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jjeaff

I am frustrated with articles like this that keep pushing a higher and higher "acceptable" tip percentage.

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.

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When I was a kid, 10% was fairly normal.

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. :)

You’re making it seem like the drink ice and refill part are obvious things. I like a lot of ice in my drinks.

The waitstaff tip out the kitchen and bar in a lot of restaurants.

"tip creep" is a really great term for what's going on.

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.

That's ultimately the problem with tips. It ends up being about coercion, and extracting the maximum amount from customers.

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.

My girlfriend, whose worked in the service industry for the last 5 years, would vehemently disagree with you. If she doesn't get at least 20%, it's more or less an offensive amount _because_ they get paid so little because of this law. That's baseline.

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.

OK...but that's not an obvious thing to those of us on the outside. Particularly for those of us who grew up in a world where 15% was considered a good tip, and then start vaguely hearing from random sources that maybe it's supposed to be 18% now? When did that happen, and why?

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.

Putting it on the employer is lazy.

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.

As someone who grew up outside the US, I sill find this attitude really bizarre. In Australia, if you can't afford to pay your employees a livable wage, then you are not a businessperson, you are a thief. You are taking money that your employees earned and putting it in your own pocket. If you can't afford to be profitable otherwise, then you shouldn't be in business. Why is it the general public's responsibility to pay your employees salaries? Saying it's not possible to stay competitive is a complete cop out. Zazie in SF has been around for more than 25 years if you need an example of a restaurant with sustainable business model that treats its employees fairly and doesn't expect their customers to tip.

You're suggesting one out of tens of thousands of restaurants in the US. I don't need one example, I need an overwhelming body of evidence that paying your employees a livable wage means you can stay competitive. I'm talking specifically about the service food industry of which this thread is addressing specifically. I don't know what the laws in AUS are but in the US, you can pay your employees, BY LAW[1], around $2/hr because tips are considered supplementary to that. I'm not stating anything new here, this is just how it is. I don't like it any more then you do but that is the world we live in and laws that make it possible to pay people below what we consider a livable wage need to be repelled.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

There's no minimum wage in Sweden and waitstaff there earn good money, the hospitality average would be about $4000 USD monthly.

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.

https://jobseurope.net/average-salaries-sweden/

Not sure I would frame these restaurant owners as indecent because a lot of them are locally owned and just trying to survive. You can make an argument that they shouldn't be in business at all but for a lot of people this is their livelihood and there are those who take these jobs either out of convenience or need.

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.

As a kiwi that could buy a 50c bag of lollies with my EFTPOS card at any corner store nationwide, 20 years ago I find it pretty amusing an Australian is criticising America for its backwards purchasing policies - especially when it comes to bundling and offsetting of business costs to make it easier on the customer.

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?

I don't buy this old argument at all anymore.

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.

SF restaurants now add a healthcare surcharge which ranges from 3-10% (mandatory), then expect a 20% tip on top of that.

Pretty ridiculous, I've started subtracting the healthcare surcharge out of what I would normally tip since it seem to vary widely.

Do they clearly advertise the healthcare surcharge with signage or on the menu? Because I would speak to the manager and absolutely refuse to pay a secret add on to the bill.

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.

It is usually mentioned in very small print on the back or bottom of the menu.

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.

I noticed this yesterday at dinner. The lowest suggested tip on the receipt was 20%! So psychologically I kind of felt bad for "only" giving 15%.

Honestly, when I see this I go out of my way to not tip at all. I appreciate the tip "shortcut" buttons, but when you're missing the most common option (15%) that's just in bad faith.

What’s your Uber/Lyft rating these days? I imagine it’s not good if you don’t tip.

How would one know such a thing?

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.

From what I've heard (And someone please correct me if I'm wrong), drivers can't see what an individual rider tipped. They just get a total at the end of some period.

This is done specifically to prevent rating riders low just for not tipping.

That's not how it works, but if it were, how in the world would that be dependable? Coupling a rating system to an "optional" tipping system is surely just about the worst idea in the world as far as incentives go.

4.94

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.

4.87 and I don't tip.

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