Stop Turning every purchase into a tip request
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The choice of who we tip is entirely arbitrary. How much we are supposed to tip is also arbitrary. There is no logic behind it. The system is entirely stupid.
It clearly existed so that the proprietor can delegate the duty of finding and punishing bad service employees to the customer... which is, again, a terrible system that makes no sense, and it make even less sense now that it's spreading to all manner of jobs where this tenuous connection doesn't even exist!
Why do the payment companies do this? Because they get ~1% of the tip.
I hate tipping so much, I want to start a "no tipping" movement. Then hopefully the industry will figure out how to pay their people a living wage without making paying a game of social pressure for me.
Tips should become less of a thing and tipped wage should go away.
They also must pay their employees overtime "by law". And not require them to work when clocked out "by law". And give them a certain amount of breaks "by law".
How many of these laws do you think businesses break on a regular basis?
https://worldmetrics.org/wage-theft-statistics/
https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-...
I never tip at my local Starbucks counter. They ask for it before any service has been rendered. That’s not how a tip is supposed to work. And who knows how the tips are getting to the workers.
I tip in cash after a service is rendered. If it’s on a screen there are renter seekers between you and the person who helped you.
Not knowing how much people get paid probably also frustrates collective bargaining.
It also leaves the price / performance relationship up in the air for customers. They're tipping, but they don't know how the tips are being split. Between people tipping habitually, and not knowing where your tip is going, I'm not sure that "reward for good service" is a meaningful incentive. It may be as much a reward for quality management.
Disclosure: Both of my kids are tipped workers. They both receive a split of the tips depending on what job they're doing. I also receive cash tip income as a musician, but it's not my main job.
Workers are now allowed to deduct up to $25k of their tipped income from their federal income tax, though they still have to pay into Social Security and Medicare from their tipped wages.
Of course, in aggregate, it would still be far better were Congress to eliminate the distinction between tipped minimum wage and regular minimum wage, then raise the overall minimum wage, and we as a culture did away with tips entirely.
No problem tipping for good sit-down table service, or a good bartender at a bar. But at carry-out and self-service places, there's no service provided so nothing to earn a tip.
Pay for value, the percent is a suggestion.
Otherwise, negatory.
Who gets tipped is a matter of social custom, though each person is free to come up with their own criteria.
Disclosure: I earn tip income in my side job as a musician.
I recently had one at one of the big coffee chains where it offered 10%, 15%, 20% and an unlabeled fourth option. The fourth option went into a submenu with 5%, 10%, 15% and this time a labeled none option, which sent you to a another yes/no screen.
I don't avoid the business but I do not feel bad at all not tipping when there is no service involved. And, no, the 3 second interaction of handing me out goods from behind the counter doesn't count. When there is service involved it usually is already included in the price and rounding up is a courtesy but not required.
Are you saying you wouldn't reward someone like that with a few extra bucks?
Someone else mentioned dental hygienists, bus drivers, and now I think of teachers, mechanics, lawyers, etc, what ARE the rules of tipping? Cuz apparently it’s not really that cut and dry
Anyway, the most egregious tip request I’ve ever seen was in a self-service airport kiosk. I chose my bag of nuts or whatever; no human even in the kiosk, completely unmonitored; I scanned and tapped my credit card and there it was — [15%] [18%] [20%]? So insulting.
The most egregious I've seen was in the check out flow of a web store. Someone actually went to the effort to implement a tip nag at the end of check out, to ask for more money for a no-humans-present transaction.
Firstly, the business is permitted to pay below minimum wage and play accounting games with "tip credits" and having the employees pool/share their tips in common. So, the business contributes less to those wages overall, and therefore can hire/keep more staff than it would, ordinarily, and run on a slimmer margin, when food service is generally not very profitable.
Second, the business can advertise lower prices! If tipping pays wages, and tips don't need inclusion in the menu prices, then your $5 hamburger isn't going to cost $5 at checkout, but if you're the owner, you still get to print $5 on the menus and put $5 burgers on your website.
At this point, customers are being shamed and goaded into tipping, because if we don't, we're the bad guy: we're the wage thieves; we're the rude customers who can't afford to eat but do it anyway.
It is a valid strategy to boycott/avoid businesses that mandate tipping unjustly, but ultimately, that seems to be another way you're hurting the workers trying to make a living, where that includes being forced to accept a job in a "mandatory tipping" industry.
- We are conditioned to expect that the price listed is not the actual final price. If I see 1 euro as a price in Italy, I can hand them 1 euro and walk away. In the US if I see $1 as the price I could get a bill for??? 1.20? then tip? 1.40? Some random magic number I have no idea how it happened? The price listed should be the price paid. Period. Stop pretending taxes aren't part of the price.
- We have legislation that makes tips part of expected compensation. Minimum wage is different for servers. Get rid of any legislation like that. Every job should pay a living wage (including benefits) or shouldn't exist. If that were in place you would see a lot fewer places begging for tips since the cost of things would be higher to match the salaries they would need to pay. So right now if you don't tip you are actually taking away someone's paycheck and that is wrong on all levels.
Of course all of this is also part of the American psyche. We really like being lied to about price. Show us a lower number, even though we know it is fake and we will end up being charged way more by the time the transaction is done, and we will hop there. Take the taxes off the price and don't include the cost of labor on the listed price and we go 'Look! A bargain!'
Tip the person if they do a direct service to you, which may involve touching your body. Barbers, massage therapists (all kinds, you know!), Facials, nails etc.
Also (as per another comment in this thread), no tip if we pay before we use the service (or food).
If it isn't any of the above, say "Thank you, I enjoyed your great service. But at this time, I don't have money to spare. How do I get past this screen?"
I don’t tip at point of sale simply because it isn’t fair. I don’t tip at grocery checkout. Why would I tip for a drip coffee?
Calling others a miser but always hitting the lowest tip option
Some Amazon grocery choices for delivery come with a $5.00 tip by default, no way to opt out or change this default. You are only allowed to edit it, every single time, at purchase time (if you notice it).
Make that burger $15, not $10 + tax + arbitrary tip, plus a $1 x number of smiles.
It's disgusting to me how tipping casts the tip receiver into a servant. It is services, but service workers are not servants.
Another pet peeve - Barber shops near me started adding "How did I do? Good - 25%, Great - 30%, Excellent - 40%." GTFO.
These guys are independent operators, they rent the chair from the shop.
The haircut was already $40, just make it $50 so I don't need to worry getting lawn mowed next month.
I've started cooking more and am comtemplating learning to cut my own hair, this is getting out of control.
It must make it so much harder to budget and to confidently plan for the future.
Is it worth it? Do people feel they're getting something in return for all that additional stress, or is it just that fixing it seems like too big a task to realistically be able to carry out?
Somehow other countries have figured out how to give great service (read: not the weird hovering that American waitstaff do) without tips, but it's impossible to figure out how sadly.
But it's nothing compared to child rearing costs, healthcare, social safety nets. A kid is at least a grand a month, you are lucky if you can get them into a nice public school, it's impossible to book doctor appointments, and when you do, expect at least an hour wait before your BP is taken and then another 30 mins for the doc to come in for 5 and dismiss you. Dentists? Oh, "no sir, we don't take Aetna, nor United Healthcare. You can pay out of network and submit the invoice to your insurance provider". Crazy shit like that just builds up. You want progressive glasses at LensCrafters? It'll be $800.
This isn't going to change in my lifetime. I'm always perplexed when folks from developed countries want to move here and suffer through TSA level humiliation rigamarole at every level. Varies state by state though, some are nicer, and that's another PITA. I've moved three states over the last 5 years, each time new license plates, new registration fees, new inspections, FFS.
But have you thought about the poor shareholders? /s
Even with reliable good nights the off nights eat away at that margin.
It's a false economy.
It's the same as looking at an American engineer's bonus that's 3x a foreign engineer's whole pay and calling them a beggar.
But even if we take that last point into consideration, a good waiter that cares about their customers can offer a cheaper, more suitable bottle than something expensive. How can they receive a higher tip than the person who does not offer suggestions but merely pours a more expensive bottle?
This is not even mentioning that the baseline of "performance" is sub-par indeed. Americans tend to gloat about how their tables never receive water top-ups or someone never asks how their food is going so they have an opportunity to ask for condiments or napkins. But most people in the world typically know how to ask for themselves if they require something, and don't need a pseudo-butler hovering over them. Not to mention that when it comes time to actually pay the check and leave, Americans tend to be some of the slowest at actually fulfilling this process.
In traditional tipping culture, the tip is calculated on the subtotal for food and drink, minus your bar bill. Therefore, alcohol, taxes, fees, whatever? Those are not part of your tip calculation at all. For tipping a bartender, or if all you did was drink, I'd usually drop a fraction on each drink served, whatever they were.
The POS tipping prompts are all wrong, and they're encouraging more than just mandatory tip-shaming: they are forcing a shift in the basic calculations which was never intended by ordinary tipping customs. A $700 bottle of wine in a restaurant warrants an identical tip to a $7 bottle.
Extravagant tipping can be a real source of contention and trouble with the employer, too. There was a recent case where a "very generous patron" left something like $10,000 for a server, and she was subsequently fired, with litigation pending.
There are, in fact, many POS systems that will inhibit extravagant tipping. Unusual tipping patterns could be indicative of coercion, criminal activity, or money-laundering.
Generous, rich people can believe they're doing a magnanimous favor in throwing stacks of cash at a random, struggling server, but that is not the road to charity.
I try to tip in cash, avoids "the system" and avoids the employer keeping part of it.
That doesn't explain the $7 vs $700 though. It would $10 vs $40
The first thing you seem to not consider is the percentage. When someone does exceptional service you give them an exceptional tip. I do 20% of the total (so including tax) as baseline. Yes I "overtip" but I decided a long time ago that being generous with service staff was something I want to do. If someone went above and beyond I would add a few dollars/extra percent to the tip.
The question about 7 and 700 dollar bills is illustrative. If I am buying a hotdog or I am buying an exceptionally high end meal - implies a big difference the sophisticated of service and the experience of staff. At the higher price point I expect the waiter to be capable of (whether I need it or not) help the diners navigate the menu and the wine list for example.
That's mainly what I was getting at. By the time you are a waiter in a high end restaurant you are financially good and better than any alternative.