Tipping in the United States has gotten out of control | Hacker News Reader

Tipping in the United States has gotten out of control

cnbc.com

66 pointsblueridge133 comments

My goodwill for this stuff is rapidly running out. You've got the already inflated cost of the goods or services, then taxes, then whatever "local fees" are required, then the venue or restaurant adds on "service fees" on top of that...and then you're asked to tip, or to donate to a good cause, etc.

Lots of small businesses in our area have kept the "fair wage and wellness fee" they added during COVID times and there's a long paragraph of text on the bill that explains why it's important and how it's helping them pay staff, yadda yadda. Seems like the entire cost of running the business and keeping people employed has been passed on to the customer.

I enjoy a good meal and a good show, and I am happy to support local businesses. But a $5.25 latte and a $24 pizza and $14 for a salad that is only three pieces of lettuce or a $100 ticket that becomes $175 after fees...I'm starting to opt-out entirely.

We’ve opted out and couldn’t be happier. Just do things at home, better quality, less money and no pressure.

Seems like the entire cost of running the business and keeping people employed has been passed on to the customer.

Is that not the only way it can work? Unless a business is being subsidised by someone as a hobby or Softbank is pouring money into it for it to be set on fire (more charitably in some kind of growth phase where they can stomach taking a loss for years), then the income from the customers surely has to cover the costs.

Wages must be built into the costs, otherwise the owner maintains their margin subsidized by the customer through tips. Otherwise, the "true costs" are what the customer pays + tips. It's resort fees for services!

Just price it in. The reaction to all the point of sale fees are transparent pricing laws which will just make the business have to calculate and track all of these silly fees, add them up and then display the final price to the consumer before they choose to buy it.

Except that tips won't even count as those "fees", because they're technically a gift from the customer directly to the employee.

That's a big part of why I get so angry about this. This practice has subverted a good and very nice human act into a something demanded. It strips out all of the value of tipping.

Yes (generally), but the $100 ticket would be better advertised as $175, and the $24 pizza should have been listed as $24 on the menu, not $16 (+10% tax, +$2 fair wage fee, +25% tip).

</european-pov>

Usually running costs are built into the price of something. It would feel weird if Netflix was asking you to add a tip to help pay for the developers after charging you for a subscription.

As a business owner you set the price of a product or a service while factoring in all costs, including wages.

Tipping should not be mandatory and if it is then it means something is profoundly wrong with the way the specific industry works.

If you're starting a business you need the resources and the financial fundamentals in place to keep the doors open. If you're renting a space you can't afford, or you're spending beyond your means for supplies, or your menu is too broad, or your opening hours don't make sense...you can only compensate by increasing costs for so long—people will go somewhere else.

"I really like the food, I like the space, but I can't keep buying a $15 bottle of juice and a $22 sandwich with a single slice of meat, and I don't know why I'm on the hook for all of these extra fees..."

One of our local eateries recently closed their doors because they just couldn't make it work. They ruined goodwill with customers by substantially increasing the cost of everything, every few weeks: sandwiches, drinks, small baked goods, small bags of chips, etc. On top of that, they added one service charge after the next, and it always came with a plea to help them stay open.

But they made a lot of bad decisions along the way, like opening up a fancy organic eatery in a part of town with no foot traffic and no parking, by taking on even more debt to expand their space and open up another pop-up store before they had got the basics rights with their first location. Fewer and fewer people came to visit and that was that.

> Seems like the entire cost of running the business and keeping people employed has been passed on to the customer.

Who else do you expect to pick up the tab?

Yea this mindset always confuses me. If you don't tip the employees, the prices will go up, and you'll pay the same price either way. Where do people think the money that goes to employees comes from if not ultimately from customers pockets?

I agree but I just want to know the price up front. If they have to sell the sandwich for $12 then put $12 on the sign, don't put $9 and then try to pressure me into a $3 tip.

It's the hiding of the actual price that pisses people off, but not enough to prevent them from using the service obviously; there's a reason that hidden fees are a dark pattern that I'm sure date back to antiquity.

It's not even the hiding that pisses me off. It's the manipulation.

This assumes that money is distributed evenly though. Nothing stops restaurants from lowering server pay, increasing prices, and just taking profits to themselves.

I'd prefer no tips, an increase in price, and no hidden bs fees/tips

Edit: evenly meaning an increase in prices proportionally increases employee pay

The rest of the (developed) world manages to operate by paying living wages and displaying and charging the final price. US is the only one that needs to underpay staff (and charge 10 to 100 times more for health and education while we mention differences) and then DEMAND 20% tip and 15% service charge on top of random 10-20% taxes. Just end the slavery mindset already and pay your people a living wage. If the business cannot afford that then it should not exist and new business that knows how to operate properly will take their place.

Canada also has the ridiculous top pressure but (I believe in all jurisdictions but might be wrong) eliminated the lower than minimum wage pay for servers. And we have the added nonsense of being asked to tip at the oil change place and other areas where no one was ever being paid less than minimum wage.

> If you don't tip the employees, the prices will go up, and you'll pay the same price either way.

Right, which is preferable by far. At least that makes the whole thing noncoercive.

Businesses should pay their people a reasonable wage, not make the employees beg, or rely on guilt and coercion to get your customers to make up for what the business doesn't want to do.

I think the point is that if a business wants its employees to make a living wage, they should pay them that wage, and make whatever adjustments are required on the business end to make that possible, instead of continuing to pay wait staff less than minimum wage and guilt tripping customers into providing the rest. Yes, ultimately the money that will be used to pay the staff will come from the customer, but the way restaurants do it is dumb. Just pay them more and raise your prices.

> Seems like the entire cost of running the business and keeping people employed has been passed on to the customer.

This is all business everywhere (other than the trillions of dollars exchanged in corrupt government contracts).

But most businesses are honest about how they go about it. Abusing tipping like this is the opposite of that. Not to mention it puts customers and employees into an adversarial relationship, and manages to be an insult to both the employees and the customers.

Just be honest, pay the workers what they should be paid, and price the goods and services accordingly.

> Just be honest, pay the workers what they should be paid, and price the goods and services accordingly.

HELL YES

I would much, much rather pay more and know the staff were getting real wages. This is complicated by the fact that a large number of FOH workers prefer the $2 hourly plus tips because they don't disclose most of the tips on their taxes.

My favorite one was this one time I went out in NYC for a pizza and a beer. The pizza was $24 for 2 slices (which tbh is a lot, especially in NYC) and the beer was $8. I gave the server a $50 and he didn’t come back with the change. And when I asked for the change, he made passive aggressive comments. The best part is that I still left a 10% tip and he came back asking if everything was alright, making a point to let me know the tip was less. My goodwill has long run out because it’s not just the businesses adding the pressure, the people in the service industry are behaving in a way where generous tips are expected for bad and rude service.

I've always been a good tipper (> 20% even before the pandemic), but I'm increasingly unwilling to do so. My argument is fairly simple. Tipping is a tax on decency. Decent people tip well. Assholes don't tip. And it's the decent people who get screwed.

I'd much rather a restaurant tack on a 20% or even 25% service fee that everyone, including the assholes, must pay rather than asking for tips and depending on my decency to compensate for the restaurant underpaying its employees, while allowing assholes to get away with contributing nothing.

One thing to add to this is tipping with POS systems at fast food restaurants, coffee shops, etc. is always done before you receive your items. I much prefer to tip after I have received everything, since the tip is supposed to reflect your satisfaction with service and is a useful incentive for good, quick service.

> is a useful incentive for good, quick service

This is frequently said, but has anyone done any work to show that it's actually true? That tips work as an incentive for measurably better or improved service? Or to what degree it is true? Just wondering.

I have a lot of friends in the service industry and, like people in many other careers, beyond a particular baseline of compensation and satisfaction, it seems that good performance is as much about intrinsic motivations as it is about extrinsic factors. The best people often simply want to do a good job. If the tips or overall comp isn't satisfactory, they either find a different place to work or take additional shifts at another bar or restaurant.

I've never seen a study but Planet Money interviewed some waiters back in the day and they all said the trick to making a lot in tips is turning over tables as fast as possible.

So tipping is accomplishing the opposite of encouraging good service?

why not just raise prices by 20%? or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage?

> why not just raise prices by 20%?

Because if every restaurant doesn't do it, the one that holds out from doing it and hides the extra cost behind a noticed-on-the-menu-later surcharge (or simply keeps asking for tips) will get more business because customers have trained ourselves to sort by lowest-price-first-then-choose-that-one.

> or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage?

Several states and cities don't have the tip-credit restaurant wage and do require restaurants to follow minimum wage, regardless of tips. Tipping is still incredibly prevalent in those places because it's still a way for employees to make more money without the owner having to figure out how to pay for it through prices.

Imagine thinking the world is so simplistically assholes vs decent people and you’ve magically chosen to be decent.

Here’s a hint: Being a “good person” aka compassion is not the only virtue.

Contrast with conscientiousness which is doing what is right (even when it hurts someone).

> Tipping is a tax on decency. Decent people tip well. Assholes don't tip.

Or how about we just just get rid of this tipping ridiculousness altogether and the social judgement associated with it?

I would be ok with that, but a lot of people would probably be priced out of the market. After all the costs associated with that business don't vanish, they'll just have to be inserted into the up-front costs. People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping.

Again I think that's the way to go, instead of the weird shell game of value we have now, but I think a lot of people will not agree. What people really want is for tipping to become purely voluntary or go away, but also for nothing else to change.

Works fine in Europe. Plus I pay the price I see on the menu, instead of 3 different taxes and service fees tacked on.

> People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping.

Uhm, much of the rest of the world works without tipping, and it seems to work out just fine for everyone (even in the developed world). Tipping is a weird America thing, and it has made me mostly avoid full service restaurants...and now I'm being asked to tip at self service and take out places, ugh.

We seem to get these comments all the time from any Europeans gawking at the US here on Hacker News. Just to be clear, you understand much of the rest of the developed world has strong social safety nets, abundant public services, free to the payer healthcare, often free college? The US has none of this and workers are expected to bear all of these costs out of their own wages, so those wages need to be higher than they are in Europe for that to be possible. You can stare at us like we're all idiots, but what do you expect anyone reading this to do? If every American reading Hacker News agreed to all vote for candidates who would put in place stronger safety nets and public services and subsidize wage earners so they didn't need to bear every cost out of their own wages, we still may as be pissing in the ocean both because of how small a portion of the voter base we represent but also because our legislative system is more or less intentionally designed to make that kind of thing impossible.

Do you realize we just went through a crisis where the country nearly defaulted on its debt because our Congress somehow has the legal ability to pass a budget but then not agree to actually fund the budget they themselves passed just a few months earlier? The only way out of that was to agree to pass a law saying we'd cut public spending even further, outside of the regular budgeting cycle, even if the budgets themselves don't say to do that. We just pass laws saying we're going to ignore and contradict other laws we just passed, mostly because the structure of our representative system severely overweights the representation given to underpopulated states, originally because that prevented slavery from being banned and we had to give them that power for them to agree to be part of the country, but now who even knows why? Uncharitably, because billionaires and gigantic businesses that don't want to get taxed have convinced people in these states that stronger public spending would benefit atheists and foreigners and not them. Charitably, it's more inertia than anything else and it's more or less baked into the American identity that this is how we do things and it's why we're special and successful, not that we have a resource-rich country that was underpopulated because of smallpox killing all the natives and across two vast oceans from a couple of world wars that destroyed any plausible industrial competition for most of a century.

But again, what are any of us supposed to do about is? My choice as just a single person who happens to make more than enough money to pay well above the posted price for anything I regularly purchase is to tip generously or take this kind of principled stand that I'm going to singlehandledly change centuries of cultural habits and expectations by stiffing hourly service staff, because well, the rest of the world has done it.

That doesn't make sense. What's the difference between a 20% tip vs 20% required service charge. You pay the same $$$ which means people wouldn't be priced out.

A lot of people are terrible tippers, you can get away with that, you can't just say "Hey you know, I'm going to just shave 20% off that price tag, thanks."

If you're suggesting people can't afford the meal with the tip, the solution is to offer a student discount, family discount or similar when including the cost of wages in the price.

> People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping.

But people will end up paying the same either way.

"Assholes don't tip"

How so? I mean, when you go to restaurant there is some sort of the contract, that for paying X you get Y food. Why would anyone not willing to do anything more beyond this deal should be considered an asshole?

People work hard outside restaurants also, often harder, and they don't get tipped anything.

Unfortunately salaries for service jobs have the assumption of tipping built in. In some states the minimum wage for tipped jobs is lower than the minimum wage for other jobs. So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed.

And thus the reason "people don't want to work any more" gets heard.

People do want to work, for decent wages, not exploitation and begging via 'tips'.

> So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed.

I'm sympathetic to this, but surely the customers who don't tip aren't the ones screwing them. It's their employers screwing both them and the customers.

> In some states the minimum wage for tipped jobs is lower than the minimum wage for other jobs. So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed.

Federal law requires that the tipped employee be paid at least the regular federal minimum wage. I'm sure various state laws have something similar for when the state doesn't just match the federal minimum wage.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-emplo...

There are, of course, plenty varying of ideas about the minimum wage.

I like this idea, even though I dislike it.

I'm a good tipper, and it's not to feel good about myself, but because it seems the right thing to do. (Some people don't think there's a distinction there, often voiced as "they're just trying to feel good about themselves" to excuse one not doing the right thing themselves, but others do think there's a distinction.)

So long as tipping exists, I'll now have to try not to think of my tip as subsidizing jerks who tip poorly, since that's a little annoying, and I can't do anything about that.

I also tip, but don't see as tax on decency, just decency.

Let assholes do their asshole things, I do mine.

Tipping screens on touchscreen checkout/payment systems are an unfortunate tax on people who are afraid of social judgment or social conflict.

As tipping screens have become more common in retail/counter service through wider and wider usage of iPads as payment, and as suggested tipping amounts on the pre-selected options have increased, I have not started tipping any more at all than I ever did (20% on services where wait staff served our table but nothing for normal behind-a-counter transactions). I just learned to hunt down the zero percent button or the 'enter your own amount' button very quickly.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsUhBLiO4P2/?igshid=NzJjY2FjN...

Tipping no longer seems to be about rewarding good service. Tipping at starbucks, panda express or any other fast food joint didn't used to happen outside of a dollar or two into a tip jar. 15% was pretty normal for a sit down dinner where tables were bused, drinks were refilled and service was had...now the expecation is 15% or more when getting drive thru fast food which in some niche places can be as much as a sit down meal (Burgerville near me is an example where meals can easily exceed $15/person).

Can I ask what makes you think tipping at fast food is expected? Has anyone in your life told you they think it's rude not to tip there or have you had any bad interactions with a worker when you tried to skip tipping?

When the person taking my credit card at the drive thru hands me the little machine and tells me which button to push for 15, 18 or 20% tip...and watching me until I hand it back...yeah its expected.

In case you didn't see this story... https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/tipping-culture-eti... ...there is an attitude spreading that tipping is necessary.

https://viewfromthewing.com/austin-airport-shop-demands-tip-...

Oh...and the Burgerville union demanding that tips be pushed in the drive thru... https://www.coworker.org/petitions/we-demand-tips-in-the-dri...

Another article about it... https://thinkingoregon.org/2022/04/23/heres-a-tip-to-busines...

..and the change in their face when you press ZERO.

> ...yeah its expected.

Or, just this morning as I was getting coffee at a drive-through coffee stand, I handed my card to the person and she asked "How much would you like to leave as a tip. It's totally optional!"

This is abusing how human relations work. Saying "it's totally optional" in no way reduces the social and emotional pressure of this.

Although I did say "Nothing," because that's insane.

Interestingly, at a different coffee place I frequent, they never mention tips directly. They have a tip jar that is also labelled "If you want to put a tip on your card, just tell us!"

I tip them from time to time. But if you pressure me, either verbally or through those crazy-making POS keypads, you won't get a dime from me. And I'll be less likely to return. I'm fed up.

Starbucks just added a mandatory tip screen one has to navigate thru to pay when tapping a credit card to several of the locations near me in the last couple of months when using the drive thru. It's bonkers.

Lots of places have a mandatory tip screen, I have literally never seen one that didn't have an "enter your own percent" button that allowed you to enter zero (if not a skip button)

Perhaps many people aren't recognizing that that's a 'no thanks' button that makes tipping non-mandatory?

Depends on the “fast food” but generally, terminals have custom or no tipping buried in the interface after 25/20/18/15/10 or whatever the steps are.

I would be happy if 18 and 10 were the bottom options, depending on the place. It’s frankly not easy to even choose those.

Pre-pandemic, I tipped 20% for restaurants or delivery, and 10% to “restaurants” for pickup, if it was a restaurant with table service. I still mostly do that, but it’s often the lowest option these days. I do not appreciate there being a lowest tipping amount of 15% for fast casual. It is quite a bit of work to get to the 10. Depending on the exact place, it’s fuzzy if really that is appropriate or not, I really don’t think it’s appropriate for a restaurant without table service to be requesting a tip of 10% or higher for pickup, but here we are.

My biggest problem is the use of "dark patterns" in the UX of POS systems.

Firstly, a tip should be something that is asked for AFTER the service has been provided, as it's meant to both reward and incentivize good service. Modern POS systems have broken this construct by prompting for a tip at places like Panera, Five Guys, Starbucks, and others before any service has been received.

Secondly, a tip should be directed to those who provided the service. Yet, in the POS systems described above, there's no way to know who is receiving the tip. Oftentimes even the manager doesn't know.

Lastly, IF the above is going to be violated, then, at the very least, a customer should be assured that the staff behind the counter will not see the tip amount right away. As it is, I'm made to worry that if I don't tip well, the staff will see it and adjust the service I get.

The whole process is guided by dark patterns that seek to leverage guilt and the threat of being perceived as a bad customer to extract higher tips in lieu of raising wages and adjusting prices to match.

The worst dark pattern I see in big cities I frequent in (Boston and NYC) is that these POS systems have absolutely ridiculous default settings. I've seen coffee shops that show "25%, 30%, 35%" on the tipping screen. Look, before COVID I would never even tip a barista for coffee, due to COVID we said "sure" but I've never tipped anyone 25% in my entire life. How dare a coffee shop defaults to 25% as the "lowest" option?! When I see these I immediately click "Skip". It's absolutely a psychological scam, they just hope you'll impulsively click the lowest setting.

For those of us outside of the US, this seems crazy! Tipping 25+% adds such a lot to the final bill.

In Spain, we just leave a couple of Euros, maybe more if service was exceptional. There simply isn't the same pressure for diners to tip, as all waiting staff earn a living wage.

Tips here are simply an incentive/reward for good service, rather than absolutely expected in order to supplement the wages of underpaid staff.

What is considered a living wage to you? I'm honestly asking because that term is thrown around in the US, but no one can ever define a number.

In many large cities in the US the starting wage for a fast food worker can be $18+/hr. For someone working in an upscale restaurant can easily get hundreds per day in tips.

Since the purpose is to be a minimum wage to live in, it means a wage expected for low-skill jobs.

$18/hr is also a typical American salary for a new teacher [1], or $25+ with more experience, and I don't think working in an upscale restaurant should pay better.

[1] Many hits on Google.

The average wage in Spain is 2268 EUR per month (very low compared to many places), though people in the service industry will earn less than that of course. In the villages a coffee is about EUR 1.50-1.80 and a set 3-course lunch is around EUR 11-13 (but more in the big cities).

There are a lot of cultural differences (obviously) but the cost of living is generally less overall. Cafes and restaurants here are often staffed by either younger people still studying (and usually living at home), or older people.

It isn't a route to riches by any stretch, but people get a set minimum wage which should be enough to afford rent/shopping without needing to be supplemented with tips. That said - life is hard and the cost of living is definitely going up here. You wouldn't earn hundreds of Euros in tips even in the best Spanish restaurants though.

Would you believe that most restaurants in the US have a minimum 18% tip if you have more than 6 people in your party? The norms here are very different and part of the problem is lifestyle expectations. Minimum wage isn't expected to be glamorous, but some people think that having roommates is not a reasonable expectation for anyone.

Similar in the UK to be fair. Tables of 6+ often have a tip (10-15%) added as standard, though this is still "discretionary."

It is not discretionary most places here...it is mandatory.

> I'm honestly asking because that term is thrown around in the US, but no one can ever define a number.

There is no definition because it is impossible to define. Everyone will say a number based on their very specific circumstances, problems and expected quality of life (Which will also vary from person to person)

The elephant in the room is that besides trying to define a number for a livable wage there is nothing else but an extreme status quo replacement.

Kind of my point, should we be setting wages for people based on their lifestyle...or the other way around?

I think it's a fool's errand to define it either way. An endless task. Even if we eliminate corporate/billionaires greed.

Tipping in quite a few countries in the EU is effectively illegal when done in cash. When added to the bill, the tip is taxed with VAT, then it as to be added to the salary, the latter is a subject of income and social tax.

It's a form of tax evasion, yet I have never heard to have been an issue (prosecuted)

I don't know about that - I've never heard that issue with leaving a cash tip in Europe, especially as the amount overall is fairly neglible. Most of mainland Europe doesn't even give the option to add a tip to a card payment when you get the bill as tips are discretionary.

the US has a culture where regulations and general social interactions are so pro-business that people blindly accept false advertising in the form of fees and taxes being tacked on after-the-fact rather than impose on businesses by asking them to name an all-in number.

it's not just tipping but also sales tax, restaurant "courtesy fees", airline fees, fuel surcharges, resort fees, electric surcharges (I pay more in fees than I do for the actual electricity!), auto sales bills, etc.

The US is allergic to the concept of having to advertise an out-the-door number, because that wouldn't make for compelling advertising, and that's the focus in the US.

My only contact with tipping in the US as a foreigner, was my only trip to the US. Florida theme parks back when I was a child, a decade ago. In particular, I remember going to Hollywood Planet, inside the Disneyworld Downtown.

The waiter kept making us eat “fast” by asking “dessert now?” unasked as we were still eating entrees.

When we paid he stayed there completely still, and my father asked “…so?”. And he said the tip was too little. Dad said “I tip what I want and your service was horrible anyway”.

He threw a literal tantrum and furiously ran into the kitchen, to never be seen again. We walked out after that.

It left a mark on me as the symbol of US tipping culture, due to the impact actually being on a situation causes vs reading about it.

Never has any of the sort happened anywhere else in my life.

The Planet Hollywood inside Disney World has about as much to do with the US as a whole as a restaurant outside the Vatican with menus in 12 languages has to do with Italy.

I get the admittedly similar comparison, but do you think it’s truly accurate?

You’re comparing a country and seat of a world religion to a theme park.

And, even so (even if it was in Italy, that is), is it not an italian restaurant just because it’s touristic and not “for locals”?

That just sounds like a No True Scotsman.

> You’re comparing a country and seat of a world religion to a theme park.

Well, you'll notice I didn't say inside the Vatican, which is in fact a serious place with serious art treasures.

> And, even so (even if it was in Italy, that is), is it not an italian restaurant just because it’s touristic and not “for locals”?

I didn't say it wouldn't be Italian, and I didn't say Planet Hollywood isn't American. I did say they are both extreme outliers. Bill Gates is American, but his life and mine have almost nothing in common apart from language and what our passports look like. You don't learn much about American lives from looking at Bill Gates.

That Planet Holywood has so many foreign tourists should motivate them to put full (tax and service included) prices on the menu, and a clear "no tips!" at the top.

I think his experience with tipping is actually pretty realistic of one (extreme) half of the total picture though: a waiter in a shitty restaurant running tourists through as quickly as possible, getting paid less than minimum wage with tips calculated as a major component of his pay.

That is horrible.

I have to say that in 40 years of dining out, I have never encountered any such behavior. I absolutely believe you went through it, but I tend to find Americans impressively polite on average.

I read that "aggressively polite" and it made me chuckle. Then i realized i misread you :(

I'll take the "aggressively polite" as part of the package deal, ngl

I did indeed, no lies here haha.

However (and at risk of sounding hostile), can I ask what other cultures have you experienced?

All cultures have good and bad things, it’s not xenophobic or racist (I hope) that the Chinese have statistically better school conduct and order, while the Russians are impressively tough, the Spanish are very chill and relaxed, and many more examples.

As with all previous examples, Americans have many such qualities, but I wouldn’t have thought to say polite as one of them. Maybe for the Japanese. Hope it doesn’t offend anyone. At least around here Americans have more a fame of being loud-ish and sometimes a bit lacking in reading the room. It’s absolutely terrible but, have you watched Emily in Paris? Kind of like that.

I however understand you considering Americans polite if your other comparison is, for example, Egypt.

Just so it doesn’t offend anyone, here’s some qualities I associate with Americans. Creative, resourceful, fighters for freedom and their own personal rights (litigious too), despite the current political climate.

I think your assessments are pretty spot on.

I've visited many other countries but I should have added that most of my adult time has spent in high-end neighborhoods on the West Coast. Except for Poland and France I've never spent more than a couple of weeks in a country outside the USA. I grew up not rich in Southern California and people were polite there too. In my old age I am beginning to suspect that people are just nice to me for some reason, or that I don't perceive rudeness as well as I should.

On an individual level Chinese, Poles, rural Americans, and Russians are sort of like New Yorkers: once they know you're not going to kill them they're ridiculously warm and welcoming. Also New Yorkers: I have more than once been asked if I needed directions when I stood on a street corner consulting my nav. In 40 years of visiting New York City I just have never found people rude, whether it's bus drivers or wait staff or people in the finance district. Which means my impression of things may be suspect.

As usual of "reporting" in the United States this is devoid of anything beyond informing the reader that something happened.

Tipping in this country should be called what it is: customer subsidization of service worker wages. Restaurants are allowed to pay their workers below minimum wage because of the expectation for tips. The answer has been clear for a while now. Require full minimum wage (not that it's enough) for all service workers regardless of their role and require that all tips be pooled for everyone working a given shift.

As others have mentioned the tipping culture in the U.S. has its roots in the abuses of the antebellum South. Tipping is paternalistic and many people treat it as a way to exercise power over service workers. It needs to be abolished, but as with most things we'll probably have to do it in phases.

Tipping is stupid, and it now exists (in the US) solely to offset shitty wages.

When I waited tables in college, I treated it as compensation for my work above and beyond the status quo. Now it's simply an expectation, regardless of the quality of work or experience.

Canada too.

A perennial gripe about tipping is that it’s usually based on value of goods, rather than value of service. Pouring a $7 glass of wine takes exactly the same effort as a $14 glass of wine, but one earns the wait staff double the tip.

My current rules for tipping is that I'll tip when all three of the following are true:

- The quality of the service I came to get is significantly impacted by a single employee

- That employee is the one receiving the tip

- I am only asked for the tip after I have been able to judge the quality of the service

When those things are true (waiters, haircuts, Uber drivers) then I'll tip generously and with high variance. When they aren't (fast food, Starbucks, etc) then I try not to tip, although fighting the peer pressure is definitely hard.

The goal is that the best hairstylists/waiters/drivers make enough in tips to have it be a high-paying job they love, and the worst are incentivised to move to an industry where their skills are a better fit.

If the general quality of the service is good for reasons not related to a specific employee, I'll do all the normal things (rating highly on Google Maps, returning frequently, recommending to friends), so tipping is only arguably useful when it's directed feedback to a single person. I do wish restaurants allowed a separate tip line for "tip the waiter" and "tip the chef" though.

It was mentioned in the article but probably a part of this is “standardization” of POS software and devices. Have seen up to 30% suggested tips before which is laughable. Receipts often have tip sections by default it seems.

My biggest qualm is when tax is included into the pre-defined tip denominations because it’s absurd but also messes with my mental math.

Edit word

When I remember to, I blank out the tip section and fill in the total. Sometimes, people will use the opportunity to give themselves a tip. (I haven't caught it happening, but I know/have read about people who have)

Those POS devices don't prompt for a tip by default. The amounts they offer for the denominations are configurable as well. Companies offering to add a tip to picking up your coffee chose to do so.

Why is this desirable for employers? One: It doesn't cost them anything and improves employee retention (or: they don't have to pay their employees as much). Two: They get control over that tip money, and can distribute it (or not) how they like. Yes, I've heard about this too, where tip money is equally distributed among all shift employees, or as well as a disciplinary step employers have kept all the tip money for that day. Three: If it's a self-owned business, they may get free money from someone who feels pressured to tip. Yes, some of that may be legal, but it goes on anyways.

>t was mentioned in the article but probably a part of this is “standardization” of POS software and devices. Have seen up to 30% suggested tips before which is laughable. Receipts often have tip sections by default it seems.

My favorite is when they have the screen set-up so the largest tip is furthest to the left where you'd expect the smallest to be.

haha yep and that's how it was configured when I saw the 30%!

Yet surely these are configurable?

I've had numerous instances in Europe, particularly in Ireland and the UK, of shops, grocers, cafes, etc with touchscreen POS devices that ask customers for a tip percentage with every sale, only for the staff to quickly reach over on every sale and press "no tip". It seems like a rather inefficient way of not having tips. I don't know, however, whether it comes from owners trying to establish tipping and staff disagreeing, or an inability, administratively or technically, to figure out the configuration.

The staff on the floor are embarrassed to ask for a tip, but the owner has configured the device.

It's clearly configurable if you look on the websites of Square, Stripe etc.

In Denmark I've twice had waiters reach over once they saw my Danish credit card and press "no". "Sorry, I thought you were tourists/American as you were speaking English."

correct, I've talked to merchants that said Square pushed that on them and were flabbergasted when the merchant said it doesn't make sense to add a tip for their kind of service

we should actually pressure the POS services as well as the card networks to cut this practice

it'll probably be far more effective too than trying to talk to service industry workers given the conflict of interest

I generally tip no more than 15%. Seeing suggested tips come up when I pick up take out is too common. In the past I would robotically tap the lowest option but now I am trying to be more deliberate and discerning about it. I really can't afford to tip everyone for everything!

Plus, delivery services like Uber often have large discounts but tips seem to be priced based on the undiscounted value. Leading to cases of it proposing a $5 tip on an order I'm paying ~$15 for.

Everything's controversial in the land of tipping but it's pretty normal to tip on undiscounted price.

Huh, I wasn't aware of that.

yep i always go by pre-discount total

Maybe the net effect of default tip screens on POS terminals is positive from the vendor’s perspective; but for me it’s negative. I tip less now than ever because the whole system is opaque to me. I have no idea who’s getting how much. I don’t know how the cost of the goods and services I’m purchasing relate to actual cost of provision. Why am I voluntarily putting in more than the asking price when I have no idea who is operating behind the scenes to extract value from the transaction. I’m sympathetic toward worker’s rights but the solution is in collective and political action, not in hiding it behind these one-off transactions.

I lived about 40 years under a sort of social truce with tipping culture. Tipping is inherently too transactional and too patronizing for my comfort. But the social construct, including laws, around server wages and tips was so well established I was able to establish a sort of loose personal policy. This truce allowed me to tip consistently and generously transaction after transaction. Yet, it allowed me to still somewhat abstract each tip from its transactional and patronizing character.

Not only is that social truce now violated, it is violated specifically within our new global environment of every-transaction-of-any-kind-is-a-novel-attempt-at-customer-exploitation. Every supposed price is already a mystery, and every voluntary tip screen is a mystery with an ethical puzzle and a face to face confrontation.

I’ve drastically scaled back my use of services because it is emotionally taxing for me to confront the utter pettiness of trying to guess how much I should be paying for hot noodles from day to day.

15% waiting, haircuts

0% for non-services like taking my order at the counter and having to pick up a call-in

10% for everything else

I don’t care if you screw up or move the earth for me, that’s what you get. That’s what everyone gets. It’s made my life so much simpler.

I don't get tipping in the US.

To me the idea of a tip is basically as some sort of recognition of status. It feels like an aristocratic tradition of sorts - a recognition that the money is not much to the giver but is to the recipient. At least in proportion to the service rendered.

And it only makes sense for like, kind of personal favours with some sort of emotional connection where the person goes above and beyond.

When it comes to just like, literally giving money for everything ever, like buying a coffee, it just seems bizarre. If you're on the same level as someone else then tipping just seems weird.

Problematically the concept of “tipped wage” (and consequently tipped workers) is a legal one in the US.

That's exactly what people are typically complaining about they complain about tipping culture. People don't complain about having the option of tipping for above-and-beyond service; people complain about having a universal expectation of tipping for all service.

The US generally allows waitstaff in restaurants to be paid below minimum wage, with the expectation that they'll earn the balance in tips.

The way this works, assuming everyone is following the law, is weird. Generally how it works is that the employee must make at least the normal minimum wage when including tips, and if they don't the employer has to make up the shortfall.

So all tips that represent the difference between an employee's base wage and the minimum, those are basically going into the employer's pocket first, and only represent actually increased compensation for the employee once they get over the minimum.

Also, while that's generally the rule, if you pester your employer to cover the tips, you're going to be fired/hours reduced. It's wildly easy to retaliate and arguably the employer can even justify the retaliation on "you're underperforming/if you can't make min wage we have too many waiters during those hours".

Yeah I considered adding that "following the law" is quite the assumption. My understanding is that this form of wage theft, minimum violation, whatever, is pretty widespread.

The US allows that federally, but in Washington state, where I live, servers must be paid minimum wage at least (which is $18.69/hour here in Seattle), any tip is extra.

Same in Oregon, though our minimum wage is quite a bit lower.

Looks like the states that don’t allow tip credits against minimum wage are Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

And that's how it should be, imo.

> I don't get tipping in the US.

It used to be a gift, a special thank you for service above and beyond. Then it became expected for certain jobs (in large part because of a change in US tax policy).

Now it seems to be expected for everything. Employers use it to supplement wages, which in my view turns it into a kind of extortion.

Also remember that the union representing Apple store employees is pushing for tipping: https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/apple-store-propo....

I've been wondering what the true solution is. I see more and more restaurants removing tips from the equation and just charging more and supposedly paying their employees better. But that's still a tiny portion of all restaurants. I wonder if one day we'll see a state ban tipping (or at least asking for tips) and institute some type of pay restructure so tipped employees don't get screwed. But what that looks like, I have no idea.

Tipping has really gone from a nice gesture to workers to a whole other beast where customers are massively subsidizing the pay for workers. It's a lose-lose for anyone but the businesses.

I think the point of sales systems are to blame. I think gratuity should be banned from debit and credit cards, and only allowed as cash. Unworkable I know, but how else would you get rid of the prompt to tip?

As a European, this whole concept is mind boggling. Just show me a price for a service or an item, and I'll pay it. The listed prices for us already include any taxes and charges.

If you're having a nice meal and you're satisfied with the service delivered you can leave a little extra. But there's no pressure or expectation to do so.

I remember visiting NYC and being baffled by how the hamburger listed at $ 5 ends up costing $ 12 in the end.

Tip culture became popular in the American South during the slavery era, as a way for former slaveowners to "employ" former slaves without having to pay them directly.

https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...

The sooner the US can move past that era of its history, the better.

EDIT: I didn't expect "let's move past slavery" to be such an unpopular opinion on HN. Yikes.

Why do we tip?

If for a fare wage, does the server deserve less because I ordered a salad instead of a steak?

If for service, what is 'good service'? Can you quantify it? Do you even want it to begin with?

Perhaps the next time you're about to sit down at a restaurant you should request the 'zero tip' experience. This should give you a lower bound from which to judge off of, if indeed you value the 'service' enough at all.

I went to a hole in the wall place the other day, the kind with no seating. The machine shows me tipping options of: 20%, 25%, and 30%. I have also seen restaurants add a gratuity of 20% for parties of 4 or more automatically and then ask you for tip on top of that. This kind of thing is sadly getting more and more common.

I guess my question is what do I do in a region where the minimum wage is quite high (CA) and there is no longer a tip-included-below-minimum-wage minimum wage?

Do I continue to tip even thought I now know my servers make a fair wage (and the bill often includes healthcare mandates etc.)?

I haven't gone to a sit-down restaurant since the pandemic began. What with compulsory tipping, inflation, and a huge reduction in quality, I'm finding it hard to justify the cost. I still enjoy food trucks and takeout... but restaurants are a pass.

It's hilarious how giving and requesting a "tips" is socially acceptable.

But if a company would change the name to anything else, there would be a huge revolt.

Big discussion a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213929

Tipping should be illegal in a lot of cases, if not all. They need to pay their employees a living wage.

I don't think it should be illegal. I should be able to give a monetary gift to people if I choose.

But it has to stop being effectively mandatory, and employers should not be factoring tips in when they're determining what they pay their employees.

I no longer eat out because of this.

Agreed. My weight is down, my general health is up and my wallet is fatter.

I’ve been to the US a few times (from Australia). I will actively avoid places I get the impression tipping might be expected, because I find the practice so distasteful and anxiety-inducing.

While most of the conversation is focused on “ohh restaurants pay less than minimum wage, therefore we should tip”. I think more of the conversation needs to happen on the side of “why do more people expect tips for just doing their bare minimum?”. Tips are showing up for things where employees are not paid less than minimum wage like bakeries, flower shops, clothing stores, fast food, ice cream shops etc.

The weirdest one was a bicycle shop where they charged me $120 before taxes for a “tune up” on a $500 bicycle and then presented me with the 20, 25 and 30% menu. I almost laughed out loud on this one.

TIP = To Insure Promptness. That is where it comes from. Nowadays, everyone expects a Tip and restaurants are getting cuter by adding those screens on payment devices.

I love to tip if I actually got a great service at a traditional sit down restaurant where a waiter actually takes care of my order and pays attention.

But getting tired of every food place trying to force us to pay Tips. Don't forget delivery charge if you order delivery AND then you still gotta pay that drive a Tip (expected to).

> TIP = To Insure Promptness.

TIL. I'd never even thought about the possibility of it being an acronym..

Edit: Nevermind snopes says that isn't true https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tip-sheet/

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