“tipflation” and “tip creep” are sparking a backlash | Hacker News Reader

“tipflation” and “tip creep” are sparking a backlash

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70 pointslxm179 comments

Just tell us the fucking price.

No fees. No tips. No taxes. No special assessments. I don’t care about your costs.

There’s a reason Americans hate buying cars and those that sell them.

In North America I hate buying anything, anywhere. Currently whatever I'm buying is 13% (tax) more than the sticker price, not including an arbitrary service charge and tip amount.

Whatever tip I give will be either too little and I'm guilty, or too much and I'm annoyed, or zero and I'm a monster.

It's exhausting. Just put a number on the sticker and let me either take it or leave it.

> Currently whatever I'm buying is 13% (tax) more than the sticker price, not including an arbitrary service charge and tip amount.

And tipping on the after tax amount too!

It's everywhere. Order food and there's a handling fee, a delivery fee, a packaging fee, misc. restaurant charges, tax...I never know what the final price will be. I've abandoned so many shopping carts because I just don't want to pay an unexpected price.

Here in NYC (and I’m sure elsewhere in the US) there was a movement to end tipping policies for all of the reasons noted here.

For a short time it succeeded for well known and established restaurants. Prominent restauranteur Danny Meyer signed all of his (mostly high-end) restaurants on. However while it worked at known entities that catered to very price insensitive customers and whose employment was considered a stepping stone, lesser known establishments couldn’t make it work. Employees left for jobs where they’d make more from big tippers and customers balked at higher service included prices.

The pandemic shattered pretty much all traction when even the most elite restaurants had an impossible time finding and retaining talent. In 2020 Meyer’s Union Square hospitality reversed their no tipping policy [0].

Long story short tipping is baking into US hospitality culture and very hard to change on a restaurant by restaurant basis.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tip...

This sounds like a coordination problem that a government could solve. One of the three I’m paying (NYC, NYS, USA) should take a crack at it.

Sounds like an impossible task if you account for customers not wanting to pay more for food. People who don't make a livable wage would just opt to work somewhere else or move away from the hospitality industry altogether.

How does requiring honest pricing on menus imply paying more?

Just make the sticker price include median tips and people pay the same amount as before. Everyone are happy.

Well, imagine you are walking by a restaurant, you see the menu. A dish that you are interested in is $15.99. "Not bad", you say. You walk in, finish your meal, get the bill, and realize that with all kinds of taxes and fees it came out to be pretty much $20. Then you have to leave a tip, and since the minimum is really 20%, you go "it's tough times for the service workers, fine, here is $25".

At least that's how it always goes for me, but the point is, the price you see for entrees in the U.S. is pretty much +$10. If the advertised prices were this high, I wager fewer people would be walking into restaurants.

The industry as a whole is probably interested in this systematic bait-and-switch, and to get from there to the real, "service included" prices would be too much of a shock to the system. The price of being served food is actually higher, and people need to get used to that.

If you think about it, it should really be illegal - it's a legalized way to fool people into becoming customers, but in the United States the interests of a business almost always come before the interests of the public. The only exceptions are extreme dangers to health and safety.

> the price you see for entrees in the U.S. is pretty much +$10.

Generalized, I just add 30% to whatever I see. Sales tax is 8.something% here (and if it's food service, there's often a "Healthy SF" fee of a couple percent), so adding 30% ends up being roughly accurate, or even an over-estimate. I'd rather over-estimate and end up seeing a lower final bill than the opposite.

> it's a legalized way to fool people into becoming customers

Pretty much. People are calibrated to expect certain things at certain quality levels to cost a certain amount. If laws changed and businesses were required to report the final cost of everything on menus, price stickers, etc., that would likely -- at least for some amount of time -- cause patronage to drop. People would get sticker shock and pass on things they'd usually buy, even though the final prices are actually the same.

And of course few to no establishments will buck the trends and include all costs, because then -- at first glance, at least -- they'd appear more expensive than their competitors, even if they're the same.

The only thing Americans hate more than car dealers is the image of themselves as the sort of suckers who would ever pay a sticker price.

You might go so far as to say Americans don't really buy cars; they buy the feeling of having gotten good deals on their cars.

What? I’ve yet to meet an American younger than my grandfather who haggles at all on anything.

Interesting, almost everyone that I talk to will negotiate on a car.

I’m also the kind of person to negotiate on lots of other things too. You can definitely save money on random things if you ask. Subscriptions for phone/tv/internet, electronics, furniture. Maybe not at ikea, but at a more local showroom

Bought a bike on Craigslist for less, too. In fact, as far as I know, everyone prices things on Craigslist higher than they actually think the thing as worth. Because they know the buyer will offer them less than they post.

I’m a young millennial.

It's pretty mixed among the people I know. Some will haggle, some will accept the offered price. I'm usually in the latter camp, though I might haggle for something like a Craigslist sale, as the cost/value of used goods is more subjective.

I'm a xennial, so a bit older than you. I continue to be skeptical that our arbitrary generations matter for all that much.

Craigslist is a special case. Big ticket items like cars are very, very special cases. Neither of them indicate anything about Americans' appetite for haggling in general. Personally I'd rather not.

If craigslist and big ticket items are special cases, what does it take to not qualify as a special case?

You can't think of any other major areas of the economy? What fraction, by item count (since prices are usually decided per item), of people's commercial activity do you think takes the form of buying used stuff from private sellers or buying cars/houses/boats/etc?

Well, no one haggles at McDonalds, or Kroger.

you should check out online marketplaces more.

As someone growing up rebuilding cars with my da as an income, the automobile industry is an atrocity. Dealerships are a virus borne of a bygone era, now they're no more than concert ticket scalpers justifying their existence through a forgotten relic of bygone law being middlemen.

It's not paying sticker price that's the issue; it's paying more than someone else. If everyone always had to pay sticker price, nobody would have a problem with it.

>Just tell us the fucking price.

American hospitality taking a page from American healthcare.

American business culture is:

* There’s always a middleman

* It is expected that you will be grifted as much as is legal

* And then a little more in the categories of “wage theft” and “inflation.”

I wouldn't mind the itemized fees if I could opt out of them. But when they call it a "convenience fee" on a theater ticket, and they don't actually offer an inconvenient way to buy the ticket, or a business charges a "transaction fee" so that you can... pay them, then I don't see how the posted price is anything but a lie. If someone can't actually buy the thing for that price, it's a lie.

(Taxes are different. I wish those were required to be included in the posted price, but since they really are diverted to a separate entity, I understand how we arrived at the itemization. Don't get me started, though, on "regulatory fees" that are actually a business's claimed cost of complying with regulations, which somehow lets them bury it among the real taxes...)

Spirit airlines advertises one price but when you go to book it online they slap you with a convenience fee. But in this case they do actually offer the ticket at the advertised price if you are willing to go to the right airport during the right hours to purchase it at the desk.

If it was just taxes I could live with it. But given the proliferation of hidden costs, we might as well fix it right and require all-in prices and ban soliciting gratuities (including facilitating them via credit card.)

This has been tried and its very difficult to do if your business is already addicted to these revenue streams. The problem is when you don't include fees after the initial price, you have to raise the initial price. A large enough percentage of customers decide to do business at the initial price (excluding addons/fee/tips,etc). So raising the initial price, reduces volume ordered. In the end it hurts their bottom line to raise the initial price and exclude tips.

What I don't understand is why they are going to larger tipping percentages. The only explanation I have is they are doing this to try and retain employees in a tougher market.

Yeah it is really strange to go from Australia to the US. Australia the price is what it written, includes all taxes (no state taxes, just a VAT/GST sales tax at federal level), no tipping culture.

Come to Europe :-)

In Germany showing the final price including taxes is a legal requirement.

We are getting way off topic here, but I don’t know how anyone with even a touch of SAD manages in Europe. London is as far north as the southern tip of Alaska.

Hello from Helsinki. I have a therapy lamp on my breakfast table and on my desktop at work, and it helps a tiny bit but not much. People clearly have different reactions, and I guess mine is worse than that of most people. But of course, I mainly meet people who are still capable of functioning.

Suicide rates peaks during summers, not winters. Some things are worse during winters, but other things are worse during summers, so SAD is just a preference thing.

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

Ok. So sub out SAD for “people that hate long, dark winters where the sun barely shines even for the few hours it’s up” and the question stands.

This largely depends on where you live on either side of the pond. Moving from Canada to Germany, the biggest problem was not the lack of daylight, but the lack of winter sports. Winter here is just a worse summer.

I teach people to schedule their vacations for January-March, not the pleasant summer months.

Even from Canada, you probably moved north. Toronto is as far north as Nice, on the French Mediterranean. Of all the major Canadian cities, only Vancouver is as far north as southern Germany.

I did, but it's still a minor issue compared to the lack of things that make winter enjoyable.

Just came back from the US and is thoroughly confused!

How is the percentage ratio fair as a system, doesn't it make the product price define what the servers are getting?

First day i bought two lobster rolls from a street food vendor that was pretty expensive ($80, yup it was NY) and put 20% on top as a tip not really thinking - that's a whole lot of money for 2 seconds of service, pretty bizarre to me coming from Scandinavia.

Later that day i bought a complete meal that was very cheap from another vendor, he used a lot of time to talk to me and make the food but it was only $10, so tipping 20% gave him a pretty small amount.

If anything tipping should be relative to "time spent" for the server no?

That said better wages - besides just compensating workers fairly - would also save everyone from constant awkwardness / social posturing and general inconvencies that made service experiences a constant tiring negotiation no?

$40 for a lobster roll is the starting point for the rip off. That's insane.

I just looked up the price of a Luke's Lobster lobster roll in NYC: $23-35 (not sure how/why the price varies). That's for a chain restaurant with a substantial real estate overhead, in a not-cheap city.

I've started noticing that food truck prices are becoming ridiculous, in general. They used to be cheap alternatives to restaurants, but no longer.

Yes it's nonsense. The server is basically a business partner of the owner, getting a percentage of revenue like an Oracle salesperson. It's a solution to the problem: "how can certain stake holders make more money"? The server gets to make more money. The owners gets to make more money. The customer gets to spend more money.

Forcing businesses to pay proper wages has been tried (e.g. in Seattle) and did not work because it doesn't address the problem set forth above properly.

You wouldn't normally tip a street vendor, that would be like tipping at McDonald's, which nobody does. You tip servers at sit-down restaurants, pizza delivery drivers, and barbers, not fast food. In other words, tip only if a tip is an incentive for good service, or in situations where tipping is common.

Just because the POS machine suggests a tip doesn't mean you should.

> tipping at McDonald's, which nobody does

This is the real tragedy. McDonald's employees suffer from every malady that justifies tipping waitstaff, or delivery drivers -- low wages, hard work, annoying/demanding customers, little control over their schedule, no autonomy -- but because they earn a base wage, tipping them seems inconceivable.

Why tip barbers? Shouldn't the price include everything automatically? Or is it some sort of tax evasion scheme that everyone is forced to participate in?

Presumably because they're performing a highly personalized service, just waiters at sit-down restaurants. Really, food delivery drivers seem like the odd ones out. Why should they be tipped?

So does your accountant, lawyer, doctor and so on? Why not tip them as well?

I don't have an answer for that. I don't like tipping culture, I'm just trying to make sense of it.

It seems to be common in some places. Uncommon in others. Depends on the shop type too. Don't take that poster's word as universal uncontested truth

I thought tipping was because server / pay in general is so low they need something extra "to survive", at least in some places?

Confusing to european no matter what - here we get the image that "many working class people work multiple jobs to even pay rent so we better give them something extra because there is no safety net and no unions looking out for them".

You're right, it doesn't make sense. Some people try to rationalize it that they're doing better/classier service or that a $200 bottle of wine needs more care or something but people are finally seeing through that noise

It's an imperfect heuristic, but it's hard to find a better one that's as objective and easily adopted. In general, it makes the tip proportional to the number of people/dishes served, which does relate to the amount of work done.

For the case of the fancy restaurant vs the cheap one, people who compete for these jobs know that. For a high end steakhouse, you'll likely find wait staff who have been there a long time and who tend to have sharper interpersonal skills.

It's true that it doesn't make sense when comparing two dishes at the same restaurant, one being twice the price, but otherwise being the same amount of work for the wait staff. But I think what's common in these cases is for people to tip closer to 15% in one case and 20% in the other case.

Overall, it's something strongly engrained in our culture. A large portion of people in the USA worked for tips at some point in the life, and so they they have strong feelings about it continuing to be a thing when they themselves go to restaurants.

Yeah, it's a bit ridiculous. Pre-COVID, I feel like it wasn't unusual (even in the US) to tip 10% or so at a bar when ordering a beer (since pouring from a tap doesn't take much work, skill, or time), but for a complicated cocktail, 18% or 20% seems fine, as it reflects the time and effort put in.

(Then again, a beer usually also costs less than a cocktail, but maybe not enough less to really show the difference in effort.)

But COVID basically made it so I'd feel guilty if I tipped less than 20% (hell, sometimes 25%) for pretty much anything. And while things certainly haven't recovered to pre-COVID levels in many service industries, I feel like we shouldn't feel bad about tipping more "normally" even now.

How about not spending eighty dollars on street food?

You're not required to tip 20% and since nobody sees what you tip, you can tip them both $10 if you want.

> since nobody sees what you tip

Eh, what? Of course they see.

Yeah, I remember when 10-15% was customary. now I am seeing tipping options as high as 40%. The argument you hear is that wages are low and that tipping is a way to offset this. This is effectively a tax/inflation on consumers for companies not paying high enough wages. The tipping policy is set by management. The employee is not demanding the money.

Looked at less cynically, it’s also just lingering generosity from a challenging shared experience.

Many people, including myself, who experienced the luxury of secure remote work during the pandemic felt especially appreciative of the people who found themselves in more marginal or high-risk situations.

When I was given the opportunity, I was happy to share that appreciation through larger tips. Now I’m just used to it. So are a lot of others.

Higher prices and friction in the experience will just drive people to eat out less.

So you may have higher tip %'s, but if people on average eat out only half as often, the service staff still receives less tips in aggregate.

Frankly, the best way to address this is overall improvement of the safety net in the US, starting with single payer health care. Tips are a small shim-fix at best, and realistically a wedge between the service staff and their customers.

Sure, but when I feel warmly for the person who just helped me out, I’m not usually weighing the optimal strategies of civic development. I’m just sharing what I have to spare.

>When I was given the opportunity

You know that you can tip as much as you want right? That's why it's called a tip. It's not billing.

For historical reasons (not wanting to pay for non white labour) in the US, it is customary by businesses to pay service personal minuscule wages, and shift the responsibility for their wages into the customer.

As such, not tipping in the US is utilizing uncompensated labor, which is highly immoral.

Until the current system is dismantled, you can either tip, or not participate in it. But not tipping and enjoying free labor is abhorrent.

This is in the context of tipping more.

You are not allowed to tip as much as you want in all scenarios. GrubHub currently disallows tipping >350% of the order, but, if memory serves, it used to be lower.

Not saying it's wrong - it probably prevents fraud. But still :)

This isn't quite true, unless you bring various bill sizes to go along with a credit/debit transaction. And even then, it can be jarring for some of the situations mentioned in a negative context here (versus baked into the payment steps).

Opportunity as in “where tips are welcome”

I'll demonstrate "lingering generosity" spontaneously

But begging me for it is crossing a line

If I saw a 40% tip even as an option I would leave zero. It's completely ridiculous.

Thirty or forty percent is a built-in menu option on many point of sale systems - they'll often give you four different options. The only point you'd be making by choosing zero out of pique is "bcrosby95 is an asshole."

> The only point you'd be making by choosing zero out of pique is "bcrosby95 is an asshole."

Wouldn't be the first person, or the last.

> The only point you'd be making by choosing zero out of pique is "bcrosby95 is an asshole."

Please don't make comments containing personal attacks here. It degrades the community.

Who configured it to show the option?

Certainly not the person who is likely to be negatively affected (i.e. your waiter, barrista, etc.) if you do not tip.

I’m attempting to make the point that the POS vendors aren’t just showing these high numbers, but the owner or someone close to them is making the options appear. (i.e., it’s not really “built in” as to be permanent)

That barista or waiter could even tell the owner that they’re not comfortable asking for 40%, or that they are getting more $0 tips since the option appeared, or that customers complained it’s a bit rich.

If the price of the item is low 40% might make sense but there should just be a "2USD" option instead or whatever.

Wondering whether an experiment where a restaurant charges a flat amount, no tip, no taxes would do well right now. It feels impossible to leave the house even alone without spending $40 on even the smallest meal that isn't fast food.

I went to IHOP and got an omelette, hash browns and toast (extra $5) in a city recently, and with a 20% tip it came to $29 for just that meal - $17 + 5 + $2 tax + $5 tip. The food cost can't have been more than $4. Its getting way out of hand, and yes minimum wage is getting higher but thats not a sufficient reason. Have noticed this isn't nearly a problem in cities with lower real estate costs. You can still get a $12 diner meal in chicago for instance.

> Have noticed this isn’t nearly a problem in cities with lower real estate costs.

These price hikes were long overdue. I guess e.g. the Bay area is running low on suckers that have not realized that it is unaffordable to sell omelettes under 29 USD and live there. This includes local business owners as well as waitresses.

I believe the reason is that the generation of native born that could get estate at good prices are getting old now and the new generation that takes over can't operate "at a loss" like the old. I.e. the earlier generation kept prices down since they already owned the buildings since before the boom and didn't have to charge alot.

IHOP's pricing has exploded recently. Yes all of their omelettes are in the $14+ range. You didn't order a soda (Pepsi, uggh) which would have been $4 more. They aren't the only ones but, there seems to be a huge disconnect between what they charge and what you get, and it's evidenced by the restaurants often having a whole section or half entirely closed off and empty.

IHOP does offer a "hoppy hour menu" but they even upped the price on that significantly from when they originally rolled it out.

People have run the experiment at great expense and then given up and switched back. [1]

[1] https://ny.eater.com/2020/7/20/21331797/danny-meyer-ushg-no-...

It's probably not worth it in the same way almost nothing is tax-included. It's a bit of a coordination problem: the psychological benefit of lower list prices means restaurants benefit from loading as much of their prices as possible into tips and fees. On the other hand I think it would be a net benefit to everyone if we didn't have to play these silly games with prices.

> Have noticed this isn’t nearly a problem in cities with lower real estate costs.

Well, yes, at any business you buy from, you are paying for all of their inputs, including any real estate they need, and, in addition, their costs reflect their suppliers (including employees, who need a place to live) costs, including real estate costs. So, yes, ceteris paribus, local real estate prices are going to have a major impact on prices, especially where inputs need to be locally sourced (including industries that rely on substantial on-site labor.)

I was drawing that comparison because often pricing is blamed on minimum wage primarily and exclusively especially as business owners lobby against wage increases, while saying nothing about real estate costs. Wages become a bogeyman and only the business interests (including the real estate business) get addressed

A few restaurants had prices inclusive or service. A local one stopped that recently, as they believed the higher menu prices made customers avoid them (even if the total amount paid for dinner, service included, is the same)

Food delivery apps like Uber Eats are another one. They add up to 50% (or more) to the price of a meal for things like delivery fee, bag fee, service fee, priority delivery fee etc. and then prompt you to tip 20% of the total.

Doordash will increase the base cost of items in addition to the extra fees

This is entirely up to the restaurant; likely to recoup some of the fees they are getting charged. I can pull open a local store right now and verify that the prices on the Doordash menu and the prices on the wall in the building are the same.

… But that restaurant isn't on dashpass and has a delivery fee. So there is definitely some incentivizing of rolling the platform fees into your base prices.

I think this really is one of the cheats that these delivery companies run. They also take cut from the food and this is invisible for the customer.

It would be nice if they broke down the price. X for restaurant for the food, Y for delivery, Z for processing fees. And then n% cut from total to the middle man.

But that might direct the consumers straight to restaurants, so no one will do that.

Most of these restaurants would not have delivery at all without companies like this.

Source: decades of history before delivery apps were a thing.

Skip does this too.

Actual menu price 10.99 Skip menu price 11.99

Plus delivery fee, driver tip, etc.

I'm actually kind of impressed with DoorDash's (and competitors) audacity. They tell you right up-front, hey, the menu price of your order is $40*. We think you're so lazy (or busy, stressed-out, whatever) that we're going to charge you $70, and yes, you still have to tip. Deal? And then most people apparently say yes -- so why wouldn't they keep their pricing model?

* yes I know this part is deceiving, often the actual menu price is less -- but DoorDash's customers typically know this

Do the food app delivery people get to see the tip amount beforehand? If the tip is not enough, do they decide not to accept the task? I've had several Uber Eats where my food arrived late, ice-cold, and wrong order.

I've stopped using those services.

I like how it is done in France: service is included in price everywhere. Why this could not be done in US?

Another point is tips distribution: there are many people involved in serving your meal. Does cook get tips? Does dishwasher? Does cleaning lady?

Tips were created so that non white service personal could be employed but not paid wages to, as former slave owners found the concept of directly paying for labor abhorrent.

They have integrated the idea of tips as the “American way” (just as much as police brutality or easy access to firearm) and it is now extremely hard to disintegrate.

France had the luxury of having it colonies an ocean away, hence less resilience to a safety net back home, as it wouldn’t protect “undesirable”. Of course, now that they have crossed the ocean, that safety net is being slowly dismantled.

This is a political talking point, pretty far from established fact. It comes from the article you sited specifically. Here's another partisan article debunking it: https://www.aier.org/article/did-tipping-come-from-slavery-t...

AIER also "debunk"s global warming and the recent pandemic. ffs, in the link above they quote Segrave's book, but apparently didn't read it, because it shows tipping in the US was created as a result of economic, systematic racism. And then they discuss European's custom of tipping, which people in the US originally opposed (again, see Segrave's book, which they quote, but never bothered to read)

Seems like this is the way out -- branding tipping as a racist throwback activity might end the ridiculous practice once and for all.

When tipping started in the US pre civil war, it was deemed classist and thus shunned upon.

It’d be poetic if it’ll be discouraged by similar reasoning again.

Confirms the theory that: "everything weird in the USA will turn out to be to do with slavery".

Similar, everything different in western and central Europe can be attributed to colonialism.

A lot of loaded comments in this and with the risk of sounding combative or ignorant: citations?

Tipping as a way to avoid paying non whites: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/16/fac... and basically all over research and the internet.

On difference between US and European racism, and the role of the distance from the colonies: https://knowledge.insead.edu/responsibility/recognising-and-... and a large body of research.

On dismantling of the safety net in France: just read a newspaper.

I was in Paris recently and had an interesting experience at a restaurant. As I pulled out my phone to pay at the handheld terminal, the server asked me whether I'd like to add a tip. I asked whether the bill was "service included" as is the custom in France. He responded that the servers don't get that money, and that "we" encourage an extra tip to show appreciation for good service. He had clearly given this speech before, as it felt like he was reading from a script.

I was speaking broken French to him, and he was speaking broken English to me, so I may have missed a nuance. But that was the gist.

I left an extra 10%. The server was unusually nice for Paris standards, but I wouldn't have even thought to tip if he hadn't asked.

Afterward, I wondered whether this was a Parisian hack on the service compris tradition. Everything he said was true, but it was manipulative in that it sidestepped my question whether the policy had changed. And I was pretty obviously American, so he knew I was accustomed to tipping.

Yes, this is called "tipping out". Kitchen employees get a percentage of server tips. It sounds like a ripoff for all involved but the real sums can be significant. My sister was a waitress for much of her adult life because the work was easy to get and paid disproportionately well compared to the skill involved.

Yes that is the tradition but as a customer, you often find that the tip is shared disproportionately. I've had delicious food served by a terrible waiter or waitress... wanted to give the chef a great tip but the server the bare minimum. I guess in general I believe the cook's job is a lot more difficult and I'd like to ensure a larger percentage of my tip goes to him or her, but am pretty sure it doesn't.

It's 1 or 2% of the server's take. In a normal week at a midrange restaurant in a metro it would add up to 60 or 80 dollars, busier weeks could be better of course. For a cook working 5 12+ hour days at low-mid teens $ an hour it's extra beer money but hardly comparable to the 20+ hourly servers come out with.

Source, I have worked in kitchens for over 15 years (it sucks, don't do it, I changed careers ;)

I think servers don't actually won't to do away with tips, because on good days they make a ton of money, way more than they would get with a decent wage.

I just got an invoice from a company that came out yesterday and resealed all of the gaps/protrusions/etc on my roof. $475 plus tax. Little high considering the effort, but it's a tall townhome, so no way in hell I'm getting up on a ladder that high and doing it myself.

I got to the checkout process and there was a tip box. Since when do you tip roofers? I didn't even interact with the guys that showed up and did the work - the appointment was planned, they came out and did it, and they left.

The options on the tip box were 10, 15, and 20%. Needless to say, I set it to 0. It's getting ridiculous. I paid for a service, it was performed, and that should be that. I'm not tipping an extra $50-100 for doing your job. This wasn't even a one-man show, it was a company, so I have no idea how those tips are distributed.

The problem is that wages are basically not covering the cost of living (primarily housing). That money has to come from somewhere one way or another (or you will see stores closing, completely understaffed etc). The situation where some people make $300k/year, live in an area with $2m median price homes and expect to pay service fees for an area where homes are $100k simply can’t last.

This just sounds like the author not liking to tip more than 20% and being concerned someone might judge them for that. There is “research” cited in the article, but not when it comes to supporting the headline, only to make other points. The fact that a professor of economics wrote an essay saying that somebody might have some negative feelings about tipping is not news. The comments here are sure to be way more thoughtful and balanced an exploration of the topic.

This part tells me the author is making up controversy and is not looking at things very reasonably:

> It's not only human workers who are asking for tips, but services like GoFundMe, a platform for people to fundraise for issues like emergency health costs. When people donate to a cause, the site asks for a "tip" to help it continue functioning. GoFundMe also charges a processing fee, which is deducted from the donations before the recipient receives the money; it doesn't disclose this processing fee when it asks donors to add a tip.

From what I can tell, the processing fee of 2.9% goes straight to the payment processing company (or most of it, probably depending on payment method). Plus it’s the only fee and this is very clear on GoFundMe’s pricing page. To drum up some idea that it’s an extra hidden fee that GoFundMe is not transparent about is ridiculous. They are presumably asking for tips instead of higher fees so that people can pay according to what they’re able to pay.

When we instituted the $15/hr minimum wage in Seattle, I wondered idly whether that would reduce the pressure to tip 20%+ at restaurants. It should, right? Because if the reason to tip is really to address economic inequalities in the service industry, then doubling the minimum wage should mean less tip wages are required. The tips were meant to bring the effective wage up to a certain threshold we arbitrary decided we could stop feeling so guilty about — and so was the $15 minimum.

(another possibility is the 20% tipping level was arbitrary, and turned out to be too low to have been serving its intended purpose in the first place. That is very possible.)

Anyway, I wondered about that, and predicted that the power of upper middle class guilt was strong enough that we'd just continue doing the same thing as always, which turned out to be more or less correct up until now. We'll see how this shakes out.

Customer facing displays for signature capture are driving this, not inflation. It more of a why not, cant hurt approach to accepting payments. It's affected me to the point where I pay mostly in cash.

I believe Square was the entity that foisted this mess on us the most. They were an early adopter of CFDs with an added tip.

One thing I don't see talked about enough is the perception that reporting tips is optional.

Governments know people underreport tips and still want their fair cut. A previous roommate of mine worked as a server where he was required to say he was getting at least 8% in tips on every order because it looks suspicious if that doesn't occur. So, in scenarios where a customer opts not to tip, it was actually costing money.

If the expected value of tipping continues to rise then I have to assume these expectations will also rise which is only going to spite those receiving tips even further.

I know my experience here is anecdotal. I'm curious if others in the industry have been given similar ultimatums from their places of employment.

Yes it's generally assumed that you're making at least a percentage of the sale as a tip. Most of the bigger employers automatically report your CC tips and an assumed percentage of cash tips. "unusually" low tips reported could result in the IRS taking a look at you.

Some time ago I remember working a job where it didn't matter if you only made 5% tips over all they still reported to the IRS that you made 15%. You will see this often in areas where the hourly pay is below minimum wage. The employer will state you made up the difference in tips thus they are allowed to pay you less than minimum wage.

> in scenarios where a customer opts not to tip, it was actually costing money.

More accurately, where a customer opts not to tip, the server isn't able to commit as much tax fraud.

More accurately, the employer is able to pay the employee further below minimum wage.

It is worth noting that, while the minimum wage is lower for tipped employees, their total pay still has to be above the ordinary (non-tipped) minimum wage.

To quote https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

> An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages if that amount combined with the tips received at least equals the federal minimum wage. If the employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.

I wonder if you believe "the employer makes up the difference" is a thing that actually happens just because it's suggested in a Department of Labor rule. In the US, employers often feel entitled to keep the money that people put in the tip jar, blatant theft, which ought to help you gauge matters here.

https://www.jacksonsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/2018/02/...

Simple solution for the employer is to report to the IRS the employee making enough tips to put them over minimum wage. It doesn't matter if the employee even made those tips. Employees can complain to regulatory groups but it won't get anywhere as the employer will just say the employee is lying to save on taxes.

In California there is no tipped minimum. You have to be paid the normal minimum and then tips on top.

I am okay with tips for a good service. I am not okay with

> expectation of 20% as the bare minimum > tips when I did all the work, like when I picked up a prepackaged meal from a fridge and brought it to the counter or a “restaurant” where you order at the counter, pick up your meal and clean up after yourself when you’re done > tips when no service was involved like a pet store (what?) > tips for non tip employees like plumbers and electricians when you quoted me $100-$200 per hour > Delivery apps when you already paid delivery fee, service fee and a local flat drivers benefits fee > A barista

I am not okay with tips for good service!

Until we all stop being okay with tips for good service, we'll continue having to be annoyed, everywhere we buy, every time, even people who themselves work in the service industry.

That’s not true. Outside of the US, pretty much everywhere people are okay with tips with good service. The problem starts when people start expecting them.

> Outside of the US, pretty much everywhere people are okay with tips with good service

That's not true :)

In Korea, I've literally had people chase me down the street after I left to return a couple extra dollars worth of tips I'd "forgotten on the table".

This is changing as American influence and tipping culture eats the world, but there's certainly large parts of the world where the price is the price and there's nothing more to it.

And I wonder how many business are taking a cut of the tip. I remember hearing this was common process in the past.

if you leave tips via card machines it is extremely common in most countries that;

A) those tips are pooled (thus the management is taking a cut)

B) those tips are taxed.

Therefore at least in most of Europe its better to drop some cash. if you are tipping.

Not sure if it is the same in the US.

EDIT: did I say something wrong or controversial?

(IANAL.) You're missing their point. The person above you is referring to the practice (and I've read about this any number of times in these discussions) that the business pockets the tip: the person you are tipping, effectively and in some circumstances, never receives it. This derives from the usual definition of their wage:

> A tipped employee engages in an occupation in which he or she customarily and regularly receives more than $30 per month in tips. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages if that amount combined with the tips received at least equals the federal minimum wage. If the employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.

(US Dept. of Labor: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips)

Say, within an hour, I receive a meal. I decide to choose between tipping $0 or $4; the result of which is:

  I tip $0: The business pays $7.25 for the hour of work; the employee gains $7.25
  I tip $4: The business pays $3.25 for the hour of work; the employee gains $7.25

So what was the point? That's not a tip, that's a business subsidy.

That tips are taxed … yeah? so? The Man gets his cut, always.

You're right that it's better to pay a tip with cash.

The part that's iffy is what happens afterward. If it's as simple as handing a bill to someone who has helped you out, great, that's the ideal. But if that person is required to pool that money (for example - a restaurant might require servers to pool tips, cash or credit, so that busboys and the kitchen get a cut) there's probably no avoiding the shenanigans the restaurant's management might engage in.

In that case it's better to tip with the card so the money is taxed correctly. Taxes are necessary and everyone involved in providing the service should have a cut of the tip.

Cash is better for that reason in the USA.

The situation is a lot better in most Europe and especially France. Service charges are already included in prices, mandatory, employees are paid a somehow correct salary, at least the legal national minimal salary. No tip is really expected. And also not needed for the employees to be able to survive. So it is a no brainer here for customers to go to restaurant or cafés.

You can still tip, really as a small gesture, but it is with coins you leave on the table before leaving if you enjoyed the service. Around 0.5, 1 or 2 euros. You do that after you paid when the employee leave so lot less social pressure.

The idea of the tip here is to thank the employee with something to pay a coffee or drink.

Also, prices on anything (menu,...) Are already all charges and taxes included. So again, you know clearly and directly what you will pay in advance without deception.

Tipping is a relic from slavery which is why Europe does not have to deal with it. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-land-of-the-fee....

The system is bad, no doubt, but I personally have spent almost a decade living and interacting with reality with a hard fast personal rule that every numeric value I see fronted by a "$" is only 2/3 of the actual price, and adjust my purchase habits accordingly. It's not a hard conversion to make, and the amount of times it's an underestimation are greatly eclipsed by the number of times that it's spot on or even wrong enough to be a "good deal". Life's too short to be a pessimist all the time, but in certain contexts it helps to live by the adage that if you expect the worst, you'll rarely be disappointed.

If enough people have this attitude then the system collapses. Because if everyone tolerates the advertised price being 66% of actual then they'll tolerate 65% of actual. And businesses can make 1% more money by doing that. Which is a race to the bottom where advertised prices become completely disconnected from actual price and become of no value at all.

You've just given up and are letting other people fight the fights for you.

What fight do you recommend I take? The way I see it, if I balk at additional fees, taxes, and tips, there is a relatively high risk that I don't even receive the product or service - which is no different than my current strategy of, loosely, "spending within my means plus a 50% buffer", with the added detriment of wasted time and effort on the haggling process.

I find it alarming that there are digital payment terminals with tipping options. It might seem obligatory and you might think why not, but this is actually a huge deal. Because it's the business that has full control over tipping now. They control the apps and terminals.

Sure you can use a digital payment method that let's the customer choose an arbitary amount as a tip, but you can also chose not to, the customer can't as he's not the one who's running your business. We as consumers are at the whim of the industry here. Cash meant that the customer had the full control of the amount he would like to tip.

If you are young reading this and working in a tipping industry, the smart way to take advantage of this situation is to work at a location that has high throughput per employee.

Actually being in the a sit down restaurant at this point is not a wise decision (except maybe high end). I would look at businesses like ice-cream parlors that have long lines during busy hours and have forced tipping screens as a good starting point, and try to get hours during the busiest times (7pm-9pm after dinner). I've heard owners in this industry complain recently that employees make more than they do as the owner per hour because of tips.

Tipping is just a way cheap business owners float the cost of wages to the customer.

If the tip is a mandatory % that is charged directly by the business and not an amount you willingly decide to give, it's not actually a tip. I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept for americans.

It’s not mandatory. Culturally, though, it’s expected so people raise a stink about it if you don’t do it.

What gets me is people/businesses that say “if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out”.

No. If you can’t afford to pay your workers a livable wage without tips, you can’t afford to stay in business.

Banning tipping is not for you, as the customer, it's for the worker. If tips were banned, they'd just be part of the price and you'd still be paying it. When you refuse to tip, it's just free riding.

No, really? I’d gladly pay 10%-15% more to get eliminate tipping. Tipping sucks for consumers, sucks for employees, and is rooted in the worst parts of our history.

> I’d gladly pay 10%-15% more to get eliminate tipping.

Next time you tip, inform your server that it has nothing to to with their performance, you're actually just adding what they would have made if they were paid appropriately to the base price.

edit: I'm not being facetious, I have added 20% no matter what for at least 20 years. I've tipped servers that I'm pretty sure I hated.

No?

Or, don't. I'm just saying you're a free rider.

edit: You're paying less for your meals than you would in your hypothetical ideal circumstance irt tipping, and that difference is coming out of the server's pocket. If it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother you, but you're no freedom fighter.

Advocating for an annoying at best, repressive and anti-worker at worst, system doesn’t make you any better than me, and your assumption I think I am some “freedom fighter” for seeing it for what it really is makes you look disingenuous.

Business owners are shirking their responsibility to pay a living wage. They’re also setting up a socioeconomic reality that pits customers against workers to absolve them of that responsibility.

Go ahead and keep advocating for tipping though, I’m sure you’re really making progress.

Most of us understand this perfectly well. But there’s not a lot we can do about it.

There's a lot you can do. Change restaurant, cook at home, demand to know beforehand etc.

I can cook at home for a decade, but that isn't going to change how tipping works.

As Americans, we need to feel like we have the power to humiliate or praise servants, and when that power disappears we feel like our right to the freedom of expressions of magnanimity or resentment towards our lessers have been taken away.

If you appropriately price and ban tipping, people will just tip on top of that to prove how much better they are to their servants than other customers, and walk away complaining about how expensive your restaurant is. If you set a mandatory tip of 20%, it means absolutely nothing: you could say the tip was 10,000% and set prices so that a 10,000% tip brought in exactly the same revenue. Setting an arbitrary mandatory 20% tip (the current customary routinely generous amount) will actually trick most people into not tipping.

People always like having someone to look down on.

I think people love demonstrating how much they don't look down on people even more.

As someone who doesn't step foot in America much, I honestly cannot comprehend the "tipping culture". It's expected and almost mandatory as it's an integral part of workers pay but not absolutely mandatory or legally enforced. So any "rules" or customs are on a "you should know" basis. I've seen many receipts with an empty "tip amount" line above the total.

Is there no consumer movement or workers organization whatsoever lobbying to just have the tip incorporated in the salary and purchase price?

Yes but they get crushed by the owners in the various industries. THe money/power these companies wield dwarf anything the employees could bring to bear. Unions would help this issue but they've been successfully slandered and destroyed over the last few decades.

Workers make more money from tips, so they're not going to protest.

An issue I haven't seen mentioned (yet so please let me know if it has): If you don't tip you receive less service. Ordering at a taco restaurant I was asked to tip 20% on a $12 order. I hit the 15% but a thought occurred: What if I hit zero, would the service decrease, or will my food arrived cold?

Has anyone experienced backlash from employees when you don't tip, or don't tip high enough?

I wonder if lower end QSR and fast service concept restaurants will be hit the hardest. Upscale places that were already expensive have less price sensitive customers. But try to shove more tips on top of an underwhelming $20 sandwich that has increasingly poor ingredients and less and less protein? Yeah, not gonna fly with price sensitive customers.

Why tipping in percentage at all? The work to bring a plate to the table is the same for filet mignon and for a vegetable salad.

Was coming to this. Shouldn't some reasonable rate of pay be calculated let's say 20/h. And then estimate how much time server and staff spend serving you. And then just add that to the bill?

Why server should be tipped more than cook who actually made a huge effort to prepare a meal?

You should always view tipping as a donation to a company instead of a person. You're helping them pay their employees less. That's why they happily ask for tips at kiosks, and want the amount raised.

They'll keep pushing the amount up until legislation forces them to stop.

What really gets me is the recent trend to request tips for counter-serve and takeout. Like, WTF?

I really don't like the feeling of being the guy who explicitly chooses the "no tip" option, so in the end I've pretty much stopped going to these places altogether.

It's fucked of them to even ask.

This is apparently a standard feature for some new POS terminals, but the business owner has no incentive to disable it.

For my family eating out, I have a flat $8 tip policy for restaurants, and a flat $5 tip policy for delivery. No tipflation for me, thanks.

I have never felt any shame from either one.

All restaurants are welcome to raise their prices.

This is uniquely a US-style thing, but even now in the UK I am noticing more and more restaurants adding a 12.5% service charge. Definitely not a great trend.

I'm basically at this point being forced to tip for shit service. Who could be happier?

Just pick 0% as protest. Is it or is it not optional?

If it is not optional then increase the price

That would be using uncompensated labor, as in the US, the burden of paying service personal was shifted to the customers.

A protest would be not to buy from business that don’t pay their employees directly.

I can’t wait until I see a tip prompt at my bank teller.

I have never, not once, in real-life conversation, heard anyone complaining about tipping. The cost of health care and health insurance, yes, the price of cars and the lack of negotiating leverage when there is a shortage, yes, the price of housing and rent, yes, but not one time have I heard people complaining about tipping.

People who like ranting online may enjoy complaining about that portion of the workforce who gets tips, but for most people, that is quite literally the least of the inflationary problems.

Haven't heard many more bizarre claims than complaining about tipping customs being some newfangled internet thing.

Your experience is not like mine. I’ve heard it hundreds of times. More if you count the reservoir dogs mr pink-style rant on tipping in general.

“I don’t personally hear anyone talk about it so it’s not an issue”

Seems a little self-centered.

Heh, even my kid complains about it. Your situation must be unique vs those in my circle.

You clearly have not met any Australians

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