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Comment by boomchinolo78 | Hacker News Reader

What? Who is harmed? Are we to pretend all waiters do an equally good job? Good service gets good tips, bad service, not good. It's just an incentive system.

The only reason it starts to breakdown is because there are really cheap people out there who will skimp on the tip and then complain when waiters treat them like shit.

If you are a regular at a place and you tip well, they'll spoil you.

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Most places in the world do not have tipping. The US has tipping because for some reason, the law allows restaurants to pay below minimum wage. I think that tipping should be outlawed and waiters should be paid a wage supported by the market, at least whatever minimum wage is (in California, that's $15.50/hr).

> The US has tipping because for some reason, the law allows restaurants to pay below minimum wage

Tipping predates minimum wage laws. (indeed the first laws to ban tipping in the US also predate minimum wage laws, but it clearly didn't stick)

I'm not talking about the history of tipping. I'm talking about why tipping exists right now in the US. It's a form of additional tax on consumers that the restaurants don't have to pay and exploits workers with the promise of tips. Restaurants going below minimum wage should be illegal and if they can't afford to do that, then I'm perfectly okay with them going bankrupt.

You made a claim about causality, I'm suggesting the causality is the other way around: these laws exist because the US has a culture of tipping. It seems unlikely that this existing culture of tipping would've stopped being a thing if these laws didn't exist, given the long confusing list of people you're apparently supposed to tip in the US.

I would argue that most places in the world do have tipping, it just manifests differently.

> Are we to pretend all waiters do an equally good job?

Are we to pretend all supermarket checkout clerks do an equally good job? No, but we don't tip them. They get paid a wage which is bundled into the price of every item I buy at the store. Same as every other cost of business like their insurance, electric bill, etc.

While we're at it, Engineers?

Part of the issue is a seemingly ingrained concept of "fairness" between when we do the same job we want the same reward (a grape not a cucumber stupid researcher!) ... And combine that with the propensity to overestimate our own contributions and underestimate the difficulty of what others do.. Suddenly even rationally fair "feels" unfair.

Should we tip doctors then? Surgeons? Software developers? Are we to pretend all professions do an equally good job?

Here is a free tip for you: you can tip your Healthcare workers. If you have a family member in the hospital, bring some homemade cookies or treats for the staff. I can't prove that it helps, but I am confident it does.

Only until the precedent is set that you need to tip $$$$ or else you're a cheapskate.

So when you get bad service in the US, you don't tip?

I've gotten bad service while traveling in the US - how can I not tip? Someone tell me, please, because when I'm paying it's usually before I even get the service and I'm already supposed to pre-pay a 20 percent tip or some such from a checkout prompt that doesn't always let me opt out.

Or when it does let me opt out, it's in plain view of the staff, of course; in a "go ahead and hit 0%, take a chance on whether we'll shit in your food" kind of way.

Growing up, i've been told leave at least 15%, or 10% if the service is atrocious, but never 0% if you plan on showing up to the same place again, or if anybody you know might find out. Being accused of tipping $0 is not generally something want to carry around with them

> Growing up, i've been told leave at least 15%, or 10% if the service is atrocious

This seems nuts to me - if the service is truly atrocious, to the point where it’s questionable whether the service I asked for was delivered at all, I’m going to refuse to pay at all.

If it’s run of the mill atrocious service and I want to prove a point via tipping, I’ll tip $0.01.

Do you have the same productivity each week? Do you get paid less when you have a bad week?

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