Fuck that. Tipping culture is ridiculous as it is. No way in hell someone deserves a tip showing you the capabilities of an iphone. Especially not with the current POS systems that ask for a minimum of 20%.
Yeah isn't it literally your basic minimum job requirement to be showing people the capabilities of an iphone?
You want me to buy your product, YOU show me why I should want it.
Apple doesn't include manuals for their devices like the old days. They are left to be discovered by users on their own. Apple should be the one paying for this 'service' work because they don't include manuals.
(Obviously you have to tip in restaurants to not be a monster, but everywhere else just don’t do it. And if you want to not tip waiters… the world needs monsters sometimes.)
No, it's not like that. The institution of tipping waitresses is baked into the minimum wage laws for waitresses, that's why you're a monster if you refuse to tip them. In all other circumstances it's considered optional in exchange for particularly good service (barbers, taxi drivers). Cashiers working behind a counter get at least the normal minimum wage. It is not considered socially obligatory to tip them. And tipping salesmen is unheard of, the social convention is that salesmen get commissions from their employer, not tips from the customers.
Tipping is only considered socially obligatory for waitresses and this hasn't changed.
Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington all have the same minimum wage for both tipped and non-tipped employees. Unsurprisingly, people see you as no less of a monster if you don't tip there.
But that's not really true. Across Canada and the US there is intense social pressure - especially with the person taking the transaction watching one tip. I fell for this for a long time, but gave up after the local corner stores all started adding tips. You can see the annoyed looks, even though - for some I asked if they even see the tips and was told no - it goes to the company.
After that I gave up and no longer tip. I also, interestingly, as a side effect, just stopped eating out.
I saw that the feds are trying to pass a junk fees law (primarily targeted at resort fees and the like). I fully support this legislation as well.
IMHO - people (companies/orgs) have become so greedy of recent, its interesting.
That's just... not intense social pressure. That's the least intense social pressure I can imagine.
Refusing to tip a waitress will very likely subject you to intense social pressure; your own friends and family will likely berate you for it on the spot. They'll tell you that you're an asshole and may refuse to eat with you in the future if you establish a pattern of refusing to tip waitresses. The waitress might even dox you on social media for it, and in the past before social media, they might chase you into the parking lot to loudly tell you that you're an asshole taking food from their children's mouths. The manager might chase you down to ask if something was wrong with the service, or tell you that you aren't welcome back.
Refusing to leave money in a tip jar is nothing like that, nobody says a thing. The most you'll ever get is a surly look from the person behind the counter and in all likelihood their poor attitude that day had nothing to do with you. They do work in retail after all, they have a hundred other reasons to be in a bad mood that have nothing to do with you. Follow the golden rule and be courteous to them, but don't let them walk all over you. If they glare at you, just take it in stride; they don't have American culture or customs on their side. Waitresses do.
> the current POS systems that ask for a minimum of 20%.
My rule is to only ever tip with cash and only then directly into the hands of the worker. Tipping through a computer system is a scam, the business owner almost certainly takes most of it. If you're paying with a credit card, X out the tip field and leave cash instead.
And of course, never tip in cases where it isn't customary to tip. Waitresses, bartenders, barbers and taxi drivers. That's about it. Tipping into tip jars is never customary, don't do it. Never tip at a starbucks or a business where you get your own food at the counter. And you sure as hell should never tip a salesman, these Apple store workers have lost the plot.
Do we know if there serious about this? I'd hope the union negotiators would realize there was likely to be a backlash to this and put out this request as a bargaining point they won't fight very hard for.
It's so far beyond the pale, I earnestly believe they've likely been set up to look ridiculous. They've probably been fed this horrible idea by Apple, or a covert union buster (Pinkertons, etc) hired by Apple. To ask for tips makes the union look completely unreasonable and out of touch, which is good for Apple.
If they were doing as you say, asking for something they're unlikely to get as a negotiation tactic, they should have asked for commissions. Salesmen getting commissions would be perceived as completely reasonable. It degrade the customer experience by making the salesmen pushier, but commission for salesmen is totally conventional while tips for salesmen is pants-on-head dumb and bizarre.
> But this tipping proposal is so antithetical to Apple’s customer-first retail experience that it feels like a joke, or that the union negotiators have never even been in an Apple Store.
Aggressive asking for tipping will drive customers away and the shop can be closed. The shop workers aren’t helping themselves with such measures in the time of online shopping.
This is why unions are must today. Helping workers earn a little bit more in these uncertain times. Kudos to them for pointing out such an obvious source of additional income.
>In addition to an overall raise, representatives from the store are asking Apple for higher pay over a larger slate of holidays, including the day after Thanksgiving. The union is also seeking to expand vacation pay and available time off based on years of service. And it wants to extend paid bereavement leave from 10 days per occurrence to a maximum of 45 days a year and for the policy to include pets and close friends.
45 days a year for pet bereavement? If it includes goldfish, I'm in!
Americans love pets, to the point of not getting evacuated from Hurricane Katrina when ordered to leave their pets behind. This trend has only compounded in recent decades, with the mainstreaming of emotional support animals and the like. So if bereavement can apply to non-kin friends, pets are arguably not a far stretch behind. Not to mention pets are often a substitue for children, as can be seen in cities like San Francisco.
That's because complaints about tips are bald-faced lies. Tipped employees make much more with tips than they would otherwise, doubly so because cash tips are chronically unreported to the IRS. Income numbers are skewed across the board because the US's service industry participates in blatant tax evasion.
I think tipping is an archaic Americanism that should be replaced by living wages or family wages, as much as anyone. But, oh no, not tax irregularities from service workers.
My impression is that for whatever wage level is provided, there will still be a vocal minority (majority?) that will demand tipping as a practice. There is a strong presumption to see it as a free boost to wages rather than just substituting an upfront price for an after-service fee.
Oh I completely understand why they like tips. I have a feeling all of these new IRS agents are going to crack down on it though. It has to be pretty easy to track now that most tipping happens digitally via the POS system.
The marginal cost of putting a tipping screen in the payment flow is close to zero. If one person tips for the whole year, it's pure profit.
Yes, it might annoy customers, but I have a hard time buying the idea that people will go buy a Samsung phone because Apple stores ask for a tip.
I've seen online checkout pages for e-commerce stores asking for tips now. Not even for custom products or commissioned art or anything but just straight-up factory made products like motorcycle parts and electronic goods.
There are always marginal customers who are barely hanging on, and already angry with Apple for whatever reason, and seeing a tip screen may finally throw them over the edge. Imagine an example where someone came in for a warranty repair, got told it had some very minor water damage, and so it was not covered, and now has to pay $499 for a repair they feel should have been free (let's assume the water "damage" has nothing to do with the issue) and the payment screen for the repair says "add a tip?" I could see that person never buying a new iPhone, or at least never stepping foot in that store again.
While the scenario you’ve outlined can- certainly happen, I think some studies have to be carried out to really determine tipping as the final insult to tip irate customers over the line into lost business.
Personally I don’t regard it as such a severe affront. To me, modern payment flows are such a bloated mess of screens that I’m half surprised Apple Stores don’t already have a tipping screens. If it wasn’t tipping, it’d be an appeal to donate to the St. Jude’s Children Hospital or to the Ronald McDonald fund. When supermarkets and fast food joints have all of these extra payment screens, a tipping screen at an electronics retailer doesn’t trigger me any more intensely.
Is this right? No. But it’s the state of payments, and it’s easy enough to tune out. Just another way how every vendor is trying to squeeze every last drop from consumers.
The marginal benefit of putting a tipping screen in the payment flow is close to zero. If one person during the whole year avoids the creepy store that demands tips, it's pure loss.
> 45 days a year for pet bereavement? If it includes goldfish, I'm in!
This is a bad read of this.
While 45 days is ... huge, the inclusion of pets and friends is almost certainly a result of companies who refuse to let anyone grieve when their friend dies.
As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.
If some exceptional edge case comes where someone abuses the system for goldfish, that's worth the cost if I can grieve when my dog of 7 years or my best friend of 25 dies.
Sorry for your losses. On the other hand, if my employer offered 45 days of paid time off under certain conditions, I'd do my best to maximize that benefit.
There's an argument on either side - many companies/employers offer 6 months paid parental leave after a child is born (for both parents), but I haven't seen many people maximizing that benefit by having a child every 12 months.
lmao (honestly) at the humorous implication that buying a goldfish per year and mourning its demise for 9 weeks in cancun is comparable in effort or commitment to birthing and raising a child.
If you worked for a company that actively treated you well, I imagine, in general, you'd want to treat them well in return and wouldn't exploit their kindness beyond need.
Such companies are few and far between, though. Very few. Very far between.
>As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.
The judgement is not that the others are "not worth mourning", but rather that it's not worth having an employee who is going to spend a sufficiently substantial fraction of their overall tenure on bereavement leave, and at some point you have to tell them to either work or quit. Which is of course trivially true, eg. the goldfish case.
This gives me the vibes of a list of requests made by a committee with feel good rules where all suggestions are valid and you don't get what you don't ask for.
I am shocked a labor union is okay with tipping as a mechanism of compensation. Its antithetical to their own goals usually, let alone Apple is not going to take kind to this.
Tipping is out of control as it is, at least in the US. Where does it stop I have to wonder.
Lets just keep the fight about fair wages, benefits and working conditions first and foremost. This feels like its waiting for public backlash
The person you are replying to said neither of these things. Unions, like most human institutions, have their pros and cons. They generally try to pursue the interests of their members, but their members are human and as humans, sometimes things go sideways or ultimately are self-destructive.
Unions on balance do generally improve the lives of their members, but only an idiot would unconditionally approve of everything they do.
Why are you shocked? Starbucks employees have formed unions and tipping is still allowed.
Wanting tipping is a signal that pay is not high enough - you see it here, with the reactions. A deeper look might reveal they could be paid more. Just like Starbucks employees.
That’s a bad read. Wanting tips is a sign that they want more money, not that they’re not being paid enough.
I knew a tattoo artist that owned his own shop and made well over six digits in a town where the average income is barely 30k and he would bitch all the time about “getting stiffed” on tips whenever he did tattoos.
>I am shocked a labor union is okay with tipping as a mechanism of compensation. Its antithetical to their own goals usually, let alone Apple is not going to take kind to this.
I am utterly unshocked, as most service workers seem to view tipping culture as providing a free boost to wages - and if so, why should they not fight for this via a union?
Like a lot of people, I waited tables for a few years in my youth and also did pizza delivery and was paid well under minimum wage if I excluded my tips. Tips largely shift salary burden from the employer to more directly from the customer, who like an old lord, may decide whether and how much he wants to pay the peasants serving him.
I always tip very well because I empathize with and appreciate the services provided by people at this layer of the economy. However, I hate it. I found it demeaning that my salary as a waiter was dependent on fluffing up the customer and found it gross at best how compelled the girls were to flirt because of how much it inflated their tips. As a customer it adds a psychic burden--decisions suck. Now I have to do math and decide my level of generosity. Do I really need to tip Starbucks for the brewed coffee I just ordered? And so on.
I don't like this additional friction with every human interaction I have that involves commerce.
Organizing against a company like Apple is pretty much exclusively about how you can leverage media attention to get concessions. Apple has no problem locking you out and replacing, except for the negative media & consequential consumer impact.
So it seems like it would make sense to ask for things that the customer would actually like/be okay with, like basic higher pay, some sort of seniority structure maybe, etc.
Agreed, but it does not make sense to add in absurd/burner requests and then attract all kinds of bad PR for your previously serious negotiating effort.
Title is clickbait, which this entire thread has fallen for. Tipping is mentioned in two paragraphs out of an entire article worth of eminently reasonable requests and terms. Who knows what the actual context is. Maybe this was a half-hearted idea that was tossed into a long list. Bloomberg just chose to zero in on it as a title to make the union seem deranged.
I'm not so sure, some of these things seem unreasonable:
>And it wants to extend paid bereavement leave from 10 days per occurrence to a maximum of 45 days a year and for the policy to include pets and close friends.
>Tipping
>Finally, the union is asking Apple to pay $1 an hour more to employees who become first-aid certified, and to provide as many as 34 weeks of severance pay in the event of a layoff.
I get the idea of asking for everything as a starting point, but some of these are just wow.
First aid certification is worth something. Not sure it's worth $2000/year, given that a customer who suffered a medical episode in an Apple store would probably end up suing Apple anyway, but it does add value. It's also something the union could organize as a quid pro quo. 34 weeks of severance seems wildly optimistic though.
Apple paying for your first aid certification (even paying more than it costs to get it) would seem reasonable; having the ability to have employees who are paid more for it would open them to amusing liability, I'd assume (imagine someone has an incident and nobody currently in the building is one of these power-employees, or one attempts first aid and something occurs).
Title is clickbait, which this entire thread has fallen for. Tipping is mentioned in two paragraphs out of an entire article worth of eminently reasonable requests and terms. Who knows what the actual context is. Maybe this was a half-hearted idea that was tossed into a long list. Bloomberg just chose to zero in on it as a title to make the union seem deranged.
> The workers’ negotiators also want Apple to adopt a tipping system, letting patrons offer gratuities in increments of 3%, 5% or a custom amount for in-store credit-card transactions.
> “This will allow thankful patrons the ability to express gratitude for a job well done without any obligations,” the union wrote Apple. “All monies collected through this manner would be dispersed to members of the bargaining unit biweekly based on any hours worked.”
That’s it. The entirety of the rest of the article is not focused on tipping.
Why is tipping needed for a union negotiated salary?
Ideally we need to move away from tipping. It’s like a hidden tax everyone needs to pay. They’re supposed to be union so they can negotiate a fair wage. I do not like this descent into the tipping space.
It’s fine to be so vehemently opposed to it on principle, but thanks to technologies like Square, Clover, etc., tipping is easier than ever. It has become a completely mainstream aspect of the shopping experience. Blame it on those payment providers.
So in practice, building a tipping screen into the payment system is as seamless as Apple Pay and for most customers will not amount to anything more than perhaps a moment of self-doubt or embarrassment as they tap “Other amount > 0” before going to the next screen of the flow.
The anger in this thread does not match the reality of what will actually happen if this was to come to pass, which it probably won’t anyway.
I'm opposed to tipping on principle. I understand it when workers are not organized and have no recourse to fair wage but have to turn to tips. I cannot understand it for a union shop. Negotiate a fair wage and say no to tipping dark patterns in society. I really don't care "how technologically easy" it is. That is just exacerbating the problem.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I’m just saying the tech has enabled it to be ubiquitous. And when that happens, you’re going to get bloat all over the payment process- if it’s not tipping screens, it’s supermarket POS systems asking you to donate to random charities. At some point you need to take it as less of a moral social affront and just screen it out.
If the union wants to be taken seriously, then it needs to make serious proposals.
The rest of the proposal is dog-bites-man, which isn't really news. This is so far out in left field that of course it is news. It may be a small piece of the proposal, and perhaps even a negotiating tactic, but it makes the union look unreasonable and impossibly out of touch.
It’s one minor point. I think HN’s hatred of tipping culture has been triggered and all of this is a disproportionate response about a point that will likely get dropped in the first round of negotiations.
I don't think it is just hatred of tipping culture--although that is there too--but also a general skepticism about unions. Unions have a pretty severe credibility problem among significant pieces of the HN crowd, and this proposal is so absurd that it makes the problem worse.
I wonder if the tipping system is envisioned for Genius Bar work, which is more like a specialist consulting service rather than purchasing merchandise.
It is their job. They are not private consultants. Like others have said, if the pay is too low, they should focus on that. Genius bar service is a free perk for customers. There is no payment for most of those interactions so adding a tip would create a whole new payment flow and make the whole experience much less customer centric. It would be a serious detriment to the Apple Store experience for customers. They must know there is zero chance Apple would agree to this, so it must be a toss-in as something the negotiators can 'give up' in a fake show of good faith.
As I said elsewhere, I'm fully in favor of them having a union and negotiating reasonable things. This particular idea is BS and whoever came up with it should be embarrassed.
I'm guessing that the tips is more a bargaining tactic than a real ask. They're also asking for 45 paid days off for "bereavement leave" including for the death of a close friend or pet. 45 days of paid leave would be over 2 months off. It seems unlikely that a company would consider 2 months paid leave for the death of a pet. Imagine employees buying goldfish.
That's no excuse. 'No harm in asking' BS requests are antithetical to serious negotiation. It doesn't matter what side it comes from. This isn't just a union v corporation thing, it shows up in all sorts of contexts like lowballers on Craigslist or bid sniping on Ebay. Almost invariably it's simple greed.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threador you? the potential customer paying with a tip to the store's employee??
(Obviously you have to tip in restaurants to not be a monster, but everywhere else just don’t do it. And if you want to not tip waiters… the world needs monsters sometimes.)
Tipping is only considered socially obligatory for waitresses and this hasn't changed.
https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_tipsandgratuities.htm (which is returning NXDOMAIN right now for some reason)
The Federal DOL page says minimum wage for tipped workers in CA is currently $15.50.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
After that I gave up and no longer tip. I also, interestingly, as a side effect, just stopped eating out.
I saw that the feds are trying to pass a junk fees law (primarily targeted at resort fees and the like). I fully support this legislation as well.
IMHO - people (companies/orgs) have become so greedy of recent, its interesting.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-urges-states-jo...
That's just... not intense social pressure. That's the least intense social pressure I can imagine.
Refusing to tip a waitress will very likely subject you to intense social pressure; your own friends and family will likely berate you for it on the spot. They'll tell you that you're an asshole and may refuse to eat with you in the future if you establish a pattern of refusing to tip waitresses. The waitress might even dox you on social media for it, and in the past before social media, they might chase you into the parking lot to loudly tell you that you're an asshole taking food from their children's mouths. The manager might chase you down to ask if something was wrong with the service, or tell you that you aren't welcome back.
Refusing to leave money in a tip jar is nothing like that, nobody says a thing. The most you'll ever get is a surly look from the person behind the counter and in all likelihood their poor attitude that day had nothing to do with you. They do work in retail after all, they have a hundred other reasons to be in a bad mood that have nothing to do with you. Follow the golden rule and be courteous to them, but don't let them walk all over you. If they glare at you, just take it in stride; they don't have American culture or customs on their side. Waitresses do.
My rule is to only ever tip with cash and only then directly into the hands of the worker. Tipping through a computer system is a scam, the business owner almost certainly takes most of it. If you're paying with a credit card, X out the tip field and leave cash instead.
And of course, never tip in cases where it isn't customary to tip. Waitresses, bartenders, barbers and taxi drivers. That's about it. Tipping into tip jars is never customary, don't do it. Never tip at a starbucks or a business where you get your own food at the counter. And you sure as hell should never tip a salesman, these Apple store workers have lost the plot.
If they were doing as you say, asking for something they're unlikely to get as a negotiation tactic, they should have asked for commissions. Salesmen getting commissions would be perceived as completely reasonable. It degrade the customer experience by making the salesmen pushier, but commission for salesmen is totally conventional while tips for salesmen is pants-on-head dumb and bizarre.
> But this tipping proposal is so antithetical to Apple’s customer-first retail experience that it feels like a joke, or that the union negotiators have never even been in an Apple Store.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/05/04/apple-store-mar...
"They might as well ask for employees to be allowed to vape while working."
Thank you for your understanding.
https://archive.ph/v1tpo
>In addition to an overall raise, representatives from the store are asking Apple for higher pay over a larger slate of holidays, including the day after Thanksgiving. The union is also seeking to expand vacation pay and available time off based on years of service. And it wants to extend paid bereavement leave from 10 days per occurrence to a maximum of 45 days a year and for the policy to include pets and close friends.
45 days a year for pet bereavement? If it includes goldfish, I'm in!
Every time this comes up on Reddit people in the food service industry say they do not want to get rid of tips.
Tax evasion*
Taxes are already progressive. You don't get to decide what you pay or don't pay, it's already incredibly little.
Yes, it might annoy customers, but I have a hard time buying the idea that people will go buy a Samsung phone because Apple stores ask for a tip.
I've seen online checkout pages for e-commerce stores asking for tips now. Not even for custom products or commissioned art or anything but just straight-up factory made products like motorcycle parts and electronic goods.
Personally I don’t regard it as such a severe affront. To me, modern payment flows are such a bloated mess of screens that I’m half surprised Apple Stores don’t already have a tipping screens. If it wasn’t tipping, it’d be an appeal to donate to the St. Jude’s Children Hospital or to the Ronald McDonald fund. When supermarkets and fast food joints have all of these extra payment screens, a tipping screen at an electronics retailer doesn’t trigger me any more intensely.
Is this right? No. But it’s the state of payments, and it’s easy enough to tune out. Just another way how every vendor is trying to squeeze every last drop from consumers.
(iphones can be purchased online, btw)
This is a bad read of this.
While 45 days is ... huge, the inclusion of pets and friends is almost certainly a result of companies who refuse to let anyone grieve when their friend dies.
As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.
If some exceptional edge case comes where someone abuses the system for goldfish, that's worth the cost if I can grieve when my dog of 7 years or my best friend of 25 dies.
Such companies are few and far between, though. Very few. Very far between.
The judgement is not that the others are "not worth mourning", but rather that it's not worth having an employee who is going to spend a sufficiently substantial fraction of their overall tenure on bereavement leave, and at some point you have to tell them to either work or quit. Which is of course trivially true, eg. the goldfish case.
Tipping is out of control as it is, at least in the US. Where does it stop I have to wonder.
Lets just keep the fight about fair wages, benefits and working conditions first and foremost. This feels like its waiting for public backlash
Unions on balance do generally improve the lives of their members, but only an idiot would unconditionally approve of everything they do.
Wanting tipping is a signal that pay is not high enough - you see it here, with the reactions. A deeper look might reveal they could be paid more. Just like Starbucks employees.
I knew a tattoo artist that owned his own shop and made well over six digits in a town where the average income is barely 30k and he would bitch all the time about “getting stiffed” on tips whenever he did tattoos.
I am utterly unshocked, as most service workers seem to view tipping culture as providing a free boost to wages - and if so, why should they not fight for this via a union?
I always tip very well because I empathize with and appreciate the services provided by people at this layer of the economy. However, I hate it. I found it demeaning that my salary as a waiter was dependent on fluffing up the customer and found it gross at best how compelled the girls were to flirt because of how much it inflated their tips. As a customer it adds a psychic burden--decisions suck. Now I have to do math and decide my level of generosity. Do I really need to tip Starbucks for the brewed coffee I just ordered? And so on.
I don't like this additional friction with every human interaction I have that involves commerce.
So it seems like it would make sense to ask for things that the customer would actually like/be okay with, like basic higher pay, some sort of seniority structure maybe, etc.
>And it wants to extend paid bereavement leave from 10 days per occurrence to a maximum of 45 days a year and for the policy to include pets and close friends.
>Tipping
>Finally, the union is asking Apple to pay $1 an hour more to employees who become first-aid certified, and to provide as many as 34 weeks of severance pay in the event of a layoff.
I get the idea of asking for everything as a starting point, but some of these are just wow.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
> The workers’ negotiators also want Apple to adopt a tipping system, letting patrons offer gratuities in increments of 3%, 5% or a custom amount for in-store credit-card transactions.
> “This will allow thankful patrons the ability to express gratitude for a job well done without any obligations,” the union wrote Apple. “All monies collected through this manner would be dispersed to members of the bargaining unit biweekly based on any hours worked.”
That’s it. The entirety of the rest of the article is not focused on tipping.
Ideally we need to move away from tipping. It’s like a hidden tax everyone needs to pay. They’re supposed to be union so they can negotiate a fair wage. I do not like this descent into the tipping space.
So in practice, building a tipping screen into the payment system is as seamless as Apple Pay and for most customers will not amount to anything more than perhaps a moment of self-doubt or embarrassment as they tap “Other amount > 0” before going to the next screen of the flow.
The anger in this thread does not match the reality of what will actually happen if this was to come to pass, which it probably won’t anyway.
The rest of the proposal is dog-bites-man, which isn't really news. This is so far out in left field that of course it is news. It may be a small piece of the proposal, and perhaps even a negotiating tactic, but it makes the union look unreasonable and impossibly out of touch.
Tipping sounds like a bad idea for both the customer and the employees.