at the time of booking, and I want that to be the price I pay.

The problem with tipping is that people take it extremely personally, they also try to encourage tipping through awkward conversation. I don't want to have to deal with that.

Plus these kinds of apps/services allow me to review the experience directly. I don't have to use money as a way to review the quality.

If they absolutely insist on tipping, it should all be in the app, with pre-set amounts that I can just mash without too much thought, and that I can calculate into the cost before the car even picks me up.

I really really hate American tipping culture. Even after living here a while it just seems so pointless, is completely arbitrary, and makes simple transactions more complicated.

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Agree, as someone who grew up in a non-tipping country then became American later in life. I really like visiting countries where tipping is not only not done but actually "considered rude in their culture". Going to Japan in a few weeks...

Within the US I've made my peace with the tipping thing by simply always over-tipping (not excessively, but always 20%+ on meals and bar tab, for example). Although this costs me more money, I prefer to avoid the anxiety over whether the tip is sufficient, appropriate etc. I get to devote my brain-time to other things. I do follow the custom that business owners are not to be tipped.

fwiw when you say that tipping is pointless -- it is not because it serves the purpose of business owners to underpay their workers.

Spent a couple of days in Seattle since I wrote this and was surprised to find that several of the restaurants in which I dined have banned tipping, instead adding a 20% service charge (that they state goes to pay the service staff). Progress.

> I really really hate American tipping culture. Even after living here a while it just seems so pointless, is completely arbitrary, and makes simple transactions more complicated.

You aren't alone. I've grown up American and constantly wonder "do I have to tip for ___" and what is "normal" for the service in question.

In any situation where a business employee cannot significantly improve my experience by going beyond the minimum standard of service set by the employer, it is inappropriate to tip. It is also inappropriate to ask for tips, even passively, by way of a tip jar. Restaurant counter service, where you order and pay at the point of sale, and leave with your tray, is an example of this.

Never tip unless the employee is genuinely helpful to you, saving you time or labor beyond what you may ordinarily expect their employer to provide. Do not tip at all if there is a service charge included on your regular bill.

If the employee is providing you with a one-time personal service or a prolonged but nonpersonal service in conjunction with a regular purchase, you tip 10% the total regular value of the goods, before discounts and before sales tax. This applies to delivery drivers, taxicab or livery drivers, massagers, stylists, or tour guides. Most tip-worthy services that improve the value of your purchase will call for 10%.

If the employee provides you with prolonged personal service, you tip 15%. This is for something like restaurant table service, or golf caddies, or personal shopping assistants.

If you are requesting a service that is technically part of the employee's job, but only tangentially related to the main paid service, tip what you would regularly pay for one drink in a social context, rounded to the nearest dollar. If you drink coffees at IHOP, give $1. If you drink Miller or Bud at the dive bar, give $2. If you drink lattes at Starbucks, give $3. If you drink caramel appletinis at a bar lit by blue LEDs and with bowties on all the bartenders, give $20. This is what you give to porters per suitcase, hotel housekeeping per day, concierge per favor, valet per car retrieval, matre'd per non-snooty table-seating. This is also an appropriate amount to give for a street busker's performance that you enjoyed, or for a crowd-patronage subscription.

For a full standard deviation above and below the median quality of service, those are the only three numbers you need to know: 10%, 15%, and your personal fixed tip amount. For quality between one and two standard deviations below the median, you subtract 5% from a variable tip. For quality above one standard deviation above the median, you add 5% to a variable tip. For service more than two standard deviations below median, you complain to the manager and give a reason why you are not tipping.

If you intend to be a "regular" at any establishment, it is acceptable to tip more than the standard amount when the employees can greet you by name, or remember your "usual", but not until then.

Anyone advising you to tip 20% for median-level service, or 25% for anything, anywhere, does not have any idea what they are talking about--completely clueless. The standard is 10% for delivery or buffet, and 15% for table service. It already scales perfectly well with the menu prices.

Never tip with anything other than cash. Advice is not a tip. Religious tracts are not a tip.

I appreciate your detailed response, I liked your "tip based on what you drink socially" guide, never heard that one before in all of my googling.

However, I think that shows exactly why people hate tipping and would rather just pay a higher fixed cost. Not to mention the whole subjectivity of "quality" from the tippers POV. What you may call a crappy waiter another person may call average.

Finally.. one point my grandpa made to me that has stuck with me

> 15% for table service. It already scales perfectly well with the menu prices.

He would always take me out to breakfast. He told me he tips breakfast waiters what a typical dinner tip size would be. "Just because we are eating pancakes doesn't mean the waiter is working any less". I'm sure there is some whole "work your way up" in the restaurant biz but my anecdotal experience has been older women serving breakfast and young men & women at dinners. Guessing it has to do with being home for kids after school.

Everybody has their own rules for tipping. These are mine. It is because I have them that I do not feel tipping to be confusing or inconsistent or burdensome. I always know how much to tip, to whom, and when.

Just set your own rules and follow them.

As an American I agree completely. I know tipping fine for things like eating at restaurants, but there are tons of services I buy where I have literally no idea what constitutes a fair tip, and constantly wonder if I'm shortchanging people or overtipping. And of course you can't just ask the person because they feel weird about it, and you feel weird asking, and the whole thing is just annoying.

I get that it's a decent motivator to encourage good service, but I think in my entire 10 year consumer history I've left maybe 2 intentionally bad tips for poor service out of hundreds if not thousands of interactions. It can't be that big of a deal.

I agree with this assessment in terms of how I feel as a customer.

But I also think that tipping is used as a form of price discrimination. So what happens to an arbitrary price when tipping is removed might not be as simple and intuitive as we would want.

Either way, as a customer I prefer transactions without tipping because of the friction of trying to manage expectations without enough information.

The point of tipping is to empower the customer and measure their satisfaction. Because the customer has a considerable portion of the bill at his discretion, staff are going to be focused on making his experience as enjoyable as possible. This is what the restaurant owner wants but couldn't feasibly accomplish through direct management.

I used to be very uncomfortable with this power over people's pay; who was I to determine how much money someone was worthy of? But it's not about that. It's about rewarding good service and having a good incentive structure. It's about making sure that the customer comes first.

In this day and age I imagine tipping is also good documentation for performance, should someone need to be fired. Otherwise, the owner might find himself on the wrong end of a bogus discrimination law suit.

> It's about rewarding good service and having a good incentive structure.

I've thought this before, but my current view is that any theoretical benefits of tipping evaporate in the real world. Worse, tipping creates a huge vector for pay abuse, via all kinds of crazy schemes.

Tipping obfuscates actual pay for workers and actual cost for customers. It's delightful to travel in no-tipping countries, and I've uniformly had excellent service abroad. The lack of this "incentive" doesn't seem to have created any service apocalypse.

But the "base" tip is still kind of mandatory even if the waiter just does the very very bare minimum. Why should I have to give a tip at all just for someone bringing a dish to my table? That's what you are paid for, it's not like I can opt out of your service anyway so why not just include it in the price. And if your service is very good then I might give a tip.

It gives you room to go down, if the service is sufficiently sub par.

But is this an issue in areas where tipping is not common? This sounds like it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist.

> This sounds like it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist.

It may well be, but that's a question that would deserve addressing in the parent's rant.

Tipping is not a good tool for a customer to exercise influence over a transaction. If the exchange is anonymous, then tip cannot influence future interactions with the customer. If the exchange is not anonymous, then any attempt to punish with tip basically means you shouldn't go back to that restaurant again, because people are going to interpret it in a very hostile way.

This is exactly the problem that Uber's rating system solves, but without all the arbitrary factors that tipping incidentally includes.

That's a good point. I honestly haven't thought enough about the virtues of rating vs tipping. One potential issue that comes to mind is that people might be more frivolous with a rating than with real money.

I guess you could do an experiment at a restaurant. Give half the tables standard receipts with tip lines, and the other half a receipt that lets you choose a rating.

> One potential issue that comes to mind is that people might be more frivolous with a rating than with real money.

When you rate someone lower than 5 stars, Uber prompts for an explanation. And if you provide one, it often generates a direct followup from Uber support trying to address the problem; if there was anything seriously wrong, addressing the problem often includes either a full refund or some small credit for future rides, and some indication that there'd be an attempt to solve the problem. I think that's a pretty reasonable way to keep ratings meaningful, and actually address any problems that produced a low rating.

So, I actually feel like there's more connection between a rating and actual action, whereas choosing whether to submit a tip or not seems very likely to correlate with factors other than the quality of service.

I think you're talking about how you want tipping to be. In the real world, it is often more a measure of folks unconscious bias than the worker's performance. It's also a great way for management to shift risks onto workers. [this might be the one time Uber does something that isn't designed to shift risk onto their employees]

My experience in Japan, where tipping is frowned upon and service is usually quite excellent, disagrees with this.

I agree entirely with saidajigumi. It's one of those "good ideas in theory, terrible in practice" things. There are more cons than pros and the pros expect an honest and fair system.

But then if the service is not as you wanted it to be, do you first tell them and then lower the tipp, or do you just lower the tipp? Even if something was bad, I'd just want to get out there, having to create another awkward situation is the last thing I would search for.

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