You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping
wsj.com
wsj.com
Very few people in the US are going to admire a principled stance you take against tipping. The moral of the opening breakfast scene in Reservoir Dogs was not that Steve Buscemi was a smart and principled dude. Harvey Keitel was the one you were expected to admire in that scene.
A very easy, relatively pleasant way to get through life in the US if you're well-off enough that you routinely buy coffee in expensive coffee shops: just always tip. Anywhere there's a tip line. You never have to figure anything out, and sometimes people really appreciate it.
The entire burden of compensating them is on me either way, isn't it? The employer doesn't pay the employee out of his own money. He pays it out of the money that comes from customers.
The question is simply the route. Either I pay $4 for a muffin, and all of it goes to the employer before any reaches the employee, or I pay $3 for the muffin to the employer, some of which gets passed on to the employee, and $1 directly to the employee.
Tipping complicates things. That's why I don't like it. Not only does it reintroduce math, but it also introduces complexity in my relationships with every server of every kind. Did I tip enough? Did I tip enough in his opinion? Did I need to tip that guy that did that little thing? Do they hate me now? Will they do something to my food? Will they slack off next time, out of resentment? These are not things I need to be thinking about after every transaction.
Down with all tipping! And daylight savings time! I don't know why, but in my heart they are connected. And maybe I'm finally ready to adopt the metric system.
And then people that should be tipped, aren't. I'm thinking about a helpful secretary at work that moves calendar entries around to get you a meeting with a high level manager, or a nurse working a double shift in the emergency room easing the pain of your kid's broken arm.
Sell a $4 muffin without tips, and you might lose business for being seen as "too expensive". Even if everyone always spent $4 anyway when you consider tips.
My favorite brand of fish fillets no longer come with packets of tartar sauce, because $8 for a box of breaded fish was seen as too expensive and they didn't sell well. So now the box is $6.25 and they have a display of little tartar sauce bottles for $1.75 next to the freezer. Sales more than tripled, or so claims my grocer.
I agree with you overall, and I don't think the psychological trick of dividing up the cost is a good reason to keep tipping going. Just mentioning it as a reason that seems to exist.
First, it allows businesses to advertise lower prices than consumers will need to bear. It's similar to the American habit of adding sales tax at the point of sale instead of including it in the posted price that way. And because, as a species, we're prone to anchoring effects that causes us to systematically underestimate what the final total will be. That's pretty good for proprietors of service sector businesses, but probably slightly bad for the economy as a whole.
Second, it allows those proprietors to price discriminate a little bit (because price sensitive customers will sometimes buy the service but not tip) while pushing the downside risk off onto their employees.
And that's not even touching the way tips allow customers to de facto discriminate against staff (conventionally attractive people get more tips), or staff against customers ("black people don't tip"), in ways that would be anywhere from suspicious to downright scandalous if they were implemented more formally.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't tip well. You absolutely should, as service workers depend on tips to be fairly compensated for their labor. But tips are a bad idea and there's plenty of reasons beyond social awkwardness to wish they would go away.
That sounds true in principle, but your ignoring the commision aspect of the service. In the tipping model, a very efficient server could, say, serve 100 miffins/hr and be tipped 20% each accordingly. A fast, but rude server could serve 100 muffins, but perhaps get 0-10% tip each sale. A slow, but polite server may only serve 50 muffins, but garner 20% tip each.
If you simply jack the muffin price up and distribute equally among all servers, as you suggest, then there is no incentive to perform above average - no lesson learned for lackluster performance.
Personally, I tip anywhere between 15 - 30%, understanding that this is part of the servers anticipated income. If service is bad enough for me to want to tip 0%, then I either leave before I place an order, or I tip 15% then don't go back then write a negative Yelp review to warn others.
And the idea that eliminating tips would be "jacking up" prices is exactly the line of faulty reasoning that tips are designed to exploit. The muffin already costs 20% more than the number on the little plaque in front of it claims. Without tips the same amount of money would leave the customer's pocket and the employer and employee would still ultimately split the proceeds from that sale the same way. No prices actually change, but the numbers become a lot more honest and simpler for all parties to reason about.
The truth is vendors don't want prices to be simple to reason about because when they're difficult to reason about the other actors in the system will, on average, tend to make mistakes of reasoning in the vendor's favor.
Well, sure, in some world where tipping actually reflects service and politeness alone, rather than being significantly determined by gender, race, and attractiveness.
> If you simply jack the muffin price up and distribute equally among all servers, as you suggest, then there is no incentive to perform above average - no lesson learned for lackluster performance.
Sure there is, employers can monitor performance and use pay incentives (and punitive disincentives, including termination.)
Employers of workers in customer service jobs in industries that aren't typically tipped do this (and even in tipped industries, they do some monitoring and at least the negative incentives.)
This seems like a weird argument. Do the customers get no say in whether or not they want muffins?
You seem to be implying that a person behind a counter selling muffins is able to alter dramatically the demand for muffins by being efficient.
Most cafes or stores that I see are basically waiting for customers or have only a couple of customers, nowhere near reaching the limits of how fast a worker can throw muffins at them.
I realize you're only using muffins as an example but it's the same with most food places I see.
How is it then that non-tipped employees have incentive to perform above average, or learn lessons from lackluster performance?
This echoes the sentiment that 'if you can't afford to pay a X% tip, you can't afford to buy the product'. Problem is that it seems to keep going up. It use to be 10, then 15, now it is closing in on 20 and in some areas 22 seems to be the expected. How far does this logic extend? If you can't afford to tip 50% then you can't afford it?
My preferred reaction has been to begin avoiding places where tipping is an option.
Expected tip is definitely going up.
Restaurant owners NEVER say "Oh look, expectation for tipping in the general public is up 5% this year, let's cut down our menu prices to balance this out."
I don't know what logic is behind your statement - could you please elaborate?
I'd actually say it wasn't complicated, until technology like this made the experience awful. Before this tech existed, I don't ever recall being verbally asked for a tip, and if I had I would have thought it to be the height of rudeness. I certainly don't ever recall being asked for a tip while the machine then broadcasts your tipped amount to everyone else in line behind you.
I get your overall point that tipping is a way to make extremely low-wage jobs slightly more bearable, but I'm fine with people pointing out how this technology is ridiculous and not a good thing.
Don't even get me started on the fact that the purpose of tipping is to reward service after you have received it.
What about haircuts, yard work, and any other often-tipped service profession? "How much would you like me to charge your card?" is, and always was in my experience, super common in those areas--and that's the same thing as asking for a tip.
Hell, if you pay cash at a restaurant, "do you want change for that?" is similar.
I think it has always been more or less that way, and that's fine. A button on a screen or a coded question aren't much different if you're paying attention, and not having to do the annoying indirect-etiquette game probably makes life easier/less awkward for people receiving tips.
I've paid cash at plenty of sit down restaurants and never had that question. Almost invariably, when the cash presented exceeds the bill when the server picks it up (instead of leaving a tip separately after paying the bill), the server will say something like “I’ll be right back with your change” in exactly the same way they’ll say “I'll be right back with your drinks” when you've ordered them. Now, this certainly provides an opportunity to decline (or to make specific requests for how the change should be provided, as may be necessary to leave the exact tip you want), but it's not asking that.
However it frustrates me to no end, that customers are expected to do compensation sharing with the employer. The nefarious thing about this is that the employer has put the negotiating for fair wages between the customer and employees instead of between the employees and the employer.
End of the day its manageable as you say, just price in the tip - however I prefer places that have it priced in (same goes for tax).
Either way, tipping is not an elaborate conspiracy. It might have been long ago, but today, it's just the way service work in the US is organized. If you want to crusade against the injustice of it, that's fine! But make sure your crusade is orthogonal to whether or not you actually tip. :)
Neither good nor bad.
> In a tipping system, when things are going well, everyone tips; if things aren't going so well, not so much. There's some wiggle room between the list price and the actual price, which might offset price stickiness.
That's terrible! Instead of the burden being spread around, the restaurant still makes money and the employee doesn't!
A debate, perhaps worth having. Meanwhile your server makes less than minimum wage because tips are expected to fill in the gap. A while back it was $2.13 an hour. Not giving him a tip is only going to ruin his day, not start a revolution. As of right now, the chicken dish cost $16 plus an unofficial but expected 15-20% tip. Do you have the roughly $20? if not, grab a few slices of pizza.
Edit: I don't tip 20% when I grab a coffee at Dunkin. Oh no. Maybe leave them the loose change.
Why not? Not a critique, just curious about your rationale when you note that "tips are expected to fill in the gap".
It's not a "tip". It's an expected (and the expectation is in law, as evidenced by the lower minimum wage) part of the employee's salary.
This is a really bad system, (as David MItchell would say, it's a tax on conscience), but it's the system the US has. It's very different from almost all of the rest of the world where a tip really is a tip intended to reward good service.
In practice this is unlikely, but it’s still the legal requirement.
A tip, in the classical sense, is expected to be something that the person you're tipping gets to keep in addition to their wage.
A minimum wage isn't supposed to guarantee a minimum level of welfare (that's what direct-transfer welfare programs are for); it's supposed to guarantee a minimum proportion between labor-in and compensation-out.
In fact, think of the alternative case: it would piss most people off to realize that giving $20 to a person on welfare, means that—if the recipient is honest—the government will subtract that same amount from their welfare check for that month.
That's the way that system is supposed to work, and people still find it unjust. So why don't they find it unjust when it's a system (minimum wage) that's not supposed to keep people "at level", but rather to increase their compensation as they provide more labor?
By that logic, tipping is not an expectation since the law says that if the tips do not equal enough to bring the worker's earning up to the minimum wage limit, then the employer has to pay them the actual minimum wage and not the tipping minimum wage.
Many employers will not follow the law, but the solution to that is to punish the employers and empower and incentive the employees to seek out enforcement of the law.
Well, one could argue that this is effectively NOT making you feel better, quite the opposite. Empathy is what makes people feel better. So to counter-argue your point, tipping someone despite the fact you may have negative feelings about their service or judge incompetent, is empathy.
As a native French/European person, I've always thought of tipping as counter-intuitive, i.e. "why is the tip not included?". But after a few years in the U.S., I realized that this is actually a small gesture of appreciation that -- even if insignificant because so normalized -- will make the person serving you feel a little better about their job and themselves.
For that reason, I am now on the "always tip" camp.
What is it that makes restaurant and bar staff special?
But practically, certain customers end up paying a larger share of the service worker's take home pay. Dynamic pricing based on customer's willingness/ability to pay is an interesting pricing model, but in this case the risk is entirely on the service worker who hopes enough people pay sufficient tips.
Well, unless you are the next person in line who hadn't planned on leaving a tip and now feels guilty/obligated because the person in front of them put down a large tip right in front of the cashier.
My hope is that there will be sufficient political and societal will to expect employers to pay their employees a comfortable wage, and for everyone irrespective of whether or not they are an employer, employee, or self-employed to pay 100% of the taxes they owe without resorting to de jure or de facto loopholes or having an unreasonably high tax burden.
350 comments and heated discussions, embarrassing anecdotes about tipping (or not tipping) in the US, claims of tips creep from 10% to 20% and from full seated meals to coffee on the go, complaints of moral blackmail and peer pressure. Aren't all these already strong enough indications that the tipping system is bad and doesn't work? Isn't the fact that it doesn't exist almost anywhere else a proof that it's completely unnecessary?
Well, it's been too complicated for me because the comments in this thread show I've been doing it wrong.
For example, I sometimes picked up "to go" orders from Chili's restaurant[1]. In my mind, if I sat down to eat, I tipped the server. On the other hand, if I phoned in an order and picked it up, I didn't tip. Yes, I noticed that for pickup orders, the credit-card slip had an extra line to write in a "tip" but I just ignored it because my programming brain just assumed that tipping line is printed by the point-of-sale software regardless of sit down or take out service. (The POS programmer didn't bother to code the conditional IF(ORDER_TYPE==DINE_IN) PRINT "tip: ___")
A few decades ago when I worked in a restaurant and manned the cash register for take out orders, I did not expect tips when handing a customer a bag of food. That is the experience and decision tree I used when I myself became a customer for pick up orders. Therefore, the logical tip amount for takeout orders was $0.00.
However, this thread says I've been "stiffing" workers. I think times have changed!
EDIT ADD: The replies that further refined this specific restaurant example and I appreciate that but that's not really what I was trying to discuss. Let me try state my conundrum another way: I was exploring the generalized philosophical point about where the genesis of a particular tipping expectation comes from. The question is... do _new_ valid tipping scenarios legitimately come from software programmers modifying point-of-sale software to add a line that says "TIP:____"?
To make up an example, today when we go to get eyeglasses, the optician (or salesperson) will help pick out different frames, adjust and bend the frame for fit, clean it with a cloth, etc. Basically a bunch of "service" type of actions for the customer. Today, we do not tip this worker. However, if the POS software at Pearle Vision or Eyemasters starts printing out "TIP:___" on the credit-card receipts, does this, in itself, begin a new social more that compels us tip opticians? Would we then be debating in 5 years that we're "stiffing" opticians if we don't tip them even if some of us grew up without ever tipping opticians? Those are genuine questions and I don't know the answer.
I didn't tip the takeout cashier because I thought life experience with proper tipping etiquette was the proper guide and therefore, it's not dictated by the "TIP:___" text on a credit-card receipt. Many in this thread say that's wrong so I to re-evaluate this.
It's next to impossible to get enough small bills to cover all the tipping you need to do on a vacation, between hotels and taxis, and other incidentals. ATMs typically spit out the local equivalent of USD$20s if you're lucky; US$100s if you're not. Who's going to make change for that?
At home this is less of a problem because (a) I don't have as many things to tip for, and (b) I have had time to save up small bills for tipping. But when first thrust into a foreign country you need to be PREPARED.
I've spent about six months in the USA, mostly on family holidays and business travel, and never knew it was expected to tip housekeeping.
Pay the staff a decent wage, or at least a fair wage, then charge me accordingly.
How do I put a tip on my work expenses?
EDIT: I was wrong
Being UKian I didn't even know that this was a concept.
The hotel advertises a per-night fee, I pay it on departure.
Still felt bad when I checked out and still didn't have anything to leave.
That is making a lot of mistaken assumptions about how restaurant service works. I can only speak for myself and former colleagues, but very often increases in takeout orders correlated with fewer in-house patrons. Whether that was because Foodler was running a promotion, people who came in to sit down got discouraged by the sight of all the takeout business or what, I don't know.
Even if that correlation is invalid, it's not like restaurant workers are able to go and get tips from a thronging mass of people when you pick up takeout--we might be sitting on our hands earning nothing while we wait for tables to turn up. We're definitely not making the money "back" in some other way when you order takeout.
The explanation made sense to me though: The same waiter that waits tables has to package your food for you. Obviously it doesn't take as much of their time as people who sit down to eat so you tip less, but you're still using their time that would otherwise have been spent on people sitting at the restaurant.
Of course I wish we could just get rid of tipping by increasing the costs of the goods and paying them higher.
Ehmm, yeah it is. Other than the very well established rules for dinning in a restaurant, where one is expected to leave a tip of around 20%, all other situations are fuzzy.
Look at the replies in this thread. Everybody has their own rules about when, where and how much to tip.
I get your point, and agree, that it not really about rewarding exceptional service, but this doesn't make it less complicated.
And not many years ago that was 15%, and very recently it had settled around 18%, but, yeah, people are starting to throw around 20% as the baseline now. So, to call the rules even there “well-established” is...less than accurate.
Now it seems like 15% is what you give for truly bad service.
I think this thread (and similar threads every time the topic comes up) kid of puts that claim to sleep.
It'd just be so much easier if it was already included in the price.
It depends what your principles are. Only in very rare cases do I tip less than 20% in traditional tip settings (restaurants and bars). But this iPad tipping is young enough that 1) you're not a jerk for not doing it and 2) we as a society have a very reasonable chance of winning this war.
This is not to justify abstaining from tipping in the seven "full-minimum-wage" states. This is merely to provide some quantitative clarification of "being asked to share with a service worker's employer some of the burden of compensating them".
[0] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/12/service-with-a-smile
To me, these tip requests deserve as much respect as the old inner city window washer routines[1]. They are insulting and show a complete lack of respect for the customer who chose your shop to spend their time and money.
[1] Edit: or any aggressive panhandling.
Or were you just intending a pre-emptive general critique of the three people who might use this story to advocate tipping 0% for table service? I think that might merit waiting for the one thread it happens in.
(20% on a muffin is like 80 cents, by the way).
First, they make the experience more closely resemble tipping at a restaurant. Since etiquette fundamentally relies on on implications and expectations, that’s a lot more significant than it would be in other contexts. It creates a real suggestion that you should consider 15-20% mandatory, just as in restaurants.
Second, they force you to make an explicit choice: if you don’t want to tip, you have to actively press a “No Tip” button. This makes it feel more like an active disservice to the worker, rather than just doing the normal thing – to you, and to anyone watching you. Consider if, hypothetically, the worker themselves asked you if you wanted to tip: it’d be very hard to say no to their face! Having a screen prompt you (while the worker may or may not look away) is much less extreme, but it’s still a shift in that direction, compared to an inert tip jar.
Personally, it just feels awkward to me. I don’t mind tipping in restaurants because there’s a clear protocol. I just have to imagine the prices are 20% higher than what’s printed on the menu. But asking for a tip in situations where no tip was previously expected seems almost… passive-aggressive, I guess? If you want to bump prices by 20%, go ahead, I won’t mind, probably won’t even notice. But don’t do what amounts to an optional 20% price increase, creating unnecessary decision and emotional fatigue for me when I’m just trying to make a simple purchase. That is: If I choose not to tip, I’ll feel guilty. If I choose to tip, I’ll feel worried that I overpaid. Both feelings will fade quickly, because the amount is small enough that it’s not really a big deal; but they still damage what should be a simple pleasant experience.
I feel like tipping is perpetuating the asshole behavior of owners underpaying employees. I actually feel like I'm making the world a slightly worse place when I tip out of guilt or fear of judgment from those around me. But I clearly know I'm in the small minority with this view.
(Purely in the circumstances discussed here. For traditional full service settings, I'd call myself a generous tipper.)
My sister in law works at Starbucks. She’s a manager so she gets zero share of the tips, but for a busy Starbucks in an affluent area, tips work out to about $100 per week for someone working 35 hours.
Holidays are much higher. Some people will tip for the whole year effectively, putting $20 in the jar.
A lot of rough guesses in the math but $100/week looks like it would work out to 5% at most. Their store is definitely above average for daily revenue.
Most people are definitely not tipping 15% on that muffin.
"Just give money in every transaction that labels it a tip at PoS. What's the problem? Why do you have to think about whether the demand is merited? I can afford it, and I find it worthwhile to know I didn't break any rules."
We can recycle that old campaign and put it to good use.
Edit: Also delivery although that is questionable with businesses that charge delivery fees whether or not they go to the driver.
I'd add that if you make 6x or more than the average barista that you need to stop complaining about tips. I'll listen to anyone making barista-level wages complain about tipping other people, but I don't want to hear about it from other software developers with 6 figure incomes.
About the expectations, the good thing is they change fast. France had the same path, where tipping was strongly expected in cafes. In particular, as it was smallish amounts, people usually paid cash (or the cafe would just refuse credit cards below some fair amount) and it was easier to leave something on the table.
In a few years contactless became widely available, laws on obligation to take payments also became pervasive, and people paying a 2E coffee by card is not unusual anymore.
Numbers of tips have crashed [0] and the cafe owners are coming to terms with it. Anecdotaly amost places I saw baked the tip into final ticket as a “service fee”.
I think the same kind of mechanics will come at play most places. Why ask the customer for some random amount on a screen when everyone will be less awkward to just have it as a fixed line item in the receipt ?
[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/m-actu/article/2017/08/30/et-le-pourb...
The tip at purchase time paradigm is in many cases an artifact of integrating credit card workflows with cash businesses with established pay up front and tip after workflows (fast casual dining, etc.) If you are against it and not against tipping, just bring cash for tipping and tip on the back end.
I don't understand why people (buyers) are so thin-skinned about this. Leave a tip or don't. Whatever.
If you get good service, will good tip ensure a good experience the next time around? If someone gave you bad service, do you make it known? I think most would prefer not to say anything.
I'm old enough to remember a time that giving extra money to someone for handing you a cup of coffee would be thought absurd. Sit down eatery? No problem, there's prior art before I was born, disagree though I might. But this recent bullshit of "tip, because my employer doesn't pay me enough", whether its Starbucks, McDonalds, or your fave local coffee shop: yeah, fuck that. McDonalds doesn't need my subsidy.
Buying a muffin at a coffee shop and not paying a premium on top of the asking price is not sadistic. It's a normal commercial transaction. Based on your logic, why don't we tip fast-food workers, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, etc...
I'm not well-versed in the history of coffee shops, but it seems to me that it is not a well-established norm -- as compared to bars and restaurants, for example. But I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken about this.
For example, do you make a point of tipping the cashier at McDonalds? I'd bet that if you tried to and a manager saw you they would refuse it because the company doesn't want others to feel compelled to tip because they want to retain their image of a low-cost restaurant. Coffee shops selling $5 cups of coffee don't have that concern because people who frequent those places probably are a lot less price sensitive than those who eat at fast food restaurants.
15% used to be the norm across the board and adjusted from there based on the level of service. Now 20% is expected regardless of the level of service. In restaurants where a 20% gratuity is included in the bill I've noticed a significant drop-off in the level of service, even to the point where I would tip less than 20% if given the option, and I say that as someone who worked as a waiter at one point.
I'm highlighting this part because it's one of the main contributing factors to dining out less and less, for me, and that includes coffee shops. I always tip well when going out; ergo, I don't go out as often.
Going off of the "I'm not very unique" rule of thumb, businesses are losing some amount of money because of tipping culture.
And quite frankly, it's disgusting that the person who spends may 30 seconds providing service gets X% of the bill when 99% of the work is done in the kitchen by guys who don't get paid anything extra.
Do you also tip at McDonalds?
In most of the EU you tip for good service. IE; only if your food came in a timely fashion, was not mis-prepared or incorrect and if the wait-staff are generally being polite, kind, courteous.
The idea is that you’re rewarding good service, not that your bound by social convention to give a percentage extra on top of what was agreed upon when you read the menu.
While we’re on the subject, the idea of excluding tax on good until you reach checkout is absolutely insane to me.
I was also a waiter in the restaurant. I hated the stress, but could find no jobs with comparable schedule flexibility/required qualifications that paid as well.
But when pushing, it's worth it to be mindful of where you exert your force. The causal flow (from not tipping to wages being raised to the point where tipping is not necessary) is indirect enough that it is uncertain to effect the desired change. Might there be other paths to achieving this goal?
There are articles on the internet. Just type in "tipping slavery" in google. The Time magazine's article should come up on the first page.
... what?
Tipping was something that the patricians/bourgie upper class did to help uplift the waiters/service staff in Europe. It caught on in the USA in the late 1800s and fell out of favor from that upper class in Europe by then.
Largely, USA coopted a "noble gesture" from wealthy Europeans and it has persisted ever since for like a century.
Anyways, I hate tipping as well.
That's another wrinkle that many people don’t know about, right? Tipping in the United States actually dates back to slavery.
The origin of tipping is really the feudal system, it’s this idea of noblesse oblige. But when tipping came to the United States, it had a real racial tinge to it, because, originally, the workers who earned tips were almost exclusively black workers—they were newly freed slaves.
There was this massive anti-tipping movement to protest the practice, a resounding populist movement that actually got anti-tipping bills passed in six states across the country, including Washington state and many southern states. What’s interesting is that that movement, the anti-tipping populist one, ending up spreading to Europe and succeeding, because the labor movement picked it up and said ‘we are professionals, and we shouldn’t have to live on tips, because we should be paid by our employers.’ That’s why you see so little tipping in Europe. What we started here spread there and actually killed it at the origin in Europe.
We, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction in the states. The restaurant industry, which was hiring newly freed slaves as tipped workers, really wanted the right to hire these workers but pay them next to nothing. So they put forth this idea that they were valueless and really shouldn’t have to be paid by their employers. They essentially made the argument that newly freed slaves should get a zero dollar wage.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/i-dar...
Feelings will be hurt, people will talk over each other, and no one goes on doing anything different than they did before.
Might as well as be debating tabs vs. spaces while we're at it.
Tipping is being fundamentally exploited as a way to make everything look cheaper.
You're free to calculate the tip however you like. Just because some junior programmer took the easy way out to make the math easier doesn't mean you have to along with it. I don't recall a digitized tip screen that didn't let me enter a custom amount.
For example, Square's documentation: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5069-accept-tips-wit...
>You will need to select if you would like your tips to be added before or after your taxes have been applied to the sale.
I have kids, and I know they can be a pain for servers. If they handle my kids well (e.g. sitting us in a booth near a wall is better than a table in the middle of the room) and/or my kids make a mess, I'll leave a bigger tip. If they ignore is for more affluent looking customers, I'll leave a smaller tip. When I bring my kids, I'm not paying a sitter, so that money is up for grabs.
My wife and I will often order and give some to the kids instead of them having their own meal (they only pick at it anyway), so basing the tip on the bill isn't a very good way to do it. I also don't like to buy drinks (I don't drink alcohol and I prefer to avoid sugar), so my bill will always be way less than someone who goes all out.
The convention in the US is to compute the tip on the pre-tax amount. If the pre-tax price is $10, a 20% tip is $2 and 8% tax is $0.80, for a total of $12.80.
Now, some of this software has come along and tried to sneak in a change to the formula where the tip is computed on the post-tax amount. They take $10, add 8% tax to get $10.80, and then compute 20% of that for the tip, for a total of $12.96.
They have deceptively changed the tip rate from 20% to 21.6%.
Whether prices are listed tax inclusive or tax exclusive isn't the issue. Even with tax-inclusive pricing like Europe has, it still would have been possible to sneak in a change to the formula for computing the tip.
It's simply a bug. I got a suggested tip amount on a bar bill, the other day and it was clearly derived from the total of all the food and beverage, before taxes. It was all there in writing, and the figures were easy for me to check in my head.
Obviously this would indeed increase tip amount, but it would definitely decrease confusion and probably fix itself over the long run if the new tip amount was too big.
Minimum wage laws also applies to the pre-tip salary so it's not really expected most places unless you get exceptional service. I've never seen "pre-calculated" tips either here or elsewhere in Europe.
At the bottom of the menu it says something like "A discretionary service charge of 10% will be added to your bill [for groups of (4|5|6) or more]"
Then it ends up like this: https://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/28hfOrBSZ1SYPD--tlNU...
I don't like it; it makes the prices on the menu appear smaller than a competing restaurant.
Capitalism only work if both side of the transaction have the same information, that's how Stiglitz got his Nobel prize. (another US trope: collecting the Nobel prizes and never reading the papers)
Instead of guilt-tripping customers into tipping, businesses in Japan up their prices if they need more money.
I remember once when I was in Osaka I was at a really good sushi place that I had visited several times prior. There was no tip option on the receipt (didn't see it anywhere in Japan) and there was no tip jar. I asked the server if I could tip.
She told me they couldn't accept my tip because they believed the food was priced correctly.
It was a totally different experience than in America where not tipping gets you poor service and unhappy waiters.
> Tipping actually originated in the aristocratic homes of feudal Europe.... When tips came to the United States in the late 1850s, 1860s, there was a massive anti-tipping movement. It was actually considered to be undemocratic, un-American.... Well that movement, which came right around the time of the emancipation of the slaves, was squashed by the restaurant industry, which argued that they should have the right to hire newly freed slaves and not pay them anything as valueless people and essentially let them live on customer tips. And so many of the first tipped workers in the United States were former slaves.
And from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12tipping-t.html... :
> After the Civil War, wealthy Americans began traveling to Europe in significant numbers, and they brought the tip home with them to demonstrate their worldliness. But the United States, unlike Europe, had no aristocratic tradition, and as tipping spread — like “evil insects and weeds,” The New York Times claimed in 1897 — many thought it was antithetical to American democratic ideals. “Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape,”
I think tipping is very rare in most of asian countries.
We were chased by an irate waiter asking why I hadn't tipped. So I tipped him a single dollar bill to make it clear how little the service was worth.
They're just hugely underreported because the kinds of people that work off tips are people making $2.15/hr instead of actual minimum wage (which is still criminally low). That's what needs to change in this equation - paying workers what they are due.
Many servers just don't bother to report cash tips (aka: tax fraud).
Tipping won't go away until restaurant owners stop being dorks about the whole matter. They also benefit because the unaccounted for tips don't count as income to them, and thus they benefit as well.
The bottom line is, patrons get sticker shock when they see the real price of a meal. This happens when restaurants change prices after a few years because the cost of product goes up, or if they switch to paying a living wage to their employees. If the culture as a whole doesn't switch, then people are just going to keep supporting poor labor practices by the industry because they typically have their own issues to focus on.
>>That is why most restaurants that have tried no-tipping have gone back to it. Citation absolutely needed. Many restaurants have never tried it, and many of the restaurants that have tried it kept it.
You could probably get away with shortchanging the IRS where tips were all cash but with cash declining on a value + volume perspective I think those days will be behind us soon enough.
I've had Danish waiters press the "No tip" button on their machine. One of them even said it was only used for "foreigners", which I took to mean Americans.
[1] Bad Anglo-German pun?
It is disparaging that one's performance while working in a kitchen is not only not rewarded, but the reward for good kitchen performance is actually given to the waitstaff.
Just to be clear, I do tip. I usually just go with $5, $10, $15 or $20. If the order is really large I might do the math just to make sure I'm in the ballpark. If the food is particularly good, I will send a $20 back "to the chef".
I often tap "no tip" on Square terminals.
To many people, tipping feels like an unfair relic of the past that can be associated with negatives like racism (servers of color receiving less), pay disparity (why do underpaid servers get to benefit from tips but not underpaid line cooks), etc.
At least here in NYC there's been a growing movement of "tip included" restaurants and coffee shops, which feels like social progress.
But when my bakery added a prominent tip jar (not even a cafe!), when Uber added a reminder about tipping after each ride -- it can feel like society moving backwards.
I tip because I frequent local restaurants, bars, coffee bars, etc - and the 20% is a little good will towards the establishment. How can I walk around complaining about Amazon and big corp dominance when I won't even cough up 20% for a small local place?
*note how I'm only mentioning local establishments. To hell with everyone else
Whether or not the system is just, the businesses are compensating their employees fairly or not, or my tips are going to one person or the whole group, I feel better about not needing to worry about such things, eliciting a good reaction from the employees I interact with on a regular basis, and putting more of my money into the local economy in which I live and interact with on a daily basis.
I can't solve any of the macro problems, but for a minimal cost to me as a highly paid tech worker, I feel good about my contribution to the micro problems. YMMV.
Then maybe the server should tell the customer how much they need to be tipped?
"Welcome to AppleBees. My name is Trevor and I need an additional $24.89 in tips today so that my employer isn't obligated to pay me the minimum wage for this state."
Also, should I be under-tipping waitstaff that I think are rich enough?
This is not true in all states. Kentucky has no provision for this, e.g. (I worked in restaurants through college, so I have hands on experience here.)
That said, its just the right thing to do for servers are trying their best. Finding a few dollars per table makes their day a little brighter.
Pay at the bar before receiving food? Don't tip.
Buying drinks at a bar? Don't tip.
Ordering an Uber? Don't tip.
Etc.
They also almost definitely remember (and talk about) people who don't tip at all.
No, the owner of the place deprives his/her employee of a living wage. I don't see how can that be possibly the responsibility of the customers.
Also tipping a bartender for popping a cap off my beer or pulling a lever on a tap...
Also tipping in a full service restaurant is equally fucking weird. Like why am I paying you a percentage of the food I order, why don't I just pay you (how good a job you did) * (how long I sat at your table).
Edit: I now have one $2000 expense card that I pay off each month and typically stays under a 50% balance to build my credit.
I could see taking responsibility though for not choosing to eat at more expensive restaurants that generally pay their staff better.
Probably what it comes down to is that restaurants are entertainment so aren't needed by society the way that grocery stores are. Then again, so is just about everything else in our economy. 10% of our labor could supply all our basic needs, the rest is just wasted keeping up with the Joneses. What I'm saying is that there may be no free market solution to the service industry being underpaid, which is why I support a $15 minimum wage and universal basic income, among other things.
In the case that I do engage with such a business, I only tip when there is objectively individual work being done: Eating out at a table? Tip the waiter 15%. Waiter was extremely rude? Tip the waiter 0%. Picking up food at a counter after ordering online? Tip 0%. Bringing bags into a hotel? Refuse help so I don't have to tip.
I really wish tipped workers would just get paid an honest wage to begin with, meaning the true cost of labor would be baked into product prices!
Like wtf?! US is weird.
However, I grew up being told that I should work hard, everyday and earn my paycheck. I was taught that expecting a tip was wrong because I should give my very best, always, regardless of how much money I was earning. If I was unhappy with the money, find a job that paid better. But always give 110% at every job.
When I was younger I worked at a Starbucks. I was in charge of counting the tips each week and distributing them. The formula was based upon how many hours you worked that week. It usually worked out to be around $20-something, sometimes more, around holidays maybe $40-$50 something. I never cared how much. However other co-workers would cry if it was low because they felt like they were "stiffed". Not because they did a bad job, but because they just expected good tips.
Recently in China, I stayed at the same hotel for a few months. When it was time for me to leave I asked my co-workers how much should I leave the maid for a tip. After all she cleaned my room for months. They told me don't leave her anything. It would be considered an insult because it implied that she didn't do her very best and maybe more money would have made her do better work. I was a bit taken back because I expected to tip her. I asked a few more co-workers and they all said the same thing. Don't tip her. Instead what I could do if I really wanted to was to leave her something that wasn't money. Like a gift of some sort. I left her a new Vivo X20 Android phone.
I go out of my way to add to tip jars after I've actually been served (my latte has a nice heart on top? awesome). But this whole idea of tip-before is ridiculous.
I never tip up front if the machine asks for it, and I feel no guilt whatsoever.
Tipping is part of business strategy to bait and switch people with lower prices. It's becoming common to hide the real price of things as we see with tips, resort fees, service charges, booking/ticket printing fees etc. Just give us the real price upfront.
In purely effectiveness terms, that's why they are the perfect lever—in the current pay regime, they can't afford to do the job without tips, so a sufficiently broad practice of withholding tips that renders them unreliable for even the workers that would previously thrive under tipping will force labor pressure on businesses to end the current tip-expected pay regime and collapse the tipping system.
Now, the interim state might be near-apocalyptic for servers, but it there is probably no more effective way to bring the tipping system down.
And if you're protesting the tipping process by not tipping workers who make less than minimum wage, please don't go around acting like you're noble or better than those who tip (as has happened multiple times in this thread) That attitude serves nothing but to soothe your conscience.
You should tip hair stylists and restaurant staff that brings you food or drink. I generally only tip 15 percent and I never tip at a buffet.
So if most people are choosing "No Tip", where did this unwritten rules of tipping go. If I should be concerned of living wage, why is there no consumer pressure on business owners to make these changes? If people keep on complying with this unwritten culture of tipping, most people will always be in a dilemma when they are expected to tip.
For food I can kind of understand of since they decouple serving and preparation + ingredients.
Note that I am not American and am new to tipping. Just curious
The old 15% became 20%. The places you used to tip (solely personal service situations like a waiter or hairdresser) became everywhere.
If it was done right, everyone would be paid well, there would be no tips, and your stuff would just cost 20% more. I find it simpler to just tip 20% on everything.
I tip because the people I tip seem to appreciate it. It brings a little more happiness into the world. I could adopt an attitude that makes neither of us happy, but why?
Each individual tipping decision in isolation is a positive, but the aggregate together preserves a system which is a negative. There's a collective action problem, and the moralizers are trying to drive defection from the existing regime to the point where it breaks the problematic system.
Also, the moralizers aren't mostly moralizing to the recipients, but to others in their same social strata. They aren't trying to get tied workers to defect from typing, they are trying to get other people like themselves to stop tipping.
I am completely against tipping unless the service is exceptional. If restaurants in Europe can afford to pay their employees living wages, it should be possible here as well.
A few informal polls awhile ago (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/theres-stil...) couldn't come to a consensus.
Now that it's standard for Uber and similar companies, well, it sucks but there we are. It's always been customary to tip taxi drivers, so it's not weird, just an unfortunate failure to change the culture.
Sometimes I take a regular cab home from the airport because the Port Authority has (seemingly) intentionally made using app-based services as inconvenient as possible. At least now everyone has Square for credit card payments, but the cab drivers often have the minimum automatic tip set to 25% (or even 30%!) so I have to take the time to manually enter something more reasonable. I'm sure they get a significant number of passengers who are in a hurry and can't be bothered to do so.
I can understand tips at restaurants for waiters. I cannot understand tips at coffee shops and pizza places without waiters. What is the tip for? Pray tell.
Also the visual difference between tipping 20% and 10% is huge with this, it's hard to tell with cash and change
The reasoning is "so you don't look cheap". If "looking cheap" matters to you, shame will rule your life and your actions. What other people think generally does not matter - assuming "other people" are not your boss, spouse, or someone in a direct position to affect you. Not trying to make a case for becoming a sociopath, but they definitely don't experience that guilt described in the article.
For restaurant table service, hair stylist, tattooing, or other personal care or beauty services, tip 15% of your before-tax bill total. Adjust 5% up or down in response to perceived service quality.
For a buffet restaurant or food delivery, tip 10% of your before-tax bill total. Do not adjust the amount; if the delivered order is incorrect or unforgivably tardy, do not tip.
For bartenders, tip at least 10% of your tab before you leave, minimum $1 per drink, even if you are paying by the drink. If service was not courteous and timely, do not tip. Just leave, and do not return. If you'll be getting too drunk to remember the tip at the end of the night, pay it as you go, with each drink. Don't tip in advance; that's for low-tippers who want to look like big shots. Baristas are not bartenders. If you want bar tips, get a liquor license and put booze in the coffee.
For restaurant counter service, drive-through, street stand, fair kiosk, or food truck, do not tip. This is the portion relevant to the article. You do not get a tip for a bog-standard service mandated by the employee manual. Operating the point-of-sale terminal and handing me the goods I just paid for is exactly that. No, I will not pay you 20% to hand me a muffin. If an employee suggests or implies that I should do so, I am less likely to return. If that tip suggestion is inappropriately embedded in the point-of-sale process, that's a management problem, and I definitely won't return.
For taxi/driver/shuttle service, tip 10% of the fare. Adjust upward for very good service, but do not tip less than 10% unless you are tipping nothing for very poor service.
For baggage handling or porter services, tip 1% the cost of your ticket, delivered item cost, or daily room rate, per bag/parcel, minimum $1 each.
For hotel concierge, 10% your daily room rate, per service, on checkout. For hotel maid service, tip 1% your daily room rate, per day, minimum $1, attached to a note at the end of each week, or left in the room on checkout.
For independent service contractors/small businesses, such as house cleaners or personal trainers, do not tip, but give an appreciation bonus if you wish on your yearly customer anniversary, or slightly in advance of the year-end holidays.
But I would just change the law: set a normal minimum wage and advertise tax included prices. And probably nudge as much as possible against the tip (I don't think it's bad enough that we need to make it a crime), but IMF has a dim view on the tip, it encourages corruption in all society.
If you go into the situation intending from the beginning not to follow this convention but receiving the benefits of it, then you are not acting in good faith. You are, through nonverbal communication, misleading the waiter.
Consent should matter when two parties enter into a transaction, and it should be informed consent. If you think what you're doing right now meets that standard, then next time try telling the waiter at the beginning that there will be no tip, and see if it makes a difference.
Stiffing waiters in the same establishment more than one is a risky proposition at best.
Minimum wage is different for tip receiving employees, but if the tips do not add up to normal minimum wage, then the employer is required to supplement their paychecks until they hit minimum wage.
So if you like the service that the waiter brought you, you got to tip. The money goes to them only. If you get a haircut, then you got to tip if the barber/stylist went a couple of steps further and made sure you got the haircut you like. You got to show your appreciation for workers who went above and beyond their requirements to serve you better.
Who do you tip at the self-service gas station? The gas doesn't just get to the pump by itself.
Who you tip when you buy something from Amazon? The product doesn't get to and from the warehouse by itself.
As I see it its just a way for restaurants to punt the responsibility of providing livable wages to workers and externalizing every nickle and dime to me the consumer. its just a way to put you on the spot and shame you into paying extra.
> In Connecticut, Mr. Dimyan, who says he feels his $3 coffee is pricey enough as it is, vented about the electronic tip prompts in a Twitter post earlier this month.
> Square replied from its official Twitter account: “Tap `No Tip.’”
Or.... Pay cash for a $3.00 item?
Do HNers still use cash? It's been years since I carried a wallet that has a slot for cash.
Yes. And not even for the ultra-privacy-minded people.
I use cash for bodegas (small corner stores in NYC) because they have card minimums I don't want to hit.
and cause I like to play cards.
2. It takes me about 10 minutes to make a cappuccino and clean up the mess. And I'm pretty experienced with a nice setup. I am paid a lot more than $6/hour. Hell, my college side gig paid a lot more than $6/hour.
3. Coffee shops are a nice place to get work down outside of work (eg side projects or self-learning). Especially relevant for those with kids at home.
So for a $3 drink, he's paying $1-$2 for an hour or more of shared work space and 10 minutes of saved labor time.
That seems like a fair deal.
And this is assuming that it's even possible for him to make the drink he wants when he wants it. If he works in an office without an espresso machine, it might just be straight up impossible for him to make the coffee he wants when he wants it.
Now, maybe Folgers from a drip machine should be good enough. But if we're going to be pragmatic robots, we should really just buy super cheap caffeine powder in bulk and mix it into our free water.... Folgers is for snobby suckers. Plus, I bet you have some hobbies/mini-luxuries I don't care about and could scoff at ;-)
Further, is there a difference between someone serving a full meal and someone that is just punching buttons?
> If you can afford to spend $3 on a coffee, you can afford to spend $3.60 on a coffee.
sounds like a logical fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox#Paradox_of_the...
It might be that $3 is right at the limit of what I am willing to spend on a cup of coffee, and that doesn't deserve a "check your (expletive) privilege."