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Comment by blacksmith_tb | Hacker News Reader

Ouch, having worked in cafes and restaurants as an undergrad I pretty much always tip 20%. Is it absurd? Of course, but given how badly most waitstaff are paid, the idea that you will somehow eliminate the practice by stiffing a few barristas seems both sadistic and highly unlikely to change the world. Until robots hand me muffins, I accept it as a tax on eating out.

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stiffing a few barristas

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.

> McDonalds doesn't need my subsidy.

No, but the person to makes and hands over your coffee does.

> 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.

Then you're probably also old enough to remember when wage increases tracked with productivity increases, or when minimum wage kept up with inflation and the cost of living.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but what is the line of which workers to tip? Gas station employees do a similar job, and I have never seen anyone tip them. I have very rarely seen anyone tip a Subway sandwich worker even though they typically do more customization and work than a Starbucks employee.

If they are a tipped employee: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

I'm old enough to remember not needing to tip at starbucks or Panera, but not old enough to remember minimum wage keeping up with inflation.

The place where I first noticed the "tip your cashier" thing happening was the Panera at my university. Why in the hell would I tip someone who's job is literally to take my order, and maybe hand me a pastry? These people aren't making minimum wage either, I had some friends there and the job paid significantly more.

I worked my way through college as a waiter and bartender. My first job was as a golf caddie. I've dried cars at car washes and operated a rickshaw. In all of those cases, there is an understanding that a tip is part of the purchase. More importantly, there is some actual work being done or service rendered for the tip (less so for bartenders, which do get paid above minimum wage).

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...

> More importantly, there is some actual work being done or service rendered for the tip.

No, that isn’t for the tip, that is literally the job they are paid to do by their employer. Choosing to tip should only be if they have gone above and beyond what you would expect. I’m from the UK and find the US tipping culture bizzare and stressful - I had truly terrible service in a restaurant in New York once and they literally chased me to the door when they realised I hadn’t tipped and threatened to call the police if I didn’t tip him at least 10%.

I'm saddened that this is part of what you remember when you think about visiting the US. You absolutely should not tip if the potential recipient of the tip treated you poorly.

They were bullying you by threatening to call the police. The cops would have been annoyed to show up for that, and nothing about what you did is illegal.

Forgetting to tip is a fairly common tourist memory, though fortunately I've never had any threat. Not knowing when or how much to tip is also a problem.

- I was 12 the first time we visited the US. My dad was at first confused, since the hotel porter was hanging around, then he was embarrassed, as he didn't have any small cash.

- In New Orleans on a business trip, I kept forgetting to tip the barmaid. Other people at the bar were throwing her dollar bills on my behalf.

- Most recently, chip cards were fairly new — although I've had one for 14 years. I don't want to tip by card, it complicates my expenses, but navigating the dark-pattern UI on the payment machines was often confusing. Several waiters assumed I was stuck with the "new" chip card.

It's only "stiffing" if we start with the assumption they are supposed to be tipped.

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.

On the contrary, it was very much the norm, though starbucks killed it.

Coffee shops are a unique one, though traditionally you tip the barista in particular, not the cashier. It's been somewhat on its way out culturally over the past few decades in the US however.

Baristas were non-existent 30 years ago.

Espresso been around since 1903?

Kevin is right, at least in terms of terminology: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=barista&year_s...

Very cool tool!

The countries that have been consuming espresso for decades before it became common in the US don't treat making an espresso-based beverage as a skilled trade. I recall ordering a perfectly serviceable latte at a gas station in Israel.

A lot of states are paid less if it's a job with tips:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage

But is a barista etc one of those jobs?

Yes. Any front-of-house restaurant staff that gets a share of tips are subject to those laws, and it's ridiculous. Worse, some restaurants even force the tips to be split between dishwashers, who actually are making minimum wage in many cases, so waitstaff get crushed even harder.

It's illegal to force waiters to split tips with non-tipped workers unless the restaurant gives up the "tip credit" (referring to the portion of the minimum wage that they get to treat as paid out of tips) for the split tips.

Also on that page:

>If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any week, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate

Do you think in a real workplace people are going to constantly bring this up with their managers?

I think what happens in a real restaurant that doesn't share tips is that if you don't make enough you'll just be let go.

I think the IRS would spot this from a mile a way.

That's fine, but my problem with that line of thinking is that the norms we live with now have evolved to reward the workers who are serving the most affluent guests, not necessarily those working the hardest or who are paid the least.

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 accept it as a tax on eating out.

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.

>businesses are losing some amount of money because of tipping culture

Only in the most trivial sense that people know that, between sales tax and tipping, they're going to be paying a price that's 25-30% more than what's printed on the menu. And most people have some degree of price elasticity.

But I honestly can't imagine it matters much whether those adders are folded into the price up-front or you just know that you're going to be paying more than the printed price when you get the bill.

Apparently it does make a difference or restaurants would have just raised their prices and incorporated the tips.

Path dependence. The problem is that, if just one restaurant does it, a lot of people see the higher prices and don't realize a service charge and sales tax is included at that one particular restaurant. It's not unheard of to do but it's very uncommon and mostly doesn't work out well. (Plus both waiters and customers are mostly just used to the current system.)

This is starting to happen, albeit slowly. It's tied in to a push to equalize income between the back and front of the house. In the currently-prevailing model, back of the house is totally screwed money-wise relative to the front.

I don't think it's all that trivial.

In the first place, I tip well partly because of information asymmetry: I don't know how well the staff are paid from one place to the next. This means that one place may pay their staff pretty well, and I'm still adding 20% to the cost of my ticket, and another place may pay their staff pretty poorly. This is placing the two businesses on an uneven competitive footing, and encouraging more businesses to pay their staff as poorly as they can get away with. This may be business-as-usual in the current American business culture, but the end result is that I'm subsidizing bad business practices.

I'm also subsidizing poor tippers. I know there are people out there who, for whatever reason they justify to themselves, don't tip, and I know that there are some businesses that don't pay a living wage (probably most, today), so I try to cover an extra portion of that cost.

It's also removing much of the incentive for food service businesses to seek out untapped efficiencies. I'm pretty sure labor costs are the largest expense category for any food service business, yet they continue to pile on more staff because people like me are helping them get away with it. I can order a Starbucks from an app on my phone, right? So why is there someone at a cash register who punches my order in to a machine when they've already got the software that would let me do it myself?

If tipping were banished and these businesses had to pay all of their staff a fair wage, it's likely that my total bill would go down.

>I don't go out as often.

At what point do we begin to consider that choice stiffing the waiters you would've tipped if you did go out?

P.S. I also avoid going to coffee shops where tipping is expected.

In my neck of the woods, servers make $12/hour. Before tips, because LA no longer lets restaurants rely on tips for wages. (And that's increasing to $15/hour by 2020). So unless service is really good, I default to 10%.

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.

> it's disgusting that the person who spends may 30 seconds providing service gets X% of the bill

Yikes,wait till you find out how much the ACH and CC networks get for providing a fully automated service.

ACH and CC networks shoulder the burden of maintaining the system, fraud checks, chargebacks, etc. They provide a convenience function that lets me avoid having to carry cash around everyone, and lets the vendor minimize their cash-related costs. It's all worth the 2-5% they charge (and if you're paying more than that you've got bad negotiating skills). Cash isn't cheap--after security-related expenses, it costs just as much if not more than accepting credit cards, but the expenses aren't as easily traced back to individual transactions.

A guy bringing me a plate someone else cooked has not earned 20% of the bill.

The merchant doesn't need "the system or fraud checks" to sell lattes. Furthermore they get hit with chargebacks, which are a feature offered by the CC, not the coffee shop. You're justying why business A shoulders business B's expense. That's like saying Visa should wipe down the espresso machine.

As somebody from a state with a high minimum cash wage I am astounded that servers still expect 15-20% tip because of the cultural influence from states that have a cash wage set at federal minimum. I am curious how you feel about tipping 20% to a server you know is making $9-15/hr.

I didn't even know tipping at cafes was a thing. Don't they earn above minimum wage? I know waitresses get 2$/h, but baristas, they must get above 8$/h.

Do you also tip at McDonalds?

I don't eat at McD's, but you general see that cafes have a tip jar at the register (not Starbucks, but your local coffee shop, that is), while chains of all sorts don't. Oddly this isn't because they pay their staff a fortune... (though as was pointed out earlier, perversely many states have laws which allow for paying below minimum wage for jobs with tips, so ultimately no one in food service can really win).

Do you tip the workers at fast food chains?

Their employers are the ones who are screwing them if they dont pay them, why would I feel guilty for actions of another person?

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