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Comment by nitwit005 | Hacker News Reader

Everything humans do is a social phenomenon. That doesn't really mean anything.

You just ban asking for tips, leaving a space for a tip on receipt, etc. It's not hard.

Wouldn’t a blanket ban on “asking for tips” be an infringement on a person’s freedom of speech? It’s essentially just asking for some money, which surely anyone is free to do

Tell that to Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes and SBF. There are limits on what you can say to people and how you can exchange money.

Ha, those are fairy strong examples IMHO. A bit apples to oranges

The difference is temporal: tip is for a "past" already rendered product or service. Sbf, Holmes, et al, it's about a promise for "future" services, which have a risk associated of no delivery or render. When you've already eaten your burger there was no risk of uncertain delivery. The causal relationship is reversed

True generally, but it gets murkier all the time. Just last week I ate at a traditional restaurant that stated up front that there is a 15% service charge on all checks. This was in a city that has a very high minimum wage even for tipped employees. More traditionally, parties of a certain size at a restaurant always are charged a fixed gratuity.

Then there’re the square terminals that are normalizing up-front tipping for everything, not even just food service anymore. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has tipped up front for something and the service wound up being terrible. So there are three examples of tipping towards the future.

There’s another future component to tipping: in many places there is regulation that states if the tips don’t make up the prevailing normal minimum wage, the employer must pay the difference in salary. I’ve personally never seen this happen and I worked for tips for about 7 years.

It depends if you mean the individual asking, or if they're asking because of company policies.

We ban businesses from having signs that are too tall or too bright, from doing door to door soliciting, making phone calls without consent, and a pile of other behaviors that could all be labeled as "speech", but which people find extremely irritating.

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