Tech Is Allowing Businesses to Overcharge You in Tips
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Until then, I have a rule: I only tip when someone is working outside of regular working hours to act as my servant. That's like evening dinner service where someone is actually waiting my table. Sometimes I'll tip at lunch for pleasant service even though it breaks my rule because I'm human. And sometimes a dollar or two for coffee early in the morning or bar service at night out of habit.
I also have "tip bands" structured such that I tip at least 10% when de-facto expected. I tip $5 up to a $50 ticket, and $10 up to a $100 ticket, on the pre-tax and pre-other-fees price. My logic here is that if restaurants are supplementing wages with baked in fees, those fees should be deducted from the tip I'd otherwise have been expected to pay. So a standard 15% less a 4% surcharge post tax becomes 10% additional (tip). In any case, things average out such that I over-tip anyway, sigh.
I guess my latter point here is that I'm still made to feel guilty when tipping at least 10% because of how establishments suggest you should be considering 20%, 25% and 30% gratuities on top of all the fees they slip in at the end and taxes. It leaves me disillusioned with the entire notion.
Note that the sum of wage + tips must reach the minimum wage, or else the employer is required to make up the difference. It's a common misconception that tipped workers can earn less, in total, than minimum wage.
In just a quick look, I found this:
> 5. Wage theft is particularly acute in food and drink service, and restaurants across the country have been found to be in violation of wage and hour laws. It is true that the law requires restaurants to ensure that tipped workers receive at least the regular minimum wage when their tips are included, but the reality is that huge numbers of restaurants—helped by too-weak enforcement efforts—ignore these requirements. In investigations of over 9,000 restaurants, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) found that 84 percent of investigated restaurants were in violation of wage and hour laws, including nearly 1,200 violations of the requirement to bring tipped workers’ wages up to the minimum wage. Among the restaurants that were investigated, tipped workers were cheated out of nearly $5.5 million. Workers in the food and drink service industries are more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than workers in other industries. [0]
EDIT: Apparently the DOL study was focused on 2010-12, so not sure what the newest compliance looks like [1].
[0]: https://www.epi.org/blog/seven-facts-about-tipped-workers-an...
But tips are also often used as a performance evaluation metric, and falling low enough that the employer has to make it up often leads to termination, so, where this is possible (as it most obviously is where cash tips are involved) its not uncommon for employees to be incentivized to artificially inflate tips.
Eliminating the lower tipped based minimum wage (which, when followed, means that tips actually go to the employer, not the tipped employee, to a point) means that, even where this practice and pressure exists, it doesn’t leas to suppressing wages below the general mininum.
Also, I don't see any reason why violating the law in that way should be any more common than violating it by paying non-tipped workers less than minimum wage. Either one would require the same degree, and same kind, of fraud. So tipped workers should be no worse off in practice than non-tipped workers.
> It leaves me disillusioned with the entire notion.
That's still kind of a dick move, man...
That's the social contract -- you go to a full service restaurant, you tip 20% of the bill.
I can understand for things like even retail and other non-traditional PoS stuff but for full service dining, this isn't new.
If you want to opt out of participating in the whole tip structure there, then you probably should opt out of participating in full service dining as well.
I've actually decided the real problem is clueless people like you trying to tip police others over immaterial minutia like exact tip percentage. Do my napkin FFS and see for yourself what my percentage averages out to. You're the ones manufacturing frantic guilt. It's like atheists and unknowns. Christ.
When did it go from 15% to 20%? Is it because people don't tip in cash anymore, making it more difficult for service staff to evade taxes?
Isn’t the idea that servers knowingly make a gamble that they can generate more from tips (performance) than less than minimum wage?
So if you order a drink that costs $1000, the server should get $200 for that?
There is a popular brewery in Boston called Trillium brewing that collects tips with these systems for people buying canned beer from behind the register. It’s crazy because you order a case of beer for about $100 and then they default to 20% tip for what is basically a retail transaction, and a lot of people refused to tip.
Turns out they started paying people like $5/hr, below normal minimum wage for Boston, because they were classified as tipped staff.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2018/11/21/trouble-bre...
Like: I see what's egregious about this: it would be better for employees to take home $15/hr plus tips, rather than $15/hr and no tips, even though customers tipped. It's a scummy move. But I don't think it could have meant that employees took home $5/hr, right?
Now that, I have a huge problem with. The tips should not be counted toward satisfying the minimum wage. That turns what should be an expression of appreciation for the employee into me just subsidizing the employer's business. If the employer needs more money from me, they should be honest about it and raise their prices.
That doesn’t speak to this issue or mass laws, but it’s something that’s new Germaine to the general conversation
Overall what I noticed is that tipping is a sub-strategy among others in the American shopping experience where companies try as long as possible to hide the total price charged to a customer. You can see it everywhere from various fees, taxations, and tipping. I am shocked that it is so difficult to know the final cost of things until the very last second. Tipping is just one strategy in the toolkit, but tech companies are deploying it everywhere now, it's hard to escape.
This is not true for DoorDash - they can see the tip amount before accepting the order. I think that such a "tip" should not be treated as a tip for tax passthrough purposes - it's a bid for service.
As you should. It's illegal to pay below minimum wage. If they don't get tipped enough to make minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. Of course minimum wage needs to be increased but that's another topic.
Here in Europe you can get by without tipping quite easily, but I don't think they would allow you to bring your own drinks and honestly it also doesn't make sense. Why can't I drink my own drink, am I not paying enough for the meal itself that you need to rob me on drinks? Might as well not going to your place at all and eat at home, if you have problem with my own drinks.
However, unlike Europe, water is free and even though it's tap water, it's really good (Tokyo has excellent municipal water quality). European restaurants are terrible that way; they want to sell you ridiculously expensive bottled water that costs more than alcohol.
You can "get by without" tipping in Europe, but in some places (like Budapest) they try to guilt tourists into tipping the same way it's done in America with a place on the credit card slip while the server is watching, because they know American tourists are used to tipping a lot. Other places have a place to add a tip too. Japan is different: there is absolutely no tipping, whatsoever. It's not even allowed; they will return your money to you.
In Japan, it's the same as American fast food (even at sit-down restaurants): you have to go to the register to pay, usually next to the door. In Europe, however, my experience has been that most restaurants have a portable payment terminal they bring to the table for you.
At fast food restaurants, you just pay at the terminal you ordered your food at. At places that don't have that, like Dick's, you just pay at the terminal they have at the register.
The non-chain places usually have Stripe or Square, they all support tap or chip.
I can't remember the last time I gave my card to someone.
Please lower that number to zero if you refuse to tip.
They give me a total price, I pay it without issue, and that's how it goes.
As far as I understand society expects that people working hourly make a minimum wage. If they're not paid minimum wage, then it's illegal and their employer is liable for damages and punishment. What's immoral is a situation where an employer is not paying an employee the wages our laws require. There's no "social minimum wage" for tip workers. There's a market for their services. If somebody wants to do more valuable labor in some other capacity nobody is stopping them just as nobody is forcing them to work for tips.
Driving on the shoulder is justifiable in certain scenarios, like if you need to get to a hospital. It's not absolutely immoral.
But somehow it's moral not to tip a Walmart worker simply because of American norms?
Ideally, we should just raise the employee's wages and end the practice of tipping. For servers in high-throughflow establishments, where actual service is being provided, give them a percentage of every bill, then they're rewarded if the place is busy (which it will be if they're providing good service and the food is good). If they upsell on wine bottles or whatever, they're then essentially earning a commission, and it's baked in, not some customer whim thing.
I don’t want to misrepresent you, but I’m grasping for more charitable interpretations than that.
At some point small businesses, food carts, etc, realized that if you just put a tip jar on the counter, many people will throw money in it just because it's there. It's culturally expected now. I find it slightly infuriating.
All the reasons for tipping in restaurants apply to tipping in every other situation they're being asked for now. It was never about fair market value. It's entirely social convention and nonsense like how attractive the server is.
In 50 years, there's a good chance that tipping for everyday interactions will be the norm simply because a generation will grow up with.
Seriously: if you have boss/manager/employer who is taking tips ("fees", "penalties", excuse less theft), you should talk to an employment lawyer. If you complain about anything like this to your boss, do it in writing/email/text messages (saving everything and/or screenshotting) - while most of the US is "at will" employment there are plenty of illegal reasons to be fired, and retaliation when complaining about wage theft is likely to be. Again: talk to an employment lawyer. Similar for protected medical leave, maternity leave, etc - ensure all communication is in writing. I've said elsewhere: your employer is not your friend, and it's not your family, and you cannot ever assume it is - even if your manager is on your side, their's may not be, and HR is not.
> if you have boss/manager/employer who is taking tips ("fees", "penalties", excuse less theft), you should talk to an employment lawyer.
Can you spell out the common scenario where it's fairly trivial for an employee to right this wrong? A good place to start might be the employment lawyer who works on contingency for the most common tip-withholding scenarios.
Historically, tipping came to America from Europe in the 1920's and 30's. When it started, it was very divisive and considered un-American. You can see it in the background of certain old films of the era. It is a sub-plot in the Humphrey Bogart movie Petrified Forest.
Pretty much across the whole personalized service industry (ie, not mass-market retail jobs like grocery and department stores), there is a soft norm of tipping. You're not required to tip any of them the way you are with restaurants, but people have been for generations; it's a way of signaling customer loyalty and getting potentially better service.
Don't tip your grocer unless you really want to. Seriously consider tipping your mechanic if given the option, at least, if you expect to use them in the future. Probably tip the barista (a buck or so), the same way you would a bartender. Definitely tip your hotel housekeeper! And: you are required to tip at full-service American restaurants.
First is that the quality of service does not change based on the presence of a tip or not, largely because tips happen after the service has completed. If it did I would tip.
Instead I expect people to quote me a fair price for their labour and do their job with pride. If they don't I'll give them feedback and find another provider if necessary.
Second, these days you rarely even interact with the service worker, sadly. I totally understand the history, but we don't live in that world anymore where I have one driver or one doorman or one mechanic who I need to continually show appreciation. If I did I would tip.
Instead I say please and thank you and if I do have an ongoing relationship I reward them with loyalty and perhaps occasionally a gift because they've become a friend.
Third, with the amount of fees restaurants have added and the shift to showing you post-tax tip suggestions on receipts, I no longer feel like the social contract is balanced and I'm disillusioned from participating. On top of that, since it's an implicit requirement to tip in these scenarios, I don't feel like it's even meaningful to tip more or less depending on the quality of service you receive. So you can't even use that as a feedback mechanism since it all comes out average in the wash. I still tip at full service restaurants because I'm not a completely ignorant dickwad, but I'm really close to becoming one.
Instead I'd vote to remove the loophole that allows restaurants to pay staff $2/hr plus tips so that we could go back to employees being paid fairly and then tips being totally extra/earned. Tell me the fair price of food such that you can pay your staff a living wage. I'll pay it.
I'm making a much narrower point, which is that if you're going to write a trend story like this for a mass media outlet, you should do your homework first. The author of this story didn't even bother to Google whether tipping mechanics was normal, let alone actually ask a mechanic.
Maybe this is a West Coast or Midwest thing, but the idea of tipping my mechanic is a non-starter.
There was only a norm in tipping in restaurants where your food was delivered to your table. That was never expected in fast food. Now places like QDoba have tipping options.
I'm not even arguing that the POS screens aren't a genuine social phenomenon, or that it isn't off-putting for a grocery store clerk to side-eye you for not tipping at check-out (I wouldn't!). I'm just saying, this article acts like tipping a mechanic is a shocking new intrusion, and what's actually the case is that the author just isn't familiar with the pre-existing norms of tipping.
Again, there is a soft norm of tipping in pretty much all blue-collar personalized services. Meaning: you don't have to tip, you're not going to get side-eye if you don't tip, but it's worth knowing that some people do tip.
This is American nonsense that needs to stay in that god-forsaken country.
Having worked in both fast-food and fine-dining restaurants, tips are a huge bone of contention. Tax fraud is common, mgmt skimming is common, and now these POS systems charge a percentage of the tip for "expediting" the process.
Screw that.
The other crazy thing is default living wage charges and all of that malarkey.
It’s just the same as Fees more fees and bogus charges.
Tipping after the fact, especially to a heartless POS machine, is utterly pointless. You’ve already received the goods or services. They’re just preying on your perceived social contract and fear of confrontation (especially when there no “$0.00” button).
Btw. I just finished rewatching X-Files and I strongly recommend everyone here (especially to people who like Black Mirror) to watch episode S11E07 from X-Files reboot called Rm9sbG93ZXJz , which is about what happens if you refuse to tip machine/AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GuGMn7n04
And btw. in China you don't tip and you can even bring your own drinks to restaurant, why not, you are paying for the meal after all.
I think the day is not far where there will be tip for paying tip because tips cause extra calculation for businesses hence they need to be tipped for processing tips for you.
1. Find, frequent, and favorably review establishments that do not accept tips.
2. Express desire for policy at local, state, and federal levels. (Listed in decreasing order of ROI.)
There is no option 3. You cannot refuse to tip on a moral basis. You are just punishing the victim. No one will join you in your revolution and nothing will get done.