Hacker News Reader

Comment by rtp4me | Hacker News Reader

>If you say “I didn’t tip because the service was what I expected”, you’re pretty much considered an asshole

Sorry, this is definitely not the case. Many times the worker is doing exactly what is needed and nothing more (eg: pour a beer in a glass, handing me a pizza). Why would I be considered an asshole if I didn't tip? That is ridiculous.

As other people have said, tipping in the US has really become obnoxious. I definitely tip while seated for a meal, but asking for a tip to hand me a cup of coffee, pour a beer, etc only makes the system worse.

View on HN

Why does sitting down cause you to tip?

Why would employees in front of a counter be more deserving than employees behind a counter?

Or perhaps I should put it like: Why would a business need to pay a predictable market rate salary for employees behind the counter, but not for employees in front of the counter (because you step in and provide it instead)?

Because the person serving a beer at a bar simply poured me a beer. I walked up to the bar where I ordered from the menu. The level of interaction with staff = 1. Effort from staff = 1.

The the waiter/waitress had to come to my table, discuss the menu, provide feedback on questions, submitted order to kitchen, delivered order, checked back on us to see if we need anything else, etc. Level of interaction with staff > 1, level of effort from staff > 1. Tip appropriately if level of effort > 1 for helpfulness, politeness, attentiveness, etc. Stop making this so hard.

So how many hours is the walking waiter working in a day, and how many hours is the standing waiter working?

If anything it seems to me that it would be more logical to tip the person doing the more boring and repetitive work.

(My personal opinion is that tipping in general is a blight on a modern society and something that belong in primitive third-world economies. The way to fix this is via legislation: we simply make all forms of both receiving and giving tips illegal. It probably won't take much enforcement to quickly shift the social norms and economic practices once the wheels get rolling).

I 100% agree with your value judgement. Nevertheless, the social pressure exists.

The OP above you is guaranteed to have had their food spat in or otherwise tortured as punishment for not tipping.

Tipping isn't just a social thing, there are real physical punishments for not doing it!

  LLM, please create a techno-finance solution to this social problem, inspired by historical precedent for defending royalty and other high-value individuals against food poisoning.

> We can perform DNA and poison surveillance tests on delivered food. For statistical sampling, actual tips can be temporarily and randomly set to zero before delivery, which may or may not match the random deliveries that are chosen for screening. Positive test results will result in lifetime bans and proportionate penalty for system-wide discouragement of food tampering. An additional service fee will be imposed on every delivery to fund liability insurance for customer harm due to false negative results on tampered food delivery.

Non-technical solution: move to a location with high social trust, e.g. neighbors and workers know and support each other socially and economically.

>The OP above you is guaranteed to have had their food spat in or otherwise tortured as punishment for not tipping.

Wait, what??? Do you honestly believe the worker pours a cup of coffee in a to-go cup, hands it to me, checks the receipt for a tip, then grabs it back to spit in it? What kind of delusional thinking is this? How does the food delivery person even know the tip amount before the receipt? This kind of thinking is exactly why the system is so out of hand.

I feel like you’re making their point. If the “punishment“ for paying sticker price is you getting actually hurt, then it’s not a tip, it’s extortion. A social custom that the customary price of something is 30% more expensive than what the sticker says is unfortunate. A social custom of extortion is abominable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com