Demands for Tips Are Up. Actual Tipping, Not So Much | Hacker News Reader

Demands for Tips Are Up. Actual Tipping, Not So Much

wsj.com

48 pointsmalshe90 comments

I feel so aggravated that nearly every single place I visit asks for a tip or 'donation' now. I take some solace in the fact it's not just me getting old and grumpy for once, and nearly everyone is saying the same.

I'm hoping this will be the trend that -finally- ends tipping culture in the US. When everyone asks for a tip, nobody gets a tip.

I am totally with you. The other day I bought shaved iced for my child which took perhaps 1 minute to make. I was already paying $5 for a really tiny cup and then another $1 that showed up as the suggested tip on the card reader. The employee was looking directly at me and I couldn't see the option for "No Tip" fast enough. So I had to click on $1.

That $1 didn't mean anything to me until then. It was suddenly a tax I was paying for not being Larry David :)

The businesses who think that are striking a balance between good customer service and paying fair wages don't realize that the consumers are leaving with a bad taste in their mouths.

I've simply stopped going to businesses that abuse their customers in this way. Most recently, a fast food place near me changed their POS system such that if you want to leave less than a 20% tip, you have to engage in three extra button presses that are reasonably well hidden in the UI, leading me to just hit the 20% button in order to stop holding up the line.

They're the latest on my "will never do business with them again" list.

Buying a bagel from a shop with a POS like that was the breaking point for me: I will never go back, and tipping nudges have now lost all persuasive force. I have returned to the tipping conventions I grew up with (which are still unreasonable, of course; the entire practice needs to end).

3 buttons will not hold up a line that much. you just punked out, and then refused to go back because you couldn't press the "other tip amount".

Most businesses are increasingly using one of a handful of different POS systems (square, toasttab and clover).

I imagine the tipping options are set up by default on those systems and it requires a (probably already very busy, maybe non tech savvy) manager to manually go in and find the options to change or disable.

The workers are probably NOT happy about the extra tips going away.

Nobody really wins no matter what here. I guess I blame the new crop of POS POS vendors? IDK

They have to choose the default tip amounts so I’m pretty sure tips are off by default. Also, there was an interview on Vox or NBC where business owners state it’s off by default but “you are leaving money on the table by not asking.”

I especially love the dark pattern whereby the “suggested tips” are shown in descending order from left to right, trying to take advantage of people’s instinct to pick the first (presumably lowest) option.

Sometimes with 35% or 40% in that default spot on the left… madness

Yep I've actually started channel my inner Larry David these days even shaming the boss for not paying their employees enough. I even volunteer to teach them coding so they can get a better job (ok I am sure that's not a thing in this market but still). I find it releases the awkwardness and frankly is fun!

> I feel so aggravated that nearly every single place I visit asks for a tip or 'donation' now.

A lot of this was done by the credit card processors in order to increase their rake.

I don't tip on machines unless I'm in a resaurant (and I probably shouldn't there--either). If I'm going to tip, I give cash because I can't count on any of what I put into the machine getting to the person I intend it to go to.

> A lot of this was done by the credit card processors in order to increase their rake.

I can't speak for every terminal supplier but store owners often do have the option to turn it off.

But it becomes problematic when it ships with tips enabled by default and there's strong messaging from your terminal vendor's rep to keep it enabled. You end up having to go out of your way and against the grain to disable it.

Yep the waiter that served us the other night in a Mexican restaurant showed sufficient displeasure at the $50 tips we were giving him and clearly said he expected more. He hardly spent anytime talking to us (a party of 10 people) or making suggestions etc and did nothing out of normal , neither did he spent a lot of time on our table. I am not sure if they feel it is right to ask for more tips nowadays but I am afraid it also shows the general decline in affordability. Or the restaurants themselves are in really bad shape and not able to support the waiters fully? Either way it leaves a bad taste and if this continues even lesser people will go out for dining.

What was $50 as a percentage of your meal? Typically for a party of 10 the 18% gratuity is automatically tacked on to the bill, so there should be no room for discontent from the server. It’s common to see this disclaimer on menus “for a party of 6 or more a gratuity of 18% will be added to your final bill.”

> “for a party of 6 or more a gratuity of 18% will be added to your final bill.”

Which, of course, means it's no longer a gratuity, but an additional fee. It irks me when restaurants lie in this way.

Agreed and I never tip more if it's automatically added. Tips are meant to communicate good and bad, and if I have no say, then I won't exercise it.

> Tips are meant to communicate good and bad,

No, tips are meant to provide an excuse for lower baseline pay and to allow pay discrimination on what are otherwise protected traits by relying on the fact that tippers fairly consistently discriminate on those traits and anti-discrimination law does not apply to them at all.

It is also taxed vs tips are not taxed if they are a gratuity.

Tips are taxed, in the US, anyway.

For me, I just round up to the nearest dollar and call it good. For anything where a tip was expected pre-2017, it's between 5-15%, typically 10%. I'm tip fatigued and this is what I am comfortable paying now. Pay your employees better.

As a privileged white collar tech worker who makes far more money than just about any service worker, I happily respond to requests to tip by tipping. It is a privilege to be able to!

It's a privilege, you might leave with a sense of being generous but in the end you also feed into a culture of systemic abuse and exploitation.

I really dislike traveling to the USA and being forced to tip because employers don't pay enough, it feels really, really wrong.

It's absolutely true, especially compared to places like Japan that have incredible food, stellar service, yet crazy high costs of living -- all for no tips.

The US system is just so broken in so many ways.

But as everyday individuals, what are you gonna do? Our democracy isn't really functional and a normal person has zero say in policies.

If you don't tip, the system won't change. The person working there will just go home with less money. They're already making much much less than us, even if all their customers tipped 30%.

Some restaurant owners have taken away tips altogether, opting for an across the board wage increase. Of course that means their items are all priced higher in the menu.

It's just a no win situation.

Ability to afford to tip isn't the issue. Being strong-armed into it is. Screw them.

I see your point also. But to be fair, being prompted by a computer to add a tip isn't exactly "being strong-armed into it"

I think that characterizing it as strong-arming is appropriate when the UI makes it hard to choose anything but leaving a tip or when an employee is watching you as you're paying, or when the employee straight up asks for a tip.

Even being asked for a tip before services are rendered is bad. Maybe not "strong-armed" bad, but it's a close call.

The issue here is not even request to tip , but rather hostile behavior when not tipped to the satisfaction of the service worker.

I dine out way too much, date a service industry veteran, and know many other service industry workers. Never have I experienced that, seen that, nor heard of any of my friends saying they did that (even for no tippers). In fact, they’d all say doing that would be incredibly unprofessional.

So I am curious what region you are in that you experience such hostility.

If you ever do see it, you’ll notice an involuntary component to the reaction. Not easy to self-report and there’s no incentive to try to. Chicago area, both urban and suburbs.

I've seen the same thing and I'm in Colorado in HCOL area.

What?

I think the problem with tipping is that the way we tip has gotten too disconnected from the service you are tipping for.

For the most part, tipping a percentage of the total paid only makes sense when two things are true: 1. the amount you pay corresponds pretty directly the the amount of service that is provided and 2. You understand where your tip is going.

This is pretty true of a lot of traditional tipped industries that use that model: taxis, restaurants, stylists/barbers, and so on.

For a lot of other jobs where that was less true, the tipping interaction was often separated from the payment of the bill, and it would be fixed based on the service provided. Good examples of that are porters, couriers, baristas (when coffee drinks were relatively cheap compared to the labor involved in making them) and so on.

Today though, UE/GH drivers are tipped as a percentage of the bill even though that has little to do with what they actually did (should probably be distance + # of bags + extenuating circumstances). People who are doing nothing more than ringing you up for a pre-packaged item are now presenting you with a console that asks for 20% (give or take).

This is creating a tipping backlash, for good reason. Even though you can always tip whatever you want, there is a social contract that has been broken: if a tip is requested it should be reasonable based on the service provided.

We just stopped going out. It’s not fun, it’s expensive, and the constant tipping is simply awkward.

So, no thanks. We used to eat out twice a week. Now I go maybe once every 3-6 months, always just for work.

I do tip generously. I just don’t enjoy the culture.

I can’t be alone in this.

You are not. But every time I bring up the unpleasantness and absurdity of compulsory tipping, people seem to assume I'm stingy.

I live in San Francisco, so the surcharges added to my bill are often:

  * tax (I think it's 8.625%)
  * 18% gratuity
  * 6% SF mandate

I know we've become accustomed to this, but I'm getting real sick of this kind of trickery in the US. I don't see any way to stop it short of legislation, though.

All I want is to pay a straight $15 for a sandwich, and not have to solve the math equation of $14.99 + 8.625% tax + 18% tip + 6% "SF mandate".

I recently visited the UK and it was really nice. Order a £15 sandwich, pay £15.

I don’t know if it’s across the entire UK but most restaurants in London add an automatic 12.5% gratuity. Only way to remove it is to ask the server which is far more awkward than choosing a tip privately.

But 15 quid for a sandie.

I've seen it second-hand many times, the all-too-common mistake of people who aren't immensely wealthy striving to live in SF, somewhere they can't afford to buy property or accumulate savings, and are willing to accept any and all abuse to remain rather than relocate somewhere more reasonable with lower taxes and less bullshit.

We're in the same situation - the budget just can't take it. On the plus side, I've learned how to cook meals better than any restaurant I've been to. Just need the right tools to get started. It's surprisingly easy to cook and cheap if the grocery's bought on sale/clearance.

I agree. But there are some dishes that often taste better at a restaurant or require so much preparation a restaurant is much more feasible. I'm best at cooking things I can iterate on quickly. Especially foods you can taste as you go along like soups and stews. But homemade ramen? One full day of boiling pig trotters to make a broth, only to realize it ended up very mid doesn't exactly inspire me to keep at it. Same with baking that requires me to proof the dough for multiple days. I just can't get it refined enough in a short amount of time to make it worthwhile for me.

French fries are another one which I just can't nail as well at home, and the double cooking is annoying enough to keep me from perfecting it. Also throw in dishes which require more specialized cookware like a tandoori oven. Yeah, you can make naan without it but it's not the same. Largely though I can easily make most "North American" dishes better than what I can experience at most restaurants.

> I've learned how to cook meals better than any restaurant I've been to.

Most restaurants don't serve food that is better than what a moderately-practiced person can do at home.

Restaurants sell convenience and atmosphere.

What kind of places are you even going where "tipping culture" intervenes in such a way that it affects your enjoyment?

I am not at all a fan of the economics of tipping, and I've spent tens and tens of thousands of dollars on restaurants and bars, but I've never once felt tipping intrude on my time.

Generally, I pay and tip at the end of the night. It's a pretty uneventful moment.

Curious how your experience differs.

For table service it’s probably the anticipation, plus the mutual sizing up, that is unpleasant. That would be a low-grade feeling during the whole experience rather than a brief unpleasant moment. I’m talking about others’ experiences, not yours, to be clear.

What do you do now? Go to the grocery store and buy groceries and then cook/clean? Or do you order to-go/takeout/delivery/go pick it up?

Pick up on order outs maybe 10 percent of the time, but generally we have just moved to meal prep.

We cook 3-5 times a month and eat better than we ever have with less work than we’ve ever done for less than we’ve ever spent.

You cook 3-5 times a month? Did you mean week? Otherwise that sounds like a crazy amount of eating out or getting take out food. We cook 5-7 times a week.

Meal prep.

You're not alone. We've seriously reduced the amount we go out as well, in large part because of the tipping insanity.

Thank you. I deeply appreciate you saying something. Nobody in my social circles understands or agrees with me.

Went to a concert the other night, happened to be at a winery. They had wine sales. Walk up to the cashier, ask for a bottle (only bottles), and how many plastic cups. They hand you both, and you can uncork off to the side.

Tip options for this "service" (on wines ranging from $28-60/bottle): "20, 25, 30 or 35%".

Same, but for buying canned beer at an arena concert recently. Pretty awkward to manually press "Other" -> "0".

My "system" now is to _always_ press "Other", even if I'm going to tip one of the pre-selected amounts (e.g. 20%). This way I'm always making a conscious choice.

This is a great habit to get in.

I usually will do that as well especially in that sort of environment. If I'm grabbing ready-to-go pre-packaged drinks from a concert bar, I'm just gonna tip a flat couple bucks per drink and not percentage.

If I'm getting hand-made cocktails sitting at a bar or ordering table service obviously that's percentage.

I think a ton of people in this thread are forgetting that you CAN just choose your tip. Anxiety and fear of getting scowled at by the worker are making people hurry and spam the closest tip button and then complain about it online. You can do what you want. It's your life.

Sometimes they make it quite difficult to navigate to "Other" by making the font too small or forcing you to swipe to another page. I think most people are too afraid to ask the servers how to find "No Tip" option.

"Tipping baristas isn’t the norm", says the caption on the photo at the head of the article. It isn't? I've been tipping baristas about 20% ever since I got a laptop around 2005 and started spending a lot of my work time in coffee shops. But the chart in this article says only about 25% of people do this. Huh.

I'm not gonna quit though.

If we tip baristas at Starbucks we should tip the people at McDonald’s. Both are essentially fast food workers.

I’m not trying to be mean. I think there’s some brilliant manipulation going on with how some of these coffee shops brand and present themselves.

You tip people like this as a form of mild corruption.

When I travel to places I’m going to return to regularly, I take out a few hundred bucks in $5 bills. Parking guys, the hotel clerk, the night housekeeping supervisor, etc. I’m also nice to people, as I truly appreciate them.

Kindness + cash = courtesies granted.

If you’re abusing the hospitality of the coffee shop, the staff should be happy to see you.

If you're looking for corruption then you should contemplate the efficacy of your corruption. Are you getting sufficient ROI? Are the waitstaff actually engaging in corruption for you?

In restaurants where you get access to the kitchen I tip straight into the kitchen. I get more meat and I can tell the kitchen pays attention to my order. In contrast, how much do you have to tip to get your waiters to call in a corrupt favor in the kitchen on your behalf?

Also, most restaurants have a bad waitstaff to customer ratio. If you're looking for "corruption" then you're looking for the waitstaff to attend to you at the cost of other customers. How much do you have to pay to get that kind of treatment? At least enough to cover over the disrespect being dealt to the other customers, which could be major $.

> In restaurants where you get access to the kitchen I tip straight into the kitchen.

I’m not familiar with this, can you elaborate? Like you walk right over to the open kitchen and hand some cash to one of the cooks?

When I travel, I focus on a few places. A regular reliable tipper is remembered.

The restaurant’s or parking garage’s staffing problems aren’t mine. Frankly, I could care less if I affect the customer experience.

And yet when I’m spending 2 hours using the PlayPlace as a brief respite from my duties as a parent in the summer, and refilling my fourth serving of Coke Zero and someone comes by to generously clear my table, they are strictly forbidden from accepting a tip.

The ability and care of the Starbucks worker has a lot more impact on the product than the McDonald's worker.

I don't like the idea of tipping at (or going to) Starbucks, but I tip at independent coffee shops.

You really are the white knight barristas need in this 7 dollar latte age.

It's spelled "barista"

i generally do not tip my barristers, as they already charge me 450/hr.

https://archive.ph/6XFUI

I see a lot of comments about feeling awkward for not tipping because it takes longer to navigate to the no tip option.

It is your money folks, don't feel bad for not being forced to just give it away.

It's just easier and more pleasant to not go to such establishments at all.

Pay with cash. Then there’s no more bs tip options at every transaction like when you pay with card.

These days when I present cash at the counter, it's as if I shouted "BOO!" while the cashier was sleeping. "DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING?"

They’ll pull out the tip jar

Tip jars are totally fine, though. They present no pressure, you can tip (or not) when the server isn't looking, and nobody is closely policing the tip jar when you place an order.

My favorite coffee stand has a great compromise. They have a tip jar, but they also don't use those preset tip buttons on their POS. Instead, they have a sign by the tip jar telling you that if you want to leave a tip on the card, just tell them how much and they'll add it on. I always do.

It’s way less intrusive and I’m more okay with dropping some change in the jar than getting a 15% add-on charge by way of card reader…

Honestly, so few places have a physical tip jar anymore. The most I’ve seen are those coin donation jars at service stations.

im fine with that. they can have the 0.31 that comes from breaking a bill. that may or may not be anywhere near a guilted 15%

Is there even a way out of this situation? Some socioeconomical absurdities just cannot die.

By not paying. Your continued tipping allows restaurants to not pay their employees a living wage and forcing the customer to subsidize them. Once a sizable percentage (let's say 30%) of customers don't tip, it will become progressively less effective as they have to jack up the percentages even more for people that do pay, resulting in more of them joining the non-tippers in a feedback loop. And then, maybe tipping will become a thing of the past.

Alternatively, coerce your representatives into removing the loophole in minimum wage law and tipping will all but die because people won't have a reason to feel bad for not tipping

Reasonable, but doubtful this will solve it. The West Coast states, with the some of the highest minimum wages, already require the standard minimum wage.

Government regulation is the only viable option, and that's pretty unlikely to happen (at least in the US).

Paying with cash.

Stop letting the capitalist class pit the working class against one another.

Stop tipping. The employee's issue is not with you, it is with their employer. Studies have also shown that tipping enables race, age and sex discrimination in total pay.

If you believe in equity and fair wages for all, you will stop tipping.

After the abolition of slavery, many formerly enslaved individuals found work in the service industry, including as waitstaff. Tipping became a way for employers to avoid paying a fair wage to these workers, as they were expected to rely on tips for income. This system disproportionately affected Black workers.

I've heard of another story about tipping and freed slaves. It was a way of tacitly demonstrating that the person no longer enslaved, they were paid

My city has raised tipped wages to the point where I don't really feel obligated to tip as much, or at all.

You leave a tip in a restaurant. The rest can pound sand.

Buying a bag of peanuts at the baseball game and they ask for gratuity - WTF

Be careful there, a lot of "big" venues like that, the employees don't even get the tip. It goes to "charity" etc

I suspect as much

went to a game yesterday and after pointing me to the tip buttons, the guy said “we accept cash tips too”

Pulled out two dollar bills on the spot

I drastically reduced my tipping due to the increased demand

Finding decent restaurant food and service is like running into a Navy SEAL or a model who's an astronaut with a PhD and a private pilot's license. If I can cook better than what's on the plate, then why even walk in the door? To catch this year's COVID?

And the "living wage fee" gotcha capitalism tricks aren't cute or advancing socioeconomic justice. Raise the prices, pay fair wages, and run a respectable business... or don't.

You are not even going out and you want then to raise prices?

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