Why Tipping Is Impossible to Get Rid of in America

Okay, so make all added fees, including tips, illegal. All prices everywhere include sales tax. All meal prices include gratuity, or everyone in the restaurant is paid a tipless wage. Let people get over the sticker shock.

Increasingly, everything in this country has three prices: the sticker price, the price with sales tax, and a third price which depending on the industry is either the price with gratuity, the price with fees, or the subscription price.

You know what, I worry about this sometimes. We think that we're so evolved and advanced race - that we have poetry and literature, modern medicine and rocket science. That we deserve to explore the stars, and if we met alien intelligence we'd sit at the table as equals.

But turns out a normal human has emotion overriding even the simplest logic and basic arithmetic defeats most of us - I imagine it's not even just the "average" Joe - a lot of very intelligent people will see that $25 burger and decide that they'd rather go somewhere where the burger is $20, because it "feels cheaper".

Monkey sees banana, monkey wants banana. Except this monkey can build rockets and nuclear reactors.

At least for me, personally, I'm nearly at the point where I want to stop tipping entirely. It just seems so unnecessary and just another way that the capital class deflects blame for inadequate employee pay.

You dont tip in any other context. If you want the deluxe experience you order the deluxe option.

To me this seems wrong. If tipping were so great then why isn't it universal? What is special about restaurants?

Taxis/Uber/Lyft want tips. Same with barbers/salons/spas.

I know that the gray market is a big factor. Untaxed cash transactions under the table. But it is weirdly institutionalized and normal.

We have just decided to politely tolerate certain kinds of trivial illegal activity. But all-cash businesses do become a key vehicle for money laundering, and thus does have wider negative impacts.

It's not just that some low wage employees get tax-free funds. It aids organized crime.

I'm not exactly sure why it works like this, and contrary to the title this article doesn't really explain why.

Incidentally I've known plenty of people over the years who have worked in food service who never seemed to be lacking in cash for drugs, big car payments, expensive clothes. If just one sucker is willing to tip you 15% once per hour you're doing fine. If you're going home with hundreds of easily tax evadible dollars in your pocket at the end of the day stop complaining to me.

More context : the state take over some employers responsibilities by providing healthcare, unemployment, and retirement insurances. ( none of that is free, it’s been pay by both employers and employees )

More context : prices are fair, in the sense that middle class folks in those place can afford to go get intoxicated in bars and eat food in restaurant.

Now the question, dear American friends : what type of exceptions make those things unreal in your place?

It’s not a trick question, I live among you since a while. I don’t see tips going away like I don’t see firearms disappear.

But I’m merely an experienced watched of your society, so maybe you can explain me why tips are still a thing.

Another unmentioned way is if customers just get fed up with paying tips and start tipping less. I get annoyed with any digital payment screen that only offers default tip options of 18% or more and take my revenge by sometimes selecting no tip.

Prior to that the only way to equitably pay them alongside front of house was to pay them a higher wage out of the food costs. Those increased food costs put the restaurant at a disadvantage in the market even if the total take (food plus tip) was the same.

The issue I have with tipping is that it's everywhere. From the person who takes your order at a coffee shop, dining, ridesharing, and it's become ridiculous. Ban the solicitation of gratuities in drink and eating establishments; conversely you could make no-tipping a contingent for a restaurant license.

If people want to tip, fine, but enough with the asking.

Like, I don't think it is the right lesson to say that the higher price points scare away people in the abstract, as if everyone who is eating is paying the meal plus 15% and they are just being dumb by not realizing they are paying "the same" in a world where tipping doesn't happen. (edit: And yup... I now see other comments leaning into "Americans are bad at math").

It isn't that uniform: a lot of people tip 10% while many are tipping 20%; there are people who aren't tipping at all and people who routinely tip 30%... and it doesn't stop there! There are also people who at least occasionally throw in some massive tip... I myself have, for various reasons that made sense at the time, thrown down a >100% tip on small checks.

Sure, some people like the awkward "control" over the wait staff, but that is also simplistic: there are people who make it a status symbol and proudly are known among their friends--the wait staff doesn't matter--as "big tippers"; and there are people who get into friendly competitions with their friends over who tips the most.

The result is that this turns into a kind of "pay what you can" at best and an awkward gamified mechanic to force people to stretch to pay more at its worst, resulting in people who have the money to pay subsidizing the people who don't, which maybe is actually a good thing? If nothing else, I see why it is profitable, even if customers ALL kind of dislike it.

(It also, though, causes people who "feel the weight of society" and feel a need to tip to ensure people get paid to subsidize the people who have the money but are selfish and don't give a shit. My guesses as to the balance of people who don't tip much because they can't and those who don't tip much because they won't affects my personal feelings on whether it is "fair" or not.)

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9491448/here's-a...

The US is incredibly corrupt. It's our culture. I think it makes people feel they have more control over situations because they can pay to influence outcomes.

I have had orders cancelled by the driver because they found something that tipped higher despite me tipping $7 for something down the street less than 1 mile from my house. I have also tipped $20 only for instructions to be ignored where I put my gate code, unit# and ask for it to just be dropped off at my door step but the driver is so lazy they leave the food on the ground outside the gate on the street.

I could see it eventually going the way of internet advertising.. so noisy that a significant minority rejects the system altogether.

I tend to tip high when I do - but recently I've just been questioning it since the tip request has gone up even more.

Was this necessary to get your point across? Honestly, invalidated much of the article for me. I find that assumptions like this betray the poisoned viewpoints of the author.

Tipping is the standard in America and other 3rd world countries. The rest of the world should just get used to it and stop complaining.

Raise prices and be transparent with pricing - which is difficult with tipping since most people are bad at math and don't take out a calculator to see what $127 meal will really cost.

Tipping is a service tax and becoming an entitlement to a generation of workers who have never and likely will never have to really work.

No. Tipping is going away. Learn how to pay your employees properly.

Anecdotally, the culture gap between America and Europe when it comes to obligatory tipping is wider than the issue of tipping. Americans seem to generally value superficial pleasantness more than Europeans do. If a waitress in America is having a bad day, people still expect her to put on a pleasant face for the customers, while in Europe people seem to think it normal that a waitress having a bad day would treat other people in a natural fashion, clip and surly. For my part, I prefer the American culture and try my best to reciprocate. If I'm having a bad day, I try to remain superficially pleasant when interacting with waitresses, or anybody else. My bad day shouldn't become somebody else's bad day.

Tipping is not necessary for that sort of culture, but I do think it helps to reward it, and washes out those waitresses that can't manage it.