I will not tip at a drive-through oil change service.
I will not tip at a fast food counter.
I certainly will not tip at a convenience store.
Every single new tipping situation is a company begging me to subsidize their employees' wages instead of increasing them. Screw that. I'm not participating, and they can't make me. Those existing jobs were grandfathered in: waiters make below minimum wage on the expectation they'll make it up in tips, and that's f'ed up, but I can't change that by myself and I'm not going to stiff someone making sub-minimum to prove a point. All the others? Those cheapskate bosses can get bent. Pay more if you want to keep good help. Don't literally beg me to donate money to your employees as a charity.
I believe tipping is primarily cultural default and companies using human psychology to guilt them into it. Most Americans worked at restaurants while attending college. They are conditioned to think its perfectly acceptable for an employer to pay $2.13/hour and customers must pay tips to support them. This became a cultural default. There is another cultural phenomenon, people mostly go out on dates to restaurants, usually the man foots the bill, and wants the woman not to think of him as a cheap person.
All checkout systems now ask for a tip, and another asking to donate to their own charity (Ronald McDonald House Charities or some other garbage charity), guilting the buyer into giving a tip and/charity for the billionaires 'non-profit'. We foot the bill for the billionaires generosity and kindness, they will go give TED talks on how awesome they are.
CVS was sued for using customer donations at checkout to fund a corporate philanthropy pledge: https://qz.com/cvs-customer-checkout-register-donations-laws...
I've seen it normalized for parties of 6 or greater...but not for any party size until recently.
I find that completely wild. If that's the case it should be posted and announced prior to anything taking place.
Incidentally it was the worst service I had ever gotten in a very long time, presumably because it didn't matter at all
Hotel cleaning staff are harder to find than you think. If Maria is made or broken based on your $2, she can find a job that pays better. You enabling her through a system of random rewards may actually hold her hostage in a bad situation.
Don’t be racist
- Not only is there no tipping here, things cost what they say they cost. Taxes are always added in. Worst case you pay 2% for a credit card fee. - There is basically no tipping. I see jars occasionally but it's not a thing. - Service is often not as good but fine. If you want a second drink, go up the bar, mate. - However you NEVER self-bus your table here. I've seen almost no restaurants with bussing stations, which were very common in Seattle.
The wages are higher, healthcare is covered, taxes are higher. When I went back to US earlier this year the tipping culture shocked me - POS 22 / 25 / 28% -- wth?
Agree there is no way to change this as an individual consumer. But I sure don't miss it.
Today, that same meal is $35 - $40 and wages haven't kept up for most, so not only does the tip have to increase, but people are also just eating out less. Lately it seems restaurants are closing left and right. So I think restuarant tipping as a percentage of all tipping is probably really on the decline
What's sort of come up in its place over the past few decades is the payment system asking you for a tip before you even get your food. I think there is a backlash against that, as well as tipping in non-food places. I'm seeing more and more Instagram posts about it.
WTF? A $10 to $40 jump? I haven't seen that anywhere around here, and I don't live in a cheap county, either. This is 100% about where you live and eat. This is not normal at all.
Today in that same place, same pizza and same beer, is ~$50. So I only go about once a year.
Doesn't look too bad?
I’ve seen kebab prices in Europe also rise from 2-4€ to 8-15€ within five (!) years.
To break the cycle, we need to force all employers to pay their employees a living wage.
Maybe where you’re at, people working a job can afford to live. Imagine if you lived in a society where a waitress relies on tips to pay for their children’s doctors appointments.
This is a common but incorrect meme and misunderstanding. Setting aside that the federal min wage of $7.25/hr is a universal floor and states can (and many do) go much higher, the difference for tipped jobs is that it becomes a "guaranteed minimum" instead of "guaranteed payment". Ie, for an untipped job, the employer must simply pay minimum wage or higher, period. For a tipped job, the employer must pay the $2.13/hr no matter what, but if the amount of tips the employee gets plus averages out to being equal or greater than $7.25/hr the employer doesn't need to pay more. However, if the employee does not get enough tips to reach $7.25/hr, the employer must make up the difference. So ultimately nobody is allowed to end up with less than minimum wage. The law just allows a different path to get there for tipped employees. If nobody tipped at all, employees would still get minimum wage (or higher).
Of course, it's completely reasonable to argue that federal minimum wage itself is disgustingly low. It doesn't auto-adjust to reflect inflation, and the highest purchasing power it ever had was back in 1968. Congress last increased it to $7.25 in 2009 and has left it that way 17 years later. Even by official definitions of the federal poverty line (themselves grossly outdated underestimates), minimum wage is below it. But it's still not good to confuse the matter by claiming any employer is legally allowed to let their employees end up with below minimum wage (that some certainly break the law is important too of course).
Edit: Straight from the horse's mouth (department of labor's FLSA page):
>The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires payment of at least the Federal minimum wage to covered, nonexempt employees. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 an hour in direct wages if that amount plus the tips received equals at least the Federal minimum wage, the employee retains all tips and the employee customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips. If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.
>Some states have minimum wage laws specific to tipped employees. When an employee is subject to both the Federal and state wage laws, the employee is entitled to the provisions which provides the greater benefits.
Not disagreeing, but I can recall a couple of workplaces that did not do that. (One at least was sued by a former employee after they quit, but my sense was that the employer treats even the lawsuit as just the cost of doing business.)
There are a few tip free restaurants around, it’s sort of rare. Tipping at basically every random shop is out of control nowadays tho.
Americans would riot if restaurants raised the prices to offset the loss of tipping.
That's entirely possible, but then again people make far more in the U.S., so the cost of living is generally higher. Taking that into account, I don't think the cost of eating out is higher than in Europe.
Even when factoring in things like tipping and taxes being included in the prices, I would say In aggregate US restaurants are simply more expensive.
Portion sizes are probably bigger but definitely not cheaper.
My experience is that European restaurants are cheaper and better. Especially in 2026 with the Trump inflation hellscape. Everything from McDonalds to local high end restaurants.
Certain commodities are even more shocking. You’ll get the best loaf of bread that you ever had. in France, Spain, or Italy for two euro. In most American cities, unless there happens to be a functional local bakery, you’re looking at a seven dollar defrosted loaf of bread at a supermarket that tastes like cardboard.
Basically if you individually don't tip you're just hurting someone who's underpaid by the tipping culture system. I agree if _everyone_ stopped tipping simultaneously the system would become untenable and have to change, but it would be pretty painful for the workers involved in the interim.
Perhaps the only individual in the game who does have a positive incentive is the business owner, where going tip-free can gain a good rep among customers and get more business if viewed as ethical and stably priced. I've seen this grow a bit more common in California restaurants but it's certainly still rare. Most business owners would rather just participate in the dis-equilibrium and coast off the shadow subsidy.
Like, a waiter may start at $2.25/hr, and if they work for say 20 hours that week and get $150 in tips, for an effective wage of $9.75/hr, they’re above fed min wage. However if they only get $50 in tips? Now they’re at $4.75/hr, and their employer is federally required to supply the remaining $50, on top of whatever the state may require.
And the way the system is trying to sneak it in everywhere more and more makes me revolt even more.
Last time I was in a restaurant and I tried to pay with the QR code thing it suggested I paid 20% tip on top of the total + tax. Tip is supposed to go on the part before tax. Sneaking it in makes it so that the people working there think they get paid better, without the employers paying their fair share.
It should be on the employer to ensure that (s)he is properly remunerated for the work (s)he does, not the customer who has no insight in that contract.
Won’t ever succeed one person at a time.
(Just kidding—but, yeah, the stores want me to be charitable rather than them.)
But refusing to tip just hurts people at the bottom of the ladder and doesn’t do anything about the billionaires stealing from all of us.
How would it help society?
Looking at the comments, can a business operate with transparent, "this is what you will pay at the end" prices shown (which include everything like taxes)? Is this even allowed?
That said, I feel like sometimes this is pushed with those tablets with tipping options that present 20% 30% and 35%. Especially in situations where you self serve by going up to the clerk, as a non american it feels like I'm being scammed by a tourist trap, I might press 30% out of feeling that it's customary, but then an American might know the actual rules and either tip 15%, or not tip at all since it isn't customary to tip for self service.
...wtf kind of argument is "this how it been so it is how it will be"
This forum has no room to argue it's a different kind of place.
Now that software is a dead end career cause AI HN is the same old blue collar Main Street dogma and tribal gibberish of any old typical bulletin board
Second of all, this is a convention issue, like tabs vs spaces, it could be one way, it could be the other way, in that sense I don't see how arguing that it could be the other way is helpful.
Either restaurant bills can be higher, or they can be a tad lower and tip is soft mandatory. It doesn't make much difference which way it is, the end result is the same. There's problems if you come from other conventions, in the same way that your device might burn if it comes from EU and you don't have a transformer.
One time I was forced to pay a tip for self checkout at the Austin airport. I was in a rush for my flight, it prompted, and I could not find any way to opt out.
Thereby perpetuating cheap skate owners can continue to get away with labor exploitation and wage theft
You know the olds that put this social way in our heads are dead or too old to force our hand anymore
No need to continue to kowtow like an abused spouse; grandpas hand can barely lift a glass of water
No one is worried about Grandpa's opinion here.
Sensory memory reinforces our agency more than philosophy; we're replaying visual memory just like we were shown
All these startups need to jump yeh high raises hand to arbitrary height to get funding because of gramps old rules
Better keep line go up for old rich will financially engineer this economy right off a fiscal cliff! (Google simpsons fiscal cliff for context)
And more specifically to the "no one is worried..." you should get out more cause I encounter "we owe it to our elders to carry on their ways for all they did for us" type conclusions a whole lot
We could collectively action around less stupid jobs like knowledge work. We're well outside the post WW2 rebuild that fostered "endless growth" mentality in elders
84% in the US live <100 miles from their childhood home collectively acting just fine
I think a majority are capably collectively acting where they are; not sure where you see a deficiency there
You misunderstand.
There is tipping in restaurants, and then tipping in other places where it's much more traditional to not tip.
While some people don't like restaurant tipping, it's generally the other type of tipping the ruffles feathers. But in those cases, you don't have to tip.
> But tipping is optional
Again, you don't understand. No, tipping is not always optional. It's known and part of the bill in certain circumstances and this is known ahead of time.
> If you don't tip you both help society improve
I don't know, having been to European and American restaurants, I find the American restaurants to be far better at service. Couple that with free refills and other amenities (like again... actually good service), I wouldn't see it as better.
I personally prefer going to restaurants when I'm in Europe and using delivery in the US.
I've got a real pet peeve about something. I order my drinks and meal and the server starts dropping stuff on the table, and when the main course comes, they set it down and then ask, "is there anything else you need?" and due to whatever mental issues I have, I am fundamentally unable to tell them, on-the-spot, "yes" because I do not know what is missing. As soon as they turn their back and walk away, my mind refocuses on the food and I notice that yes, I do need something else. But they have gone away.
Even worse: if I'm a regular and I know how their food is served, I may anticipate stuff, like "can you put a second cup of butter with that?" or "could you add more tortillas?" and they always go "yeah" and then they don't do it. Because there is some unspoken restaurant rule that says they are supposed to serve the dish as-is, and then the customer expresses his needs, and there is a back-and-forth like that. It feels like an absolutely ridiculous charade to me.
Many dishes are deliberately served with not enough bread, or not enough sauce or dressing, in order to induce the diner to speak up and say "yes please bring more" (implying "ooh I like this food and I want to keep eating the rest of it") which is, again, a ridiculous charade, but seems to be a universal written rule for table-service restaurants in the USA.
And guess how this plays out when a table-service restaurant packages up food for delivery instead? That's right: they can never include enough dip, enough dressing, or enough bread/tortillas to complement your entrée, because they are still adhering to the "back-and-forth with the server" rule, but there is no server, only a taxi for your burrito, so your taxi driver eats all the gratuity, and you eat half the meal before running out of dipping sauce.
I will give bonus credit to a particular Ethiopian eatery here which just closed down, but if you ate in their dining room you'd ask over and over for more injera, but their delivery orders were miraculously packaged with extra injera to consume with the entire meal. Bless their hearts.
When asked "is there anything else you need?", the most common replies by far are going to be along the lines of the next drink order or where the restroom is.
If anything, most people never finish all the sauce or bread. The restaurant is not trying to gauge what you want, but what makes the most sense based on how everyone else consumes it. Why be wasteful?
I cannot even comprehend "next drink order or restroom". Waitress just set down my main course, hot and ready to eat, and I don't know where the bathroom is? Didn't I wash my hands on arrival, or just after ordering: here's the menu back and please direct me to the restroom? The waitress is literally asking if she can bring me something so that I can begin eating. That means: condiments, utensils, send this plate back it's wrong. If my drink's empty, she proactively points it out and offers a refill. She wants to know if she is gonna return to this table, or if she's done and she can serve others now.
This is an objective experience. I can promise you that I'm not being unreasonable about sauce or bread. It's not a matter of drowning food or trying to use more sparingly. There is always objectively less than half as much sauce, as food to put it on. I have literally argued with waitresses about how much sour cream to bring out for potato skins and they seem simply forbidden to anticipate that. They will come out with 1.5oz instead of 1 and point out how much bigger the container is... when I need 3oz or more just to finish the plate.
Or in a Mexican restaurant: fajitas or some other DIY dish, comes with tortillas alongside it. The customary method is to scoop the fajitas into a tortilla and make your own tacos as you go. But there are 5 servings on the plate and only 2 tortillas. The math ain't mathin' and there is literally no way to fit in a skillet full of fajitas in 2 of any size tortillas.
That Ethiopian restaurant knew exactly what they were doing. They gave enough injera to eat a little bit of the meal. The injera is your utensil, and you cannot eat Ethiopian food without it. Imagine if you gradually ate your fork during a meal and your fork disappeared 1/3rd of the way through it. You would probably ask for 2 more forks. That is injera in action.
How do you know that "most people" would never finish 2 tortillas? Do they just like, stop at 1 tortilla and 1 scoop of fajitas, and then tell the waitress to just trash the rest of their meal? I cannot comprehend this assertion. Often, running out of tortillas just prompts me to start eating with a fork. It's not wrong, but it's not customary Mexican dining: you put 'em in the tortillas because that's what tortillas are for, and tortillas are overflowing endlessly from every metate on the planet.
They know how to spam you with food, because the free tortilla chips know no bounds, and they'll refill your soda without asking first, but somehow it takes an Act of Congress to put down adequate, complementary servings of tortillas. It's fucking obvious.
No. When I finish half of my potato skins and the sour cream runs out, then I ask for more, because the full plate of potato skins is what I paid for off the fucking menu. I want to finish my meal in a normal way, please. I fucking ordered enough food to eat and I didn't order 3x as much so that they can throw it in the fucking garbage when I leave. I will do the tortilla dance and keep asking for tortillas until I finish the fucking fajitas plate because I paid them to eat in the customary fashion, and they know exactly how it works.
Restaurants do care about this charade, because if the diner sits at the table asking for more bread, they'll probably ask for more cocktails or dessert, and they'll consider raising the tip. More time spent dining, and asking for more, is profitable for them. It is profitable to over-serve large portions for the main course, because it looks generous, feels satisfying, and it doesn't cost much more to do so.
And again, this absolutely craps out when they wrap it for delivery, it gets to your door, you run out of sauce and/or bread, and you indeed trash 2/3rds of the fucking $60 meal because it's not worth eating incomplete food.
And yes, I do mean to be fucking rude, when I get second-guessed like that.
What would be examples of those "other places"?
What would be examples of the tip being part of the bill?
For me, if it IS on the bill it's a service fee and not a tip. If it's not on the bill, it's technically optional by definition regardless of social norms that'd make it practically mandatory.
Our federal administration recently decreed no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. This is a judicious move; although it unfortunately enshrines tipping even more firmly, it gives relief to the rank-and-file worker.
Generally, employees raking in cash tips always faced a tax-time dilemma: record and report all my tips from my job, and be taxed on them? Or just let it all slide under the table. Surely, nearly everyone does it. So, "no tax on tips" simply encourages you to report them without being docked for it.
Tipping culture is business-friendly. It gives business the opportunity to hire more workers for more hours, and simply offload the wages onto the customers. End-stage capitalism's finest hour.
As I mentioned earlier, tips in advance for services like food delivery? Those are bribes, not tips. They're also wages, but they're also bribes. It's fairly disgusting. I hate tipping. But I hate stiffing workers, and I personally enjoy a reputation as someone who cares about tipping people for services provided.
That being said, I encounter rampant “tip cheating” in my everyday life. In my state, there are businesses authorized to solicit tips, and the rest are not authorized to do so. However, a common sight on the countertop is a clear glass jar with cutesy decorations on it. They are not allowed to write “TIPS” on this jar, so you will see many creative turns of phrase. But, they are illicitly soliciting tips from you in the silence.
Ethical employees of ethical companies generally are discouraged from allowing customers to slip cash into their pockets. They do not want to get this kind of custom started when they are not authorized to accept gratuities. But it seems perfectly normalized to silently and passively solicit gifts from fake tip jars. The ubiquitous “take/leave a penny” tray is exactly the same low-grade tip cheating in convenience stores. So beware of this practice. If it is incorporated into their P.O.S. flow, I would expect it’s legitimate.
It is obviously deeply ingrained corruption that cash tipping, and under-reporting, has been a national pastime for decades. In fact, as the "cash discount" policies increase nationwide, there will be more corruption at the till, with entire sales going unreported. However, since many Americans in 2026 are accustomed to cashless payments, cash tipping was on its way out, and it's really hard to falsify or under-report credit-card-based gratuities!
Now that the IRS specifies non-taxable gratuities, the workers have ample incentive to simply track and report it in the open, especially the cash, because they're not docked. That... increases transparency and consumer honesty. When workers are more accurate/honest in their tax returns, the IRS garners better metrics on wages and gratuities nationwide. Everyone wins.
If I seem to be repeating myself, I am. I have no idea how this is "more corrupt" than the status quo ante. Who is corrupt in this scenario? The IRS for passing up revenue??? Please make it make sense, America-hater.
But we need to recognize that as a privilege. For most people (including me, ten years ago) that's absolutely not marginal. Most people are having to budget and count their money carefully even at amounts you are privileged do dismiss as having no relevance.
Having the privilege of wealth is fine, up to a point. Being so wrapped up in it that you don't recognize it as a privilege is not fine.
I’m saying people are willing to accept marginal worseness the same way the frog in a pot of water accepts an increase of 1 degree
15% to 20% as customary in the US is anything but "marginally more expensive".
It can be insulting to be considered "cheap" and that's the label you might gain if you stop tipping.
We've heard from waitstaff and restaurants for decades that this is part of their income.
I think the only way this changes is through regulation or a seismic shift in this mentality causing people to stop tipping, resulting in waitstaff retention issues, resulting in restaurant owners paying better.
I wish the "morality gun" would point back at those who ask to be tipped, the same way a beggar who asks if you have some spare some change is castigated (in most places)
The only people stiffing service staff on their compensation is their employer shrugging their shoulders and not pricing the server's labour correctly. Your compensation agreement is between you and your employer, I'm here to pay for goods/services in exchange for the amount of money that we agreed on.
It's just not really my problem, and getting openly angry at me means you're the asshole, sorry.
Tips are part of the compensation structure for front of the house staff. You are ethically obligated to tip.
Yeah, the staff would be assholes by any measure. Publicly confronting a paying customer, demanding a tip. I've personally never ever witnessed such a scene. Have you?
I attended church for years without tithing at all. I didn't feel able to. I definitely did not get cornered or lectured or confronted by the priest for my deadbeat spirituality. My own conscience eventually prevailed, as surely a non-tipper's conscience would.
Actually, the receptionist called me once and brought it up in a non-judgemental way, and I was the one who lectured her, saying I was volunteering and contributing an abundance of my time and talent such that I was making up for the $0 tithing. And she noted that down in my record, and the notes were still there when I got her job years later. It was kind of amusing to me, remembered as the guy who mansplained stewardship to the parish office. But I also brought it up directly in private with my pastor, who was unwilling to... command me to begin tithing.
Waitstaff is literally paid to be kind and courteous to customers. Even if they personally obviously hate my guts they are still polite and non-confrontational. There are plenty of non-verbal ways for you to give bad service and express hostility to diners in the food-service industry, that do not involve confronting or insulting them.
The theory is that gratuities reward great service and so a gratuity paid should be commensurate with that outstanding service. I don't know if this is true anymore, because I only adjust upwards in exceptional circumstances, and it's not often that waitstaff goes "above and beyond" in obvious efforts to earn higher tips. Not even in those breastaurants like Hooters.
It is customary for a diner to leave $0 or $0.01 in retaliation for blatantly bad/rude service. It would also be customary to never return, if you're that offended. Surely, if the party did return, the staff would be entitled to treat them rather poorly. They could conceivably refuse service to a non-tipper. But why though? And why in the world "confront" a customer? That will surely earn 1 star on Yelp and Maps.
If a particular server earns $0 tips, rather than confronting customers, they should probably pause to consider what went wrong at that table. The management should take notice if this happens on the regular. Far from confronting customers, $0 tips should generally considered a signal of bad service or dissatisfaction, don't you think? If someone already felt they were mistreated, how does a confrontation address that issue?
Again, your compensation is between you and your employer. If I don't tip, perhaps your employer should be paying you more. Raise the prices to account for this.
Heck, someone should vibe code a mobile browser extension to do that for online menues...