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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly how I think about tipping. I, and many friends and family, worked retail and food service jobs when we were young. Now I’m professionally successful and will not miss a couple extra bucks on a cup of coffee. So I’m happy to help boost the person serving it to me. I know it means way more to them than it does to me.

This also explains why people (including me) get SO MAD if they find out that tips don’t actually go fully and directly to staff. See: DoorDash.

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The way you describe it sounds like a micro trickle-down wealth redistribution rather than making sure someone has a fair wage.

Personally I find this really frustrating. You're not paid fairly for your labor. You only achieve a living wage through the generosity of those "happy to help boost" me. In my mind that reinforces a power dynamic between the "professionally successful" and those in the service industry. If I get a tip that raises my wage to something I can live off, now I must be profusely thankful to the person that donated their money to me.

I may be isolated in that opinion. I understand many service industry workers prefer tipping. For my personality though it's distressing.

Employees like tipping because it gives them greater control over their earnings. If they handle customers efficiently, if they sell hard, they can make more money. And they can take it home that day if they are receiving tips in cash.

And business owners like tipping because it aligns the employees' interests with their own: bringing in as much revenue as possible.

There are U.S. food service jobs without tipping, for example fast food chains or school cafeteria workers. Do these folks have higher pay as a result? Generally no.

I used to work shipping & receiving, where I got minimum wage, and didn't get a tip for anything. That's why I'm happy to let people working retail & food service jobs just do the work for their wage.

See how that works?

People working in restaurants in the US have a lower minimum wage than the rest of the country. So letting them do their work for like $3/hr doesnt really cut it

No, they do not. The employee is still owed the minimum wage, whether it be via tips or their employer if the tips do not add up to minimum wage.

Also, quite a few jurisdictions do not have tipped minimum wages anymore.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

I always thought tips was on top of minimum wage but sounds like it is more sponsoring/helping the employer to pay it's employees instead of an extra to the employee.

Money is fungible, so it would always be helping the employer pay an employee.

When a person decides to become a waiter versus a cook or a janitor, they are including potential income due to tips and lack of tips in their calculations. Thereby, the potential of tips always reduces the need for an employer to pay more.

That seems like a problem worth addressing.

This is a common misunderstanding. Tipped workers still make at least the full federal minimum wage no matter what, just their employer may not be paying more than $2.13 of it if tips are sufficient. It's still not exactly the same (and minimum wage being enough for anyone is a separate issue) but the fallback is the same minimum wage.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

No, I don't. I don't understand that mindset at all.

It wasn't just when I was older that the tips were expected, it was still expected while I was making minimum wage.

I'm a firm believer in better salaries rather than pushing the burden of sustaining an employee directly onto the customer by keeping an air of shame if you don't follow the "accepted tipping guidelines".

Whenever I've been to the USA I feel I'm being scammed every time I'm required to tip. I know it's your culture but it feels like an emotional extortion, if I don't tip I have to bear the weight of an underpaid employee not making ends meet because I don't think it was fair to see a price and then have to mentally add "20%" just because someone served me.

Worse, for me this culture makes me very uncomfortable by the level of service, I can tell when a waiter is miserable and just fake smiling to get me to tip more. When a waitress is over-the-top charming and nice while being berated by the kitchen staff for a misplaced order, etc.

It just makes every service I get feel fake and forced, to the point where I've avoided going to eat somewhere on days I'm exhausted because I don't want to deal with that weight on top.

I'd much rather just pay 20% over the price and know that the staff is well paid.

Tipping culture just opens a can of worm of abuses...

Another issue with DoorDash and GrubHub is that I am supposed to tip BEFORE delivery. I do that but most of the time my orders get delivered to a wrong building because drivers don't seem to read my delivery instructions.

I wish I could tip them directly after the delivery, but I am concerned that no one would pick up my order if I set the tip to $0 in the app.

This is why I always try to tip in cash, even when paying with a credit card. Higher chance of the tip actually going to the worker(s) and not their managers.

Me too. And I don't spend much time calculating either. Always round up, because you rarely get the opportunity to be a hero for $1.

Not defending what DD was doing there but whether it directly goes to the driver/server/cashier or not, you're still implicitly giving that money to the store owner/delivery company/restaurant by allowing them to get away with poor pay.

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