Yes. If you business wants to collect a "tip" up front, before services rendered, it's not a tip (Doordash, Instacart, etc). If 100% of the proceeds don't get straight to the employees, but some end up in the pocket of the business, it's not a tip.
This last one is going to be to hear, but if you pay your employees below mimimum wage and allow for tips to make up the difference, well.....
I've faced that after moving to SF. Stopped eating out unless its a actually special high end place or something.
I was in a rush and didn't put a tip, I found a hair in my fried rice and the tofu was not fully cooked. I'd ordered from that place a couple times before and its like $22 with tip for just Thai red curry with rice..
The prices are insane. Even if I made 10x what I make, I wouldn't eat out unless its really special.
Sure, but this is an isolated incident. I don't want to attribute to malice what could have been a total accident that day, maybe the kitchen was just busy. However, it was coincidental that it happened at a time when I didn't tip.
I'll keep that in mind for next time though if it ever happens again! Now I kind of want to do a social experiment.. go to a restaurant like 4-5 times and then don't tip once to see what happens. If its really true service is affected that way, then its a broader problem.
In australia we have no tipping culture and I've always been very against it, but I've found if I don't tip the quality of delivery driver is just abysmal, but if I do tip, I get "regular" service - ie. they come to my door in my apartment building, not just leave it in the lobby, and they usually don't completely fuck it up (ie. squished pizza from holding the box vertically).
It sucks but I just view it as an extra cost for using uber eats.
Most places allow you to give specific instructions to the driver. It's intended for things like "gate locked, text ### when you arrive" or something to that effect. But I bet you could say something like "will tip cash upon arrival" and it would have the intended effect, maybe even better than a tip in advance.
Do they have an option to avoid these deliveries anyway? Where I live they're all employees (basically) of e.g. Grubhub, and Grubhub promises me delivery within e.g. 45 minutes. I had assumed Grubhub was automatically assigning a delivery worker in the area to make the delivery.
Well it’s a you problem if they don’t accept your pickup. And yes they can see the top amount. In most areas your basically bidding for their seevice
But that’s just the Grubhub/doordash branded drivers. In my area placing an order on those sites just triggers the place’S own delivery people if they normally do delivery
But you have no guarantee that your food won't be vandalized anyways when you tip before service. The bribe has no teeth. You're going to demand a refund if you notice the food has been damaged regardless if you tipped before or after.
I tip up front with Uber Eats and Rappi because it usually means I get my order faster. But I have reduced tipping recently because I can see other orders are taking priority over mine.
I absolutely do not use these services unless there's a substantial coupon involved, it's madness. You get a delivery surcharge, a service surcharge, and a 20% tip to top it all or risk the food be messed with. Last order was 25 eur food and 20 eur charges for two hamburger before I went in and reduced the tip %. If it weren't for the 15e coupon I'd never have completed such a predatory transaction.
A few years ago Uber and Uber Eats in Ecuador was awesome. I could order a meal for $5-$8. Sometimes two dishes. I could take a taxi around town for $3. The promotions were dropped and the price of food increased substantially.
Should the person greeting and seating customers get a tip? Should the people running food from kitchen to table? Cooks? If any of the above are a yes, then unless you want to tip each one in cash individually, you need them to split tips at the end of the night amongst themselves.
The fact that tips technically need to be reported to the IRS and thus your employer aside, I believe it is a legally fireable offense to pocket cash in order to avoid any policies on splitting it with others working the same shift.
A lot of restaurants do that? If it's agreed up by the employees BEFORE the transactions are taking place or even the employment decision is made, then whatever system they choose is fair (cooks or no cooks, etc). The key here is the the cooks know what they're getting into as well as the servers.
The problem is when the restaurant tries to change the rules in the middle of the game (Like the girl in Bentonville who's manager tried to confiscate a $2k tip) OR the restaurant owner sees this cash left on the table and gets a little greedy.
I contacted my senators and representatives about how the IRS should classify tips made before service. I got a call back from my senator’s office. The reasoning I presented was: that automatic gratuity for large parties is taxed differently than actual gratuity in some jurisdictions (why those have disappeared in most places), and that since the tip is used to determine order priority it is not a tip but is instead a bid for preferential service.
I also went through a call to get back a tip I made on a Chipotle order (DoorDash I believe) up front after the driver failed to find the address and then chewed me out after driving through parking lots for 5 minutes.
Solution: pay people a decent wage. Stop externalizing the costs of running a business. If you can't make enough money to keep the business viable, then maybe the law of supply and demand and the free market is trying to tell you something.
That law works on the side of labor too : if competition (more supply of workers vs fewer work slots) for the job is high enough that employees are willing to risk working for a crappy wage plus tips, then employers can still get away with this. As long as regulations permit. I agree that a decent wage is the best path forward.
Why would businesses stop asking for tips if wages rise?
Tipping is a cultural norm in the US that won’t be changed by the price on the menu going up a few bucks. If anything, the relationship is the opposite. You are socially expected to tip better for more expensive meals.
Who is you? Is there someone out there requiring Starbucks workers that make minimum wage (or higher in many cases) to stay at that job and ask for tips? Are you considering providing good customer service begging for a wage? I'm confused here.
Given that even retail stores have added tipping prompts to their checkouts, I'd say yes.
Plus many restaurants with placeholder tip icons that start at 25%+
You also don't know what the tip is really going towards in many cases. In the classic restaurant/waitstaff case you can reasonably expect it to go to the workers, in the random knick knack or general goods stores ???
Tipping in general is a system to transfer wealth from the charitable to the uncharitable (high tippers pay more and subsidize the business, low tippers pay less).
I believe in the spirit of tipping rewarding better service, but by and large it doesn't actually function that way. Most tip ~20% on everything outside of extreme circumstances.
Much better for everything to be baked into the price of whatever good or service it is.
I noticed the expected tipping percentage go up after most customers started tipping in credit.
Tipped workers had to up their game because they can no longer do tax evasion with everything on the record. Back in the days where most paid their restaurant with cash, tips were more like 15%. The move from 15 to more like 20 to 25% almost perfectly corresponds with the amount needed to make the same earnings after tax.
I don't know all the mechanisms behind how it happened. I expect indirectly yes, as employees choose to work where they are paid highest (if possible) and employers putting the pre-calculated percentages on the receipt / point of sale that match those desires influence tips. You have to keep up with employee expectation to keep and retain employees and setting those expectation at the point of sale as a voluntary option is an easy win.
I've always done 20% because it's easy to do in my head. Nowadays it's a low tip for those tip prompts and I punch it in manually if I tip at all.
When I delivered food my tip spread was funny. Many people wouldn't tip at all, many would just let you keep the change or give you a token amount (~5-10%), and a few people would give you over 50% tips. Not many gave me 15-25%.
Yeah I did food delivery and a sizeable amount didn't tip at all. It also created huge problems picking up food because many of the places people ordered from were full service restaurants, and the workers would purposefully go slow as fuck because they knew they would get no tip as most the food delivery companies don't provision for a tip to the restaraunt people preparing the food for the food delivery guy. A few times I had to take a loss on orders to tip the restaurant I was picking the food up from just to get them to release the food.
The food delivery guy is basically seen like the UPS worker. All around I decided it was a fucked business model and quit pretty quickly.
A "token amount" is pretty reasonable if you take tipping at face value, no? It's supposed to be a reward for good service. Waitstaff engage with you many times over the course of about an hour, and every person at a table receives service. It's fairly reasonable in this case to tip in proportion to the total bill. On the contrary, it's roughly the same amount of work for a delivery driver to deliver $100 of food as it is $10. Tipping the driver a few dollars (at most) seems not unreasonable in this case. The tip cannot possibly be reflective of any service rendered and it's essentially random what driver you will get, so you're not being biased or harming a particular person.
This is, of course, wholly separate from whether the tipping system is a good idea on the whole.
See my below post. The issue is the delivery driver has to pick up the order from a full service restaurant much of the time. The full service restaurant workers will blackball the delivery driver if he doesn't tip them, and that happens proportionally to the cost of the food. After 2-3 times the delivery driver not tipping the restaraunt at the food he's picking up, he will be waiting forever until his customers cancel.
Yeah, it's certainly an unfortunate situation all around - mostly for the restaurant staff who are dependent on the tips - but probably doesn't change much from the consumer's point of view. FWIW I've not had significant problems with delivery. I think a lot of restaurants have gotten used to "the new normal", though to be fair the majority of meals I've had delivered have been mediocre, sometimes cold.
As any hourly worker waiting forever is a nice break from having to actually deliver food. Bonus if the orders are cancelled. Fault never makes it to driver.
I was working as a contract worker through postmates. I was not paid by the hour and earned nothing if the customer cancelled.
Later the courts ruled this was technically employment and I got a token check in a class action, but of course never back paid for the hours as an employee.
> The full service restaurant workers will blackball the delivery driver if he doesn't tip them
Have things seriously gotten this bad, that restaurant workers are shaking down delivery drivers for extra cash? So much for solidarity with fellow workers.
Tips are for service, and selling food is not a service. At a restaurant, tips are for the waitstaff that brings your food and cleans up after you. Everything else is people hustling for extra cash. And yes we all like extra cash, but that doesn't make one entitled to it by putting a cup on the counter.
(Delivery drivers bringing food to your house, and drinks at a bar are two separate categories of service where tipping is legitimately expected. Although now that I think about it, maybe that second category was just the beginning of people getting suckered).
The issue is the waitstaff that prepare takeout at some restaurants are "tipped" service workers.
Which means they don't earn almost any wage.
So if they spend all their time prepping takeout orders for delivery workers they make NO money. So they get very pissed doing this work and intentionally slow it down.
my experience is from several years back, things may have changed.
This sounds like straight up employee misclassification and wage theft that should be taken up with state regulators. Surely a fast food place like McDonalds can't just put a tip jar on the counter, play coy that their workers are tipped positions, and underpay their employees. So it's a matter of enforcement on the smaller outfits that are able to fly under the radar.
I don't want to completely wash my hands of it because it's certainly possible the state regulators could be corrupt and just ignoring the problem, but just giving in to the corruption doesn't seem right either.
The law has always included consideration for this loophole. Every employee must at least average state minimum wage for their 80-hour paychecks, including tips.
So the employee has to record their tips (often but not always, in the same computer system they record their hours) and make sure their employer correctly compensated them for the shortfall between actual earnings and minimum wage.
Minimum wage laws basically says “Every employee must make the minimum wage when tips and employer payments are combined. Also, employers must always pay at least $2.13/hr (federal) regardless of amount that is earned in tips.”
The “real” issue is that $2.13/hr combined with averaging earnings over a paycheck leads to very very mismatched incentives for a business deciding what hours they should be open. The business has very low marginal cost so they’ll stay open during hours when it’s not profitable to the laborers because not enough customers ever walk in to make them minimum wage during those extra off-peak hours.
Good point, I had forgotten about that. It seems like the real issue in this case is that minimum wage isn't really much of a guarantee. Waiters are expecting to make much more than minimum wage, but got pushed into a different role that unilaterally altered their wage.
What the businesses I saw this at did was the waitstaff worked the tables part the time and prepped take out orders part the time. So in effect delivery workers were stealing time they could use to wait tables or directly serve a takeout customer that would usually tip them something. It wasn't that they had staff just for takeout that wasn't getting paid regular wage.
Naturally the waitstaff super resented having to maybe take on less tables to do essentially unpaid work on the side of taking your order, prepping utinsels and drinks, possibly even making some very simple ready made stuff themselves, and plate bagging it up etc and a lot of the shit they have to do for a normal table except for no tip.
There was a class action suit regarding servers not being paid a full wage while being made to roll up silverware and napkins and other tasks like that where they were on the clock but not able to earn tips. My wife worked at Applebees and got a couple bucks out of this lawsuit.
> Have things seriously gotten this bad, that restaurant workers are shaking down delivery drivers for extra cash? So much for solidarity with fellow workers.
This is why I call them bribes and say they are akin to feudalism (where the practice started). Because it separates us. Like I said in my main post, it divides a larger group that should be collectively bargaining for a higher minimum wage. I'm fine with tipping, but it being a social standard is barbaric.
Minimum wage is feudalism again though. You're outlawing the jobs of those who create less than minimum wage in value, thus relegating them to the black market and/or less employment. It separates the wage workers and benefits some of the poor at the expense of the even more poor.
This is absurd, I'm sorry. It is logically inconsistent and means that if wages, payments, or exchange of goods exist in any form as compensation for work, then the system is feudalism. This would not only go against the common usage (words mean what we collectively agree they mean), but render the word meaningless. Please don't do this, you're just adding noise to an argument and not providing a useful comment.
Personally I didn't agree with your redefinition, but since you go by a completely different standard than everyone else I went to your level to make you understand your absurdity.
> It is logically inconsistent and means that if wages, payments, or exchange of goods exist in any form as compensation for work, then the system is feudalism.
And no I was saying minimum wage law is doing the exactly thing you fear, which is split us apart by outlawing poor people from working if the value of their labor is less than the minimum wage amount. It creates the same bifurcated society you feared where the very poor now have their jobs outlawed and have to work in the black market and shadows already more than they already do. Minimum wage law is basically a giant "fuck you got mine" to people creating less than that value and creating a cartel where a number of poor people benefit at the expense of the even more poor through violence of the state.
I’m having trouble believing this. You’re saying restaurant workers are expecting tips from the delivery drivers coming to their restaurant for pickup? I’ve only ever seen drivers show up, confirm their identity and orders to the restaurant workers via an app, take the food, and leave.
I honestly don't know, but do you think the $200/plate restaurant spreads your tips among more people? I would imagine their ratio of tipped workers to patrons would be higher than most restaurants.
I'm sure this varies so I came to this same scenario at a high end sushi restaraunt where there is a waitress, a sushi chef, a non-sushi cheff, hostess, bartender etc and every single one of those people are working on your dinner (closer to $100 per person, but still).
I wasn't sure and I had hoped the tip worked as you said getting spread around (at least to the sushi chef who takes the sushi order directly and drops it at your table). I figured the hostess would tell me straight up since she's not taking my tip directly and doesn't benefit greatly one way or another.
She made it clear to me. Don't expect anyone beyond the waitress to get a meaningful share. I presume she meant either the sharing was very minimal or the waitress was likely to pocket most of it before reporting the amount to the people she may obliged to share it with. That didn't sit well with me but I have a feeling she was telling the truth, especially in light of the fact that the waitress would have every incentive especially with cash to just pocket the money and tell everybody else they were stiffed or got 5% or whatever.
When I was a kid, Emily Post said always tip 10%. In college, the buzz around campus was that 15% was what the proletariat deserved. The past decade or so, I keep hearing you need to give 20% if you don't want to make enemies of the servers. Now, are you telling me it's become 25%?
No, tipping is in general a system that shifts some of the employer's costs to customers explicitly, rather than hiding them in prices and wages. It's an idiosyncratic system, but not an irrational one: wages and prices are stickier than tip levels.
Yes, thus higher tippers subsidize lower tippers by reducing the list price of goods.
If tipping didn’t exist and were instead embedded in wages, the employer would just raise the list prices commensurately.
There’s a fair argument to be made that restaurant wages would decline in aggregate without tipping though. Certainly there would be both winners and losers
Which is generally what you want: for less price-sensitive customers to subsidize the more price-sensitive customers; see: any demand curve chart.
Of course, raising prices is exactly what happens when you eliminate tipping. But prices are sticky; people react strongly to price increases. They can, to some extent, modulate their tipping behavior (from 25% down to 15%), but if all they can do is take or leave prices, some customers will switch restaurants.
On average, less price sensitive people will tip more, but there are no guarantees. Somebody who’s wealthy may still tip 20% over somebody who is less well off tipping 25% because they’re feeling charitable.
Or, more commonly, some people don’t tip at all, even if they can afford it. Anybody who’s worked in food service has experienced this.
You wont find anything close to a linear relationship between wealth and tipping percentage. Most will tip 20% ish regardless, because that’s what’s generally expected
Tip size probably correlates with price insensitivity, but since it's completely voluntary, it also correlates with prosociality: prosocial people are paying to subsidize antisocial people.
All costs are borne by the customer because the employer, i.e. business owner, is charging the customer -- or they go out of business, which rarely helps the customer or the employee.
Not only that, but then they want to donate to some charity. Roundup for charity? (sometimes they don't even bother to tell you what charity it is) Roundup, Red-Nose day, etc. etc.
Tipping at best is a form of bribery and at worst a feudal practice of wealth transfer. I tip because it is the social norm (and bribery: don't want my food messed with), but I think we can also acknowledge that this practice is weird and has a shaky history.
If someone has the mentality that they are free to spoil your food because they won't get a (good) tip, then they don't deserve to be paid at all, let alone be tipped well.
There's a lot of things the US has that are extremely strange, and the tipping culture is amongst them.
And a tip isn't a bribe. Thinking tipping someone so they don't sabotage the job they are already being paid to do is, to use the article's words "getting out of hand".
It is not unreasonable for me to expect that you complete the job you are paid to do, for the price we already agreed upon. Period. Tips used to be for good service, circumstances where you know that due to circumstance you're asking a little more of the staff.
Many of the "pickup" order sites I have request a tip. There is literally no service, and I'm not even sure how the quality of the order will be, as I've literally not gotten it.
I ought to clarify: I meant that waiters don't deserve their wages and don't deserve to work if they think that spoiling customers' food is an acceptable reaction to a low/nonexistent tip.
Sure, but that's not a principle I'm willing to eat snotchos for. Paying the bribe is the rational choice, even if the vast majority of recipients would never dream of messing with your food.
>If someone has the mentality that they are free to spoil your food because they won't get a (good) tip, then they don't deserve to be paid at all, let alone be tipped well.
This is not a good follow-up for the parent's concerns. I tip for the same reason parent tips: for protection. I don't want my things to be messed with. I don't care who's in the right, I don't care what the server thinks, if it's the culture that we tip, then we tip, or potentially face the consequences of being outliers of the culture. It's not my hill to die on.
I think tipping at its very best is an opportunity to give a stranger a small gift. I recognize your points -- sometimes it feels like an obligated payment and probably in nearly all cases the capital owning class could and/or should contribute more, but i think you're excluding some optional perspectives. Sometimes I just want to help someone have a nice day by giving them something they didn't expect, like a generous tip. The escalation of niceness and virtue signalling seems right now to be creating an expectation of that generosity, which undermines it, since it can feel non-optional, but sometimes it's still just a nice thing one human can do to recognize another human.
Perhaps, but it can show you care that the person get what they actually want instead of another item for the landfill or something they feel obligated to keep around for when you visit.
Disagree hard. I’ve been given so many garbage gifts that I immediately threw away or donated. I tell my family members to just do cash or gift cards for me. I’d rather get exactly what I need than some junk I’ll never use.
I was in a KTV place in Shanghai several years ago and decided to tip the guy who was doing an excellent job at keeping our little room very well stocked with ice cold beer. I think I gave the guy like 100 RMB. A little later I had to explain to his manager what the money was for...
“Keep the change” has a benefit to both parties - no need to spend time waiting for change to be counted or carrying it round
Colleague of mine left a new generator with his fixer in the Phillipenes when there was a massive hurricane a decade ago. He could the value of it was minimal once the time and money to ship it back to Europe was counted, reality was they needed the generator on site. Could be argued it’s not a bribe/tip/gift.
Giving money directly for services rendered could be a bribe, could be paying him on the side (for more hours for example), could attract tax problems etc.
>I think tipping at its very best is an opportunity to give a stranger a small gift.
I think tips work well, if this is the case. When tips are expected, for example because otherwise the server makes much less than minimum wage, then it's not a small gift anymore, and that's problematic. But when I like a service, give a bit more, they like that, give me a bit more of a service, knowing that I'll give a bit more the next time too, then I don't think that's something I should be against.
> Plus many restaurants with placeholder tip icons that start at 25%+
This is the most egregious part of it. Who ever invented that a percentage should inflate? The price is already inflating so a percentage of it goes up. You don't get to inflate both.
Tipping was always 10% to 15% if particularly exceptional. Although even that should be made illegal, just include all costs of doing business in the price like nearly every shop does.
Inflating restaurant price + inflating tip + tax are on the trend to make US restaurants the most expensive restaurants on earth. A simple Caesar salad is now starting at 16$ and more likely 20$ in a lot of "not that fancy" places. When you add tax and 30% tip, it almost 28$. This is almost or even more expensive than in Switzerland where you waiter earn at least 26$ per hour, and tipping is not expected.
Tipping are just here to profit business owner and not the workers (that’s why it’s almost inexistant in socialist country), and don’t get me started on the business adding "don’t forget to pay your staff" on your check.
Likely not what the op meant, but food trucks and artist markets (square's bread and butter)
A food truck operator is providing no additional service than a McDonald's ignoring the choice of where to drive or park. They provide takeout with no delivery.
And then this started at food halls.
Similarly, for farmers markets, artists, and crafts; these are traditionally retail items, these items often retail on their website or at a gallery (there is an edge case of auction houses), but now there is at least a vendor option of having a tip screen.
Was really shocked to go through my normal Starbucks drive thru recently and was verbally asked “are you going to leave a tip?” and they thrust the card reader in my face which starts with a $1 tip as the first option you see on the left hand side. You have to hunt for the “No”. Of course Starbucks knows their target, those that feel too embarrassed if they don’t leave a $1 tip. (I paid). I tell myself, not again. Then I was back there today and paid it again. They got me. Not again.
There’s significant overlap between counter service and sit down restaurant prices. The front of house labor is not a massive proportion of restaurant cost.
I also think the proportion of the tip should decline. They are doing a lot less work to give you the food, disproportionate with the small decrease in cost.
It's not clear to me why the proportion should decline alongside the price, since the decline in price also reduces compensation to the server, and a single prevailing tip rate is more convenient to consumers than a floating rate, but I don't care enough to make a stink about it.
Pretty much every place I've eaten at will do takeout. Back when I lived in SF, I ordered a $60 takeout steak dinner once or twice.
I usually still tip for these because it's tying up the kitchen for the in-restaurant diners which might slow down the service for the staff. But not the full 20%.
> Full waiter experience (seated, handed menu, food brought to table, plate cleared) gets 20%.
I don't understand this. Why do you Americans tip for this? Isn't being seated, handed a menu, food brought to the table, and plates being cleared part of a waiter's job?
Why does the customer have to 'reward' waiters for doing 'a good job'?
Why do restaurants not just drop a flat 10% service/cover charge (it's 10% where I am) and be done with it?
I do it because it’s a social norm. I’m sure you also do illogical and inefficient things solely because your culture dictates it, weather you realize it or not.
And some restaurants are starting to implement a standard service fee, it’s more common at high end restaurants.
the short answer is for wait service it's customary. this thing where you're now being asked to tip 20%+ for any product or service as long as there's a touchscreen POS terminal is the new thing everyone is getting rankled about.
> I don't understand this. Why do you Americans tip for this? Isn't being seated, handed a menu, food brought to the table, and plates being cleared part of a waiter's job?
1. Because nobody you'd want waiting a table wants to be a waiter for minimum wage.
2. And because restaurants don't want to pay waiters more than minimum wage on slow nights.
Your options if you don't like this situation are:
Yeah, the thing I'm most often paying for that I would tip for is my 12oz double-shot Americano. Usually between $2-$4, but I feel stingy giving the servers quarters, so it's always $1 tip.
>Full waiter experience (seated, handed menu, food brought to table, plate cleared) gets 20%. If the level of service is less than that, the percentage starts to go down proportionally.
I have implemented the same policy of 20% BUT with strict process to make sure it isn't 20% of the full bill:
1) I tip 20% on the Sub-Total amount after subtracting all alcohol (see #2). I am not tipping 20% on the sales tax as well. So don't make a common mistake and tip on the total, go with sub-total.
2) Subtract alcohol from sub-total, calculate 20% on that new sub-total and then I add $1-2 MAX per drink or $5 for a bottle.
With the price gouging on alcohol at restaurants/bars (particularly wine - which they literally charge for a glass what a full bottle costs in the store) I refuse to tip 20% of their inflated prices. Sometimes wife and I can have 3-4 drinks total at a long dinner and can be like $50-100 just on alcohol. No WAY I am over-tipping our waiter $20 to walk the drinks over to our table.
This process drives my wife crazy sometimes and she calls me cheap, but just flat out giving 20% on the full total of the bill is over-tipping. Steakhouses drive me nuts too because they can be very expensive and 20% tip on the full total could be $60! That is just dumb for someone performing the same job at Applebees of taking order and bringing food/drinks to table.
They started this in Australia just before the pandemic, but I haven't seen it since we reopened.
I suspect enough people, when prompted with these uncomfortable requests, paid it reluctantly then just never came back. At least, I know I've never been back to any business that asked for or expected a tip.
I'm sure this showed up on the metrics as an immediate spike in revenue, followed by a large downturn some months later.
Honestly can't think of a quicker way to ruin your business.
I mean, the US could just get a decent welfare state like a grown-up country, but instead you have the worst paid members of society depending on tips.
You already have a welfare state, but it goes to businessmen instead. The more money you have, the easier it is to pay fewer taxes. Money want to trickle up.
Give us an example of how higher taxes have benefited the low class. Maybe you could use a high tax haven like California?
I think you've made the mistaken assumption that government has your best interests at heart. Has the government trickled down that tax money to worthy causes? Do you expect that same government who gives these wealthy businessmen so much to suddenly invest MORE tax money wisely?
It seems to me that we have constant tax increases with no benefit except to pad elitists pockets in Washington.
What does a "decent welfare state" mean? Have you seen the amount of people that are jobless in the US right now even though there's a plethora of jobs available? The US must have a pretty heavy welfare state for that to continue.
Additionally, I assume you believe decent welfare state = a handful of 1st world western European nations and maybe Australia/NZ? You may want to check the average salaries of these locations. Higher welfare states come with a lot of cons... it's not all rainbows and daisies.
A safety net should be just that.... a safety net. Otherwise, you risk LA Skid Row type ramifications or feces/meth needle ridden streets in SF where essentially no one is benefiting.
Germany has "a decent welfare state". Wait staff depends on tips to make their job worthwhile. Not as badly as in the US, but there's a reason they weren't rushing back into the hospitality industry after the Covid lockdowns were lifted: when they had to work elsewhere, many realized how much more they'd make, how much easier the job is, and how much less abusive the bosses are.
Tipping is just a cultural thing, the welfare state doesn't have a lot to do with it.
Around me the restaurants are still doing "economic recovery fees" and "kitchen appreciation fees". I just tell them I'm not paying it and to take it off the bill.
I most certainly get paid a lot more than the person behind the counter does. If it's a person who did something helpful and the person gets the $, then I'm happy to tip. If they can give me some attention (e.g., not chatting away with someone behind the counter while I just stand there), I'm happy to tip.
No. I don't go there, and I'm hard of hearing and usually use self checkout any time I can. And perhaps you're perceiving my post as being supportive of "tip culture", whatever that is.
I don't condone tips, but I realize it's more effective for me to "help" those who live partially on tips than to try and change that culture.
I go to a few select places I like, and I tip well there. I also put money to artist and others who's work I appreciate.
I don't want my name in their credits, I don't want a shout out, I just want them to keep doing what they do because they are good at it.
One thing I've never understood is the argument for tipping. It has always been "because servers are being paid less than minimum wage." Which the issue with that is that that varies state by state. Most west coast states do not have a separate tipped wage[0]. So the question is, why do we tip at all on the west coast[1]? Worse, it seems to be expanding and increasing in size[2]
The followup argument is often "well they are still being under paid." While I can buy this argument, I do not think the solution is tipping. Because if they are underpaid so are non-tipped jobs like the fast food worker, janitor, grocery worker, or movie theater employee. All tipping does is divide these people and reduce the pool for a larger collective to bargain for a higher minimum wage.
I feel we have this collective belief that tipping is bad (it sure confuses my foreign friends, who sometimes get dirty looks because they didn't tip), but once we've effectively created the criteria necessary to abolish it[3], we still maintained the cultural aspect of it: that we __need__ to tip (often thinking we'll get our food spat in if we don't). I've had others get upset with me for these opinions (I do tip btw) but I don't understand how we can think tipping shouldn't exist but continue in this direction. It's also interesting that in early America we thought of tipping as akin to bribery (I still believe this and I think this is common). It also has a history with slavery[4]
[1] Obviously the argument no longer holds outside Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington
[2] When I was a kid (some 20 years ago) 10% was common for a standard tip. Now most places have an 18%/20%/25% option on screens. Some even higher! The second image in the article even shows a 30% tip
[3] I wouldn't completely abolish it, but I'd say it shouldn't be a standard.
Tipping is a system in which customers explicitly, optionally, and variably share some of the cost of labor. It has the features of allowing individual patrons to modulate the labor subsidy they provide, based on their current price sensitivity, the value they place on warm fuzzies (don't dismiss this!), the relationship they want to build with the business, and the service they perceive themselves to be getting.
You can't do all these things with prices; prices apply universally across customers, and for the most part in the hospitality industry they can't float (see airline tickets as an example of a floating price, and the sheer loathing it creates in the customer base).
Later
I also should have added, and probably led with, the fact that tipping addresses a big agent-principal problem in hospitality: in restaurants where servers rely on tips, their incentives are strongly aligned with those of customers; without tips, virtually all the incentives are aligned with that of management.
You can. It's a system that makes more sense for some occupations and less for others, but plenty of occupations besides hospitality are routinely tipped. You tip your hotel housekeepers, don't you?
The existence of restaurants, barber shops, delivery services, all over the world in first world and developing countries indicates it's possible to run a business successfully without relying on charity or variable pricing models.
When I pay for a meal in Japan (often times with better, fresher ingredients, and prepared with more care) I pay for the meal and the service without a tip. It is the norm all over the world.
What makes the US so special that we have to provide charity on top of the price of the meal.
As has been explained repeatedly, you're not providing charity; you are sharing some of the restaurant's labor cost. When you refuse to tip, you aren't withholding charity; you're refusing payment.
Why does Japan do this differently? Japan is a different place.
The business transaction between me and a restaurant is for the food and service they provide. I pay the restaurant, the restaurant pays the labour.
Refusing to tip isn't refusing payment. If it were, I'd be illegal (i.e. theft). Labelling this as "sharing the labour cost" is precisely the problem at hand.
If I hand my pizza delivery driver a $5 bill, I intend it to be a bonus for the driver, not a subsidy for the business. I have zero incentive to pay the business any more than the prices they advertise.
No, in an American restaurant, the business transaction is between you, the restaurant, and your server. You are explicitly given permission to refuse (extra) payment to your server, and the restaurant (to a limited extent) backstops that risk for the employee. You're going to have bad relationships (and experiences) with American restaurants if you make a habit of undertipping.
In an American retail or grocery store is my business transaction between me, the store and the cashier?
What's the difference between a server and a cashier? One walks between point a and b instead of standing in place? How much should I tip a cashier; 20% of the cost of my groceries?
If my grocery store has a hot bar of to go food that is packaged by the employee and handed to me to eat on their patio or take home. Should I tip that employee? If they worked at a restaurant they would tipped. My point is the waiter chooses to take less pay in hope of a tip, while the grocery store employee would rather know what their check is going to be and have stable reliable verifiable income. Wait staff don't have that. They make $0 on paper, they take the risk to avoid taxes, while the grocery store employee pays their "fair" share of taxes and social programs. While the waitstaff complains about tips and not earning a living wage.
Complaining about a job they chose when there is a multitude of jobs that you know exactly what you're getting paid based on your hours.
All this being said I do tip. I don't mind it. I find it hilarious when they spin the iPad around around to "answer a few questions" ie "please please tip me, I'm not gonna look or judge you but I am going to look and judge you and most likely passive aggressively spell and say your name wrong to show you why you should tip better!!"
Does the point of sale system ask for a tip? Is there a check with a tip line on it that you sign? Is there a prominent tip jar? Then: tip (or do business elsewhere). Else: don't.
You're missing the point. The existence of that line or that jar will change whether tipping exists, even though your relationship with that person hasn't changed at all.
So maybe it's not really a three way relationship in any of these situations.
You're absolutely correct regarding tips being a "subsidy for the business". The reason "tipped minimum wage" (where it exists) is lower than actual minimum wage is because the business claims a "tip credit" towards meeting their minimum wage obligation. They're essentially telling the government "this person will make up the difference (or more) in tips, and that will meet our legal obligation to pay the minimum wage."
In most jurisdictions, this is figured by taking the employee's wages plus reported tips for each pay period and dividing them by the employee's clocked hours for that pay period. If that result is not at least actual minimum wage, the employer normally owes the employee the difference.
I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge or actual malicious pay practices (probably some of both), but number of people I meet in the service industry who don't know that last bit and tell me they've never been paid the difference for "dead" shifts (those that generate little to no tips) is staggering.
> I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge or actual malicious pay practices (probably some of both), but number of people I meet in the service industry who don't know that last bit and tell me they've never been paid the difference for "dead" shifts (those that generate little to no tips) is staggering.
That's because wage theft is relatively common among the service industry and is also why several states outlawed special wage. You can probably imagine how easy it is to perform wage theft in this situation simply because how difficult accurately calculating that differential is. You're basically relying on every single person to act in good faith in an environment where every person has large incentives to act in bad faith (employers can easily get away with not paying and employees can easily pocket tips and not report them. One of these, or just the perception of, can create a coupled feedback loop with the other).
To specifically counter Tp's claims, I think we should note that these services also have plenty of friendly relationships between employees and customers.
I disagree with this. I'm reading your claim as "you should pay people so they become your friends." There's plenty of stores I've been regulars at that don't have a tipping system that I've become friendly with staff with. When I was a teenager and worked at movie theaters I became friendly with many regulars and tipping doesn't exist there. The warm fuzzies come from social interaction, face recognition, and being rememberable through your good/frequent business and friendliness. It feels wrong to suggest we should be buying them. That would just be confirming the bribery/feudal aspect of the system. I also don't think this helps those working non-tipped based jobs.
I don't want to abolish tipping, but instead I want to raise the minimum wage, make prices transparent (I am also a proponent of including tax in price listings), and making not tipping socially acceptable. If we have to supplement wages with tips then our economic system is broken (and akin to feudalism). If you want to provide an extra reward or explicitly bribe an employee for faster/better service (or to flex your wealth), I have no qualms.
When I pay people to perform services for me, I don't operate under the illusion that we've become friends. I go to my favorite restaurant in Chicago and get brought a couple dishes on the house as soon as we're seated --- that's not because we're friends, it's because I've built a business relationship with the restaurant (and its servers). It's exactly the same dynamic as exists for airline customers who pay up for the airline lounge.
That relationship with the servers, by the way, also has a name: it's a principal-agent problem. Servers have competing incentives: to serve the interests of customers (better service) or the business (reduce ongoing costs). Tipping shifts the incentives around. You could attempt that shift with other mechanisms, like after-dinner surveys, but you know how well that'd work.
It costs time, effort, and money to provide better service, so I'm not from where you get the moral dimension of having to buy them. They have a cost; of course you have to buy them.
> It costs time, effort, and money to provide better service, so I'm not from where you get the moral dimension of having to buy them. They have a cost; of course you have to buy them.
It's an odd industry where you perform a service, then hope your customer decides to pay you for it.
(Obviously, you don't decide if you're going to pay for restaurant service; you decide only whether you're going to hold up your end of a cost sharing deal.)
> Obviously, you don't decide if you're going to pay for restaurant service; you decide only whether you're going to hold up your end of a cost sharing deal.
Tipping is not a “deal” that you have committed to, by definition.
As the meme goes, "that's a nice hypothesis you've got there. Be a shame if someone were to test it". If tipping fixes a supposed incentive problem that exists with tip-free service, than restaurant service should be better in North America than anywhere else in the world. Is it? Empirically, no. And even locally there is no gain from tipping: Seattle has several tip-free restaurants and the service is indistinguishable from the rest of them.
I consider obligatory 20% tipping as that weird American thing along with guns and (absence of) healthcare. People have elaborate arguments and discussions about them, and the side in favor can look very rational and plausible, and their hypotheses can even have a lot of explanatory power, but they are easily refuted by looking at basically every other developed country.
I travel a lot and eat out a lot and I haven't noticed any discernible difference in service between the countries with obligatory, optional and prohibited tipping.
That's interesting you consider tipping an American thing, I'm guessing you aren't very well traveled as you clearly haven't been to Canada or the Middle East.
There are certainly places without tipping, with much worse and much better service than America. Why? It's cultural (duh). And in American culture, you tip mechanically if you can afford it and your experience wasn't notably incredible or terrible.
In some places, it is acceptable to raise your hand and call for service. In other places it is not. If you know that it not acceptable, and you do it anyways, you're sort of an asshole. It's the same with tipping. You're not some iconoclast who will personally change the culture.
> Servers have competing incentives: to serve the interests of customers (better service) or the business (reduce ongoing costs). Tipping shifts the incentives around.
If that were true, we'd empirically be able to observe better service in countries with a tipping culture than in those without.
I don't want to start a nationalist flame war here, but: you and I should agree to disagree on this one. (Austria was lovely, though, from one end to the other.)
It is not, for what it's worth, my contention that tipping is the only way restaurants can work, or even the best one; only that it is a rational system.
I don't disagree on that, and I can see both how it developed and why some people prefer it.
But as a participant in interactions where tipping is expected, I very subjectively find it somewhat exhausting. I'd happily pay more, on average, and be rid of the (albeit small) decision each time.
> Austria was lovely, though, from one end to the other.
What gave me away? :) I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you did tip – contrary to what some guide books say about Germany and Austria, tips are very much expected, although at a different percentage than in the US. (Coffee house waitstaff in the latter being rude is to be expected regardless of your tip rate – supposedly it's part of the charm.)
Regarding my experience with non-tip cultures, these are mostly limited to a few countries in Asia (where waitstaff will at least anecdotally follow you onto the street, returning your tip/accidental overpayment).
Nothing gave you away: Austria (particularly Vienna, but also Salzburg) were simply the examples that jumped out of my mind as the best service experiences I had in Europe. We tip everywhere, even when it marks us as obnoxious Americans; we're well (over)trained by our culture. :)
What you're saying here, about tipping being exhausting: I don't deny that at all. I can absolutely understand the preference against it. And: Japan is a good counterexample: very good service culture, no tipping.
Those same arguments apply to several other professions where it is not customary to tip. The reality is that tips are expected only for the lower social/economic classes, where it is acceptable that the price for labor is set based on the whims of the customer instead of being pre-agreed (which, personally, I find degrading).
Right-leaning people like it because it creates a power dynamic. Left-leaning people like it because they delude themselves that they're helping the working class. In both cases, it boils down to paternalism, and all other reasons are rationalization.
It's true that you can run any industry without tipping, but that's not really saying anything interesting, because you also demonstrably can run industries with tipping. I don't like tipping for the power dynamic or because I'm "helping the working class"; I just get the logic of it, and am fine playing along.
It's true that you can run any industry with tipping, but that's not really saying anything interesting, because you also demonstrably can run industries without tipping. I like tipping for the power dynamic and because I'm "helping the working class"; I get the logic of it, and am fine playing along.
I don't claim there's anything interesting about observing that tipping exists; it obviously does, and is a system that has been functioning in America for generations.
Is it on a good track to continue existing, though?
TFA is specifically describing how the kind and number of situations in which a tip is expected/asked for (if only by a payment terminal interface) is rapidly expanding – and if every service is tipped, no service is tipped.
A tipping decision is a decision in the end, which are drawing from a limited mental resource, according to some research. The way in which our mind typically handles repeatedly having to decide is by developing some simple heuristics and effectively running on autopilot most of the time, following them mechanically.
I could imagine a not too distant future in which tipping evolves into a quasi-fixed-rate quasi-tax, with only exceptional or atrocious service warranting a deviation from a cemented social norm.
What you describe in your last sentence is, I think, exactly how restaurant tipping works. It's best to look at it as a 15% labor tax, with an optional 5-10% upcharge if you're happy (or have a general policy of retaining a reputation as a good tipper).
Another similar example (probably outdated): airport skycaps.
An example of a tipping system in America that doesn't work that way (yet) is hotel housekeeping; a surprising number of people don't even know that there's a tipping custom there at all.
The "quasi tax" thing sounds alarming, but it doesn't bother me at all; it's just another way of expressing costs and prices. Things will cost what they cost one way or the other. If tipping becomes so common that everything has 5-15% tacked onto it (I doubt it'll happen, but we'll stipulate), base prices will fall. Businesses can't simply banish demand curves! There is ultimately a market clearing price.
> [...] a 15% labor tax, with an optional 5-10% upcharge if you're happy [...]
Ah, yes, that is in fact almost exactly my mental model for how to tip in restaurants or cafes (albeit with a conversion factor to the rate I was socialized with).
What always blindsides me is tipping in a place I (or even some locals, apparently?) don't expect it. And generally speaking, I much prefer taking social cues from local friends or other patrons than from a device.
The issue is that you're vehemently defending this practice. As far as I can tell the only reason for this is simply because of momentum. None of the arguments you are making really make much sense. There's strong evidence to the contrary in fact. Not only is the practice particularly unique to America (and Canada), but the practice and laws defending it just enable wage theft (employers not paying minimum wages by claiming tip credits that don't exist). The practice was developed during feudalism and was a form of oppression. The current practice also divides the working class and prevents them from working together in a larger coalition advocating for a larger minimum wage. No one here is really against the concept of tipping, but people are upset about its expansion and that the practice is essentially required. You have said that the money is optional, but we all know that this isn't exactly true. Technically/legally yes, but in practice this doesn't work out. People aren't tipping for service, they are tipping to avoid bad service (as many have said here) and to avoid social stigma from their peers. This is not the system you have laid out in your many comments, this is just a convoluted form of class oppression and wage theft. Sometimes we need to reevaluate things we've been doing just for the sake of doing. Momentum is not a reason to continue a harmful practice.
The issue is that we disagree. I don't think vehemence enters into it. The appeal to feudalism isn't persuasive; all sorts of things are traceable back to feudalism (something about feudalism being a pit stop most of our cultures took at some point), and not all of them are bad.
People shouldn't "tip for service". That's not how tips work. Tip mechanically: at a restaurant, divide by 10 and double (keep it simple include the drinks in the tab). If you're sitting there stewing about whether you achieved the requisite level of service, you're the feudalist.
You're fine playing along because you're on the winning side of the deal.
Say you were a software contractor, would you be ok with working for a customer based only on an "expected price range" with a 4x spread, over which the customer has complete unilateral discretion, decided only after the work has been completed?
If your first instinct is "that's different", I'd like to know how.
In what way am I on the winning side of this deal, and how might I find myself on the losing side of it? If you're thinking that I'm beating out the people who can't afford to tip, you should bear in mind that the abolition of tipping would mechanically imply prices raising across the board to the average level of the previous tipping. TANSTAAFL.
> how might I find myself on the losing side of it?
Like I mentioned above, by having your livelihood depend on the whims of customers that may be offended by not having been treated with sufficient deference.
> abolition of tipping would mechanically imply prices raising across the board to the average level of the previous tipping. TANSTAAFL.
Quite the strawman, I never claimed tipping is extra cost, I just find the practice degrading. I would be very much in favor of bundling all costs in the displayed prices, like it happens in the rest of the world.
Most people's livelihoods depend to some extent on other people's whims. I tip mechanically, and think everybody else should too: as I said, it's a cost sharing mechanism. Part of the problem I think nerds like us have with tipping is that they think it's something they have to figure out, like a Yelp star rating. No: just divide by 10 and double, end of story.
I'll go you one further and candidly tell you that what I perceive lurking in the subtext of HN's biannual tipping freakout is the frustration some nerds have that they don't get to inflict their whims on American servers, because their tips are expected to be automatic. They feel ripped off by the expectation. That's the fucked up belief, right there.
You can feel free to ask one of your server friends how degraded they feel by your tips. I think you'll be surprised.
This thread is surreal. You started with "Tipping is a system in which customers explicitly, optionally, and variably share some of the cost of labor.", and now we got to no, actually, there is no optionality or variability, why would you want there to be any?
So we're back to tipping being just a way to artificially display lower prices on the menu and enjoy the psychological deception?
You have the option of not tipping mechanically; you might, for instance, find it acceptable to subject working class people to your whims about the quality of your service. I do not. Regardless, generally speaking, you are socially expected to tip at least 15% any time you dine out at a full service restaurant in America.
> I also should have added, and probably led with, the fact that tipping addresses a big agent-principal problem in hospitality: in restaurants where servers rely on tips, their incentives are strongly aligned with those of customers; without tips, virtually all the incentives are aligned with that of management.
Very astute of you to mention this, though “address” and “cause” could be used interchangeably.
When I was a bartender it was always in my interest to give away free alcohol to my highest tipping customers, who generally understood that it’s customary to add 50% of the cost they would have paid to their tip for each free drink.
At a very surface level, the tipping system incentivizes employees to steal product from the business to give to customers. But the game theory gets very complicated.
Sometimes this results in a great customer base that forms the core of a “social engine” that powers the popularity of a bar/restaurant and results in a win-win-win. Bar owners set various levels/thresholds/criteria for how much free sample can be given out and under what circumstances.
Tl;dr: the principal-agent problem can almost never be solved to align all parties in a system.
Friendliness or a general level of service is in a lot of industries considered a competitive factor that contributes to increased customer lifetime value through repeat sales, loyalty etc.
Why should the restaurants be any different? If I like the food and the service, I'll want to come again - the restaurant increases their earnings that way and both I and the business are happy.
The question then again comes down to how is that an incentive for the workers. The obvious answer is that their pay should be linked to the earnings of the business. The fact that it is not shows the fundamental problem with current state of capitalism, where the primary goal is to exploit the work of the workers below your financial level (as a business owner) and increase your wealth based on the ever-increasing difference between costs / wages and revenue.
The incentive of business is in conflict with incentive of workers, and the interest of customers - business will be motivated to use the workers willing to work for less, count tips towards salaries, but also use lower quality/cost ingredients etc.
A system where the worker salaries would be linked to revenue, with some nuance of course, would ensure top quality / service / products for the customers, fair reward and aligned incentives for the workers, and access to top tier employees (since they would want to work for businesses with higher revenue), happy customers and increased revenue to the business.
People keep asking "why should American restaurants be different?"
The answer is simple: because they choose to set these terms.
Restaurants are far from the most idiosyncratic businesses customers interact with. Buy a plane ticket sometime! Different businesses have different pricing structures.
There is no clear disclosure that you will need to pay more than the listed prices to get your food as you should.
Also, if you go to a counter service business, and the point of sale system asks you to tip, again, the terms were not set prior to engaging in the transaction.
In another comment, you write:
> You're going to have bad relationships (and experiences) with American restaurants if you make a habit of undertipping.
I classify this as the restaurant (and waiter) violating the terms. You do not get to claim your prices are low and then spring and increase on people, even if it is a “cultural” norm.
Did you see that sign "Welcome to the United States" when arriving at the airport? That was the clear disclosure that from this point on, every restaurant price is [menu price] * 1.3. Just keep that in mind when ordering.
No, that sign is clear disclosure that you are being welcomed to the United States.
Even if we assume the person is familiar with American culture, it is only restaurants with wait service having prices times 1.3 (including sales tax).
That's nonsense. If that were true, not tipping in an American restaurant would give the owner the right to take me to small claims court to recover the missing tip. Do you really think simply stating that "everyone knows" would convince a judge to rule in the restaurant's favor?
No, but you are very likely to be publicly humiliated, bodily fluids been added to your dishes should you dare to visit that restaurant another time, and yes, there were cases when police was called on account of insufficient tips.
> The followup argument is often "well they are still being under paid." While I can buy this argument, I do not think the solution is tipping
The alternative is getting a restaurant to entirely change its identity.
Their POS system will always have a spot for tip on a receipt.
Their prices are based on the fact that they expect customers to tip the servers at least 15-25%.
It's a monumental change. It's not just "pay the servers at least $15/hr and turn off tipping". Nobody I've ever met who waits tables is happy with $120/night out the door pretax ($15/hr * 8)
For a restaurant to pay a server what they make now ($150-$300/night tips), their labor cost would be through the roof and they would have to raise the price of the food.
> For a restaurant to pay a server what they make now ($150-$300/night tips), their labor cost would be through the roof and they would have to raise the price of the food.
Is that every night or just weekends? Because everyone I've known that has cleared that kind of money has only done so on weekends (Friday/Saturday), and works at higher end or very popular restaurants. I agree that an extra $15-$30/hr would be an insane increase, but if that is spread out over the other 5 days a week then this is much closer to a $3-$6/hr increase. Large, but not obtuse considering a server is probably serving many meals an hour on average. I wouldn't expect food prices to go up very much to cover such a change. As a customer I'd be far happier with that version too. To be clear, I'm against abolishing tips, I just don't think it should be the social expectation for an average establishment.
Tipping for service is a little different than the tipping thats been getting out of control imo. Places are signing up for these square readers and whatever else is sold to small businesses to scan a credit card, and the default settings seem to be to add a tip. These would be jobs where the worker would never expect a tip normally, maybe a tip jar with a buck or two in it a shift if that. Plus you are expected to tip before you even get whatever service when you do it at point of sale like this, unlike the traditional restaurant approach where you tip at the very end of the meal even after you've closed out the rest of the bill.
I’m already paying that much. If you keep the same total price but put it on your menu instead of making it an end-of-meal surprise, that is much preferred thanks.
> If the average waiter works a dinner shift from 5pm-11pm, waits on 40 customers during this shift, each customer has a check average of $40 and tips on average 20%, the waiter would walk with $320 in tips.
> In this example, the total cost of labor for the waiter is $55/hr for 6 hours, which is $55*6 = $330. The total number of customers served during the shift is 40.
> In order to eliminate the need for customers to tip, the restaurant would need to increase the cost of their food by $330 tips / 40 customers = $8.25 per check.
> Therefore, they would need to increase the cost of their food by $8.25, so that the check average would be $40 + $8.25 = $48.25 per check.
My argument is that I’m already paying $48.25 per check and don’t particularly care about the restaurant’s cost structure.
Passing wages (and in SF health care) onto me feels about as petty as an attorney adding “$5 for pens” into a $4000 invoice. I’m still sore about that 3 years later.
Perhaps we just need a quick break where customers realize that they're paying for the service, one way or another. Your hamburger costing $20 and you leaving $5 is no different from your hamburger costing $25. It's really only the poor tippers who shouldn't want this transition to a fixed wage with the costs added to the food. Currently, they're getting subsidized service from good tippers.
For what you say to be true, it relies on everyone tipping the same amount all the time. The problem is that people do not tip this way. Tipping in the USA has been studied for 25+ years and the results are clear: The amount a given waiter will receive in tips is far more influenced by their physical appearance, race, and gender, than the quality of service they provide.
For example, a white woman with blonde hair and large breasts will, all things being equal, make more in tips than anyone else working in the same establishment[0].
Paying $25 for that burger is fine if that is the advertised price. Everyone in the service industry deserves to be paid an equal wage for equal quality of work. Despite all intentions, tipping ensures this is not the case. That alone is enough to justify abolishing tipping as a form of primary compensation.
Honest question : how do you think it works literally anywhere outside of Canada and the US?
We have bar and restaurants, too.
People working there have kids, mortgage.
I would even say that it’s more a “real” job than in the US.
“Real”, in the sense that, in the US, I’ve seen friends in their 40’s switching industry because they want to have kids. While for instance in France their is actual school you go to before become a waiter in the higher end places.
Those are jobs were you are well compensated and that you can expect to keep for a while ( with a promotion path )
> how do you think it works literally anywhere outside of Canada and the US?
Being 100% honest, I was of the opinion that because of tipping in America, waiters/waitresses stand a chance to make $150-$300+ whereas in Europe, you probably make less than that.
The argument is about harm reduction. You need to separate the ideal from stuff that improves the current situation.
The ideal all consumers should be pursuing for all forms of financial transaction is that all advertised prices are the out-the-door ceiling. Fees, taxes, surcharges, tips, etc may not be added, though discounts are ok. Tipping should not even be an option, though we've seen a lot of evidence that a visible percentage would much prefer to lord their power to tip over the heads of their servers, and get very upset when that's taken away. So this is a hard position to reach from where we are, even though it's clearly better than the current state.
But we don't live in that world. In the current world, many things are advertised at prices lower than are actually sustainable. And no, I'm not talking about loss-leaders. I mean the entire menu at a restaurant, for instance. If that is all their income, they can't afford to pay servers enough to be livable. So they underpay servers, and expect tips to sort of paper over the gap. And because that gap exists, I recognize tipping as sadly necessary, even though it is forbidden in my ideal world.
I don't like it, but of the options I have available when I choose to eat out, it's the least bad.
That's the law in Australia. We have a whole government department (https://www.accc.gov.au/) dedicated to defending consumers against companies, and they do pretty well at it.
Can I also recommend the Australian Electoral Commission (https://www.aec.gov.au) who are available for private events and functions as well as larger elections if you think you might have trouble running it yourself.
> When I was a kid (some 20 years ago) 10% was common for a standard tip. Now most places have an 18%/20%/25% option on screens. Some even higher! The second image in the article even shows a 30% tip
Restaurant prices generally ran behind inflation; that's why tipping percentages increased.
Not saying it’s good or bad, but I used to know some people who made 6 figures a year on tips straight out of high school and stayed in the food business because of it. I never did… I’m not a particularly friendly or warm person. But, those people do actively defend tipping and they expressly do not want salary/wage systems.
I'm not advocating for the abolishment of tipping (I explicitly stated this btw), but I am against its expansion and an economic system where bribery is required for an employee to take home a living wage. If we had a social standard where everyone was making at least a living wage then I have no problems with you wanting to depart with extra cash. No one here is really advocating for making tipping illegal, we just don't think it should be used to supplement income.
You’ve just described my sister’s ex-husband. Friendly guy, knows how to work customers just right to get a tip and made good money for giving up his weekend nights. If I wanted to get a rant out of him, all I had to do was ask about tip pooling.
I have a friend with no education who has been a server and bartender. When he is able to work as a server, the money flows in. He's currently working at a Brazilian steakhouse where the standard tip for a table of 4 is $36 before counting money spent on drinks, meaning that after splitting up the tips with other servers and the backroom staff, he's still making well over $70 an hour on a slow day.
Of course, when he was between serving jobs, he was working at a doggy day care for $12 an hour.
Stories like this make me think tipping should be abolished more. I feel bad for the other less charismatic servers. Just get rid of tips and pay them higher across the board.
Yes, the effect of a tipped minimum wage is that until you make it up to minimum wage in tips, the tip makes no difference in your take home pay. It only makes a difference after that, and if it can be sustained on average over all hours worked.
No, it has for the most part been "because servers paid based on their performance will perform better". The effects are easily observable in nearly any restaurant in the country - the servers are better than their European counterparts, whether in a fancy establishment or a tiny sandwich shop. 'Because they're paid less than minimum wage' is a straw man - the law that allowed that to happen was created in a pre-existing tipping culture that justified it on the merits.
> One thing I've never understood is the argument for tipping
European here, from Italy, we don't tip much and it's not mandatory.
We do at dinner if it has been a long dinner usually as a way to show appreciation, but the tip is usually a modest amount (in the 5-10 euros ballpark for a table)
The argument for tipping here is that it is tax free money.
That's why here restaurants love American tourists and their very generous tips.
Tipping is to incentivize personalized, special, service. The proliferation of it is because people forgot what it's for. Don't tip when you're a fungible customer.
The point of sale system can be shamed or regulated, or have codes for the merchant type that dictates whether they have the option of doing a compulsory tipping screen
The payment processor can dictate all or cut them off, payment processor can also be regulated from on high
We can also make viral articles shaming a random shop for their behavior. This is not normal now but we can make it so.
We can realistically address the conflict of interest from service workers wanting more tips that are shaming consumers for not tipping a certain amount. We pretend that because they’re closer to the environment then their thoughts should be more privileged, when it is so convenient to just gamble on getting more tips that its a conflict of interest.
And of course the crazier thought of raising wages, but we should stick to things we can control
I think tipping should be outlawed. The price should be the price. Workers should not be subject to inconsistent pay for the same amount of work. In addition it gets rid of any bias in wages (more attractive people or people of different ethnicities might get higher tips for the same work).
Nothing should be outlawed unless it causes a reasonable amount of harm. This mostly doesn’t. First, it’s just semantics. Second, you don’t have to buy again.
It causes a minimal amount of harm. What proportion of the tip requests you get are from your first time buying from the establishment? It’s very low. After that, you know there’s a tip request and choose to return.
Propaganda aligning with a certain modern day cult and nothing but subjective anecdotes isn't proof of anything. First of all you'd have to PROVE the tipping difference is due to racism.... something this article fails completely at.
Let's assume that people are actually tipping "people of color" worse. Do you think getting rid of tipping is somehow fixing this perceived racism? If so, why do you believe you can legislate a personality trait out of people?
> First of all you'd have to PROVE the tipping difference is due to racism....
No you don't. If tipped wages are more discriminatory you can ban them. Even if no racism is involved, somehow! And that's not trying to legislate a personality trait.
Yes you do, you do not get to just claim people are racist with no proof. Do you think it's a joke to make this claim? You're certainly treating it pretty nonchalantly.
You're talking about taking jobs and money from a specific group of people so you can implement your ideological beliefs that have zero data to back them up.
You haven't provided any proof this sort of racial tipping exists but you've certainly provided plenty of proof of wanting implement your own racist ideas to redistribute money from a very specific skin color, while claiming other skin colors are helpless victims.
> Yes you do, you do not get to just claim people are racist with no proof. Do you think it's a joke to make this claim? You're certainly treating it pretty nonchalantly.
I didn't say people were racist, I gave a link supporting the idea that tipping is harmful.
See where I said "Even if no racism is involved, somehow!"
Even if a lot of people.. look it doesn't matter for this topic.
> You're talking about taking jobs and money from a specific group of people so you can implement your ideological beliefs that have zero data to back them up.
Mostly I want to get rid of the idea of a tipped minimum, and fix some of the other issues around minimum wage. I don't want to take any jobs away.
> You haven't provided any proof this sort of racial tipping exists but you've certainly provided plenty of proof of wanting implement your own racist ideas to redistribute money from a very specific skin color, while claiming other skin colors are helpless victims.
You're reading a lot of things in my posts that aren't there. I just want all the waiters to get a good paycheck and make tips exceptional. "Pay everyone in the same job at the same tier the same amount" is not redistribution.
But you can require that all posted prices include all taxes, fees, and expected gratuities; AND that the price on the bill include all taxes, fees, and expected gratuities.
Basically, just push the tip into the noise and require that the posted price be the sum of all the hidden fees.
I went to a religious university and there was a certain ethics class everybody was required to take. A discussion topic one day was about how to advertise you were a member of this faith while out and about, and the topic of tipping came up. The lecture pretty much worked out like you should be tipping big! People don't treat waiters so well after the religious service ends! At least 20% to share the good news:tm: with them! Oddly, this same class never took the same effort to address how to advertise to any other class of people.
I get this sounds like a random aside, but tipping is something that religious communities at least try to connect to people with (which surprisingly includes patrons who leave $0 tip and a "here's a tip, your pathway to %afterlife%" business card). If there was a push to make it not the social norm, I could see churches crusading to keep it a part of our culture forever.
I'm just ambivalent about making it illegal and prefer to not make things illegal. But I think your story supports the bribery aspect that I'm bringing up. That definitely isn't right.
This actually happened because Christians (maybe other religions too?) got a reputation for being bad tippers. IDK, maybe it was something about already giving 10% before tax to God to take care of orphans and widows, but seeing their pastor and politician in highend cars and suits? IDK.
So as a counter to that reputation pastors began to admonish folks to tip well, to show them the love of Jesus as 20%.
I propose a middle way: Outlaw tipping unless the establishment posts an upfront notice of what their tipping expectation is (what percent, for what services, for what satisfaction level).
Under that system:
- You can still have tipping with only a trivial amount of extra work.
- There would then be common knowledge -- in the technical sense [1] -- across all parties, leading to expectation alignment.
- There would be a clear mechanism for competition over expected tipping levels, letting people know they're getting into at each place.
I expect that such a system would to more establishments preferring the no-tip option, but even if not, it would remove the worst parts of the tipping system.
What? Who is harmed? Are we to pretend all waiters do an equally good job?
Good service gets good tips, bad service, not good. It's just an incentive system.
The only reason it starts to breakdown is because there are really cheap people out there who will skimp on the tip and then complain when waiters treat them like shit.
If you are a regular at a place and you tip well, they'll spoil you.
Here is a free tip for you: you can tip your Healthcare workers. If you have a family member in the hospital, bring some homemade cookies or treats for the staff. I can't prove that it helps, but I am confident it does.
Most places in the world do not have tipping. The US has tipping because for some reason, the law allows restaurants to pay below minimum wage. I think that tipping should be outlawed and waiters should be paid a wage supported by the market, at least whatever minimum wage is (in California, that's $15.50/hr).
I'm not talking about the history of tipping. I'm talking about why tipping exists right now in the US. It's a form of additional tax on consumers that the restaurants don't have to pay and exploits workers with the promise of tips. Restaurants going below minimum wage should be illegal and if they can't afford to do that, then I'm perfectly okay with them going bankrupt.
You made a claim about causality, I'm suggesting the causality is the other way around: these laws exist because the US has a culture of tipping. It seems unlikely that this existing culture of tipping would've stopped being a thing if these laws didn't exist, given the long confusing list of people you're apparently supposed to tip in the US.
So when you get bad service in the US, you don't tip?
I've gotten bad service while traveling in the US - how can I not tip? Someone tell me, please, because when I'm paying it's usually before I even get the service and I'm already supposed to pre-pay a 20 percent tip or some such from a checkout prompt that doesn't always let me opt out.
Or when it does let me opt out, it's in plain view of the staff, of course; in a "go ahead and hit 0%, take a chance on whether we'll shit in your food" kind of way.
Growing up, i've been told leave at least 15%, or 10% if the service is atrocious, but never 0% if you plan on showing up to the same place again, or if anybody you know might find out. Being accused of tipping $0 is not generally something want to carry around with them
> Growing up, i've been told leave at least 15%, or 10% if the service is atrocious
This seems nuts to me - if the service is truly atrocious, to the point where it’s questionable whether the service I asked for was delivered at all, I’m going to refuse to pay at all.
If it’s run of the mill atrocious service and I want to prove a point via tipping, I’ll tip $0.01.
> Are we to pretend all waiters do an equally good job?
Are we to pretend all supermarket checkout clerks do an equally good job? No, but we don't tip them. They get paid a wage which is bundled into the price of every item I buy at the store. Same as every other cost of business like their insurance, electric bill, etc.
Part of the issue is a seemingly ingrained concept of "fairness" between when we do the same job we want the same reward (a grape not a cucumber stupid researcher!) ... And combine that with the propensity to overestimate our own contributions and underestimate the difficulty of what others do.. Suddenly even rationally fair "feels" unfair.
I think instead tipping law should be that it is not be asked for until after the service is rendered. These days they will ask for tip BEFORE anything is served which makes me very upset. It traps you into paying and any incentive for good behavior is completely stolen.
I don't. For sit down restaurants, or many service oriented jobs it makes for a better customer experience. I agree for counter service it where they want tips BEFORE the service experience it makes no sense.
You ought to try sitting down in a restaurant in the EU. They do the bare minimum to serve you.
Tying a possible bonus to the way you act in customer service facing role has a lot of benefits.
"In addition it gets rid of any bias in wages (more attractive people more attractive people" Why are higher wages for a subjectively attractive person a bad thing... Are they not driving better business? Do you think it's somehow more altruistic to provide subjectively uglier individuals the same wage? Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait. Your point is moot anyway, in a capitalistic society people can just choose to visit another business where the staff has the traits they desire.
Japanese people are culturally more inclined to be pleasant, it's part of the way they're raised, so I don't think that's a good example.
I've not had a pleasant experience in most other western nations. I won't say it was bad but it's nowhere near as efficient and you have to really get waiters attention before they'll do anything.
> For sit down restaurants, or many service oriented jobs it makes for a better customer experience.
In my personal experience, it makes it worse. They annoy me with attempts to be ingratiating. They fish for tips with forms and devices which creates awkward and unpleasant situations, especially if I didn't like the service. There is nothing pleasant for me about having someone watching me and trying to guess when I want something. I know when I want something and I am perfectly capable of telling them when that moment comes.
> You ought to try sitting down in a restaurant in the EU. They do the bare minimum to serve you.
I live in the EU and I find the service at restaurants a hundred times better here. Nobody is pestering me, nobody is insulting both of us by pretending to be my new best friend. They stay out of my way until I ask for something.
That's fine... it's your country and continent. I happen to dislike that attitude and so do a LOT of other Americans. It turns out EU culture isn't something everyone strives for.
If I wanted to ask for something I'd stay home, they're called waiters and not for a reason. There's no "pretending to be a friend" going on, it's just called being cordial.
> Do you think it's somehow more altruistic to provide subjectively uglier individuals the same wage? Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait. Your point is moot anyway, in a capitalistic society people can just choose to visit another business where the staff has the traits they desire.
Your point seems to be that there is no inherent moral good in distributing resources equally among people as opposed to allowing inequality to naturally emerge and/or optimizing for total value across all people. I don't necessarily disagree: it is hard to argue from first principles that each individual should be given the same weight, as opposed to any other arbitrary system like giving each family the same weight, or taking intelligence into account. However, it is also wrong to pretend that there isn't significant precedent in society for assigning each individual equal moral weight — for example, by allowing everyone an equal vote in elections, which has clearly been a useful practice. And I consider it obvious that "Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait" isn't something that would be widely agreed upon.
You are correct. In fact, I'd call it a moral BAD to forcefully redistribute resources according to someone's weird dystopian fantasy that everyone can be equal through some ridiculous idea of UN-achievable utopian equity.
The ONLY way that is possible is to bring down the higher achieving people to the lowest common denominator. You cannot bring people UP past a certain level.
"And I consider it obvious that "Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait" isn't something that would be widely agreed upon." -
This completely case dependent there are careers where intelligence is sought and there are careers where attractiveness may be advantageous. The only reason this is "obvious" to you is because you've been tainted by recent modern thought that believes there's no value in physical attractiveness.The fact your bias towards certain physical traits is fine while other physical traits are off limits should tell you something about the cognitive dissonance of this though pattern. Maybe you ought to ask yourself why it's ok to be biased against physical attractiveness but not physical skin color????
To provide some additional (counter) anecdotal evidence - I moved to Melbourne several years ago and can't recall a single, bad service oriented experience at a restaurant here.
I disagree, I prefer the service in EU - I like the bare minimum. I hate in the US when they take your order as soon as you arrive, they check every 5 minutes if you're OK then whip away your plates as soon as you finish the last mouthful.
My experience in restaurants all throughout the EU is that service is perfectly acceptable. I really intensely dislike over the top service - I want the employees to be polite and friendly but not to fawn over me - I want to feel that they're my equals in a social sense, not servile (but that doesn't mean they shouldn't respond to complaints etc.) I guess I'll have to take a trip to the US to see the difference in expectations.
I feel like this is because Japanese are more culturally inclined to be "nice" and cordial.
I agree it's possible to have a good custom experience without tipping but I do not agree that they don't promote better customer experience. Bonuses, tipping etc. are pretty powerful way of enticing people to be better at their jobs.
The tipping situation is numerically very similar in Canada, unsurprisingly.
But at least in Canada, the waiter brings a wireless point-of-sale machine to the table for you to pay. Whereas in American, they take your credit card all the way to the cash register (unsafe!), bring the receipt to your table, make you write the tip and total on the receipt, and collect the receipt.
There’s handheld machines now at American restaurants which have a very bold tip screen. At the one I see it at, the waiter (who usually only took our order, didn’t even fill drinks, bring food, etc) holds it towards me and says “tip?” instead of the common “it’ll ask you a few questions”. Maybe it’s a clover POS system?
Handheld POS terminals exist in America but I found them to be rare. When I was in New Orleans last year and went to a bunch of restaurants, 9 out of 10 of them had the traditional opaque payment system. Only at one restaurant did I I experience the waiter bringing the wireless POS to my table.
Yes. Here in Canada it's a couple percent points less (15-20%, I here it's higher there) and servers have a proper minimum wage, but tipping is still expected here.
And the pandemic has shifted things and now everybody's got tip options on the takeout touchpad... I'm iffy on that. It was one thing when everything was shut down and so takeout was a fallback for restaurants with a lot of staff, but that's over.
It used to be. For instance, France passed a law in 1987 to include an automatic tip on all bills (12-15%), i.e., switched from optional to automatic tipping.
AIUI, French restaurant menus still say "service compris" (service included).
I've never experienced the US tipping culture, but have been aware of it for a long time. Am I remembering correctly that the 'standard' tip has been increasing over the past few decades? I don't mean just the dollar amount, but the percentage that is expected. Why has this happened? Is there some standard explanation or justification given for this?
I think it’s gone up because of the cultural marking of “cheap tippers.” You see it lambasted in movies and TV (in Reservoir Dogs it’s even a significant point of foreshadowing). The scale as I understand it is:
For delivery, tip 10-20% on the subtotal based on the size of the order and the service/delivery time (and perhaps your relationship with the deliverer or business, in cases where they have a dedicated pool). Often these people live off tips and their wage doesn’t even cover gas/maintenance on their own vehicles.
Dining in? Outside of very bad service, I’ll tip 18-20% of the subtotal. Service industry is hard and there’s a lot going on. Even with a bad experience, sometimes it’s not your waitstaff’s fault and they’re trying to roll with it themselves.
Take out/coffee/etc: tip 10-15% based on your relationship to the business and price. If I’m going to a pricier coffee place, I may tip less because I do have a upper limit on what I’ll tip for anything paltry (a buck or two for a latte and a muffin).
Moving guys/tradesmen: May slip em a ten if the job was a pain or they were real punctual.
Most POS systems do not charge per transaction, neither by count nor dollar amount. It’s usually an upfront or flat monthly fee, based on number of terminals, level of service and feature set.
I quite dislike the tip system, but feel I have no good way to protest it. I could "just not tip," but that mostly harms the people who have the least power in the situation (the waiter) rather than the people who can change it (management).
Instead, I feel like the only ethical option available to me is to preferentially frequent no-tip restaurants. Unfortunately there aren't too many of those and although I hate the tip system, quality of food is usually more important except at the margins.
It seems like the sort of thing where maybe there's a regulatory answer, but I'm hard-pressed to think of one. California already takes the reasonable step of mandating minimum wage before tips, but that doesn't seem to remove the tip expectation.
I think tipping waiters in restaurants, at the end of a meal is fine.
It's the request for a tip at practically every cafe or donut shop, where a person is simply pouring drip coffee or placing an item in a bag, for to-go/carry out, which gets to me. Or the expectation to tip for a re-fill of a coffee mug, at a cafe. It's not service-- it's dispensing a product.
I am starting to wonder how much baristas make, for example, if it's $10-$15 per hour, plus 15 customers per hour (x$1-$2 tip each)... that's potentially $50-60k+ per year. Which is more than many teachers and healthcare workers make-- people with degrees, training, and who provide a skilled, emotionally-involved service.
I echo the feeling of a lack of capacity to change things. Given my income level and current situation I resorted to the penultimate form of not tipping: No longer going out to eat, by and large.
It sucks, for sure. We do not have any no-tip restaurants in my area. But price transparency is something that is very important to me and I will stand by my principles on that matter. And since not tipping a person you are face to face with carries a social weight that renders such a move untenable I just don't go out for food at places that ask for tips in any capacity. I'm sure there's an argument one could make about my choice being harmful for tip-heavy employees that use that money to live on. But I have never chosen to subsidize businesses whose practices I don't agree with and tipping has hit a point where it has fallen squarely into that category. I'd like to think if more people thought like me, the market for tipping restaurants would begin to shrivel, but I have little reason to think such a thing will happen in my area at least.
Does this mean maybe we have a glut of restaurants operating in a preferential-to-the-business economic environment, and some might not survive such a change, maybe yeah. Does it mean those employees will have to look for work in a changed market if that does happen, yes. But I want everyone who works to be paid a fair, predictable, agreeable wage for the work they do and continuing to support places that are (I feel) diametrically opposed to that principle does not work towards that goal.
So cast iron chicken and rice pilaf at home it is!
I frequently see tipped employees argue _in favor_ of tipping because it allows them to have a higher take-home than they normally could get at an hourly job. I think tipped establishments could have success by removing tipping but offering commission to their formerly-tipped staff.
It's built into the price (bonus points if they add sales tax as well), so you just pay what it says on the menu, and the servers stay happy.
Or you can just pay a good hourly wage, but no one really seems interested in making that happen.
I very rarely visit places where I have to tip so my sanity is kept in check. The whole idea of tipping however ruffles my feathers. Just give me price and fuck off. I did not come to the place to think how much should I tip and feel guilty if I do not want to tip for shitty service / food.
I started tipping for a while, and I think I will stop unless I am being served sitting down.
I see no benefit from the tipping, and the staff are not thankful nor do they seem to notice. and in most cases they do not do anything at all to benefit the tips..
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 451 ms ] threadThis last one is going to be to hear, but if you pay your employees below mimimum wage and allow for tips to make up the difference, well.....
Always tip, in cash, direct to the employee.
I was in a rush and didn't put a tip, I found a hair in my fried rice and the tofu was not fully cooked. I'd ordered from that place a couple times before and its like $22 with tip for just Thai red curry with rice..
The prices are insane. Even if I made 10x what I make, I wouldn't eat out unless its really special.
I'll keep that in mind for next time though if it ever happens again! Now I kind of want to do a social experiment.. go to a restaurant like 4-5 times and then don't tip once to see what happens. If its really true service is affected that way, then its a broader problem.
It sucks but I just view it as an extra cost for using uber eats.
Do they have an option to avoid these deliveries anyway? Where I live they're all employees (basically) of e.g. Grubhub, and Grubhub promises me delivery within e.g. 45 minutes. I had assumed Grubhub was automatically assigning a delivery worker in the area to make the delivery.
But that’s just the Grubhub/doordash branded drivers. In my area placing an order on those sites just triggers the place’S own delivery people if they normally do delivery
The fact that tips technically need to be reported to the IRS and thus your employer aside, I believe it is a legally fireable offense to pocket cash in order to avoid any policies on splitting it with others working the same shift.
The problem is when the restaurant tries to change the rules in the middle of the game (Like the girl in Bentonville who's manager tried to confiscate a $2k tip) OR the restaurant owner sees this cash left on the table and gets a little greedy.
I also went through a call to get back a tip I made on a Chipotle order (DoorDash I believe) up front after the driver failed to find the address and then chewed me out after driving through parking lots for 5 minutes.
And this is fast casual where you don't even have a waiter.
Let me say again "a decent wage"
Tipping is a cultural norm in the US that won’t be changed by the price on the menu going up a few bucks. If anything, the relationship is the opposite. You are socially expected to tip better for more expensive meals.
Plus many restaurants with placeholder tip icons that start at 25%+
You also don't know what the tip is really going towards in many cases. In the classic restaurant/waitstaff case you can reasonably expect it to go to the workers, in the random knick knack or general goods stores ???
Tipping in general is a system to transfer wealth from the charitable to the uncharitable (high tippers pay more and subsidize the business, low tippers pay less).
I believe in the spirit of tipping rewarding better service, but by and large it doesn't actually function that way. Most tip ~20% on everything outside of extreme circumstances.
Much better for everything to be baked into the price of whatever good or service it is.
Tipped workers had to up their game because they can no longer do tax evasion with everything on the record. Back in the days where most paid their restaurant with cash, tips were more like 15%. The move from 15 to more like 20 to 25% almost perfectly corresponds with the amount needed to make the same earnings after tax.
When I delivered food my tip spread was funny. Many people wouldn't tip at all, many would just let you keep the change or give you a token amount (~5-10%), and a few people would give you over 50% tips. Not many gave me 15-25%.
The food delivery guy is basically seen like the UPS worker. All around I decided it was a fucked business model and quit pretty quickly.
A "token amount" is pretty reasonable if you take tipping at face value, no? It's supposed to be a reward for good service. Waitstaff engage with you many times over the course of about an hour, and every person at a table receives service. It's fairly reasonable in this case to tip in proportion to the total bill. On the contrary, it's roughly the same amount of work for a delivery driver to deliver $100 of food as it is $10. Tipping the driver a few dollars (at most) seems not unreasonable in this case. The tip cannot possibly be reflective of any service rendered and it's essentially random what driver you will get, so you're not being biased or harming a particular person.
This is, of course, wholly separate from whether the tipping system is a good idea on the whole.
Later the courts ruled this was technically employment and I got a token check in a class action, but of course never back paid for the hours as an employee.
Have things seriously gotten this bad, that restaurant workers are shaking down delivery drivers for extra cash? So much for solidarity with fellow workers.
Tips are for service, and selling food is not a service. At a restaurant, tips are for the waitstaff that brings your food and cleans up after you. Everything else is people hustling for extra cash. And yes we all like extra cash, but that doesn't make one entitled to it by putting a cup on the counter.
(Delivery drivers bringing food to your house, and drinks at a bar are two separate categories of service where tipping is legitimately expected. Although now that I think about it, maybe that second category was just the beginning of people getting suckered).
Which means they don't earn almost any wage.
So if they spend all their time prepping takeout orders for delivery workers they make NO money. So they get very pissed doing this work and intentionally slow it down.
my experience is from several years back, things may have changed.
I don't want to completely wash my hands of it because it's certainly possible the state regulators could be corrupt and just ignoring the problem, but just giving in to the corruption doesn't seem right either.
So the employee has to record their tips (often but not always, in the same computer system they record their hours) and make sure their employer correctly compensated them for the shortfall between actual earnings and minimum wage.
Minimum wage laws basically says “Every employee must make the minimum wage when tips and employer payments are combined. Also, employers must always pay at least $2.13/hr (federal) regardless of amount that is earned in tips.”
The “real” issue is that $2.13/hr combined with averaging earnings over a paycheck leads to very very mismatched incentives for a business deciding what hours they should be open. The business has very low marginal cost so they’ll stay open during hours when it’s not profitable to the laborers because not enough customers ever walk in to make them minimum wage during those extra off-peak hours.
Naturally the waitstaff super resented having to maybe take on less tables to do essentially unpaid work on the side of taking your order, prepping utinsels and drinks, possibly even making some very simple ready made stuff themselves, and plate bagging it up etc and a lot of the shit they have to do for a normal table except for no tip.
If it's less than 20%, well, that's just part of the job.
This sounds like the same thing.
This is why I call them bribes and say they are akin to feudalism (where the practice started). Because it separates us. Like I said in my main post, it divides a larger group that should be collectively bargaining for a higher minimum wage. I'm fine with tipping, but it being a social standard is barbaric.
This is absurd, I'm sorry. It is logically inconsistent and means that if wages, payments, or exchange of goods exist in any form as compensation for work, then the system is feudalism. This would not only go against the common usage (words mean what we collectively agree they mean), but render the word meaningless. Please don't do this, you're just adding noise to an argument and not providing a useful comment.
Personally I didn't agree with your redefinition, but since you go by a completely different standard than everyone else I went to your level to make you understand your absurdity.
> It is logically inconsistent and means that if wages, payments, or exchange of goods exist in any form as compensation for work, then the system is feudalism.
And no I was saying minimum wage law is doing the exactly thing you fear, which is split us apart by outlawing poor people from working if the value of their labor is less than the minimum wage amount. It creates the same bifurcated society you feared where the very poor now have their jobs outlawed and have to work in the black market and shadows already more than they already do. Minimum wage law is basically a giant "fuck you got mine" to people creating less than that value and creating a cartel where a number of poor people benefit at the expense of the even more poor through violence of the state.
Someone who helps you at a $10/plate restaurant can be just as helpful as the person working at a $200/plate restaurant. Often less annoying, in fact.
I wasn't sure and I had hoped the tip worked as you said getting spread around (at least to the sushi chef who takes the sushi order directly and drops it at your table). I figured the hostess would tell me straight up since she's not taking my tip directly and doesn't benefit greatly one way or another.
She made it clear to me. Don't expect anyone beyond the waitress to get a meaningful share. I presume she meant either the sharing was very minimal or the waitress was likely to pocket most of it before reporting the amount to the people she may obliged to share it with. That didn't sit well with me but I have a feeling she was telling the truth, especially in light of the fact that the waitress would have every incentive especially with cash to just pocket the money and tell everybody else they were stiffed or got 5% or whatever.
I held my tongue about exponential functions, and just said "ok", I'll choose my battles...
I guess that's why I'm an engineer and she's a server.
it's not explicit because no one knows what the total cost is that's being shifted to the consumer and how much of that is recouped by tipping.
Anyway that's not the cost, that's post everything so including tax.
If tipping didn’t exist and were instead embedded in wages, the employer would just raise the list prices commensurately.
There’s a fair argument to be made that restaurant wages would decline in aggregate without tipping though. Certainly there would be both winners and losers
Of course, raising prices is exactly what happens when you eliminate tipping. But prices are sticky; people react strongly to price increases. They can, to some extent, modulate their tipping behavior (from 25% down to 15%), but if all they can do is take or leave prices, some customers will switch restaurants.
On average, less price sensitive people will tip more, but there are no guarantees. Somebody who’s wealthy may still tip 20% over somebody who is less well off tipping 25% because they’re feeling charitable.
Or, more commonly, some people don’t tip at all, even if they can afford it. Anybody who’s worked in food service has experienced this.
You wont find anything close to a linear relationship between wealth and tipping percentage. Most will tip 20% ish regardless, because that’s what’s generally expected
A wealthy customer can be very price sensitive.
If someone has the mentality that they are free to spoil your food because they won't get a (good) tip, then they don't deserve to be paid at all, let alone be tipped well.
There's a lot of things the US has that are extremely strange, and the tipping culture is amongst them.
It is not unreasonable for me to expect that you complete the job you are paid to do, for the price we already agreed upon. Period. Tips used to be for good service, circumstances where you know that due to circumstance you're asking a little more of the staff.
Many of the "pickup" order sites I have request a tip. There is literally no service, and I'm not even sure how the quality of the order will be, as I've literally not gotten it.
This is not a good follow-up for the parent's concerns. I tip for the same reason parent tips: for protection. I don't want my things to be messed with. I don't care who's in the right, I don't care what the server thinks, if it's the culture that we tip, then we tip, or potentially face the consequences of being outliers of the culture. It's not my hill to die on.
thank you for being reasonable and for having far more patience than I
The best Christmas gifts were actual things - not an envelope with $60 in it.
She gives me the exact same gift.
We’re thinking we need to increase it because of inflation.
“I am rich person. I will give you some money, service person. Now smile and appreciate my lordship.”—how it feels to tip.
Driver chased me into the lobby to give me the change.
“Keep the change” has a benefit to both parties - no need to spend time waiting for change to be counted or carrying it round
Colleague of mine left a new generator with his fixer in the Phillipenes when there was a massive hurricane a decade ago. He could the value of it was minimal once the time and money to ship it back to Europe was counted, reality was they needed the generator on site. Could be argued it’s not a bribe/tip/gift.
Giving money directly for services rendered could be a bribe, could be paying him on the side (for more hours for example), could attract tax problems etc.
Buying him dinner would be different.
I think tips work well, if this is the case. When tips are expected, for example because otherwise the server makes much less than minimum wage, then it's not a small gift anymore, and that's problematic. But when I like a service, give a bit more, they like that, give me a bit more of a service, knowing that I'll give a bit more the next time too, then I don't think that's something I should be against.
But the base price must be fair.
The correct term is racket. Bribery is when you get something above normal.
Quite fitting description. But since we are no feudal lords, I would also describe tipping as the daily power trip of the plebes.
This is the most egregious part of it. Who ever invented that a percentage should inflate? The price is already inflating so a percentage of it goes up. You don't get to inflate both.
Tipping was always 10% to 15% if particularly exceptional. Although even that should be made illegal, just include all costs of doing business in the price like nearly every shop does.
Really?! Which retail stores?
Big employers don’t do it as far as I know. Have seen it many times in convenience stores or small grocery
A food truck operator is providing no additional service than a McDonald's ignoring the choice of where to drive or park. They provide takeout with no delivery.
And then this started at food halls.
Similarly, for farmers markets, artists, and crafts; these are traditionally retail items, these items often retail on their website or at a gallery (there is an edge case of auction houses), but now there is at least a vendor option of having a tip screen.
Full waiter experience (seated, handed menu, food brought to table, plate cleared) gets 20%.
If the level of service is less than that, the percentage starts to go down proportionally.
Counter service is flat-rate $1 per person served.
This is the same every time regardless of quality of service (unless something truly malicious happens, but I’ve never experienced that.)
I usually still tip for these because it's tying up the kitchen for the in-restaurant diners which might slow down the service for the staff. But not the full 20%.
I don't understand this. Why do you Americans tip for this? Isn't being seated, handed a menu, food brought to the table, and plates being cleared part of a waiter's job?
Why does the customer have to 'reward' waiters for doing 'a good job'?
Why do restaurants not just drop a flat 10% service/cover charge (it's 10% where I am) and be done with it?
And some restaurants are starting to implement a standard service fee, it’s more common at high end restaurants.
1. Because nobody you'd want waiting a table wants to be a waiter for minimum wage.
2. And because restaurants don't want to pay waiters more than minimum wage on slow nights.
Your options if you don't like this situation are:
1. A ~20% price hike in the cost of your food.
2. Significantly worse service.
3. Significantly limited hours.
Pick two.
I have implemented the same policy of 20% BUT with strict process to make sure it isn't 20% of the full bill:
1) I tip 20% on the Sub-Total amount after subtracting all alcohol (see #2). I am not tipping 20% on the sales tax as well. So don't make a common mistake and tip on the total, go with sub-total.
2) Subtract alcohol from sub-total, calculate 20% on that new sub-total and then I add $1-2 MAX per drink or $5 for a bottle.
With the price gouging on alcohol at restaurants/bars (particularly wine - which they literally charge for a glass what a full bottle costs in the store) I refuse to tip 20% of their inflated prices. Sometimes wife and I can have 3-4 drinks total at a long dinner and can be like $50-100 just on alcohol. No WAY I am over-tipping our waiter $20 to walk the drinks over to our table.
This process drives my wife crazy sometimes and she calls me cheap, but just flat out giving 20% on the full total of the bill is over-tipping. Steakhouses drive me nuts too because they can be very expensive and 20% tip on the full total could be $60! That is just dumb for someone performing the same job at Applebees of taking order and bringing food/drinks to table.
I suspect enough people, when prompted with these uncomfortable requests, paid it reluctantly then just never came back. At least, I know I've never been back to any business that asked for or expected a tip.
I'm sure this showed up on the metrics as an immediate spike in revenue, followed by a large downturn some months later.
Honestly can't think of a quicker way to ruin your business.
It is funny how words change meanings depending on which meaning is better for the person who says it.
I think you've made the mistaken assumption that government has your best interests at heart. Has the government trickled down that tax money to worthy causes? Do you expect that same government who gives these wealthy businessmen so much to suddenly invest MORE tax money wisely?
It seems to me that we have constant tax increases with no benefit except to pad elitists pockets in Washington.
Additionally, I assume you believe decent welfare state = a handful of 1st world western European nations and maybe Australia/NZ? You may want to check the average salaries of these locations. Higher welfare states come with a lot of cons... it's not all rainbows and daisies.
A safety net should be just that.... a safety net. Otherwise, you risk LA Skid Row type ramifications or feces/meth needle ridden streets in SF where essentially no one is benefiting.
Economically, exactly how does your plan work?
Tipping is just a cultural thing, the welfare state doesn't have a lot to do with it.
Sanctimonious without good argument.
I don't condone tips, but I realize it's more effective for me to "help" those who live partially on tips than to try and change that culture.
I go to a few select places I like, and I tip well there. I also put money to artist and others who's work I appreciate.
I don't want my name in their credits, I don't want a shout out, I just want them to keep doing what they do because they are good at it.
The followup argument is often "well they are still being under paid." While I can buy this argument, I do not think the solution is tipping. Because if they are underpaid so are non-tipped jobs like the fast food worker, janitor, grocery worker, or movie theater employee. All tipping does is divide these people and reduce the pool for a larger collective to bargain for a higher minimum wage.
I feel we have this collective belief that tipping is bad (it sure confuses my foreign friends, who sometimes get dirty looks because they didn't tip), but once we've effectively created the criteria necessary to abolish it[3], we still maintained the cultural aspect of it: that we __need__ to tip (often thinking we'll get our food spat in if we don't). I've had others get upset with me for these opinions (I do tip btw) but I don't understand how we can think tipping shouldn't exist but continue in this direction. It's also interesting that in early America we thought of tipping as akin to bribery (I still believe this and I think this is common). It also has a history with slavery[4]
[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
[1] Obviously the argument no longer holds outside Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington
[2] When I was a kid (some 20 years ago) 10% was common for a standard tip. Now most places have an 18%/20%/25% option on screens. Some even higher! The second image in the article even shows a 30% tip
[3] I wouldn't completely abolish it, but I'd say it shouldn't be a standard.
[4] https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-land-of-the-fee
You can't do all these things with prices; prices apply universally across customers, and for the most part in the hospitality industry they can't float (see airline tickets as an example of a floating price, and the sheer loathing it creates in the customer base).
Later
I also should have added, and probably led with, the fact that tipping addresses a big agent-principal problem in hospitality: in restaurants where servers rely on tips, their incentives are strongly aligned with those of customers; without tips, virtually all the incentives are aligned with that of management.
What makes the US so special that we have to provide charity on top of the price of the meal.
Why does Japan do this differently? Japan is a different place.
Refusing to tip isn't refusing payment. If it were, I'd be illegal (i.e. theft). Labelling this as "sharing the labour cost" is precisely the problem at hand.
If I hand my pizza delivery driver a $5 bill, I intend it to be a bonus for the driver, not a subsidy for the business. I have zero incentive to pay the business any more than the prices they advertise.
What's the difference between a server and a cashier? One walks between point a and b instead of standing in place? How much should I tip a cashier; 20% of the cost of my groceries?
Complaining about a job they chose when there is a multitude of jobs that you know exactly what you're getting paid based on your hours.
All this being said I do tip. I don't mind it. I find it hilarious when they spin the iPad around around to "answer a few questions" ie "please please tip me, I'm not gonna look or judge you but I am going to look and judge you and most likely passive aggressively spell and say your name wrong to show you why you should tip better!!"
So maybe it's not really a three way relationship in any of these situations.
In most jurisdictions, this is figured by taking the employee's wages plus reported tips for each pay period and dividing them by the employee's clocked hours for that pay period. If that result is not at least actual minimum wage, the employer normally owes the employee the difference.
I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge or actual malicious pay practices (probably some of both), but number of people I meet in the service industry who don't know that last bit and tell me they've never been paid the difference for "dead" shifts (those that generate little to no tips) is staggering.
That's because wage theft is relatively common among the service industry and is also why several states outlawed special wage. You can probably imagine how easy it is to perform wage theft in this situation simply because how difficult accurately calculating that differential is. You're basically relying on every single person to act in good faith in an environment where every person has large incentives to act in bad faith (employers can easily get away with not paying and employees can easily pocket tips and not report them. One of these, or just the perception of, can create a coupled feedback loop with the other).
I don't want to abolish tipping, but instead I want to raise the minimum wage, make prices transparent (I am also a proponent of including tax in price listings), and making not tipping socially acceptable. If we have to supplement wages with tips then our economic system is broken (and akin to feudalism). If you want to provide an extra reward or explicitly bribe an employee for faster/better service (or to flex your wealth), I have no qualms.
That relationship with the servers, by the way, also has a name: it's a principal-agent problem. Servers have competing incentives: to serve the interests of customers (better service) or the business (reduce ongoing costs). Tipping shifts the incentives around. You could attempt that shift with other mechanisms, like after-dinner surveys, but you know how well that'd work.
It costs time, effort, and money to provide better service, so I'm not from where you get the moral dimension of having to buy them. They have a cost; of course you have to buy them.
It's an odd industry where you perform a service, then hope your customer decides to pay you for it.
(Obviously, you don't decide if you're going to pay for restaurant service; you decide only whether you're going to hold up your end of a cost sharing deal.)
I definitely would not trust my kids with someone willing to accept that deal.
Not generally.
> Obviously, you don't decide if you're going to pay for restaurant service; you decide only whether you're going to hold up your end of a cost sharing deal.
Tipping is not a “deal” that you have committed to, by definition.
The tipping there is kind of stupid since they tip at the base cost of the massage even if you get a discount for the membership.
Probably going to cancel it given how expensive it's getting
I travel a lot and eat out a lot and I haven't noticed any discernible difference in service between the countries with obligatory, optional and prohibited tipping.
In some places, it is acceptable to raise your hand and call for service. In other places it is not. If you know that it not acceptable, and you do it anyways, you're sort of an asshole. It's the same with tipping. You're not some iconoclast who will personally change the culture.
If that were true, we'd empirically be able to observe better service in countries with a tipping culture than in those without.
In my experience, that is not the case at all.
It is not, for what it's worth, my contention that tipping is the only way restaurants can work, or even the best one; only that it is a rational system.
I don't disagree on that, and I can see both how it developed and why some people prefer it.
But as a participant in interactions where tipping is expected, I very subjectively find it somewhat exhausting. I'd happily pay more, on average, and be rid of the (albeit small) decision each time.
> Austria was lovely, though, from one end to the other.
What gave me away? :) I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you did tip – contrary to what some guide books say about Germany and Austria, tips are very much expected, although at a different percentage than in the US. (Coffee house waitstaff in the latter being rude is to be expected regardless of your tip rate – supposedly it's part of the charm.)
Regarding my experience with non-tip cultures, these are mostly limited to a few countries in Asia (where waitstaff will at least anecdotally follow you onto the street, returning your tip/accidental overpayment).
What you're saying here, about tipping being exhausting: I don't deny that at all. I can absolutely understand the preference against it. And: Japan is a good counterexample: very good service culture, no tipping.
Right-leaning people like it because it creates a power dynamic. Left-leaning people like it because they delude themselves that they're helping the working class. In both cases, it boils down to paternalism, and all other reasons are rationalization.
TFA is specifically describing how the kind and number of situations in which a tip is expected/asked for (if only by a payment terminal interface) is rapidly expanding – and if every service is tipped, no service is tipped.
I could imagine a not too distant future in which tipping evolves into a quasi-fixed-rate quasi-tax, with only exceptional or atrocious service warranting a deviation from a cemented social norm.
Another similar example (probably outdated): airport skycaps.
An example of a tipping system in America that doesn't work that way (yet) is hotel housekeeping; a surprising number of people don't even know that there's a tipping custom there at all.
The "quasi tax" thing sounds alarming, but it doesn't bother me at all; it's just another way of expressing costs and prices. Things will cost what they cost one way or the other. If tipping becomes so common that everything has 5-15% tacked onto it (I doubt it'll happen, but we'll stipulate), base prices will fall. Businesses can't simply banish demand curves! There is ultimately a market clearing price.
Ah, yes, that is in fact almost exactly my mental model for how to tip in restaurants or cafes (albeit with a conversion factor to the rate I was socialized with).
What always blindsides me is tipping in a place I (or even some locals, apparently?) don't expect it. And generally speaking, I much prefer taking social cues from local friends or other patrons than from a device.
People shouldn't "tip for service". That's not how tips work. Tip mechanically: at a restaurant, divide by 10 and double (keep it simple include the drinks in the tab). If you're sitting there stewing about whether you achieved the requisite level of service, you're the feudalist.
Say you were a software contractor, would you be ok with working for a customer based only on an "expected price range" with a 4x spread, over which the customer has complete unilateral discretion, decided only after the work has been completed?
If your first instinct is "that's different", I'd like to know how.
Like I mentioned above, by having your livelihood depend on the whims of customers that may be offended by not having been treated with sufficient deference.
> abolition of tipping would mechanically imply prices raising across the board to the average level of the previous tipping. TANSTAAFL.
Quite the strawman, I never claimed tipping is extra cost, I just find the practice degrading. I would be very much in favor of bundling all costs in the displayed prices, like it happens in the rest of the world.
I'll go you one further and candidly tell you that what I perceive lurking in the subtext of HN's biannual tipping freakout is the frustration some nerds have that they don't get to inflict their whims on American servers, because their tips are expected to be automatic. They feel ripped off by the expectation. That's the fucked up belief, right there.
You can feel free to ask one of your server friends how degraded they feel by your tips. I think you'll be surprised.
So we're back to tipping being just a way to artificially display lower prices on the menu and enjoy the psychological deception?
Then it amounts to psychological trick to make prices artificial seem lower. With added bonus of being able to bad faith argue "it was your choice".
Very astute of you to mention this, though “address” and “cause” could be used interchangeably.
When I was a bartender it was always in my interest to give away free alcohol to my highest tipping customers, who generally understood that it’s customary to add 50% of the cost they would have paid to their tip for each free drink.
At a very surface level, the tipping system incentivizes employees to steal product from the business to give to customers. But the game theory gets very complicated. Sometimes this results in a great customer base that forms the core of a “social engine” that powers the popularity of a bar/restaurant and results in a win-win-win. Bar owners set various levels/thresholds/criteria for how much free sample can be given out and under what circumstances.
Tl;dr: the principal-agent problem can almost never be solved to align all parties in a system.
Why should the restaurants be any different? If I like the food and the service, I'll want to come again - the restaurant increases their earnings that way and both I and the business are happy.
The question then again comes down to how is that an incentive for the workers. The obvious answer is that their pay should be linked to the earnings of the business. The fact that it is not shows the fundamental problem with current state of capitalism, where the primary goal is to exploit the work of the workers below your financial level (as a business owner) and increase your wealth based on the ever-increasing difference between costs / wages and revenue.
The incentive of business is in conflict with incentive of workers, and the interest of customers - business will be motivated to use the workers willing to work for less, count tips towards salaries, but also use lower quality/cost ingredients etc.
A system where the worker salaries would be linked to revenue, with some nuance of course, would ensure top quality / service / products for the customers, fair reward and aligned incentives for the workers, and access to top tier employees (since they would want to work for businesses with higher revenue), happy customers and increased revenue to the business.
The answer is simple: because they choose to set these terms.
Restaurants are far from the most idiosyncratic businesses customers interact with. Buy a plane ticket sometime! Different businesses have different pricing structures.
There is no clear disclosure that you will need to pay more than the listed prices to get your food as you should.
Also, if you go to a counter service business, and the point of sale system asks you to tip, again, the terms were not set prior to engaging in the transaction.
In another comment, you write:
> You're going to have bad relationships (and experiences) with American restaurants if you make a habit of undertipping.
I classify this as the restaurant (and waiter) violating the terms. You do not get to claim your prices are low and then spring and increase on people, even if it is a “cultural” norm.
Even if we assume the person is familiar with American culture, it is only restaurants with wait service having prices times 1.3 (including sales tax).
Reinvest the savings and get rich off the stupidity of the system. Belligerence seems to be the only way to fix the system.
The alternative is getting a restaurant to entirely change its identity.
Their POS system will always have a spot for tip on a receipt.
Their prices are based on the fact that they expect customers to tip the servers at least 15-25%.
It's a monumental change. It's not just "pay the servers at least $15/hr and turn off tipping". Nobody I've ever met who waits tables is happy with $120/night out the door pretax ($15/hr * 8)
For a restaurant to pay a server what they make now ($150-$300/night tips), their labor cost would be through the roof and they would have to raise the price of the food.
The customer wouldn't like that.
Lose lose lose.
Is that every night or just weekends? Because everyone I've known that has cleared that kind of money has only done so on weekends (Friday/Saturday), and works at higher end or very popular restaurants. I agree that an extra $15-$30/hr would be an insane increase, but if that is spread out over the other 5 days a week then this is much closer to a $3-$6/hr increase. Large, but not obtuse considering a server is probably serving many meals an hour on average. I wouldn't expect food prices to go up very much to cover such a change. As a customer I'd be far happier with that version too. To be clear, I'm against abolishing tips, I just don't think it should be the social expectation for an average establishment.
it’s implied you’re tipping for them taking your order then making your smoothie
I’m already paying that much. If you keep the same total price but put it on your menu instead of making it an end-of-meal surprise, that is much preferred thanks.
> If the average waiter works a dinner shift from 5pm-11pm, waits on 40 customers during this shift, each customer has a check average of $40 and tips on average 20%, the waiter would walk with $320 in tips.
> In this example, the total cost of labor for the waiter is $55/hr for 6 hours, which is $55*6 = $330. The total number of customers served during the shift is 40.
> In order to eliminate the need for customers to tip, the restaurant would need to increase the cost of their food by $330 tips / 40 customers = $8.25 per check.
> Therefore, they would need to increase the cost of their food by $8.25, so that the check average would be $40 + $8.25 = $48.25 per check.
Passing wages (and in SF health care) onto me feels about as petty as an attorney adding “$5 for pens” into a $4000 invoice. I’m still sore about that 3 years later.
For example, a white woman with blonde hair and large breasts will, all things being equal, make more in tips than anyone else working in the same establishment[0].
Paying $25 for that burger is fine if that is the advertised price. Everyone in the service industry deserves to be paid an equal wage for equal quality of work. Despite all intentions, tipping ensures this is not the case. That alone is enough to justify abolishing tipping as a form of primary compensation.
0. https://static.secure.website/wscfus/5261551/uploads/ServerA...
We have bar and restaurants, too. People working there have kids, mortgage. I would even say that it’s more a “real” job than in the US.
“Real”, in the sense that, in the US, I’ve seen friends in their 40’s switching industry because they want to have kids. While for instance in France their is actual school you go to before become a waiter in the higher end places. Those are jobs were you are well compensated and that you can expect to keep for a while ( with a promotion path )
Being 100% honest, I was of the opinion that because of tipping in America, waiters/waitresses stand a chance to make $150-$300+ whereas in Europe, you probably make less than that.
You checked for France on the statistical bureau website ( INSEE )
Average Net salary is 1558 euros / month, calculated from 196k salaries. Figures are from 2021.
With that you get unemployment, retirement and healthcare. It can be considered "play money" if you are sorta careless.
Not great, but you can definitely lives on that and find lodging. ( In Paris that will be a flatshare )
The ideal all consumers should be pursuing for all forms of financial transaction is that all advertised prices are the out-the-door ceiling. Fees, taxes, surcharges, tips, etc may not be added, though discounts are ok. Tipping should not even be an option, though we've seen a lot of evidence that a visible percentage would much prefer to lord their power to tip over the heads of their servers, and get very upset when that's taken away. So this is a hard position to reach from where we are, even though it's clearly better than the current state.
But we don't live in that world. In the current world, many things are advertised at prices lower than are actually sustainable. And no, I'm not talking about loss-leaders. I mean the entire menu at a restaurant, for instance. If that is all their income, they can't afford to pay servers enough to be livable. So they underpay servers, and expect tips to sort of paper over the gap. And because that gap exists, I recognize tipping as sadly necessary, even though it is forbidden in my ideal world.
I don't like it, but of the options I have available when I choose to eat out, it's the least bad.
That's the law in Australia. We have a whole government department (https://www.accc.gov.au/) dedicated to defending consumers against companies, and they do pretty well at it.
Can I also recommend the Australian Electoral Commission (https://www.aec.gov.au) who are available for private events and functions as well as larger elections if you think you might have trouble running it yourself.
Restaurant prices generally ran behind inflation; that's why tipping percentages increased.
Of course, when he was between serving jobs, he was working at a doggy day care for $12 an hour.
European here, from Italy, we don't tip much and it's not mandatory.
We do at dinner if it has been a long dinner usually as a way to show appreciation, but the tip is usually a modest amount (in the 5-10 euros ballpark for a table)
The argument for tipping here is that it is tax free money.
That's why here restaurants love American tourists and their very generous tips.
That's all there is to it.
The point of sale system can be shamed or regulated, or have codes for the merchant type that dictates whether they have the option of doing a compulsory tipping screen
The payment processor can dictate all or cut them off, payment processor can also be regulated from on high
We can also make viral articles shaming a random shop for their behavior. This is not normal now but we can make it so.
We can realistically address the conflict of interest from service workers wanting more tips that are shaming consumers for not tipping a certain amount. We pretend that because they’re closer to the environment then their thoughts should be more privileged, when it is so convenient to just gamble on getting more tips that its a conflict of interest.
And of course the crazier thought of raising wages, but we should stick to things we can control
Let's assume that people are actually tipping "people of color" worse. Do you think getting rid of tipping is somehow fixing this perceived racism? If so, why do you believe you can legislate a personality trait out of people?
No you don't. If tipped wages are more discriminatory you can ban them. Even if no racism is involved, somehow! And that's not trying to legislate a personality trait.
You're talking about taking jobs and money from a specific group of people so you can implement your ideological beliefs that have zero data to back them up.
You haven't provided any proof this sort of racial tipping exists but you've certainly provided plenty of proof of wanting implement your own racist ideas to redistribute money from a very specific skin color, while claiming other skin colors are helpless victims.
I didn't say people were racist, I gave a link supporting the idea that tipping is harmful.
See where I said "Even if no racism is involved, somehow!"
Even if a lot of people.. look it doesn't matter for this topic.
> You're talking about taking jobs and money from a specific group of people so you can implement your ideological beliefs that have zero data to back them up.
Mostly I want to get rid of the idea of a tipped minimum, and fix some of the other issues around minimum wage. I don't want to take any jobs away.
> You haven't provided any proof this sort of racial tipping exists but you've certainly provided plenty of proof of wanting implement your own racist ideas to redistribute money from a very specific skin color, while claiming other skin colors are helpless victims.
You're reading a lot of things in my posts that aren't there. I just want all the waiters to get a good paycheck and make tips exceptional. "Pay everyone in the same job at the same tier the same amount" is not redistribution.
Edit: to give you credit, I think that may have been your point. I lost track of context in the thread.
But you can require that all posted prices include all taxes, fees, and expected gratuities; AND that the price on the bill include all taxes, fees, and expected gratuities.
Basically, just push the tip into the noise and require that the posted price be the sum of all the hidden fees.
I would say tipping is decreasing in the UK. It's pretty normal not to tip in restaurants now because the pandemic changed payment methods.
Before 10% was the standard (only if you pay after eating though).
I get this sounds like a random aside, but tipping is something that religious communities at least try to connect to people with (which surprisingly includes patrons who leave $0 tip and a "here's a tip, your pathway to %afterlife%" business card). If there was a push to make it not the social norm, I could see churches crusading to keep it a part of our culture forever.
Maybe it'd be OK to outlaw it.
So as a counter to that reputation pastors began to admonish folks to tip well, to show them the love of Jesus as 20%.
Under that system:
- You can still have tipping with only a trivial amount of extra work.
- There would then be common knowledge -- in the technical sense [1] -- across all parties, leading to expectation alignment.
- There would be a clear mechanism for competition over expected tipping levels, letting people know they're getting into at each place.
I expect that such a system would to more establishments preferring the no-tip option, but even if not, it would remove the worst parts of the tipping system.
[1] i.e. where everyone knows the same things, and everyone knows everyone's else's level of knowledge about those things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)
The only reason it starts to breakdown is because there are really cheap people out there who will skimp on the tip and then complain when waiters treat them like shit.
If you are a regular at a place and you tip well, they'll spoil you.
Tipping predates minimum wage laws. (indeed the first laws to ban tipping in the US also predate minimum wage laws, but it clearly didn't stick)
I've gotten bad service while traveling in the US - how can I not tip? Someone tell me, please, because when I'm paying it's usually before I even get the service and I'm already supposed to pre-pay a 20 percent tip or some such from a checkout prompt that doesn't always let me opt out.
Or when it does let me opt out, it's in plain view of the staff, of course; in a "go ahead and hit 0%, take a chance on whether we'll shit in your food" kind of way.
This seems nuts to me - if the service is truly atrocious, to the point where it’s questionable whether the service I asked for was delivered at all, I’m going to refuse to pay at all.
If it’s run of the mill atrocious service and I want to prove a point via tipping, I’ll tip $0.01.
Are we to pretend all supermarket checkout clerks do an equally good job? No, but we don't tip them. They get paid a wage which is bundled into the price of every item I buy at the store. Same as every other cost of business like their insurance, electric bill, etc.
Part of the issue is a seemingly ingrained concept of "fairness" between when we do the same job we want the same reward (a grape not a cucumber stupid researcher!) ... And combine that with the propensity to overestimate our own contributions and underestimate the difficulty of what others do.. Suddenly even rationally fair "feels" unfair.
You ought to try sitting down in a restaurant in the EU. They do the bare minimum to serve you.
Tying a possible bonus to the way you act in customer service facing role has a lot of benefits.
"In addition it gets rid of any bias in wages (more attractive people more attractive people" Why are higher wages for a subjectively attractive person a bad thing... Are they not driving better business? Do you think it's somehow more altruistic to provide subjectively uglier individuals the same wage? Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait. Your point is moot anyway, in a capitalistic society people can just choose to visit another business where the staff has the traits they desire.
I've not had a pleasant experience in most other western nations. I won't say it was bad but it's nowhere near as efficient and you have to really get waiters attention before they'll do anything.
In my personal experience, it makes it worse. They annoy me with attempts to be ingratiating. They fish for tips with forms and devices which creates awkward and unpleasant situations, especially if I didn't like the service. There is nothing pleasant for me about having someone watching me and trying to guess when I want something. I know when I want something and I am perfectly capable of telling them when that moment comes.
> You ought to try sitting down in a restaurant in the EU. They do the bare minimum to serve you.
I live in the EU and I find the service at restaurants a hundred times better here. Nobody is pestering me, nobody is insulting both of us by pretending to be my new best friend. They stay out of my way until I ask for something.
If I wanted to ask for something I'd stay home, they're called waiters and not for a reason. There's no "pretending to be a friend" going on, it's just called being cordial.
Your point seems to be that there is no inherent moral good in distributing resources equally among people as opposed to allowing inequality to naturally emerge and/or optimizing for total value across all people. I don't necessarily disagree: it is hard to argue from first principles that each individual should be given the same weight, as opposed to any other arbitrary system like giving each family the same weight, or taking intelligence into account. However, it is also wrong to pretend that there isn't significant precedent in society for assigning each individual equal moral weight — for example, by allowing everyone an equal vote in elections, which has clearly been a useful practice. And I consider it obvious that "Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait" isn't something that would be widely agreed upon.
The ONLY way that is possible is to bring down the higher achieving people to the lowest common denominator. You cannot bring people UP past a certain level.
"And I consider it obvious that "Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait" isn't something that would be widely agreed upon." -
This completely case dependent there are careers where intelligence is sought and there are careers where attractiveness may be advantageous. The only reason this is "obvious" to you is because you've been tainted by recent modern thought that believes there's no value in physical attractiveness.The fact your bias towards certain physical traits is fine while other physical traits are off limits should tell you something about the cognitive dissonance of this though pattern. Maybe you ought to ask yourself why it's ok to be biased against physical attractiveness but not physical skin color????
So no, tips do not promote a better customer experience.
I agree it's possible to have a good custom experience without tipping but I do not agree that they don't promote better customer experience. Bonuses, tipping etc. are pretty powerful way of enticing people to be better at their jobs.
But at least in Canada, the waiter brings a wireless point-of-sale machine to the table for you to pay. Whereas in American, they take your credit card all the way to the cash register (unsafe!), bring the receipt to your table, make you write the tip and total on the receipt, and collect the receipt.
And the pandemic has shifted things and now everybody's got tip options on the takeout touchpad... I'm iffy on that. It was one thing when everything was shut down and so takeout was a fallback for restaurants with a lot of staff, but that's over.
AIUI, French restaurant menus still say "service compris" (service included).
And, FWIW, the top hit about this when I searched for articles on this in French is an article where the hotel-industry association is thinking about getting tipping reintroduced... (https://www.ouest-france.fr/europe/france/restauration-bient...)
For delivery, tip 10-20% on the subtotal based on the size of the order and the service/delivery time (and perhaps your relationship with the deliverer or business, in cases where they have a dedicated pool). Often these people live off tips and their wage doesn’t even cover gas/maintenance on their own vehicles.
Dining in? Outside of very bad service, I’ll tip 18-20% of the subtotal. Service industry is hard and there’s a lot going on. Even with a bad experience, sometimes it’s not your waitstaff’s fault and they’re trying to roll with it themselves.
Take out/coffee/etc: tip 10-15% based on your relationship to the business and price. If I’m going to a pricier coffee place, I may tip less because I do have a upper limit on what I’ll tip for anything paltry (a buck or two for a latte and a muffin).
Moving guys/tradesmen: May slip em a ten if the job was a pain or they were real punctual.
Then they'd be incentivized to show the tip screen by default, and maybe jack up the default amount to 20-25%.
Instead, I feel like the only ethical option available to me is to preferentially frequent no-tip restaurants. Unfortunately there aren't too many of those and although I hate the tip system, quality of food is usually more important except at the margins.
It seems like the sort of thing where maybe there's a regulatory answer, but I'm hard-pressed to think of one. California already takes the reasonable step of mandating minimum wage before tips, but that doesn't seem to remove the tip expectation.
It's the request for a tip at practically every cafe or donut shop, where a person is simply pouring drip coffee or placing an item in a bag, for to-go/carry out, which gets to me. Or the expectation to tip for a re-fill of a coffee mug, at a cafe. It's not service-- it's dispensing a product.
I am starting to wonder how much baristas make, for example, if it's $10-$15 per hour, plus 15 customers per hour (x$1-$2 tip each)... that's potentially $50-60k+ per year. Which is more than many teachers and healthcare workers make-- people with degrees, training, and who provide a skilled, emotionally-involved service.
They have the ability to choose another job (250k new jobs are created each month!) and they have the ability to negotiate/complain to their manager.
Just dont be surprised when the coffee shop starts to charge $10 for a drip. 50c of beans, 50c of hot water and $8 labor.
It sucks, for sure. We do not have any no-tip restaurants in my area. But price transparency is something that is very important to me and I will stand by my principles on that matter. And since not tipping a person you are face to face with carries a social weight that renders such a move untenable I just don't go out for food at places that ask for tips in any capacity. I'm sure there's an argument one could make about my choice being harmful for tip-heavy employees that use that money to live on. But I have never chosen to subsidize businesses whose practices I don't agree with and tipping has hit a point where it has fallen squarely into that category. I'd like to think if more people thought like me, the market for tipping restaurants would begin to shrivel, but I have little reason to think such a thing will happen in my area at least.
Does this mean maybe we have a glut of restaurants operating in a preferential-to-the-business economic environment, and some might not survive such a change, maybe yeah. Does it mean those employees will have to look for work in a changed market if that does happen, yes. But I want everyone who works to be paid a fair, predictable, agreeable wage for the work they do and continuing to support places that are (I feel) diametrically opposed to that principle does not work towards that goal.
So cast iron chicken and rice pilaf at home it is!
It's built into the price (bonus points if they add sales tax as well), so you just pay what it says on the menu, and the servers stay happy.
Or you can just pay a good hourly wage, but no one really seems interested in making that happen.
I do give generously to homeless though.
I see no benefit from the tipping, and the staff are not thankful nor do they seem to notice. and in most cases they do not do anything at all to benefit the tips..