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Comment by flerchin | Hacker News Reader

It needs to be clear if I'm shafting a sub-minimum wage worker, or declining an egregious tip-ask at the self-check counter.

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If you must tip, only ever use cash. Otherwise you're also subsidizing Square, Toast, Visa, Stripe, etc. Did they give you exceptional service today? Use cash.

Tipping cash is great whenever you have it, but it's not convenient. Not in the age of digital payments that can be completed with your mobile phone.

You're absolutely right, cash is indeed inconvenient. But all digital payments make you pay a middleman "platform" which tries to extract as much of the transaction as possible while providing the minimum possible value. Oh and by the way this platform's also trying to become a monopoly so it can eventually provide less than the minimum value without losing you as a customer.

Crypto claims to be a solution to this, but in practice approximately all crypto transactions go through a middleman (exchange) which takes a cut. It's unreasonable to expect your barista to go through the effort of accepting crypto payments without involving an exchange.

Cash doesn't have this problem.

I'd love to be proven wrong about this. Is there a digital payment method that runs on phones that doesn't subsidize a middleman?

Chinese payment platforms are the closest to a light middle man, but this might just be VC subsidizing things. Cash has its own expense of course, you need a middleman regardless, even if it’s just your local bank branch taking daily merchant cash deposits.

If it means I don’t have to carry around a wad of bills in a gold money clip and hand them out like I’m John Gotti, then yes, Visa did give me exceptional service.

That's Visa's normal service. Considering that exceptional is silly.

So should I not be tipping for normal service? Its pretty confusing because in my country tipping seems to be the expected default, not something reserved to exceptional circumstances.

Do you similarly tip your phone company, or electricity provider?

Do you if the service is exceptional?

All things equal, I do think tipping for normal service from people who are employees is messed up.

Unfortunately, culture in many countries is to tip in certain situations, especially in restaurants, even for normal service. But just because it's culturally normal to tip in restaurants in your country doesn't mean you'd tip a giant corporation like Visa. That's not how culture works.

Not that I disagree with this point but I'd say the best reason to choose cash would be that you can control who receives it. Give it directly to the person who provided the service you're tipping for, whenever possible.

Exactly! Otherwise you're giving control over the money to someone else, who will use that control to further screw over the already marginalized service worker.

You're never causing a sub-minimum wage worker to get less than the minimum wage, because their employers are required by law to make up the difference if they don't make minimum wage with their tips. You're only "shafting" them in the sense that they are expecting to do far better than minimum wage.

If you had ever worked sub-minimum wage you would know that this is total bollocks. In practice, employers never, not ever, make up the difference.

Don't tip standing up. If you're ordering at a counter, that's not a tipped job. What are you even tipping for anyway? You haven't gotten your food yet, they're not bringing anything to you, it makes no sense.

If the conceit of tips is that they incentivize good service, then tipping before you receive the service is nonsensical.

You’re tipping the restuarant so your date looking over your shoulder doesnt get the ick, its a lot of energy to get what you want out of a relationship for it to be felled by a tipping protest

This culture is socially policed and has nothing to do with service, or whether tips are split, taxed, or whether that part of the country already abolished sub minimum wage

> "Don't tip standing up. If you're ordering at a counter, that's not a tipped job. What are you even tipping for anyway?"

And what am I getting when I'm sitting down? The restaurant should be paying this person to bring me my order just as much as they pay the cashier that rings up the order "standing up".

The whole thing is ridiculous and we're just pandering to a very vocal and particularly nasty minority's opinion (just look at "tipping" subreddits and Facebook pages to see the toxicity, entitled-ness and hostility towards customers).

And because it's unpalatable to say these things, we've all collectively come up with post-rationalizations as to why we should tip and how it'll go horribly if we try address it. "Oh but if you don't tip the employer won't pay them" and endless variations of that and "a ha, but you didn't consider this" gotchas that effectively make this an un-discussible topic.

People worked hard to get some sort of "minimum wage" and then we all collectively allowed tipping (Edit: service worker's that get tips) to be exempt with some sort of "make up for low tips so they get minimum wage anyways" complicated setup that added yet more ways for employers to shaft these "suffering" workers.

I agree, but tipping at sit-down restaurants is far more culturally ingrained. Tipping at counter-ordering restaurants is newer, and a gray area, there's still time to nip it in the bud before it becomes the same cultural expectation.

in the USA, not in other parts of the world.

The price for food i see includes all costs, ingredients, service and preparation. Only in North america does this weird pressure exist to pay service workers extra, untaxed money.

I guess I'm tipping so that I don't get "additions" to my order.

Usually the person at the register is not the one preparing the order in these situations, or if they are, then they're in your view the whole time. I don't think that's much of a concern.

Sounds like tipping is a form of bribe and protection money

I will tip counter if they have a jar or the terminal asks, but if I do I treat them as tipped workers -- i.e. I will leave all my trash sitting at the table and wave them over when my food is ready.

Generally my rule is 10% tip for bussing and 10% for taking and bringing my order.

It’s hilarious when they ask for tips but yet I’m expected to get my order when they call out my name as well as expected to clean/bus my own table and serve myself water from a communal water vessel.

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