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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

As the meme goes, "that's a nice hypothesis you've got there. Be a shame if someone were to test it". If tipping fixes a supposed incentive problem that exists with tip-free service, than restaurant service should be better in North America than anywhere else in the world. Is it? Empirically, no. And even locally there is no gain from tipping: Seattle has several tip-free restaurants and the service is indistinguishable from the rest of them.

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I consider obligatory 20% tipping as that weird American thing along with guns and (absence of) healthcare. People have elaborate arguments and discussions about them, and the side in favor can look very rational and plausible, and their hypotheses can even have a lot of explanatory power, but they are easily refuted by looking at basically every other developed country.

I travel a lot and eat out a lot and I haven't noticed any discernible difference in service between the countries with obligatory, optional and prohibited tipping.

That's interesting you consider tipping an American thing, I'm guessing you aren't very well traveled as you clearly haven't been to Canada or the Middle East.

There are certainly places without tipping, with much worse and much better service than America. Why? It's cultural (duh). And in American culture, you tip mechanically if you can afford it and your experience wasn't notably incredible or terrible.

In some places, it is acceptable to raise your hand and call for service. In other places it is not. If you know that it not acceptable, and you do it anyways, you're sort of an asshole. It's the same with tipping. You're not some iconoclast who will personally change the culture.

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