Canadians think tipping is ‘getting out of control,’ new poll suggest
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The roles that are appropriate to tip didn't change just because everyone felt like it was okay to ask for a tip. You tip barbers, doormen, bellhops, shoe shines, wait staff, delivery drivers, and bartenders. That's basically it. If a worker is not rendering you a direct personal service, they should not be tipped and their employer being passive-aggressive about it is hoping enough of their staff get tipped they can start paying the tipped minimum wage instead of paying a normal wage for their job role.
What a lot of people don't get is that opposing the expansion of tipping isn't a negative for the workers, it's a negative for the business owners. The business owners /want/ society to expect to tip workers, because they can pay them $2.15/hr instead of $17/hr in a major metro as long as they clear federal minimum wage after tips. Stop the madness, and stop tipping people who are not in direct service roles.
What's super fucked is that in SF I am seeing most businesses just add it on the check as a mandatory service charge and require you to argue with them. Like, why the fuck am I paying you a 15% service charge for me to walk to your restaurant and pick up my order off a shelf and walk back to where I'm staying after I ordered online. We both know that money isn't going to the kitchen staff, it's lining the business owner's pocket and is a fraudulent way for them to raise prices by forcing a fee on you that you have to argue about. If I'm ordering on the web and picking up, and not even speaking to anybody in the process, what "service" did I receive?
Tipping should be for exceptional service. Nobody should need tips to make ends meet.
In America, this is the law. It’s poorly enforced, unfortunately.
Minimum should be just that: minimum. For higher COL cities, the minimum (and tipped minimum, with an obligation to make the minimum if tips prove insufficient) should be higher.
Raising the minimum nationwide to New York City’s COL basically depopulates lower COL places; this is a source of generally misrepresented rural backlash against these broad-based schemes. Imagine if Germany and Greece had the same minimum wage; the latter would get screwed.
(Not arguing that the federal minimum shouldn’t be raised. Just that it should be too low for most of the country, because if it isn’t, it’s too high for some, and that’s a policy failure for a minimum. I haven’t seen a scheme for a dynamic federal minimum; that would make sense.)
Also, wage theft is a huge issue in the US (and part of the problem is tipped employees not receiving the difference between what they actually made and the minimum wage) and is poorly enforced - https://wageadvocates.com/wage-theft-huge-problem-infographi...
0 - https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
Here's a law in PA: https://www.dli.pa.gov/Individuals/Labor-Management-Relation....
Now, while individual state may have their own laws around minimum wages above the federal minimum, I find the idea that there two in the first place abhorrent. The current rates are US$7.25 and US$2.13. Neither are remotely livable, but the one for tipped staff is essentially peonage.
So no, this isn't a matter for enforcement. The law is set up to encourage this behaviour.
In effect if the law is actually enforced the minimum wage is $7.25 for both tipped and non-tipped workers, but if you are tipped the first $5.12 of tips goes to the employer.
My understanding is that enforcement of this is not the best.
This is heavily diluted when you expect tips for anything else, and it makes it very obvious it's just a hidden fee that may or may not even be going to the workers. Wage theft is the largest type of theft in the US, and a non-insignificant amount comes from tip pooling schemes where owners and managers take a dip.
I tip my barber because they took extra time and attention to ensure I had the perfect hair cut and beard shaping to look good in my workplace or on a date, or whatever. I am not generically tipping for having done a business transaction, the person who took my appointment over the phone is not the person who cut my hair. I am giving a thank you gift to the barber because they took time and attention for /me/ /personally/.
FWIW, I appreciated restaurants that had a menu option to buy a round of beers for the kitchen. I would do that every time it was presented to me, above and beyond a tip. To me, when I tip someone who rendered me a personal service (especially a service where I have a conversation with them), it's me saying "I'd buy you a beer and say thank you, but I can't do that right now and you have other customers, so here's some cash as a thank you.".
Diluting that meaning eliminates the reason I'm willing to tip in the first place.
That's a direct 1-1 transaction. You are getting a hair cut, so if it's good, you'll come back. If it's bad you won't. Charge what it costs and give the best service possible.
Granted if they go above and beyond maybe I would tip (buy yourself a beer as you say, but it would have to be more than "they cut my hair").
That's the slippery slope though, whereby if you don't tip you are deemed to not be happy with the service, and so the emotional imperative is to tip to not offend.
Possibly related, I moved last Summer and it took me until January to find a barber I've now been to repeatedly. I have really high expectations and before moving I had been going to the same shop in my previous city for more than a decade, and was on a first-name basis with my barber there and his wife and eldest son and sometimes hung out with him outside of work (mutual interest in classic cars). For me, the tip is absolutely a direct and personal thank you gift, because I have very high standards not many people can meet, and few that do get it right the first time and as a matter of course. I generally tip well, though.
All barber shops are different, but usually the person cutting your hair is renting space from the owner of the shop, who may set prices. You can use this knowledge to affect your willingness to tip (or not), just in case you're not tipping because of an assumption that may or may not be valid.
> charge for what it costs
I think that's a bit tricky, I don't think the true cost of a haircut is fixed day to day. On slow business days when there is no line, a slow and careful haircut doesn't really 'cost more' than a quick haircut because the daily throughput is the same. But on days when there are a lot of people lining up for cut, slow haircuts will reduce throughput and therefore have an opportunity cost. (This is for a walk-ins only barber.)
You make it sound like an acceptable practice. What's your reasoning behind not questioning these "customs"?
If you do not like it, get out.
I remember being confused about paying both a service charge and a tip around 2002 or so in Maryland.
Service charge is like not tipping, actually I kinda prefer this to having to look the cashier in the eye and choose which tip button.
The biggest issue is it is mandatory and its impersonal. If it's mandatory and impersonal, it's /not/ a tip, and it shouldn't be percentage based. If the business wants to raise prices, raise prices. Tacking on additional costs that are not correctly and appropriately represented in the price is basically fraud, and it's doubly uncouth because my understanding is that most businesses don't give this service charge to the workers, it's just treated as revenue.
As a European living in the USA, the distinction always seemed made up for me. If someone delivers a take-out order, why is that less worthy of tipping, than if you're in a restaurant? What about the person who bundles the order together for delivery? What about the person doing the cooking? Etc etc etc.
The answer is that you're used to tipping at a restaurant and never questioned it, but when some other tipping is introduced you rightly recognize it as an abuse.
It's not. If you were at the restaurant, you'd tip the server. If you were home, you'd tip the deliverer. If you picked it up yourself, why then you could tip yourself :)
> you're using to tipping at a restaurant and never questioned it
Now that's a bold assumption :) How about, tipping at a restaurant is part of the culture, and many people do so begrudgingly?
Dissecting this meme reveals that people are comfortable tipping for the act of waiting on them (the so-called service). The person who cooks and the person who bundles supposedly serve the institution, and so they should be paid by the institution.
Or so it would seem. The waiter and the driver also ultimately work for the institution, so one could argue that they, too, should be paid adequately by the institution. Tips should be reserved for exceptional service to you beyond what they're expected to perform for the institution.
So if the cashier at the takeout place made you happy and you wanted to tip him/her for that... you could knock yourself out. It's worthy of tipping because you felt like it.
This does not match my experience at all. You may see tip jars in those places, but there is never an expectation (in the soft-obligation sense) that anybody tip into any tip jar ever. The only place where tips are considered soft-obligatory are waitresses and food delivery, and in those cases you leave the tip on the table or hand it to the person yourself. Tipping into jars may be desired but is never expected.
Are you perhaps an immigrant to or tourist of America? I can see how foreigners might get confused by the tip jars and not pick up on this nuance since it isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere on the jar, but I don't think people integrated into American culture perceive any sort of obligation to tip into jars. If you sit in a shop and watch people order, you'll surely see that the overwhelming majority of people never put anything into the jar.
(From what I have seen in Canada, all of this is true there as well. Tips for waitresses are socially obligatory, while tips into jars are not.)
I don't think tipping on those screens is considered soft-obligatory in America, but maybe I'm guilty of a few social faux pas in Canada..
> This does not match my experience at all. You may see tip jars in those places, but there is never an expectation (in the soft-obligation sense) that anybody tip into any tip jar ever. The only place where tips are considered soft-obligatory are waitresses and food delivery, and in those cases you leave the tip on the table or hand it to the person yourself.
What about taxis? I've been harassed by taxi drivers when I forgot to add a tip because I've not been in a country with tipping for a while.
> Are you perhaps an immigrant to or tourist of America? I can see how foreigners might get confused by the tip jars and not pick up on this nuance since it isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere on the jar, but I don't think people integrated into American culture perceive any sort of obligation to tip into jars. If you sit in a shop and watch people order, you'll surely see that the overwhelming majority of people never put anything into the jar.
I don't know where in the US you are but every time I'm in california all the electronic payment systems (essentially an Ipad running some special software) ask you for a tip when paying by card. The minimum selection unless putting in manually is usually 15%. I haven't seen a top jar in the US in ages, they are very common in countries without tipping culture like Australia and NZ (funnily enough I feel much more inclined to put something in those instead of tipping in the US).
The lines are so blurry
As I said, it's not black and white.
And don't get me wrong, I'd ban tipping if it was possible.
They lure you in with "25% off first 5 orders" or "March Madness special" but offset that with ridiculous service charges. Years ago when delivery services were in their infancy and trying to grow, their discounts were awesome. Now that they are established, most of their discounts aren't discounts at all. Pity.
In the UK I don't think I've ever tipped in a bar, except perhaps with bar staff we got to know well and it was usually in the form of drinks after their shift.
Cool, the staff brought me water, food, and a bill. Hell, I can walk to kitchen window it get it myself with less hassle.
Also, why is the waiter/waitress' payment based on what I order when the waiter/waitress would do the same amount of work regardless?
If I go to a restaurant and order a $20 hamburger and tip 20%, for example, the waiter/waitress would earn $4.00. But if I order the expensive $100 steak at the same restaurant, his or her payment would be $20.00. The waiter/waitress did not 5x more work and I guarantee the service I will be provided will not be 5x better either. In my experiences, most tips go to the waiters/waitresses and not the kitchen staff. I have less of a problem with percentage based tips if tips are pooled together amongst all staff.
I have a friend that owns a barbershop. He charges different prices for different haircuts. Something simple like a buzzcut is cheaper than a haircut for an individual with longer hair. It's simple -- a buzzcut requires less work and less time. A percentage based tip on such services makes perfect sense to me.
But would you be at that particular restaurant at that moment if that's how they do business? A lot of restaurants self-service from the counter, no waitresses at all, so obviously it can work and most people find it acceptable at least some of the time. Fast food restaurants are an obvious example, but lots of independent lunch-oriented restaurants with great food operate in the same way.
So why do waitresses still exist at all? I think it's because there's still consumer demand for that sort of dining experience. And if that's what you want, shouldn't you be willing to pay for it? Maybe you pay for it with tips or maybe through higher prices on the menu, but either way it is human labor that needs to be paid for by the paying customers one way or the other.
I am not sure I understand what you as asking. I would voluntarily go to a restaurant that offers service like this because I do go to restaurants like this rather frequently. These are not fast food restaurants either, but local businesses in my city. Greek restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Southern BBQ restaurants, etc.. I honestly prefer it.
I still tip at those restaurants because I do not mind supporting local businesses I enjoy. The difference is I do it out of choice and not out of socially pressured obligation. Most of the places I frequent share tips amongst all their staff as well.
> So why do waitresses still exist at all?*
Antiquity would be my best guess. Clearly, we do not need them from a technological standpoint if I can just tap a tablet touchscreen and have my order.
> I think it's because there's still consumer demand for that sort of dining experience. And if that's what you want, shouldn't you be willing to pay for it?
I go to restaurants for the food. I do not choose to go because of the experience of being waited on. I've never seen a high class restaurant without waiting staff, so I do agree with your point that there is some "experience" aspect, at least for some. But I think it's more for an image than practicality.
> Maybe you pay for it with tips or maybe through higher prices on the menu
Maybe you pay for it with tips AND maybe through higher prices on the menu.
People need to earn a living, and I get that. It's just odd that the US and Canada are one of the only countries with this culture.
I've yet to see a comment any time this topic is discussed where someone from Europe, Asia, or Africa chimes in saying something like, "I wish we had tipping culture in our country." It's always quite the opposite.
The explanation for tipping in the US has been the lack of national healthcare and a social safety net.
I live in the NYC and grew up in London and Paris. In Paris tipping was culturally seen as optional and generally reserved for instances of great service. London was similar way back when with 50p or a quid being a tip.
When I got to the US tipping was a much bigger deal and has only grown over time. The explanation was that service workers don't get paid enough and unlike in the UK, France, and Canada there is no universal healthcare or safety net so we need to subsidize the employers to make the workers whole and safe which seems like a weird concept all around, unless you are an employer.
The fact that this custom is not only not illegal but even outright defended by folks from the US, was always weird to me.
Tipping (and added taxes/fees) is just mudding the water. It is making it harder for consumers to see what is the real price is for the goods/services.
As a consumer I want all businesses to be forced to have explicit upfront pricing so they can all compete over. Some businesses will die but this is better in the long term
By the way, as a fresh immigrant I nearly never tipped. I'd do this only if the service was exceptional. This changed once I learned that the staff makes less than the minimal wage because of tipping.
One of the reasons tipping became a big thing in the US was specifically so people could display their bias without running terribly afoul of the law. Tipping allowed people to discriminate against minority workers, who were thus forced to be pretty much servile to have any hope of being paid decently.
> This changed once I learned that the staff makes less than the minimal wage because of tipping.
I don't recall if this was originally the case when the tipped vs non-tipped minimum wages were established, but by law if a tipped worker's tips + base wage doesn't add up to the non-tipped minimum wage, the employer still needs to pay the difference. In practice though, that worker is getting fired.
As I also said in another comment, some of the most vehement supporters of tipping nowadays are tipped workers, or at least a subset of them. So I wouldn't feel terrible about tipping less.
Curious for evidence of this. I’ve seen minorities treated quite horribly in non- and low-tipping Germany. And London’s restaurants feature a level of self-effacing service that makes even this Manhattanite blush.
And when in 1938 the federal minimum wage was established, and they made the tipped one significantly lower, it enshrined the ability to use tipping to legally discriminate in law.
> And London’s restaurants feature a level of self-effacing service that makes even this Manhattanite blush.
I believe tipping originally came to the US from the continent, with the practice being especially promoted by the British wealthy.
Georgia, a slave state, was the latest to ban tipping [1]. South Carolina, the original secessionist, was another, alongside Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee [2]. There appear to have been more former slave states to have banned the practice than free (Washington and Iowa).
> believe tipping originally came to the US from the continent
It originates in “criminal circles as a word meant to imply the unnecessary and gratuitous gifting of something somewhat taboo, like a joke, or a sure bet, or illicit money exchange,” being later popularised in Tudor England. It didn’t broadly take root in America until Prohibition, when “hotels and restaurants, who lost the revenue of selling alcoholic beverages,” welcomed tips “as a way of supplementing employee wages” [3].
The timeline for linking the end of slavery to tipping doesn’t seem to line up. It has roots in servility. But the racist-roots hypothesis appears to be modern and misplaced.
[1] https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/30/457125740/wh...
Call it a 'delivery bid' and make it clear that if you don't bid enough, your order may be significantly delayed, cold, damaged or improperly handled, if delivered at all. Of course Doordash et al don't want to do that because the optics are pretty frakking bad.
Essentially tipflation will cause tip requests to lose any moral obligation. Kind of like when the grocery store asks you to donate $1 to St. Judge. If you press Yes, great! Thank you, but I suspect many of us automatically press no without another thought.
That no without thought will be how people tip in the future...
It did for me personally. It was a huge motivator in learning to cook at home.
I don't forsee the US going entirely tip-free, but the number of places you tip could certainly decline (nobody tips at McDonalds, and few tip at Dominos for pickup, even though you can).
Maybe the IRS could do something to making receiving income via tips tax disadvantaged (and loudly, publicly) so that alternate methods would work. I do know a number of tip-employees who would hate that; they make quite good money on tips.
Tips should be treated as income to the business if the business collects it, because that's exactly what it is.
Yeah, this would suck for workers who rely on tips. But the blame for this lies with business leaders; they are the ones who have chosen to abuse this loophole for personal gain.
My wife thinks I'm pretty stingy on non-restaurant tipping. I won't tip for pickup, online orders, the type of thing mentioned here. But that doesn't mean a server at a restaurant suddenly did a worse job or deserves a 40-50% pay cut. My default is 20% and I can count on one hand the number of times in the last year or so I've gone under that, and many times have gone over. 10% is borderline "something happened where I need to talk to a manager" territory.
What actually needs to happen is that businesses need to start paying their employees a realistic wage and building that into the prices they charge. There are a couple of restaurants in town that do this and don't allow tipping. I preferentially eat at those.
But don't get me wrong here -- I'm talking about default tipping. If I actually get above-average service, even in settings outside of restaurants, I'll tip more.
Also, I never tip on the card. Always cash.
I believe that's the problem being discussed :)
During COVID I felt good about tipping because small businesses and restaurants were struggling, so it felt like I was doing something positive.
But then businesses got greedy, not only did they increase the prices (+50-100%) in some cases, but also increased the pre-programmed tipping percentages. Pre COVID used to be (12,15,20), now it is more like (18,22,25).
With the increase in prices I would actually tipping more $ even if they kept the percentages the same.
But it’s the greed of increasing percentages that is getting out of hand.
And also where tips are expected. Getting a drip coffee, a place where they just hand you the cup but you pour it yourself asked for a tip. What exactly did you do as a server in this case?
Getting an ice cream … you scooped it up and handed it to me. That’s your job, I am not sure what you did beyond your job description to get a tip.
I’m at the point where I just hit no tip out of spite for places that I don’t think deserve to have a tipping option to start with.
Restaurants, haircuts and bars are fair game, but I still think service has to be above par for more than 15% tip.
I think it can last much longer. As a European I already don't understand it and I feel you should have reached tip burnout ten years ago. But the culture hasn't changed it went worse. The dark patterns must be working.
Tipping is spreading means more and more people are at the receiving end of it and depend on it, these people aren't going to complain about it.
When they went full-online during covid with only pickup, they wanted to keep those people, and so suggested that you tip even on pickup.
I'd much rather just see increased prices where tips are no longer "needed" but I don't know how we'll get there.
At some point some of the zombie businesses need to die and make room for the profitable ones that can pay their workers.
Lesson 1 of globalization: only import the good parts.
If I am at Whistler at a liquor store, I tip the cashier because I know that the cost of living there is the most expensive in the world. The housing situation is horrendous.
I wish that the minimum wage was $25/hr and we didn't have to do this, but it isn't so I tip.
Especially recently, I have noticed that many (more like all) businesses have raised their prices anyway, and I do not believe it's solely due to inflation and supply side issues. Not one bit; absolute unfettered greed.
I think many business owners do not realize the reality of owning a business -- not all of them can and should survive. If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, then have fun with your Chapter 7 or 11 Bankruptcy.
Which is an exceedingly stupid argument, because the effect is exactly the same as if they raised their prices.
That is a self correcting issue IMHO. The management can incentivize excellent service or lose business. Customers continue to vote by spending their $$$ elsewhere. Poor service could be a result of disgruntled workers after that policy change but with the management's involvement, it should normalize over time.
It's really getting ridiculous.
We don't need a nanny state intervening in something like this, we're all adults
Consumers feel tricked or pressured into tipping, despite having little to no understanding around who is receiving those tips and why. This makes this a consumer protection situation. If that lack of clarity extends to the workers, then it also becomes a worker protection situation.
The government went down this path when it decided to encourage special treatment for tipped workers. So we need to either remove this special treatment, or update the laws to reflect modern reality.
France seems to be one place where this hasn't happened yet.