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Comment by mystifyingpoi | Hacker News Reader

All these silly excuses people make: "I tip when the service is good", "I tip when conversation with bartender is engaging", "I tip when the server runs around me in circles, I count the circles and convert it with an exchange rate of $2/circle". Wow.

I'm from EU, so ymmw. I simply don't tip. Why? Because I don't have to. And if I don't have to, then I don't. It is that simple.

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Yes but here in France where service is included and tipping is never compulsory (or expected), payment terminals are appearing where you need to select the tip before typing your code. This is usually shoved in your face by the waiter at touristy places, and they're watching you.

Don't fall for it though! Just select "no tip" or "0" like in this game and you're good.

Exactly. Only by selecting 0 this will put pressure to get rid of it

I saw this in two restaurants already and I am pissed

It won't though. A screen on the card terminal is free - if just 1% of people misclick the button and pay a tip, the company still wins.

> A screen on the card terminal is free

... consulting companies developing the terminal entered the chat ...

(just kidding, I agree with you)

A restaurant is fundamentally selling an experience. These screens do not improve the experience. Therefore, they have some cost to the business. The question is whether the cost is recuperated.

Doesn't matter in touristy places though, because you don't rely on repeat customers.

This is no pressure. You can exert pressure by saying that you are cancelling the transaction because of the tipping screen and you'll eat somewhere else.

This is too late, at that stage you have already eaten. I am not sure if they appreciate if you give them the food back.

You could tell them that you are very happy to pay them the price they printed on the menu and that they can present you with a payment terminal charging exactly that price, but that you will not do that job for them. Basically make the waiter select the 0% option.

But in the end you'll only annoy the waiter and not the owner of the restaurant who is actually running the tipping scam.

At least in that case you can safely select a 0 tip. It's worse when you pay up front and have to worry about a lower than expected tip resulting in some kind of retribution from the staff.

Yeah that's not possible. When you're presented with the terminal the food is already in your system.

Or maybe you can be like our former Ministry of Culture, Jack Lang, who just resigned from a prestigious, if useless, post in the wake of the Epstein scandal. It was revealed that he never paid for anything in his 60+ years of public "service", always leaving restaurants, hotels, etc. without footing the bill.

For you and me, this would be called stealing and would eventually land us in jail. But if you're a minister in France it's called "living like a prince" and being "a little stingy".

I was extorted 15% tips in Paris in a restaurant with shitty food not too far away from the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately, I didn't have roaming package at the time so I couldn't check that place's rating on Google Maps before ordering food. Turns out, there were lots of complaints about their service. In retrospective, I should have probably called police when they were actively insisting that 20% tips are mandatory and after like 5 minutes of arguing they "kindly" agreed to lower it to 15%.

You don't need a "roaming package": just buy an eSIM from one of many online services like AloSIM or Airalo.

I don’t tip either, simply because the work done wasn’t worth tipping. The only time I tipped was in a 7 stars restaurant, and the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table changing utensils and plates and filling the drinks. North America tipping “culture” is out of control, I remember picking up some street food and the guy asked for a tip.. Most restaurants nowadays buy the food from costco, machines do most of the cooking, and the waitress job can be literally replaced by a robot, it’s just a scam and it should be illegal actually.

The actual scam is that restaurants can and do pay wait staff below minimum wage (like 2-3$), because it’s explicitly allowed, with expectation that the rest comes from tips. So not tipping in USA may in some cases be an asshole move.

Tipping is one of those Moloch coordination problems where if everyone would suddenly decide to make the world better at the same time, it would be, but if only a few people try to make the world better, it gets worse and they're assholes.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

It's really not a binary situation where you'd ever see $2 wages with no tips though. If less people tip then the effective real minimum wage will gradually increase to compensate - either because laws are updated or because the restaurant has to compete with other better paying job opportunities. Sure some waiters may get upset when someone doesn't tip, but that is just that - them getting upset - and not the client being an asshole.

This will hurt people in the moment, people who sometimes are few dollars away from not making rent or buying enough food.

And as other commenter correctly pointed out, by the federal law of hour wage plus tips is below federal minimum wage, the restaurant must pay extra to reach the minimum wage. So if we assume that restaurants actually follow this law, wait staff will be kept at poverty wage 7.25/hr.

Wait staff can lobby to change that if they want. Or just get a different job and let supply and demand sort out the wages for the remaining waiters.

You can't be serious. We're discussing a class of people making sub-minimum wages, barely scraping by to afford rent and groceries (much less any childcare or medical expenses), and your suggestion is "lobby to change that" or "just get a different job"?

As someone who has previously worked for that wage and finally did "get a different job," there was no "just" about it. I had the support of well-off family who were willing to significantly contribute to my education and living situation, and it still took years of hard toil (all while being nearly destitute) before ever achieving anything resembling financial stability. That was not (and likely never will be) an option for 90-95% of the people I worked with in the food-service industry. There is absolutely no justification (beyond abject greed) for that type of poverty wage, and it's the responsibility of everyone in our society to prevent that type of exploitation of the vulnerable, precisely because they cannot afford to "lobby to change that" and often can't "get a different job" outside of the same industry.

This is what trade unions are for.

I don't know what proportion of waiters are members, but the union for hospitality workers is one of the largest (possibly the largest) in Denmark: https://cf.3f.dk/english/wages-and-sectors/working-in-the-ho...

In Danish, the collective agreement they negotiated with McDonald's: https://www.3f.dk/-/media/files/artikler/overenskomst/privat...

I remember dining out one time. In Philly, if memory serves me?

Anyways I remember the hamburger place because they didn’t ask for, or even allowed us, to tip. The price was all-in.

It’s a breath of fresh air! More restaurants should advertise with this feature.

>pay wait staff below minimum wage (like 2-3$), because it’s explicitly allowed

Not in all U.S. states, for example California.

They legally cannot. If the average wage per hours including tips is under the Federal minimum wage in a pay period, the company must top up so that the wage per hour is the Federal minimum wage.

Well wage theft in the US dwarfs all other forms of theft combined.

But also actually demanding those wages if you dont get enough tip money is a great way for them to get fired. And if they are that poor to work in those conditions they will have a hard time scraping the money to go to court to get an unlawful dismissal case.

Wage theft sucks.

But servers are the only industry where they demand we the consumer take care of the problem because they're unwilling to do so themselves:

"Hard time scraping the money to go to court"? You don't go to court, you go to the DOL with your documentation.

"If you don't tip I have to pay/pay taxes to serve you" - no, you don't. The IRS assumes that you get a certain amount of tips. If you document that you got less, then guess what, they tax you on that.

Know why servers don't like to do that? Because the IRS assumption is that the average tip is 8%. What proportion of a server's customers do we think don't tip versus those who tip more than 8%?

"That's a lot of work" No. IRS Form 4070 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf) charitably takes less than five minutes a month to fill out.

"I'll get fired". Sure. That's a risk, I admit, and easy for me to say "You need to risk something". Inertia is a powerful thing. How many servers getting fired for fighting wage theft is enough to make a restaurant start to have problems?

One of the things not discussed here is that for many wait staff wages are far lower than our pathetic minimum wage (USA) so these people tend to make sub poverty to start with on the promise of tips.

I do agree though that the whole culture was broken before and now with payment kiosks asking for tips everywhere it's absurd.

> the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table changing utensils and plates and filling the drinks

FWIW, this sounds like a deeply unpleasant experience to me

> and the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table

I hate that. My old boss would book us into 5* places when we travelled for work and his wife was also there. People standing over me just felt “ick”. Like when the security guard decides to fallow you around the supermarket! (the latter has only happened a couple of times that I've noticed, when it did I made a point of spending much longer than I otherwise would meandering back & forth, and gave them a grin on my way out after paying…)

It's usually pretty discreet - they'll stay out of your line of sight and, if they're doing it right, you should barely notice them stepping in to top up your wine, etc.

Not sure what star rating system you're going by (Michelin only goes up to 3), but I'd expect that level of service even at 1* restaurants.

I'm meaning hotel (and therefore the bars/other within them) ratings rather than restaurant stars.

Maybe years living in a somewhat ropey town and having to be careful in alley-ways and tree covered areas has tuned me to be extra sensitive to people trying to stay out of line of sight…

Little known (apparently) thing from Spain is that our tips are not proportional. I see percentages everywhere when going out... 10% here, 15% there, so the quantities seem outrageous to me. In Spain if you want you leave a 1€ or 2€ coin, maybe 3 or 4€ plus some other smaller coins if you are more than 2 people. But that's it.

I've never seen a tip reaching 10€ in a restaurant, even in tables of 5+ people.

And imagine people bring their own drinks to restaurants in China (for big family lunch it can be even big plastic bags full of many bottles) and nobody even understand the concept of the tipping - why would you tip someone for doing their work and paying for the meal? One of the things I loved about China. They even come running after you if you forget your change.

What I liked much less is smoking in the restaurants which happens in Beijing even in 2026 despite posters on the wall saying No smoking in Chinese and English and everyone is affraid to tell something to smoker. You would think after years of campaigning it will improve, but I don't see much improvement after visiting after many years.

The bigger issue, to me, is that the burden is on customers at all. That's what creates all this awkwardness and moral accounting in the first place

What's ymmw? Your mileage may waver?

Your mileage may wario.

> I'm from EU

Now we know they mean Germany.

Funnily enough Germans do tip, for pretty average service compared to most European countries where waiters are expecting zero tips.

Of course. After living in Germany I can say that if I has not been not insulted in the process and the staff did not glare at me like I'm interrupting their free time, then the service was already much better than average

The service in the US is significantly better than in Europe.

You want to feel like a burden when you go out to eat, eat in Italy.

In the US, the servers are dancing excited for you to be there.

Only if by better you mean annoying.

I've always had good experiences in Italy even though I was a stupid tourist during peak season.

Agreed, not a fan of all the "is everything alright" and "can I get you anything else" and other "helpful" interruptions that many US waiters like to do.

That's a matter of taste.

I, for one, can't stand this fake chumminess you often experience in American restaurants.

>I'm from EU, so ymmw. I simply don't tip.

I guess you've never been to Germany.

Last time I was there (last year), I tried just giving small "trinkgeld" tips (round up to nearest Euro) and the servers were PISSED. I've never seen such rude service.

So why do EU people always say there's no tipping in the EU? This clearly isn't true, at least not any more.

When I traveled in the EU in the 2010s, it wasn't like this at all. WTF is going on over there?

You see these things in the EU too.

I'm also from EU. I tip only at restaurants, only 10% on average. The prices when recently up like 50% or so. So adding the tip on top of that is a hustle. And 10% on the higher price is also higher tip, so I am double assured I do good

here in Central Europe (SK/CZ) we never done percentage, we were just rounding up the sum, like 283 to 300, but even 292 would become 300, and if it's bill 300 then tough luck for waiter. But not sure what is the situation in recent years with card payments replacing cash, tips must been hit hard, also raising prices and people going to restaurants less and less doesn't help much.

Personally I pretty much stopped going to restaurants completely during COVID when I was treated worse than dog - dogs allowed (to some places), unvaxxed not allowed to enter.

Whenever someone complains about being treated "worse than dogs" I have to wonder how they think dogs should be treated. To be fair, if dogs could catch COVID and pass it onto humans they'd likely have banned unvaccinated dogs as well.

> unvwaxxed not allowed to enter

This is the correct approach. If you are an asdhole for not caring about others but using the herd immunity znyway, this is the latest that can be done to show contempt.

My wife is immunodepressed and cannot be vaccinated. She avoids plenty of places because shit people like this do not care.

I once physically threw away someone sick and unvaccinated from a place for babies only that are not protected by the mother and too young to protect themselves. It was violent, I called the police afterwards myself.

People don't be dicks with other people life.

Covid vaccines never prevented infection and transmission. If anything, out of the people I know the vaccinated got it much more often because they were more careless.

No one claimed it totally prevented infection or transmission. But it did significantly lower the rate.

Please stop stating idiocies and behave like a grown-up.

Look at the numbers and you will see the drop in BOTH the number of infections, AND the transmissions (because of a reduced viral payload).

These are sensibly larger than would be expected from natural herd immunity due to infections.

Vaccines also greatly reduced the severity of the disease, when caught anyway.

If you do not believe in science, treat this as a religion and do it anyway without thinking.

Inflation my man

I also live in Europe and tip, specially if I know that the salary of the staff heavily depends on tips. Also, if the service wasn’t great, I also tip, maybe they weren’t having a good day, like when I’m not that productive some day at my coding job.

If I ever find the system too unfair for the workers, then I won’t go to those restaurants anymore.

Then give your excess money to a homeless person or donate it to Amnesty. We don't want or need the "pressured to tip" culture here.

No, homeless people should not live from tips, they should be helped by the government. I live in Belgium and tip because I'm used to (I'm from Argentina) and I know the staff is happy when I do it.

And restaurant workers should be paid by their employers. If the goal is to spread happiness then, again, the homeless person trumps the employee.

And they are in Europe, thanks to strong labour laws!

> I also live in Europe and tip, specially if I know that the salary of the staff heavily depends on tips.

> If I ever find the system too unfair for the workers, then I won’t go to those restaurants anymore.

Sounds like you only tip once at each restaurant then? Not paying a reasonable salary to employees and assuming they'll beg customers for extra money to make up the difference seems unfair to me.

I can't say if it's unfair or not. I would prefer every worker to get a decent salary, but no idea how they feel in countries where tipping is widespread like the US. But, if I go to a restaurant in the US, or, Argentina (where tipping is also a thing), then I'll tip, and consider the price of the food to be 10, 15 or 20% more expensive. Otherwise, I won't go, because then I am complicit with the exploitation of the workers.

The only reason they don't get a full salary is because people keep paying the difference with tips.

No, it's because of crappy labor laws

Those laws are downstream from tipping culture.

Could be, but the way to fix it is with labor laws.

Incorrect, the reason they don't get a full salary is because tipping is allowed.

If you don't tip, the worker does not magically get a salary. How would they? No, they actually make less money.

This whole "well if you think about not tipping is actually giving them more money" thing is the purest and most refined form of cope I've ever seen. It obviously doesn't work like that. Maybe if everyone did it. But you just doing it does nothing.

You're 100% allowed to not tip. What you're NOT allowed to do is not tip and then somehow try to claim you're helping the worker. You're not. Like, objectively, you're not. That's just literally not true.

Is that you, Mr. Pink?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utksPm6KgjU [NSFW]

Fine but a few things. 1) the service at restaurants and bars in Europe is terrible. 2) the employees at US restaurants and bars often make more money than people doing the same job in Europe. 3) it allows the folks with more money pay a larger share and those with less to pay a bit less.

The problem with tipping is tipping in places which aren't restaurants and bars.

Service in restaurants in Europe is way better than in USA. I don't want waiter to ask me anything except taking the order. I don't want to be ushered away as soon as I finished eating. I usually do that anyway, but I want to choose so myself and have option to sit and talk with my friend or family sometimes. I don't want to give my credit card to a stranger, who will carry it to some back room without control. An finally I want to pay exactly what is advertised, without scam fees or blackmail "tips".

> Service in restaurants in Europe is way better than in USA.

Eh. Having eaten at plenty of restaurants all over the USA and Europe, they seem equally littered with both good and bad service. Understanding and adjusting to the culture of individual countries helps make your experiences better.

Yes, this isn't a question about the US or Europe.

Some of the absolute worst service I've received have been in the US, yet they ask for tips. I've also received some of the best service at a US restaurant, where the suggested tip was 10% and the prices where pretty low.

The weirdest thing I've experience is the large number of staff in US coffee shops, compared to locally, yet basically not being able to order, and then having a suggested tip at 20%. I've encountered this a multiple locations, and different chains. Four people, one person takes the order, one makes the drink, one continuously mop the floor and the last person just stands around (manager?) You could significantly increase the base pay by getting rid of two of these people.

I know a server and it very much has to do with the client base.

The poor area? Bad tipping.

Middle class? Depends on the person

Upper middle class? Big bucks.

I totally disagree. The only good service I've found in the US was in very small cities (Fayetteville WV is the only name I remember and probably the biggest one). It also seems like restaurants there don't take their bread from local bakeries, and all their food, even vegetables, even in 30+ dollar meals, are from a food distributor. Here, if I pay more than 20 euros for a meal, I expect that at least the vegetable aren't from Metro, and if I pay more than 30, it's for sure a local fisherman/butcher that provided the proteins.

The service in Europe is great in many many places. My experience with US service is that it feels very fake most of the time. Plus, staff having their own table/zone means you cannot ask any other waiter to help out cause "it's not their table". That's one of the many problems with this tip culture.

I agree with the tiered pricing argument, but ehm, you know you are allowed to tip in Europe also right? If you are rich and feel benevolent, feel free to leave cash on the table. You don't need others to be forced into dark-pattern PIN machines or feel guilty for not paying more than the bill for that reason.

>The service in Europe is great in many many places. My experience with US service is that it feels very fake most of the time. Plus, staff having their own table/zone means you cannot ask any other waiter to help out cause "it's not their table".

I'm literally 0 for 3 on those claims. Not sure how you have such experiences. Maybe its a choice of words 'Many many' could be like 20 places out of 10,000. Maybe 'feels very fake' is something that isn't actually a problem, and might be a benefit, so I didn't notice it. And that last line about 'not their table'... I can't say I've ever experienced it.

If I can't tip, I don't go out. Cuz I don't have to.

Granted, I also don't go to the EU if I can avoid it, and most places I make so much more money than the locals I don't mind a bit extra for the worker.

You are not entitled to money beyond what you list as prices

Nobody is entitled to anything, of course. But you're a jackass if you knowingly exploit people. A "livable wage" is a legal concept and does not incorporate your wealth.

The exploitation happens between you and your employer, mainly.

Did you ever work a job or were friends with people who did where tipping is a big part of the income?

You make it sound like a general rule, but I don’t see how it is that “simple”. There are few things if any that you have to do in life. It’s all a decision and a tradeoff. Nobody forces you to breathe. Or to be friendly with your neighbors. Or a stranger.

> Did you ever work a job or were friends with people who did where tipping is a big part of the income?

The friends of mine who worked in bars were paid living wage without tips. So no, no need.

The "tips as compensation for your low salary" system exists only in the US and neighboring countries (Canada, Mexico) as far as I know.

Now that they have started abusing it, it's even less defensible.

I worked in the service industry for a while and have literally never cared about tips, in the sense that the default expectation in 99% of cases is no tip and the rare time I got a tip it was a few euros extra at most. Of course, I didn't care because it actually paid an actual wage, vs the weird shit you yanks are up to.

Hell, I know some people who have been working at restaurants as waiters for a long time now, and they live perfectly comfortably with 0 expectations around tips.

I still don't tip, basically ever, my only exception is the rare time I get food delivered, because unlike a regular service job the apps don't pay a livable wage and the cut they take is gargantuan compared to what the drivers get.

Most of my friends worked restaurants or bars when I was younger, tips were something some tourists would sometimes do and it would generally go into a pot for throwing a party for the staff few times a year. I have never tipped or seen a local tip in my home country.

Tips weren't a part of my friends income. The restaurant/bar paid them a salary.

Your point is valid because waiters earn more money when they have low salary and big tips than high salary but no tips. The problem is though, I simply don't care about how much waiters earn, just like waiters don't care about how much I earn. I will start tipping the day waiters start honestly caring about the software job market collapse.

> Did you ever work a job or were friends with people who did where tipping is a big part of the income?

In the EU people are paid fair salaries for their work, they don't have to beg for money from clients

You could make that excuse for any dark pattern.

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