Americans are confused, frustrated by new tipping culture, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Americans are confused, frustrated by new tipping culture, study finds

washingtonpost.com

25 pointscorrelator23 comments

In America we need to get rid of sub-minimum wages as it's currently legal in many states (Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana, etc.) to pay under the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) and make up that salary by tips. Source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

And I would also encourage people to patronize businesses that pay their workers higher wages. Also some of these businesses have higher prices and don't accept tips.

I live in near Seattle and when I patronize the cafe at Ada's Technical Books in Seattle I'm happy with paying a higher prices for food or drinks because they have explicitly say they don't accept tips and pay their workers higher wages. Source: https://www.adasbooks.com/notipping

I live in Seattle and previously in California. Both states have a high min wage, for waiters included. It hasn't stopped the majority of restaurants to gouge insane % off tips from patrons.

A) start a town crier that names and shames mom and pop shops with tipping on their point of sale system

B) put social and legal pressure on point of sale systems like Block to stop pushing tipping interfaces on merchants. On the legal side regulate the merchant codes and what POS systems can show based on merchant code, create consequences for noncompliance. Mandate disabling it completely even for restaurants when in states where the tipped minimum wage is the same as other minimum wage. Do the same to the payment processor, Visa, Mastercard Amex etc

C) mandate disclosures to consumers when in states where the tipped minimum wage is the same as normal minimum wage

D) use the local alcohol licensing requirements to require all service personnel to discourage tipping. Verbally, on receipts, everywhere - in states with no separate lower tipped minimum wage. Or else no alcohol can be served.

E) deny other discretionary features such as outdoor parklets, if tipping culture is not discouraged

F) disable the ability to e-file payroll taxes for “high risk of tipping“ services, or anyone with many receipts

how to think of stuff like this: regulate the intermediary. this works under any governance system.

To add to this, step 1 would have to be "Normalize minimum wage across the economy". Currently tipped employees have a lower minimum wage, that must equal or exceed the country-wide minimum wage after tips are paid out. Employers must make up the difference if they're short. So tips are heavily incentivized.

Forcing businesses to essentially wrap what was the tip into the price, in order to pay the full wage to staff won't solve everything, but that's a major first step! Businesses would then suddenly be able to compete on "NO TIPS HERE! :)" on a little sign by the register. You're also competing on the real price now (bill of materials + full price of labour), not a portion of it. (Bill of materials + labour not paid for by a hidden guilt-enforced fee.)

It's also just kind of shitty morally, service work deserves the respect of any other job and shouldn't be given the weird distinction of "sub-minimum wage" work.

Edit: Sorry, didn't read all of B), agree!

A) everyone stops tipping across the board

B) businesses have to start paying their staff better wages

I think the order here is B. then A.

Historically we haven't see it go the other way

Where have you seen it go from B to A successfully? Several states already have mandatory minimum wage laws that apply to waitstaff. The local culture of tipping still expects you to tip these people—I’ve had countless arguments with people about this to no effect. They don’t tip the minimum wage worker bagging their groceries, but by god you had better leave a tip for your server or else you are a horrible person.

Have you ever discussed that the minimum wage for waitstaff is called the tipped wage, and can + does differ in multiple states from the minimum wage for other work? Here's a very objective source for a simple topic:

Tipped employees must receive a minimum wage of $2.13 per hour, known as a cash wage. That cash wage is combined with tips to reach the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Employers can credit up to $5.12 per hour in tips against a worker's earnings. If an employee’s wages (at least $2.13 per hour) plus tips is less than $7.25 per hour, their employer is required to make up the difference. Tips are considered a “tip credit,” which allows employers to pay employees below the federal minimum wage.

The minimum wage in PA was 2.25 for waitstaff in 2000. Currently its 7.25/hr. I think we can all agree that waiting on a table is a little more complex than bagging groceries esp when you consider this wage law applies to any restaurant in any category.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/tipped-minimum-wa...

In Los Angeles servers are minimum wage which is like $17 an hour plus tips. A & B is best

yes but since that’s not going to happen due to the guilt based perpetuation of it, we can attack the intermediaries so that it is disincentivized first

If a state or local government wants to forbid tipping it doesn’t have to be this complicated. Pass a law that says it’s forbidden, that credit card merchants and POS merchants must disable tipping functionality, and for cash tips up a hotline & fees for merchants that solicit them.

Tipping is only a thing because we’ve normalized it. If you pass a law against it, it’s no longer normal, and customers will mostly stop giving them, even without highly intrusive enforcement mechanisms.

The real challenge is getting a government to want to forbid it, because people who receive tips care about them a lot while those that don’t, don’t. Until you solve that nothing else matters. Maybe tipping will go so far that the balance shifts.

https://archive.vn/Nmk3g

You're the best

I continue to get the recaptcha loop on most of these archive links. Does anybody have any workarounds when using CloudFlare’s DNS?

See this comment, which explains why it happens and resolutions, which are all workarounds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38235283

It's been weird here in Australia- where this is not a thing. - that pos software from America is more and more making us press zero every time I buy something when it prompts for a tip.

Some quick serve restaurants with apps now encourage a tip. This week I ordered on app and tried to leave a cash tip and there was no way to do it. Manager said it is a franchise rule now. Of course, they took the tip.

It is very simple: moment I see prompt for tipping on the register after I picked out something, carried it to the register and rang it up myself, is that moment I am going to leave everything behind and head on to the next store.

Tipping is for OPTIONALLY AFTER the work/service was performed: period.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231110184931/https://www.washi...

Recent and related:

People no longer know how much to tip - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38213518 - Nov 2023 (170 comments)

What's so complicated? If you don't want to tip, don't tip. If there are repercussions, that's their business, stop supporting them.

People shouldn't have to be harassed by companies constantly begging them to subsidize their labor expenses and customers shouldn't have to worry that they're getting bad service (or worse) in retaliation for hitting the "No Tip" button.

I'm sure as hell not tipping for counter service or for retail transactions, but they keep begging for it. As more and more people fall for the scam there's a risk that it will become expected and suddenly I'm the asshole for not paying more for nothing. Good luck explaining to someone making minimum wage that the person they should really be upset at is their employer who refuses to pay them a living wage.

Yeah but it amounts to bad service, and typically this aren't essential services that can't be replaced. If everyone does this then they should adjust accordingly or just go out of business.

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