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Comment by catchnear4321 | Hacker News Reader

that’s right, stick it to the minimum wage worker for the employer’s (or likely corporate’s) decision in payment processing platform.

keep going to the businesses, of course. you still want your tendies.

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At a certain point "take the ball and go home" becomes the rational decision if a player in the game isn't being treated fairly. In this case, tipping zero becomes the simplest option.

Tips encourage artificial menu pricing, which disguises the intended price of a service.

Customers are being socially pressured into tipping more than they otherwise would want to. Social pressure is not a fair mechanism in a market.

Another pattern is where servers are expecting 20% tips in addition to 5-10% "Employee Healthcare/Benefits/Wage" Surcharges. Sure, health insurance is a critical need but that should be baked into the price of the food being sold. Patrons are then pressured to effectively give a total 25-30% for service, in addition to the advertised price of food. Insane.

Sorry that servers are caught in the cross-fire on this but their employers decided to use them as fodder.

"Take the ball and go home" in this case would be cancel the order and leave. Stiffing the staff is... another thing.

I don't think characterizing it as "stiffing the staff" is accurate. It's the staff's employers who are doing the stiffing.

and your patronage that keeps it going

Why is "stiffing the staff" bad but surprise pricing to customers is tolerable?

If the pricing practices are disclosed up front, yeah that's clearly stiffing the staff, but that's simply not the case here.

I'm referring to the game where you're lured into a service with an ambiguous ruleset for pricing.

The pricing rules aren't disclosed until it is time to pay. When it is time to pay, you're now given an increasingly difficult puzzle to solve in order to tip what you intend to, without manipulation.

Expecting anyone to solve this puzzle is unreasonable.

I'm not defending surprise pricing or tipping at all. But up until you pay you have the option to not pay. If this is a big concern of yours you should take that option.

I agree that if at any point you suspect the pricing isn't fair in any transaction, it's up to you to leave. If someone checks Yelp and sees red flags on tipping but still decides to go and complain about it, they're being a jerk.

But many sit-down restaurants don't give any indication about the tipping procedures until after a meal is served and consumed.

so instead of tipping zero, since that implies the ability to decide, tip something that might be less jerk and make the decision to not return, perchance?

and if you aren’t given a choice, and it isn’t advertised, well, that’s a different predicament. same solution. you aren’t going to refuse to pay, so refuse to return.

Exactly. It’s 100% up to the customer to pay the employee, **not** the employee’s employer.

Why don’t people understand that?

Because this is unique to America and (mostly) restaurant service?

And because it’s ridiculous. I want to eat, not figure out how much to pay your employees. Part of a business’ job is to abstract the business-y stuff away from me so I can just enjoy a meal.

Otherwise, if it’s a hassle, I’ll just cook more at home. I can cook just as well, I eat out for the experience and to not deal with hassles.

you pay the employer, the employer pays the employee, so if you don’t tip the employee but you do pay the employer, who are you hurting more?

In the short term, the employee. In the long term, as people leave due to lack of tip pay, service degrades and customers stop showing up due to the degrading service, the employer. Tipping as a requirement needs to go. Pay them a minimum wage because it shouldn’t be the customers problem. If a business owner cannot do that, the business should not exist.

so hurting the employee is just, as it hurts the employer eventually?

almost sounds like people are forced to go to these places.

I never said it’s just. Don’t put words into other peoples mouths if you intend to argue in good faith. If you want systemic change, then that is what I believe has to happen. Please provide a better idea

exactly what was already said, systemic change. don’t go where you don’t support, rather than half-ass it.

hopefully you can understand how, based upon having already explained that, it would be possible to make an assumption in good faith. since you didn’t seem to notice the first time, it would appear to be a passive rejection.

shall we continue? assuming you also wanted to discuss in good faith. who wanted to argue?

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