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Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

There is a difference between "I am a foreigner, so I refuse to tip because I will never see them again" which is taking advantage of the implied service contract and morally wrong and "I refuse to tip in new categories to employees already compensated as thought they are not getting tipped."

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Not really, even as a local, you can avoid the place and will probably never see them again. They won't remember you anyway if you did randomly cross paths at Wal-mart or whatever.

And now they aren't getting paid enough, which gives incentive to the employees to demand actual wages instead of the bull shit system we have now.

Can confirm. I remembered everything that might possibly be important about an address back when I used to deliver pizza (tip amounts, broken doorbells, so so many broken apartment intercoms, violent neighbors offended by my car, ...). I guarantee if I had seen any of those customers out in the real world I could not have recognized them if my life depended on it.

> gives incentive to the employees to demand actual wages instead of the bull shit system we have now.

Ah good, revolutionary theory to support not tipping.

Sorry to have to break this to you, but "incentive" for employees to fight back is not the issue when it comes to the power dynamic between service employees and enormous companies that employ them.

Don't get me wrong, everyone unionizing and having a general strike until tipped wages are abolished seems like it would be a better solution.

But this attitude punishes people already under massive stress for not taking on extra stress and risk getting fired for complaining in the hopes that eventually the system will course correct (with how many victims between now and then?).

Yeah to be clear, I tip my bartenders and waiters even though I'd much rather they just get paid a normal, living wage. But when you're working at a counter just plugging my order into an iPad, and I have to go up and grab my food—I'm certainly not tipping then.

On previous HN threads on this topic, there definitely has not been unanimous agreement that refusing to tip is “morally wrong” and that the “implied service contract” is binding. The opposing argument is that if wait staff are not satisfied with their remuneration, that is a matter between them and their employer (and some good old labor organizing is called for), and the customer shouldn’t be brought into it.

Cultures shift through an aggregate of individuals’ actions, and each person refusing to tip in hope of moving to the system found in certain other countries is “being the change they want to see in the world”.

If you intend not to tip in an effort to “be the change”, declare your intention on arrival to the host and the server. They deserve to know that they are participating in your social project. The other option is to get the food and not the service. I.e. get your food to go. Recognize that in essence, you are buying the food from the restaurant, and the service from the waiter. If you don’t want to pay for the service, don’t ask for service.

Additionally it is disgusting to visit a country and intentionally violate social norms, especially ones around paying people for their labor. If Americans want to change their culture, they can do that. Behaving selfishly as a guest in another country isn’t “being the change you want to see in the world”.

> If you don’t want to pay for the service, don’t ask for service.

If the idea that you're buying this "service" from the waiter is implied, then surely I should be able to not buy it, but that's not really an option anywhere right? You can't go to a restaurant and pick up the food yourself from the kitchen and bypass the waiter. Even if the waiter is happy to let you, the restaurant owner wouldn't. So it's not like "don't ask for service" is really an option - the restaurant is the one requiring the service payment.

(I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your overall point, but this reasoning doesn't lead me to it.)

It’s pretty rare for restaurants NOT to have a pick up option, you just aren’t allowed to use the service area that the servers maintain and use. Part of the service that waiters provide is the use of silverware, napkins, the cleaning of the tables and the restaurant, etc. Many servers do these duties while getting paid minimum wage under the expectation that they will be compensated later by those who use the facilities.

Pick up your food and go to a park, or choose a restaurant that operates on a different model.

This isn't about take-out, it's about dine-in-but-do-the-service-yourself.

Then go to the multitude of restaurants that offer exactly that, and don’t patronize the ones that only offer table service. The majority of restaurants in America are counter service, so you won’t even be starved for choice. It’s so common that you can even google it: “counter service restaurants near me”.

You don’t get to dictate the service that an establishment chooses, you do get to choose whether or not to go there.

To reiterate, I'm not commenting on your conclusion. Just saying the reasoning doesn't hold, since "then don't ask for service" thing you suggested isn't a real suggestion, given you can't refuse just the waiter service itself, even if you declare your intention. It's more like "then don't go to that restaurant".

Ahh.

I meant don’t implicitly ask for service by patronizing places where there is no option.

I’m an American citizen living abroad. I’m damn well going to learn from how things are done elsewhere, and try to bring any practices I find good back to the country that belongs to me as much as it belongs to any American here.

And no, I’m not going to “declare my intentions to the wait staff”. Another feature of restaurants in certain other countries that I’d like to see brought to the USA, is minimal interaction with wait staff. At a restaurant I want to be left alone to talk the people I came there to dine with, and the inane exchanges with wait staff and their feigned positivity (which they feel obliged to feign because of the tip culture) are tiresome.

Again, wait staff have multiple avenues available to them should they wish to increase their remuneration, like political involvement to shape legislation and organized labor, without expecting anything from customers.

You aren’t trying to change culture, you’re just being selfish. If the “custom” you are bringing back only benefits you at the expense of others, you need to rethink how you are “being the change”.

Stiffing waiters is shitty behavior, especially when you know the expectation, and withhold expressing your intent to act contrary to custom to your own exclusive benefit. Ask for them to include service in the price they charge you so you can protest without it being at someone else’s expense. In countries where tipping isn’t the norm the service is built into the price, so if you are going to skip tipping, make sure that you also aren’t skipping the behind the scenes changes necessary for that business model.

If you wanted to actually change things you would speak to management and workers and explain that you are trying to change the world and why.

How is a waiter or management supposed to differentiate your noble intentions from those of a selfish prick, seeing as how the actions and effect are identical?

>the customer shouldn't be brought into it

This is a dodge of the actual issue at hand. If a person is choosing to patronize a restaurant and get the benefits of someone's labor, refusing to tip is wrong. The direct result is that the person waiting the table is unfairly denied a portion of expected compensation.

If you want to "be the change you wish to see in the world," patronize restaurants that have no-tipping policies. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

> implied service contract

There is no implied service contract when it comes to tipping.

An implied service contract is a legally-enforceable contract. For example, if you went to a barber shop and sat in the chair and the barber gave you a haircut, then it is implied that you will pay for the haircut. Theoretically, the barber could take you to court if you refused to pay, and the barber would win.

A tip, on the other hand, is gratuitous. The server performs their service in the hope that the customer will give a tip, but there is no obligation for the customer to do so. If a server tried to take a restaurant patron to court for not leaving a tip, he would lose.

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