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Comment by dorfsmay | Hacker News Reader

That's why I always pay 15% tip at restaurants regardless of the service. I disagree with tipping (an after-the-fact unilateral contract), but we know that restaurants don't pay fair wages.

EDIT: Following some comments here, I feel I need to add that I'm in Canada where 15% is considered "normal".

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There is universal agreement about tipping at restaurants. Tips of 15% (or 20%?) are definitely customary, expected, priced-in. People who don't leave tips after experiencing decent service are definitely not paying their fair share.

Uber traditionally operates on the service-included model. That was very well established before some drivers agitated for a change. Since then, Uber has adopted an inconsistent policy [https://help.uber.com/h/f7385bf5-1748-4fd0-a57f-3d9b62facc45]. In this condition, I don't believe users have any moral obligation to tip. Drivers should also have very wide expectations about whether or how much tip they will receive.

If drivers are unhappy with their Uber comp, they can drive for Lyft or on their own account or whatever. There is no need for riders to condescend to intervene in these labor disputes by bestowing tips, and in fact doing so may encourage the kind of abuse that inevitably follows the establishment of customary tipping (minimum wage exemptions and pressure for laborers to evade taxes).

> There is universal agreement about tipping at restaurants. Tips of 15% (or 20%?) are definitely customary, expected, priced-in. People who don't leave tips after experiencing decent service are definitely not paying their fair share.

Is this a joke? Not only is it not universal, it's not even customary. The agreement you have with the restaurant is this: you sit down, are served, eat food, and pay. Baseline service is free, that's what you're paying the restaurant for. If the person waiting on me has a problem with me not tipping, they're welcome to take their wage issue up with their employer. I can only say this as someone who supports fair wages for service industries though. I believe a lower minimum wage for restaurant/bar services is a problem. But absolutely under no circumstance will I provide a compulsory tip. It's not my job to pay the employees.

There is a secondary agreement you have with the waiting staff: if you go above and beyond your job description to provide excellent service, you may be rewarded as recognition. Even then, many countries believe that excellence to be part of the job, so tips are not accepted.

Tip if you're provided with above standard service, don't if you're not. What's hard about that?

Where are you located? 15% for average service is definitely customary at sit-down restaurants in the United States.

Do you know anyone who actually works in food service? I do, and they'd be pissed if everyone skimped with a 15% tip. It's 20% for adequate service, 25% for excellent.

This is hilarious, and sad. What a broken system.

More proof that tipping is wrong, local variances with no way to find the local standard!

Well that's news to me. I generally tip 20% and thought I was being generous...

I agree that 20% is the new normal. 10-15 years ago, it was 15% for adequate, 20% for excellent (that's my memory of major US cities on both coasts). Tip inflation is real.

25% is crazy.

Depends. 20-30% if you are dining solo and not drinking in a place which is normally couples and with some wine, seems fair, since what actually matters to the waiter is total tips at the end of the night. My check is probably $40 vs $120.

You are also less work for them. I'm not sure why you feel obligated to make up for the fact that you aren't blowing 120 dollars at the table.

I'll tip 30% at like an Ihop when my bill is 11 bucks because "total tips" is what matters.

They get a finite number of tables in an evening.

Yeah I do, and of course they claim everyone should give them more money. Since I frequently heard that the new standard is 20% I've reduced my tips to 10%, pretax. If a bill helpfully prints calculations and the lowest option is greater than 15% I will leave less than 10%.

Taxi drivers get $1 no matter the fare. The gall of that industry to even ask...

And even the slightest infraction of protocol and I leave 0.

I used to overtip all the time. I got absolutely nothing of value for doing it, so forget it.

I got a tip for ya right here: it's your money, do what you want with whatever's left after taxes, fees, fines, and mandatory contributions.

When I was in LA recently I was tipping 15% for good service. Hope the waiters can make rent! /s

That's a good description of how some parts of the world work. It might even be a good description for how the US should work. It is not even remotely a good description of how the US does work.

> it's not even customary

This is thoroughly false. It is so customary in the US that it has been baked into the minimum wage laws: in general, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, but for waitstaff and some other "tipped" jobs, the minimum wage is less than a third of that, at $2.13. The whole system is completely appalling, but that doesn't change the fact that in a lot of places the waitstaff is effectively subcontracted out and paid for by the patrons rather than by the nominal employer.

you're only right in the US centric view of things; it's totally abnormal else where.

The minimum wage stuff is not true in California, at least.

You left out the part where they are still guaranteed minimum wage if they don't get enough tips.

Try working at a restaurant and actually getting them to pay you that. They don't.

is the minimum wage not legally enforced?

Surely it is if $2.13/hour leaves enough left over to hire a lawyer, or the employee is confident that the payout will be greater than a decade of lost opportunities as "someone who sues their employer".

They did at my crappy small chain (in a Southern state without as many worker protections). It was automatically done in their payroll software based on declared tips/hours (where most servers didn't declare cash tips and were thus more likely to make the non-server minimum wage).

I'm sure you're right, because that's the general attitude they operate with in that industry, but I was a server for six years and most of my friends still are, and it's totally unheard of for a server to end the night below minimum wage. I've never known a server to come away with less than kitchen staff and the norm was much higher. A really bad night at a cheap buffet was 60 in five hours. If it was slower than that servers and kitchen staff would just be sent home.

Surprised this comment is 15 hours old and never got the "But they're legally required to! Complain to the Department of Labor and sue them!" response.

While I'm sure most restaurants stay legal, there's a non-zero number of restaurants with owners that don't make up the missing pay and let workers end up making less than minimum wage, but the workers don't complain because they're truly desperate for work, or their local government won't do anything about it.

Now I'm remembering the Amy's Baking Company episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where one of the owners, Samy, admitted that he takes all the tips his wait staff make, despite being illegal (Source: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.htm)

> in general, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, but for waitstaff and some other "tipped" jobs, the minimum wage is less than a third of that, at $2.13.

In the United States, pay for tipped employees is regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which among other things requires that they always be paid a minimum wage.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.htm

If anyone is claiming that a particular restaurant violates the law by paying lower than minimum wage to their servers, then that's the problem right there, not anything to do with tipping or tipping culture. If anyone is not being paid minimum wages they are owed, the US Department of Labor will be happy to intervene:

https://www.dol.gov/whd/contact_us.htm

A lot of waiters don't report because they can't afford to lose their job over the odd slow week where they're stiffed $20 and then get blacklisted at other restaurants. And no, that's not a lot of money to lose out on, but it adds up.

And yes, it's illegal to fire someone over reporting, but it happens all the time. And it takes time for a lawsuit to go through, so you've gotta find work somewhere else in the meantime. And now you have to also take time to sue your old company. When you're barely afloat, it's not worth rocking the boat because you might drown.

That's reality for a lot of people. You can't just say, "this is the law so it's not happening."

Maybe federally, but in Oregon, where I live, restaurant workers make at least state minimum wage ($9.75), and in Portland, the wage is going up to $15.

I feel a good first start would be to get rid of the tipped-job-exception from the Federal minimum wage law and set it a fixed minimum regardless of job classification.

Perhaps it's different where you live, but you may want to consider how not tipping will be perceived by those around you. Giving others the impression that you're selfish and lack empathy has very real costs, even though they may not be as immediately obvious as the cost of paying the tip.

It seems customary enough in the US that in the movie Reservoir Dogs hardened criminals berated one of their own because he "didn't believe in tipping" the waitress. This brilliant scene is on Youtube, in case anyone needs Steve Buscemi's take on iLoch's comment as a relief from this subthread.

It's not universal, you'll hear a lot of arguments about it, everyone has different ideas. When I was growing up I was taught 10% was standard for restaurants. I don't know if its because my parents were cheap (probably not) or that poor people have a different idea about what's reasonable. Then when I got older I heard 15%. Now that I'm working a very well paid job people say 20% is "standard." Now in the last year I have been hearing rumbling that 20% is stingy and outdated.

I am started to feel very extorted by this so I've reduced my tips in response and reduced my frequency of going to establishments that guilt me into leaving tips.

(Usually if the food is over priced I don't bother with percentages.)

This. I feel compelled in restaurants to provide a 15%+ unless I got bad service. With kids (and fewer restaurant visits) it's easier to justify a substantive tip - the table is usually a mess at the end and we do request more attention from the wait staff.

15%, regardless of the service? Don't pat yourself on the back so hard.

I'm not patting myself on the back... I'm saying that I don't want to participate in the tipping system, but we know that waiters are not paid fairly. I see the 15% as the salary that is not, but should be, included in the menu.

The fact that you thought I was getting an ego boost from tipping is the reason tipping exist, giving people an illusion of power/status.

What's the implication here? The parent post paid more than they were required, if not then the business could charge more to cover their costs.

This kind of thinking is precisely what's wrong with tipping in the first place.

The implication is that 20% the widely accepted minimum "good tip" rate, and consistently tipping 15% is consistently being cheap. Especially when you're a tech worker FFS.

Let's break out of our echo chamber a bit. In the US, tipping isn't "paying more than required," it's basic manners. You can argue until you're blue in the face about how businesses are to blame, but the vast majority of society, who have no big beef with tipping culture, will find you cheap rather than discerning.

I'm in Canada whre 15% is considered "normal". I did not know 20% was the normal in the U.S.

Agreed; 15% here in Canada is considered normal/polite/nice, but I also believe our wages for service workers are higher. The USA "$2.13/hour for tipped worker" feels like both business AND government forcing you to pay employee wages...

Canada minimum wage: https://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/minwage.p...

Liquor Servers Minimum Wage $9.90/hour

20% is not the normal minimum in the US.

Edit: here are some supporting links.

15-20% suggested with 20%+ recognized as a minority opinion and for extra good service: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/02/travel/experts-guide-to-tippin...

The highest tipping state averages 17% and the lowest averages 15%: https://qz.com/189458/the-united-states-of-tipping/

Some people have been claiming that 20% is normal for the US. But many people believe 15%. There are even some people who claim that 25% should be the norm.

You can definitely get away with 15% at places where you don't regularly eat. I do 20% at regular places where the waiter will remember me for sure and I don't want them to get the idea that I don't like them.

Actual data shows the average tip is 16.1%

https://qz.com/189458/the-united-states-of-tipping/

Those are tip numbers reported by Square. Original reply was to comment about tipping at restaurants, not POS tips. I found 16.1% surprisingly high for Square tips, actually. But even then, 15% is below average.

Plus being from Square I imagine the data will be biased by the suggestion to tip / preset amounts.

It is not basic manners and nobody cares what you tip except current and former waiters that were getting ripped off by the owners.

20% extra on top for doing your job shouldn't be expected.

Did you know that in most states wait staff can be paid as low as $3 per hour, under the assumption that tips will bring them up above minimum wage? The law literally assumes that customers will tip them. It's not just a nice custom, it is fully expected in the transaction.

If 20% is the expected then they can price that into the food rather than this stupid charade where we don't know the price but are expected to know the price. 15% is perfectly fine.

Accusing people of being "cheap" is the lamest insult anybody can come up with. Try again.

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