Perhaps you’ve noticed. We have reached a tipping point in the country over tipping.
To tip or not to tip has led to Shakespearean soliloquies by customers explaining why they refuse to tip for certain things.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers were grateful for those who seemingly risked their safety so we could get groceries, order dinner or anything that made our lives feel normal. A nice tip was the least we could do to show gratitude.
But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained; and customers are upset.
A new study from Pew Research shows most American adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.
Tipping needs to end. It’s the employer’s responsibility to make sure their employees are paid reasonably. Instead they pass that responsibility to the customer, ensuring tension between customers and staff.
Been in Japan this summer. A culture where tipping is non-existent. It was such a great experience to not worry about tipping. Instead you simply get outstanding service all the time and workers are simply paid a fair wage.
I used to be a consistent tipper.
Now I refused to tip at all.
I want workers to demand what they are worth to their employers, and I’m willing to be the asshole to help them accomplish that.
If we all stopped tipping, they’d have no choice but to turn the low wage issue around onto their employers. Then employers will have no choice but the pay their workers more, because otherwise they’d leave their industry for something else.
I don’t care if that means we, as consumers, have to pay a bit more for the food and service. I don’t care if that means that some businesses won’t survive. I want fairness all around
I refuse to tip anywhere new and expand this practice… But with things like restaurants or delivery? Without organization, all that does is further underpay people for their work and increase the chances of spitting in your food
I don’t think there’s a good answer, so I just do it much less
As far as delivery, if I’m charged a delivery fee “because reasons”, that’s the extra money that is my tip. If they’re asking for a tip as well, then no.
But instead of just not tipping, I just don’t get delivery, which I haven’t since the pandemic. Two or three experiences where I was trying to order and all the add on fees plus tips meant that dinner for one was going to cost over $45 and dinner for two, over $60 (when the entrees themselves were like $12-15) and basically that was enough to convince me not to do it.
At one place there was a delivery fee, a delivery service fee, a “take out packaging” fee, a service fee, a charge for ordering less than $25, a driver fee (which they were quick to tell me was not a tip)…and of course still asked for a tip, with the options being 20, 22, and 25%. Even choosing the lowest tip, my single meal was going to cost $46 for food that I could walk in, sit down, order, eat, tip, and leave…all for under $25.
Basically I just don’t get delivery now, and while I know that won’t break the system, maybe if enough people join me it will.
I used to think that way as well. But really, if spit in my food is being used as a threat to tip someone isn’t that extortion?
I’m polite, easy to serve, and even if the food is over-cooked and way too salty (as it was for the single taco I ordered last time I was out) I don’t ask for it to be returned. I’m a model customer, except I won’t tip.
I’m not doing it to be cheap, or out of spite, or in disrespect for the service personnel. I’m doing it to apply pressure so that things will change for the better
Think of it as passive guerilla tactics against a broken system
But what about the inherent coercion of capitalism? The fear of having your food spit in is a kind of coercion, but despite the system being broken, people who rely on tips need that money to survive
It’s a messy issue. If everyone refused to tip as a matter of course and they were paid a living wage I think things would be improved, but on a more immediate and direct level you’re reducing their pay
It’s a systematic problem… Maybe it can be handled individually, but that will create a lot of issues until the pressure of individuals can prompt systematic change
I would rather they felt the pressure to move on to different employment (if they can find it) than deal with the uncertainty and fickle nature of tippers
Where I live some restaurants have started requesting no tips because they pay their workers what they’re worth. If those are around when I go out, I go there. In their absence I don’t tip
Other countries of the world have it figured out, why can’t the U.S? We can be better. Sometimes you have to take a hard stand that feels counter-intuitive to the causes you believe in, in order to push things in the right direction. Do I feel bad about not tipping? Certainly. But I want change for the better and that requires applying pressure to the right places
There’s nothing wrong with tipping. I like the option to reward someone who made my experience great. Keyword there is option. Employers should pay employees a living wage, and if customers want to reward a great job with a few bucks on top of that, that should be allowed, even encouraged, but should never feel obligated to tip or shamed for not tipping.
You should feel ashamed for making someone act as your slave for minimum wage. The least you could do is pay them what they’re worth.
If you don’t like it, don’t force tipped workers to work for you. You have full control here. You could just cook your own damn food.
I said living wage, homie, not minimum wage. I think everyone should be paid at least a living wage, I just said tipping in general isn’t bad - it just shouldn’t be used to supplement poor wages.
Okay, but they don’t have a living wage, so you don’t get to have that option. Either tip or stop using those services.
What fucking conversation do you think you’re a part of? Because you’re clearly not reading my comments before responding to them.
You said customers should never feel obligated or ashamed. Never. I definitely feel ashamed of using these services and feel obligated to tip generously, and you should too.
You’re either intentionally being obtuse or are just plain stupid. Customers SHOULDNT be in a position of being ashamed. Absolutely required tipping should not be a thing. That’s the point.
So we’re in agreement then? Why are you lighting me up when we’re clearly on the same side? You need to learn to recognize an ally and save the anger for someone who deserves it, or you’ll find yourself without any allies.
Pretty sure you’re not responding to the employer
The customer creates the demand.
I went to a brewery recently where they swipe your card at the entrance and hand you a little black credit card type thing. You find your own seats, you go grab a glass, and you insert the card into a slot at a beer tap and pour your own beer, priced by the ounce. If you want food, you go to a kiosk, put your card in, and order food. When it’s ready, you go to the kitchen and pick it up to bring back to your seat. When you leave, you bring the card back up to the register and they charge you for all the food and drink. But then it asks you how much you wanna tip. Who the fuck am I tipping? I was my own host, my own bartender, my own waiter, my own bus boy. I haven’t seen an actual employee here except for some woman who swiped my credit card during a 5 second interaction.
I went to a brewery like this as well. Pretty annoying to have to carry your own food out from the kitchen because they weren’t optimizing for take out. They had heavy plates and bowls. Also, feel like rather than sitting and relaxing I’m forced to get up and run around looking for condiments and silverware and water cups. Can’t make it all in one trip. Don’t quite feel like a guest. Then at the end you’re expected to bus your own table.
And yes, they wanted a full 20% tip.
Wtf is the point of this. Even if they wanted to save on labor costs of wait staff and everything why not just use your own card instead of trading it for a temporary card.
It’s like this pizza place I went to recently. They had a little arcade so I went to put some quarters in and realized I had to go buy tokens at a machine first. It wasn’t Dave and Busters or anything, just a hole in the wall with a few games in a corner. I didn’t buy any tokens. Same with laundromats that now want you to buy tokens ahead of time.
There isn’t a single business anymore that isn’t trying to just blatantly scam you out of your money. They used to at least be more subtle about it.
Even if they wanted to save on labor costs of wait staff and everything why not just use your own card instead of trading it for a temporary card.
It’s the same on cruise ships. What it does is turn everything into a microtransaction so you’re all “oh, that’s not so much” at every decision point and therefore spending more than you would normally.
It doesn’t work on me, because oh holy shit the first time was a hard lesson. I went on a cruise back in the early 90s when this was a thing, and the balance I thought I had at the end of the cruise was nothing compared to the balance I did have. It took me months to pay off.
So now whenever a place pulls that card swap I end up tightening the sphincter and spending next to nothing. I won’t even go if I know they’re going to do that, because honestly it’s just no fun.
Give me a fucking menu with the correct fucking prices, pay your staff a fucking liveable wage, bill me at the end, I will pay and then tip my servers in cash because that’s the only way I can be sure MY waitstaff actually got any of it, and let’s call it a day.
You’re comparing weeks of spending to a couple hours at a bar though, I’m not sure if that’s really comparable.
There’s a couple other reasons that apply as well:
Because they get charged less by the bank for lower quantity of bigger transactions, instead of high number of small transactions. Also allows for people who have cash but no card to use the system.
You’re comparing weeks of spending
“Weeks,” lol. No. It was three days. And that was absolutely the point of it: to get you to spend more money on alcohol, spending that you would NOT have done if every drink had been a separate transaction.
Also, I think you’re confused on the card transaction part of things: the merchant back is only charging for credit card transactions, not for cash, and card transaction fees are a miniscule amount of each charge that varies per card issuer. 6-7% Mastercard and Visa, up to 14% American Express IIRC.
For example, 7% of $100 is still $7, whether that is charged ten times for $10 each, or once for $100.
The drinks are already priced accordingly, and of any establishment that sells alcohol, the alcohol already has the highest markup of anything else sold: most of that bottle is pure profit, making up for the rest of the house and whatever loss leaders they have to get people in.
Just buying just ONE extra overpriced drink more than wipes out an entire day of single merchant bank card fees for that customer. It’s not the huge gouge you think it is.
Also allows for people who have cash but no card to use the system.
And that’s where your theory falls apart. There is ZERO loss to merchants for cash paying customers; rather, the loss to merchants is for credit card paying customers. The merchant makes more keeping the cash payers OFF the credit card interchange altogether.
So there is literally ZERO benefit to a merchant to pull the cash customers onto the store card, unless it’s to get them to spend more.
Because they get charged less by the bank for lower quantity of bigger transactions, instead of high number of small transactions. Also allows for people who have cash but no card to use the system.
They don’t want to handle coins essentially. Going to the bank to exchange coins for cash every day is a huge part of the labor cost, so they make you use tokens that not only allows them to get rid of that but also essentially charge you seignorage.
Tipping was always stupid from day 1. I’ve spent most of my life being told I’m a moron for being against tipping culture and instead wanting fair wages and clear prices. Suddenly in recent years people realize how stupid tipping is simply cause it went to its logical extreme. People are morons.
Oh it’s far from it’s logical extreme.
If you are for fair wages and clear prices, that means you’re actively boycotting all restaurants right? You wouldn’t be a hypocrite to still patronize these establishments that exploit their workers and expect you to cover the difference right?
Every moron who doesn’t tip thinks this way. Nobody wants to tip, and hopefully someday it will be universally abolished, but until then, this is the way it is and people are just trying to supplement their minimum wages to make a livable income. So just tip them appropriately for the work they do for you already, you moron. I guarantee that as a non-tipper, you are on many service workers’ shit lists, so I guess if you’re not getting good service, it’s your own fault.
FYI, I don’t go to places that expect tipping. But thanks for presuming I don’t tip at all.
Also, as a previous tip-based service worker, I know all this already. But again, thanks for presuming only YOU know things.
Hurrdurr things are bad but I can’t fix them so I’ll blindly accept them. If you don’t, you’re a bad person.
Wow, this “etiquette expert” grift is more interesting than the article itself. https://www.valerieandcompany.com/
The Etiquette Expert… I’m an expert in these rules to this game I just made up!
I wanted to know if it’s ever appropriate to walk away and not leave a tip?
“No,” Sokolosky said.
She said people are trying to make a living.
“I always feel grateful, frankly, that I can tip,” she said.
No, I think this goes to show that the whole idea that people will cry if prices are raised to increase wages is a lie. People who buy products and services want the people who are tasked with delivering those products and services to make a good living. They are willing to pay more in the form of tips; they will be willing to pay more in the form of prices. Just give people raises already ffs.
(And that’s not to say that prices will actually increase all that much if wages increase because that’s also mostly a lie told to protect corporate profit margins.)
Prices would raise, because they always raise to however much people are willing to pay for it. As long as people are tipping, they’re voluntarily adding that instead of waiting for the market to correct for it. That said, you are also correct that prices are NOT the only place that businesses will go to protect their margin. If margins get too low to run a business due to labor, rents will have to decrease to keep businesses in the buildings. Similarly, if margins increase too much, landlords will increase the rent.
There’s a faulty assumption in here that I was to call attention to: it’s the it’s that capitalist companies are charging less than the market will bear.
100% of the time, prices are as high as they can possibly be. There’s no situation where a company says, “we could charge them $5, but let’s charge them $4”.
If we stopped tipping and people got raises, the balance would have to come from CEO salaries (etc) which is what they’re really saying when they say they can’t do it.
That said, for situations where tipping has become kind of expected but not required (eg baristas, who are paid minimum wage, but not eg waitstaff who are paid less than minimum wage), the expectation that prices have to go up to account for raised wages will raise “what the market will bear.”
Maybe not for deliveries? Since everyone already thinks delivery fees are tips? Idk.
I never tip anywhere I’m just picking up food and paying at the register. It annoys me as a customer and I wish they would quit asking.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Leaving tip at the counter or for take out food is just incomprehensible to me. It’s like tipping a grocery store clerk at check out when you are paying for your groceries. I bought this food already, what am I leaving a tip for?
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That is pretty funny, the dissonance of “Please tip, I get nothing without your tips” alongside “Actually I make more in a tipped position”. We just need them to all unionize then let tips go away
While this is extreme, I understand why you would do this. I just call first and see if they require tip before I go. If they do, then I don’t go.
Haha I love getting help from working class waitstaff that the system has exempted from minimum wage, stiffing them, and then bragging about it online.
Why? Because I’m an edgelord piece of shit.
Yes, tipping culture is wrong, but the doesn’t you some moral leader. You’re just a sad little person who gets off on being a douchebag.
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Tipping everything was starting long before covid. It was introduced with new interact devices. I first saw it at subways in like 2015
Like with every single thing that humans try to do to help each other, corporations have figured out how to exploit it for themselves.
We feel like tipping helps people because literally handing money to someone SHOULD help them. Except what actually happens is that corporations, with the full support of the government that they own, simply use that social convention to offset the wages that they have to pay their staff.
Pizza Hut box: The delivery fee is not a tip to the driver.
Me: Then why TF am I paying it?
I can’t speak to Mega-Globo chains but
The delivery fee is supposed to cover the barest of $2/Gal gas, and $.2/mi car wear n tear.
Basically it meant if you didn’t make a single tip at all the entire night then you probably broke even on gas costs. That plus you $5-7/hr wages are you’re living on the Ritz.
That makes sense if it’s a company car. I’ve never seen one.
Pizza delivery corpos should be forced to supply their own vehicles. Stop forcing workers to use theirs.
Why would it make sense for a company car?
Do you think my car does not have maintenance, or gas?
Gas and maintenance for the vehicle it was delivered in
That vehicle is owned and operated by the driver. The driver does not receive that delivery fee.
I don’t deliver pizzas, but anytime I drive my own car for work I get reimbursed a standard rate set by the US federal government, updated each year. If a pizza place did that, then the delivery fee would cover that cost.
If the federal government is reimbursing the pizza hut delivery driver then the fee still isn’t going to that cost. The American taxpayer is covering it
The government doesn’t do the reimbursing, they just specify how much each mile is worth. I assume companies follow the government’s guidelines on that for tax reasons.
Not always, Pizza Hut and Dominos have designated vehicles even in remote areas.
Saw one way upstate in NY, like, multilingual signage upstate.
Only delivery and restaurants that bring your food to you and bartenders get tips. That’s it. Fuck you subway I’m not tipping a sandwich artist. Fuck you Chinese buffet restaurant no tip I went and got up and got my own food.
Start being aggressive about it and I’ll go 100% Mr. pink and nobody gets tips ever.
How can the US actually end tipping culture? I cannot fathom a way forward that doesn’t fuck over a lot of people in the short-term. Ideas?
Set the minimum wage for waiters same as for other professions?
Makes sense. The issue is that many service workers are making well above minimum wage via tipping, and they’re supporting their families off it. I guess raise universal minimum wage alongside tipping ban?
No, raise the wage and make tipping optional. Simply move from ‘tipping is part of their wage, they need it because they make below minimum wage’ to ‘tipping is a reward for good service’. You can leave it but they will not starve without it.
This is a problem as well. I read at Casa Bonita they eliminated tipping and started paying the staff $30/h. And some of the staff are mad about it, which I kinda get but it’s a feast or famine type deal. Some days you really make a ton on tipping, and some days you get left a fake $100 from some evangelical asshole. I’d rather count on a guaranteed wage than a maybe. Full disclosure though, I’ve never worked in a tipping profession so I may be missing some things.
It’s the waiters who are pushing back on this. I know restaurant owners enjoy this situation, but even when they try to change it, waiters would require quite oversized paychecks to make up for this lack of tips. At a very nice restaurant near me, before covid, waiters typically were making $100k. This is not the norm for most restaurants, but even now I talk to waiters making $60-$70k. A lot of those tips are unreported so untaxed. This is unskilled labor (I’m not knocking it… I’ve been a waiter before and it’s tough work!), and if restaurants had to pay these wages I don’t know how high the food costs would have to be.
If you set the minimum wage to, say, $20 per hour but no tips allowed, you would likely have a lot of waiters leave the profession.
Though I guess others would take their place and, since that’s still a decent wage, things would level out eventually.
I don’t think any of this matters. It’s the customers that are not happy. Raise the prices of food to include the extra costs. Waiters in nice restaurants would obviously make more than minimum wage. Waiter in not so nice places probably as well. If waiters make more money because they’re avoiding taxes then that ends, sorry. I don’t think any one will argue that the only way to have restaurants is to let waiters avoid taxes.
Waiters leave > shortage of waiters > wages rise to attract waiters > something something invisible hand > everybody wins
The only time I’d tip is for delivery. I don’t even count it as a tip, I consider it a “don’t spit in my food” tax.
There is no reason to tip waiters or delivery people. I don’t tip. I would maybe tip if I could tip people who make my food when it’s particularly good. Picking up an item, carrying it and placing near me isn’t a skill worth extra reward and it’s purely surrealistic to me why people act like it is.
I’m European though.
The issue is that in the US we’ve made it a part of their wage.
(Please note though that if you make below minimum wage after tips, your employer is obligated to make up the difference. Wage theft is the most common form of theft in the US. Not let yourself get robbed by your employer.)
