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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Tipping creates an incentive for service staff to do a good job. If you do a great job of keeping customers happy, you get paid more money.

It's a much tighter feedback loop than "if you suck, maybe your manager eventually notices, then complains to you, then fires you."

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I can't help but think tipping in the US is a false economy. Having arrived a couple of months ago, I've felt obliged to tip to subsidize wages rather than reward good service. I've been told off for not tipping enough rather than asked what was wrong with the service.

I see tipping as the opposite (and wage laws make it easier). Unlike most professions, there's no asking for a raise each year to keep up with inflation or reward your progress at getting better at your job. It's immediate feedback and compensation for doing a better job. Not leaving a tip signals that you would have been better off not being served by them. If a person whose main income is from tips (and gets the 2.xx/hour wage because of it), they declare and are taxed on their tips. If they don't make enough in tips in a pay period to receive the prevailing minimum wage (i think 7.xx/hour, but I don't remember for sure), the business is required to pay them minimum wage. If someone yells at you for not tipping them, just ask to talk to the manager, explain why they didn't deserve a tip (based on their service) and the fact that they berated you for it. Nearly every time they will be fired on the spot (or at the end of their shift) because it's the same as saying the business expects you to pay for crappy service.

Better than no tip is the one-cent tip. No tip may be someone forgetting; one cent makes the point clear.

To be clear myself, in ~15 years of being the paying party I have done this precisely once, so I'm not advocating making a habit out of it. I'm just saying, it makes the point that much more.

Same happend to me in NYC. We did not tip enough and the waiter dropped the f-bomb on us and told us to never come back. He even threw the tip after us.

I did not get it. Where i live we usually tip 10% and in other countries i have been they sometimes refuse to take tips at all.

For me it looks like in many restaurants in the US the tip is part of the paycheck.

I understand that perspective. However it's not something I would favor as a customer. Managers are essentially offloading their duties onto customers to keep their employees in check. It's interesting to contemplate the societal implications though. Where I worked we had a lot of tourists. US tourists, fairly or unfairly, had a reputation for being more critical and short tempered with staff. I wonder if that culture of being more responsible for staff performance creates that situation.

Well, as a US tourist, I think being short tempered is also a matter of mismatched expectations.

Americans are used to receiving customer service of a quality much higher than the rest of the world. (This is true of both service staff who receive tips and others.) For that reason, they don't recognize that the surly attitude of a waitress or supermarket cashier is just a cultural difference rather than a personal affront.

I would unconsciously give feedback for the whole experience, because I'm not able to discern who benefits from my tip, and what I'm really tipping. So the waitress gets punished for the bad food and atmosphere and the taxi driver for a horrible credit card interface.

Ditto on the horrible credit card interface.

Should've waited a few years and outfitted with Squares.

Or better yet, a NYC-based Square competitor if there is one!

Square actually approached the NYC tlc about replacing current systems. That experiment will be happening some time in the next year. Likewise there will be several other services enterIng the market this fall, some of which have some very interesting ideas for the market and are currently in quasi stealth mode

I have some personal knowledge about /involvement one of the projects underway. Theres some really interesting mathematical and algorithmic challenges that pop up from the get go in trying to create interesting product/service and build software that works™ (I'm talking problems where the perfect information versions with deterministic outcomes are NP-Hard, but then you add an online new info component and probability on top of that.).

Anyone who'd like to learn more about that stuff and is in NYC (and not affiliated with other companies in the same space), drop me a line and I'm more than happy to chat about the space in more detail :)

:) They're working on it: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/with-new-hardware-s...

While this is true, an unintended consequence is that no other waiters care at all about you. If yours is neglecting you, you're going to have trouble getting another who's not receiving a tip from you to care.

Having lived in the US for 30+ years, eating out a lot all over the country, and working during college at a restaurant, I have to wonder where you are getting this idea. Would you care to explain?

It has been my experience too that other waitresses do not serve you. I'm in Boston and often when I get another waitresses' attention, instead of helping me they quickly rush off and signal that they will get my waitresses attention. Also, during peak hours waitresses are generally territorial. Once they've served you they expect you to order through them at all times. I've been told numerous times that I must order through them and not at the bar.

That's probably because each waiter is in charge of specific tables, so they can't serve whomever they want, or they'd lose track.

Tipping only does this when it's actually used as a reward. Having it be standard, like in the US, defeats that purpose. In Greece, tipping is not expected, as everyone pays fairly. Tipping is done to reward a good job.

Optional tipping like we do in Spain as well doesn't seem to me to actually encourage people to do a good job. I assume it's because it ends up being a low amount. If the reward is not significant then it loses its motivational power.

Moreover, in some cases I have seen that all tips are put together and then split after work, so you lose the direct connection between doing a good job and getting more $.

I have always found american's standard tipping uncomfortable, but the few times I've made a point to not tip, and the generally more attentive service there, keep me convinced that the system in fact works.

That's incorrect. Tipping is standard, but the percentages are not set. Thus it is still a reward and is not defeated by being a standard practice.

Sales people work on commission typically, and that system is absolutely not harmed by that on average. It's enhanced dramatically by it. A tip is a commission system that encourages the same way a traditional sales commission pay system does, including rewarding up-selling and efficiency.

The difference between earning 10% and 20% on average for tips can make a very large difference for a waiter. At a good restaurant that can add up to anywhere from $15k to $30k per year in difference. In the US, waiters can often make more than their managers because of the tip system.

The incentive is to earn as high a percentage as possible by doing as good of a job as possible. Everyone should not get paid fairly if they suck at their job and treat people poorly.

Waiters also have an opportunity to earn even more money by up-selling when it makes sense.

That's the ideal, however often people leave tips for things that have little to do with how well the water does his or her jobs. There are also feedback loops where water's tend to provide better service to people who regularly tip well.

> It's enhanced dramatically by it.

Not everyone would agree with your assessment. Case in point:

http://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/

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