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Comment by kossTKR | Hacker News Reader

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?

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$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.

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