'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
"Tipping again changed in the 1960s, when Congress agreed that workers could receive a lower minimum wage if a portion of their salary came from tips. The minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13, which has not changed in over 20 years, as long as those workers receive at least $7.25 in tips per hour. Saru Jayaraman, author of Behind the Kitchen Door, explains that a minimum wage of $2.13 means that their full wage will go toward taxes and forces tipped workers to live off their tips." [1]
[1] https://www.tripsavvy.com/a-brief-history-of-tipping-1329249
Wait staff etc must still receive full minimum wage in addition to any tips they receive.
The mountain that needs to be climbed here is about narrative/social norms, not real economics.
Unfortunately I think that bigger than shifting social norms will be shifting customer price expectations. If you kill tipping, expect wages to go up, even in CA, as staff expect (and perhaps legitimately require) a certain level of income, regardless of origin.
It's a little like subsidized gas. The US has been underpaying for gas for so long that I've got no idea what political martyr would try to put that cat in the bag. When a market distortion lasts so long it becomes part of the social fabric, it's real hard to just kill off.
I'd love to hear about times countries have been able to pull this off at scale.
Except that the population density of the US is almost double that of Norway. (We definitely have our share of rural areas...)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
Of course it's quite high in the US, what with the population being concentrated on the coasts.
Imagine if you receive an offer with $160k salary per year, $100k expected public RSUs per year, and $100k expected bonus per year. You'll be upset if you only make $160k salary even though that's above minimum wage.
People don't take jobs at fast food places to make minimum wage either. I'm not sure anyone takes a minimum wage job to make minimum wage. People take the jobs to make money and try to survive. Being a server is no different.
Tips are unreliable and depend greatly on place and hours you are scheduled. Sure, theoretically you get minimum wage, but not all employers make sure you do.
20% is not normal. 20% is very high for very good service.
15 years ago, 15% was normal. Now the minimum on these pos pos's is 18.
I tip 15% and no more unless service was well above normal.
And I have no qualms about hitting 0 for anything that isn't sit down service, including Uber and Lyft.
We have to fight this tip creep or we will live in a world where every service employee is paid with 100% tips by those that feel guilty enough to pay it while all the cheapskates freeload.
Services that don't have tips encoded in wage law (like restaurants [mostly]) are either passing along large scale pricing errors, or begging for arbitrary, subjective price increases beyond what's needed to run the business. Neither of those should be met with a smile.
Last time I went to a restaurant in the US, I got scolded because I refused to tip when the waitress brought my food out cold and never once gave me a refill. I'm apparently "supposed" to tip 25% these days.
When people do their job, I'm okay with tipping. But I'm not OK with tipping based on the price of the meal. A person who works at a $70/plate restaurant and keeps filling my glass of water up with ice before I can finish it, making it unbearably cold, really isn't doing anything better than an overworked waiter in a $7/plate dirty hole in the wall shack. The skills don't differ (and I'm honestly often impressed with how skill-less waiters are at high-end American restaurants--they're worse than typical servers in any other country) and they're not the ones making the meals.
Just bring me a drink that's at least 90% drink and not 90% ice, bring my food out before it's cold, and get me a refill within a few minutes of running out and I have no trouble dropping $10 or $20--the price of the meal doesn't factor into that. Fail to do that, and you're getting nothing--I don't care how expensive the meal is that the chef prepared, but you had zero involvement so you're not entitled to that cash.
But I'm glad I'm not living in a place with a toxic restaurant culture, so it's not my problem anymore. :)
Before I met her, I assumed 10% was a perfectly acceptable tip but I had never really had any friends who worked in the service industry or worked there myself, so I had no idea how little they actually make. For a typical slow shift, a bartender/server can make $20 or less...and this is in NYC.
There is no way for people not in that position to know what will be an "offensive" amount. I get that it's not a simple thing to "just find a job that pays a decent amount," but...unless we can get the law changed to require reasonable minimum wages for everyone, that's really the only way this sort of abuse will be stopped.
And that's what it is: abuse. If she's getting paid so little that she requires every single table she serves to pay an extra 1/5 of their meal price directly to her or she's in danger of not being able to make ends meet, that's on her employer. Continuing to increase the amount we all tip just allows abusive employers like hers to continue to freeload off of all of us, and not even have to shoulder the burden of being the one taking the economic or emotional/social risk of asking for more money, because they force the servers into that position instead.
The employer has to stay competitive, especially in competitive markets like NYC. They're playing on the same playing field as all the others in the same industry, which means paying employees shitty wages because the government allows it to be so.
Having ethics to pay your employees livable wages will help you sleep at night but it won't help you maintain a business.
By law you can pay your staff 10 cents an hour but no one does because that's absurd exploitation of another human being that would be considered socially unacceptable and no one would eat in your restaurant.
The fact that this is so normalised in the states is concerning. I agree with the other comment that if you can't run a business and pay staff a living wage you aren't good at business.
People working full time yet living below the poverty line is the sign of a dysfunctional society. Needing laws to force you into treating others with decency obviously isn't a shared experience across the developed world.
I would put most of the onus on the societal normalization of this practice and the fact that the US, being so capitalistic, rewards this behavior.
Again, this is my view from living in NYC for the past 5 years and viewing the industry as such. It may be completely different in other cities or countries, but this is the situation here.
How's that $10, $15, $30 minimum, 50c, $1 but that's now illigal (still rampant), .5% EFTPOS, 1.5% credit card surcharge, no amex, cash only purchase going for ya?
If customers are smart enough to figure out a 20% tip they're smart enough to figure out that your "tips included" pricing is still competitive compared to the place across the street.
Sure there is some marketing benefit to a lower number but regulars will make or break a solid business and they talk, a lot.
So no, I dont think staying competitive is an argument for anything other than lacking the balls to put a sign up and fix your pricing.
On top of that the net benefits from paying your staff a livable dependable wage, and advertising the fact you don't have to subsidize free loaders will likely outweigh any negative effects for all but the scummiest joints relying on one time customers.
The absence of tipping was one of the big advantages uber and lyft offered over conventional cabs when they first came along, and I've stuck with it; I'm not going to tip.
If that eventually gets me blackballed so I have to go back to old-fashioned cabs, well... perhaps I'm not missing out on much.
This is done specifically to prevent rating riders low just for not tipping.
Drivers don't see how much you tipped before leaving the rating on uber. With lyft, they could technically go back and edit your rating within 24 hrs of the ride.
Besides the issue of people trying to convince you that the "standard" tip amount is an ever higher amount, new industries try to add tipping. Notice tip jars appearing everywhere.
Pretty ridiculous, I've started subtracting the healthcare surcharge out of what I would normally tip since it seem to vary widely.
As for subtracting it from the tip, I don't think that's the right thing to do. You are essentially taking from the employee and giving it to the business owner. But maybe if enough people did that, the employees would revolt.
Part of the healthcare mandate is that the restaurant must provide health insurance coverage for the employee (which was not previously required), so they are benefiting in a way. It probably isn't completely fair to subtract it out, but the majority of restaurants now have this.
If the 'default' tip on the app is 15% or 20%, then you need to make an affirmative choice to not tip. Yes, you can (usually) opt out, but the screen is telling you in no uncertain terms that tipping is probably a social norm here—if you choose to opt out, you are making the extra effort to break the norm.
Otherwise, why bother setting the default at all rather than force the user to enter an explicit amount every time, like on a restaurant bill?
Also, there's a whole subbranch of behavioral economics ('nudge' economics) that basically studies how to frame choices and set defaults to influence decision making [1]. Advertisers and politicians also take advantage of the power of framing and defaults.
So getting back to the ethics of the issue, it'd be interesting to see data on how much the default influences the actual tip paid, and how that incentivizes the actual business owner (e.g. set a higher tip rate, pay a lower wage?)
[1] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/richard.thaler/research/pdf/...
On the other hand if tipping is paying for service, why do you 'deserve' a bigger tip just because I ordered the more expensive thing? If the 'fair' price for you talking to me about wine for 2 minutes and then bringing me the the bottle I want is $15 then surly you deserve $15 no matter if I select the $50 or $500 bottle.
Although if I'm in a restaurant with $500 wines I usually expect the service to include a wine educated sommelier to create a good wine pairing depending on my taste preferences and the food I ordered. That is a lot different from just bringing the bottle.
I expect the restaurant to also be a lot cleaner and more detail-oriented with its service and presentation in that price range.
All in all I think tipping in general is wrong though. The chef making my food has the most influence on my experience and at the same time usually doesn't get a tip (I live in Germany currently, so no tipping out here, but even in the US I think they never get that much). I think waiters are obviously opposed to getting rid of tips. They might complain about the lower minimum wage, but the fact is if they're friendly they get a lot more money than for any unskilled job, especially because tips aren't taxed.
A friend of mine in uni used to waitress at a bar. She said her wage is 4€/h. I asked her why she's doing it. She said she gets between 30€/h in tax free tips. That's roughly the net wage of an engineer in Europe (although you don't get the payments into social security, but most people don't think that far ahead). And this was in Germany, a low tipping country. I imagine in the US if you're friendly and fast at serving you can make much more.
Sure, but most restaurants that have $500 bottles of wind also have $50 bottles of wine and I'd expect the same level of service even if I end up ordering the $50 bottle of wine. So even there it feels like tips should be 'constant' for a given order.
Then I learned that it's pretty much expected, so I tip "normally" now, but feel weird about it.
It doesn’t make any sense for a counter service restaurant or other such business that consists of a single interaction before paying, where if you receive bad service you already know that and can just say “actually never mind I’m going to a different place, cancel my order”.
Yes, and that's ok when a tip is deserved, but apps that ask me to tip counter help are bullshit. Those people aren't paid less than kitchen workers because they're not expected to earn tips, and they don't do anything beyond the minimal expected work (fetching a donut, operating a cash-register).
As you suggest, the tip app is a way to get proprietors to invest in POS so they can substitute tips for wages.
No one makes out (again) except some silicon valley executive.
How is this acceptable? What other industry quotes prices that don’t include wage costs, then bill for a higher amount.
It’s particularly bad because pulling the percentage out of the tip lowers the percentage of the amount I pay that would go to the server (vs baking the price into the menu cost), so it’s dishonest pricing and also convoluted tip theft.
To add on a living wage fee is to imply that a lower price available at other restaurants does not pay a living wage. This is a left of center virtue signal: "Eat here, where we make sure our staff earn a living wage."
To add on an ACA coverage fee is to imply that, without mandatory healthcare, the restaurant could afford to give you a better price. This is a right of center nudge toward action: "You're in favor of mandatory healthcare, and here is what it's costing you."
Both fees are crass, tone-deaf choices but, unless the receipt literally says, "we take this out of the tip," it isn't theft. You're irritated (reasonably) but are choosing to tip less, which seems like picking out the wrong party to punish for restaurant policy.
Tip well, and then tell the owner that you won't be eating there again because of the politically motivated fees.
No, it isn't. It's a fee that started showing up in places like Seattle (and probably SF) after the minimum wage was raised, as a right-of-center jerk signal: "I would charge you less and screw my employees harder but the law won't allow me".
My point remains the same: anyone is right to get pissed of about these fees, but tipping less punishes the server and not the owner who instituted the fees. A better solution is to tip normally, ask to speak to the owner (or a manager), explain you will not be patronizing the business again (and why), and then leave.
A smaller set of restaurant does something different. They list some prices, and then in the fine print at the bottom they say "a 6% surcharge will be added to provide a living wage in SF", or something. This is not to comply with any local tax or law, it's just paying your employees more on your own accord, but then excluding an arbitrary percentage of that from your listed prices because... I have no idea why. But all places I've seen that do this have been very left-of-center.
Some restaurant owners have added automatic service charges or marked up prices to include service, but that's a mess too. If they mark up prices and customers don't realize service is included, they'll think the prices are too high and go elsewhere. If they add a mandatory service charge, customers might feel ripped off and will worry the fee doesn't really go to the servers or that they should still leave a tip.
Restaurant owners basically need to conspicuously state on the menu that service is included and the money will go to servers (and bussers, bartenders, etc.). But if you're a restaurant owner, do you want your menu dominated by a statement about your labor policies? There's a reason it's only really been tried by big name celebrity chefs, not your corner diner or Thai place.
Why not? If ALL customers stopped tipping. This would create a wave of disguntled employees who can't make rent and/or pay the bills. This sucks, of course, but if customers keep chugging at it refusing to pay then eventually someone will try to sue some business owner and then something will have to change. That's my opinion at least.
People who tip keep the system alive. Also, I think it's weird for prices to be pre-tax. It's like you pay 10$ for a burger, oh wait 10% sales tax and a 15% tip and suddenly you pay 12.56$.
edit:
>Some restaurant owners have added automatic service charges or marked up prices to include service, but that's a mess too. If they mark up prices and customers don't realize service is included, they'll think the prices are too high and go elsewhere. If they add a mandatory service charge, customers might feel ripped off and will worry the fee doesn't really go to the servers or that they should still leave a tip.
If a business has the following on his menu or signpost "We do NOT accept tips. We pay our servers a living wage. Our prices are a bit higher because of this!" will surely win some of my business.
Once again, tipping should be for extra service, not some mandatory inclusive cost. Because if tipping becomes a mandatory think voluntary or not, why not just include it in the freaking wage, the only ones profiting right now are the business owners as they don't have to pay taxes over the tips (please correct me if I'm wrong about that last statement).
Frequently it seems tips go under the radar and end up as unreported income, at least for cash tips, but all it would take is the IRS cracking down on restaurants and that would quickly end.
As we move from a cash based to a card based transaction economy this seems less relevant. Credit card transactions are recorded and it seems unlikely they don’t show up on the employee’s pay stub.
Want more transparency in the US? End payroll deductions and make people pay their income tax and FICA contributions all at once. That will do much more to drive transparency, I think.
This is a (pipe) dream of many who advocate for small government.
This would be true if people were rational.
And if people actually read everything presented to them.
All it takes is a week working any sort of customer-facing service job to see that neither are true.
I'd actually argue that's the fastest route TO fixing the problem!
When money is on the line, I guarantee that service workers will correctly look to the employer for correcting their wage, rather than trying to exploit good graces of people who happen to eat at the restaurant.
Tipping is a total sham
It's just a tax exemption that we've encoded into social behaviour.
If tips are handled in the digital (as opposed to cash), doesn't that change the meta with respect to traceability?
How many times have you seen a young service worker prostitute their feelings towards some arsehole or bitch, because the worker really needed the income?
I live in a mostly tip-free country, and I am sure most front line workers here have a lot more agency to deal with nasty customers. Although the downside is that service staff have few ways to earn more except by changing jobs...
This is quite illegal. Tips are income, and still have to be taxed.
I realize the transition moment here is confronting, and with family who work and depend on this class of labour I am completely aware of the immediate pay consequence, but even with this,
I think Californians should grab an opportunity to walk off tip culture, and walk into 'fair pay for work' culture.
The minimum wage is not fair? Lets support all workers for a fair minimum wage. End tip culture.
The minimum wage is not fair? Lets support all workers for a fair minimum wage. End tip culture.
It is far from clear that getting rid of tips is good for tipped workers, at the end of the day [1]. Basically, there may be unintended consequences.
Also, due to a quirk of tax law, getting rid of tips would result in higher total prices. This is because we don't pay sales tax on the tip currently. If this payment were built into the cost of the meal, sales tax would go up. Not a huge difference, but it adds up — and restaurants are low-margin businesses to begin with.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/get-rid-of-tips-and-...
If you don't pay your wait staff above-award and want to keep the best, I think you need to think about their value to your business.
The tax cost part, I recognize. I am not blind to unintended consequences, but this one? Not big enough to make me feel like reversing course.
I'm reminded of a great "bill tidy" cartoon from the 1970s of a porter in a USSR hotel holding his tip-hand out to the guy he's just carried bags into the room while speaking into a not very hidden microphone tipping is evil and diminishes the dignity of labour
I'm not aware of cases where restaurants got rid of tipping and then things went awesome — and I assume that if this had happened then it would be covered in the media just like the failed attempts were.
1: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/why-res...
2: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-l...
A quick absurdist example - if a restaurant has 10 customers and 1 gives a $1000 tip, increasing all the bills by $100 instead would mean the 9 customers who didn't tip would likely stop eating there.
Moving towards a fair pay for work culture may require more than just 'not tipping', but we already have many examples where it is the case. Prices may go up, or tax laws need to change, but just because there are thin margins in the industry doesn't mean that the only way to survive is to force workers to live off their tips. In so many cases it seems like tipping culture merely serves to hide the true cost of a meal or service.
Similarly, the odd practice of not including any taxes in the sticker price on goods. This one in particular feels anti-consumer, and seems to persist because sellers worry that their prices, if listed including taxes, would seem higher than the competition. I'm surprised more retailers don't buck this trend more often; realising that taxes were included in Cafe du Monde's list price for their coffee and biegnets made the experience even more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been, and definitely contributed to a few of the midnight treks I made to get that particular treat.
I am either badgered because of a schedule ("how is everything?", inevitably mid-chew), or badgered to buy something ("another round?", "want to see the dessert menu?") or -- just as annoying -- totally invisible if I am judged as no longer having money-making potential.
"Good service" is relative. What I want is to make an order, enjoy myself, then leave, with a minimum of fuss. I need a waiter. I don't need a bestest buddy evar!!1! who dabbles in bringing me food and drinks as a hobby.
Tipping is generally only restaurants and taxis, where you simply round up to the next 5€ or 10€ and the waiter keeps the rest.
In my experience, I find US servers very unpleasantly/uncomfortably nice/happy while not really focusing on the service quality itself (food quality, accuracy of order or similar).
Thats basically my point: we import many things, but not all things in other parts of the world (from the USA) and tipping culture is something we're pushing back on, preferring to see a realistic minimum wage fight instead (it is a fight: overall I think minimum wage is nothing like high enough, but it is usually higher than in the USA in relative purchasing power)
The tax thing totally amazed me. in Australia it is mandatory to quote price inclusive of GST which is our version of VAT, and this horrid practice of pretending there is no tax consequence and then applying it at the check out in US stores really upsets me. I kind of get it: this is the libertarian push back, saying "see how cheap things would be if only those nasty governments state and federal didn't levy taxes" but really, its a trick. Its not what I am going to pay, which is pretty much what I care about.
So many payment terminals (bank issued as well as square etc) now have the tipping option turned on, but most people here just seem to ignore them. I can understand why restaurants etc would have the option turned on - it's free money! and some people want to tip - but it's a little bit of extra friction where there used to be none.
With respect to GST, some quotes I see have it broken out as a second line item and 'advertise' the non-inclusive figure, but that seems very rare. Something even better than just including the full price on the sticker is something that came in a few years ago in all the supermarkets, the price is listed per unit in addition to total price. So a block of cheese that costs $5.20 also lists the price per kg or 100g, say $26.00/kg
2) I belong to an ethnic minority that stereotypically does not tip well (though I don't see this in practice with others of my ethnic group). I don't want any judgment of me or my ethnic group based on if the person handing me my donut figures out, either by looking or by watching my hand motions, whether I tipped.
3) I don't doubt your description of the interface. I experience a similar interface. If I have to be prompted for a tip, then have to decline, then feel manipulated and have to expend mental energy to "get over it" (as you say), have to think about how I'm representing my ethnic group, and contemplate my role in the socioeconomic inequality present between myself and the people in the service industry (as mentioned elsewhere in these comments), well then I'm going to reduce that to a 2 step process where I hand over cash and receive my purchase.
Paying used to be so simple, now between chips and square it's become a hassle.
I understand it actually incentivizes being an attractive female who touches male diners.
It's the same reason I just don't see the appeal of strip clubs - I can't stand people being "nice" to me just because they want me to give them money.
That being said, I’d much rather society move towards the idea that every job pay at least a living wage
If you go to a bar with "shot girls" who stroll around selling shots, they've often bought the booze from the bar to resell to you.
* Fast-food workers do just as much work as coffee shop employees, why not tip them?
* Workers at clothing stores take the time to fold your clothes nicely and box/bag them for you - why not tip them?
* Grocery store checkout clerks in the city carefully bag up your goods so you can carry them with just two hands - why not tip them?
* The guy collecting trash from the streets to keep them clean is helping everyone, why not tip him?
It does seem at some point the tipping system will grow so large it'll collapse in on itself. Sadly though, places that have tried to move that direction, in NYC at least, seem to have struggled [0][1].
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/why-res... [1]: http://gothamist.com/2017/10/19/danny_meyer_no_tipping.php
Coat/bag check workers are a good example: most concert halls seem to encourage you to tip maybe $1 when you get your coat back, but a lot of museum coat check workers will refuse to accept a tip and may get flustered if you offer one.
I've never seen anyone try to tip in McDonald's or Old Navy, but I don't think you'd be doing anyone any favors if you tried. The cashier would probably be more worried about getting in trouble for handling the situation wrong than grateful.
Tipping is a sort of economic hack; you the customer are responsible for evaluating service, and punishing inept or even just lazy service. You're the final buyer of the service, so in a way it's fair; just atypically lassiez-faire method versus the usual social hierarchy of companies paying managers to supervise service workers.
I figure if tipping dies, it will be because there's a separate economic hack undermining it. When you live somewhere where restaurants start and fail every month, the cost of a bad tipper reputation is pretty low. And if you adopt an upfront tip model to combat this, you're people's losing good faith as the fee-for-service model no longer applies -- which this article directly discusses.
All of which puts us in the awkward position of trying to figure out whether the lunch spot we visit is paying its staff a tipped wage without any actual service -- no bussing, no setting, and just a beeper to let you know you should grab your food.
> FWIW, tipped workers typically work for an hourly wage lower than the minimum wage, and are expected to earn the rest from tips.
That's true, and tipping those workers is something one ought to do. My post was primarily in reaction to tipping expanding to new frontiers of employees who are paid a "regular" wage such as most coffee shop workers or waiters in states where there is no special tipped minimum wage.
In these cases, it seems strange that one job (food-related service) deserves tips while other jobs do not. I've seen many posts recently such as "Tip the bill challenge proves humanity has a heart" or "20% minimum tip or else", but have seen no such calls to help employees in other fields.
It does seem like the obvious ideal is that people who work full-time hours are able to support themselves in a non-extravagant but livable way. I don't claim to know the correct economic solution to get there though!
You mean they go under the table.
Edit: how do you account for this page which indicates a (slightly) lower tipped wage in CA? https://www.minimum-wage.org/california/tipped-employee-mini...
You can sanity check that website by looking up your OR (which the site claims has a tipped minimum wage).
Most of the workdays, I go eat lunch at "order at the counter" places. The Square ipad is directly visible to everyone behind me in the line as they can all see that I put "No tip". More than once, I have seen people look back to check if other people in the line would see their choice, and subsequently change it to a "socially acceptable" tip of 15%.
You start hemorrhaging customers. People's baselines for how much food costs are old and calcified, and customers flat out can't be counted on to act rationally and in their economic self interest.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/jc-penney-admits-marking-pri...
I too am annoyed by the ubiquity of these tip prompts, but the manners haven't changed. (It's been on credit card slips forever.) People shouldn't feel obligated to tip just because, say, it's the owner serving cold brew from his food truck.
Tipping in general sucks. I feel like most of the time it’s manipulating customers into squeezing a little extra on the top. Just raise your prices.
I'm UK based by and by. Keep that nonsense in the US.
I mean seriously the only interaction I'm having lasted 30 seconds, I'll never see this person again / they won't do anything more for me, no tip needed...
I hate tipping as it is (granted I do tip in non fast casual food situations). I'd rather just the cost be up front.
I always tip now and use the experience as a reminder not to take my fortune for granted. It’s also a reminder that everything I have might be taken away at any time.
Someone who works a job where they receive consistent tips can make a lot of money, and if it's in cash it's tax free.
Plus the tips never go to the kitchen who do all the actual work.
Obligatory nit: Being paid in cash is not exempt from regular income tax.
The tipping system is not a good way to make things fair. People do not tip fairly as it is.
Also: how much spit do you estimate you've consumed when eating at places where you're a regular who is known to never tip?
I just don't like the tipping system. If you're worried about fairness I belive studies have shown that white women in their 30s get the best tips. Minority? Not so much.
I tip at restaurants, just not fast casual places where there is effectively no service beyond someone at the front.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/h...
The #1 reason I liked Uber/Lyft was you didn't have to tip. Then the margins didn't make sense and now they ask for it. I shouldn't have to subsidize those rides with tips because you're not paying the driver enough. Just charge me the price you need to charge me.
If you're a regular at a coffeeshop/fast casual place, another perk of tipping is that you quickly become known as a tipper and employees will come to like you. If you need a selfish reason to tip beyond having the employees like you, sometimes they'll even hook you up with free/discounted stuff.
It's easy to just eat out one fewer time a week and redistribute the would-have-been-spent-anyway money as tips to service employees, regardless of how much you think they actually 'did' for you.
Personally, I've found that when in the US I felt the food to be cheap, but when I pay the bill, the actual cost to be largely equivalent to other western countries. But, I still harbour the irrational feeling that the US is cheaper, even though the receipts I submit don't reflect this "feeling".
Tipping (and non listed taxes) is the 99c cost point writ large. To me it seems, all other considerations (discomfort, worker's rights, fairness, etc.) are overwhelmed by the lower price ticket.
Thoughts?
That one really blows my mind. I literally filled the cup with froyo and all the fixins myself. My entire interaction with the employee is placing it on their scale and giving them money. Why would I tip that?
Within about five minutes, I had walked into a smoothie shop, ordered a drink, paid with a $1 tip, received my drink, and walked out.
Pretending for a moment that servers actually get their full tip (they don't), and assuming this person makes $10/hr, then by giving them a one dollar tip for five minutes of service, I effectively doubled their earnings for their five minutes. (Their wage is $1/6 minutes, less after taxes)
I received very little service, and nothing outside of what "their job" would entail. In fact, at one point the sever was impatient and made me feel rushed. Tipping is an abomination of a custom.
It's also taxed, what's your point? Mine still stands.
As for taxes... Only if it's reported. If you tipped in cash, you can be fairly certain that it will not get reported.
> A 2009 study by the [NYC] Taxi and Limousine Commission found that gratuities rose after cabbies adopted a credit card system that prompted riders to tip; their tips jumped from an average of about 10 percent when all fares were paid in cash to about 22 percent on card transactions.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/03/star...
Completely irrational, but real.
I personally have never tipped anyone unless I was excessively well catered for, or someone went out of their way to enhance the experience I was already paying for in the first place. That's what tipping must be, not forcing the customer to actually compensate for your employees being underpaid. I'm sorry for anyone who has a lower salary than normal because the boss expects that tips will bridge the gap. If needed, I'm much happier to pay a higher price (relatively). Indeed, I propose that most of the time, the prices are already including all costs and the margin, and that the owners direct the whole margin to them while squeezing the employees out of it and having them rely on tips to make a decent living. The solution to low salaries is not tipping and guilting people into paying extra cost for no reason whatsoever and for something that's already marked up to the appropriate level, it is better salaries framed by law or contract.
Let me be clear in saying however that I'm not a fan of shaping culture changes by legal requirements. So I'm second guessing myself a little too now, but I really think the culturally accepted tipping expectation is detrimental overall as per my original comment.
1) If I pay before I get service (fast food, coffee shop counter, etc), there's no tip. The point of tipping is for service, I'm not pre-tipping you for service you haven't given me yet.
2) The vast majority of the time I tip 15%. It's extremely rare I see service that's outstandingly poor or outstandingly good. Most are just average.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/05/uber-wants-to-save-us-from-rac...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/nyregion/new-york-city-ub...
Employers are required to do that.
However, as is most often the case at the low end of the job ladder, enforcing your employment rights against your employer is a very efficient way to find yourself unemployed and--in smaller communities where "people are gonna talk"--blackballed from ever holding a job again.
Removing the tipping without increasing the pay is even more offensive and from my experience is a predominantly tech phenomenon (1)
In fact, it should be required to be the default.
Now all these other industries are trying to add tipping as a custom and and I have no idea who that actually goes to, what they make without it nor how much other people tip.
I spent a decent amount of money to get my car detailed, and was presented with a Square app prompting for a tip. I did tip because it felt like not doing so was somehow improper. After thinking about it, I will not do this again.
Many cafes sell also beans and other merchandise that are manufactured or made in batches, and can be $20 per item. So tipping on those items would be similar than you tipping in grocery stores or other stores that sell goods. Like you buy a $20k car, do you tip them 20%?
Personally, I always just change the default calculation and tip on the service items like $1 for coffee/drink.
That said, it's sort of an arbitrary custom. It's not very much work to fill a glass of beer, find a t-shirt in some cabinet, or hand someone a cup of coffee.
Often the actual question I want answered is "What tip will I be giving if I pay various whole dollar amounts?"
For example, let's say I order a pizza for delivery, and the mandatory charges come to $20.60, and let's also say I consider 15% a reasonable tip.
A normal tip calculator will tell me that I should give the pizza guy $23.69.
Screw that, I'm not futzing around with trying to find $0.69 in coins, and I'm certainly not going to give him $24 or $25 and ask for $0.31 or $1.31 in change.
Nope. I'm going to pay an integral number of dollars and say "keep the change".
What I want a tip calculator to do is give me a table:
Pay Effective Tip
$21 1.9%
$22 6.8%
$23 11.7%
$24 16.5%
$25 21.4%
I made an Apple Dashboard widget to do just that, and it worked out quite well. If I had ever gotten around to learning mobile development, that was going to be my first app for learning.
Also if its something that is generally always expected to be 20% then why not charge extra and pay your staff normally rather than having this extra layer to potentially mislead diners?
Also, its linked to higher rates of corruption:
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/h...
I have a friend who tells me horror stories of foul behaviour performed with the food by the chef in these situations.
An article featuring complaints about some of the lowest paid people in SF getting paid a little more because of a new technology lacks some self awareness.
Anything?
Repeated studies have shown that tipping is inherently discriminatory, with people of color faring worse than, say, conventionally "pretty" blonde women.
In this case, the workers don't even get the one benefit of tipping that wait staff do, namely, cash that can go largely untaxed.
What's happening here is that companies are setting a new normal that lets them not only avoid the cost of employees by calling their workers "independent contractors," they're even avoiding the cost of paying them a fair wage at all.
This isn't about guilt, it's about service workers being hurt by basic concepts like fair and equitable pay, benefits and stability being replaced by a gig economy where their take-home pay is subject to the whims of patrons' moods.
My main objection was more to do with the sentiment of well paid tech workers I have met who complain about this technology because they feel pressured to tip a low paid workers more. A position I have little sympathy for.
Tipping at restaurants is bad enough: why do I have to decide how much the waiter should make? If you make me think about it, 20% gross honestly seems way too much: the back of the house contributes a much larger portion of the value of the meal, so it feels like I'm stiffing _them_! But tipping waiters is ingrained enough that I just always give that 20%.
Any other transaction where apps try to add tipping, though? That's going to be $0 every single time, guilt free. If anything, I feel like I'm doing my part to keep companies from ruining another social interaction.
Do away with the tipping and pay people properly for thier labor. En lieu of that happening (and I don't see it happening soon) I'll still tip at these kiosks. I don't have much sympathy for people who complain about them but I get your point.
There's a weird economy to tips - in many (most?) US restaurants, the kitchen and non-wait staff (hosts, bussers, barbacks) are tipped out at the end of each night by those who receive the tips.
A busy night at a healthy place where everyone is hustling can send everyone home happy.
It always requires a signature and you have to explicitly press "18%", "20%", "25%" (or similar) or "No tip" button.
I would be shocked if I ever saw a tip amount pre-selected for me (unless on a bill for a large party at restaurant, which has been standard for a long time now).