I know this has been getting a lot of attention, but tips are out of control.<p>I recently went somewhere and was forced to tip — as in, 0 USD/% was not an option — for literally doing nothing but ringing me up. The minimum amount was 25% of the bill.<p>Tips are becoming another mandatory hidden fee, which is a form of bait and switch. Wages shouldn't be part of that and it shouldn't happen either way.
I use these opportunities to stretch my "No" muscles. Is it uncomfortable? Of course. But flexing the non-permissive "No" muscles helps you say "No" when it's really important.
I consider myself a fairly good tipper — a trait I picked up from my grandfather. However I feel this is tipping culture is nonsense. The calculated amounts at bottom are on the receipt total, including tax —- why am I tipping 20% on that? Then there’s the misc fees. A random X% Covid, inflation, health insurance cost.<p>It’s not that I don’t mind paying. I look at the total bill and shocked by the the difference from what it was to what was advertised. That puts a real damper on an otherwise good time.<p>Consequently I vote with my wallet and stopped going out almost altogether. I much prefer cultures where the price advertised is what you pay. I hope the silver lining to excessive tipping results from backlash and the movement to a non-tip society. My wife is from a non-tip society (Japan) and always asks me why some counties can do it and others don’t. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Tips in the U.S. are insane. I feel like there's now a social expectation to tip for everything, even if it involves no actually tip-worthy service due to credit card machines. And the low end is now 18-20%. I recently went to Europe and tips were not expected, the food was no more expensive (maybe even less so) than the US, and the service was fine.
It always feels weird as an outsider observing American culture about how accepting and expecting tips is not seen as dishonorable or shameful over there. The power dynamics in tipping are the same as those of someone tossing change to a beggar. How do working people suffer this instead of just putting a static value to their labor?
> “We can’t just say, ‘Oh, we’re going to charge $2 extra’ instead of having tips, because we have a duty to our customers to have a very fair price point,” said Cheaney, who also consults for Main Squeeze’s corporate office. If customers think the price is too high, he said, they won’t return. Asking them to tip, he said, is different because it’s optional.”<p>Firstly, how is charging $15 for 1oz of liquor a fair price? Secondly, I don’t think anyone thinks tipping is truly optional.
The tipping culture lead to the unfortunate situation that laid off staff received only little unemployment benefits during covid, because their base salary has been low. So it is favorable for the worker to receive a higher base salary without tips (and rather higher prices).
At a certain point I’m just going to start setting it to 0% every time. And if I can’t I’ll stop going. I’m already paying $15 for two ice cream cones, I don’t need to pay another $3 for someone to spend 30 seconds scooping them. I can do that at home.
Universal health care. Universal health care. Universal health care.<p>Yes, tipping in the US is its own peculiar local minimum -- a cycle or trough that is difficult to escape from. A big component of the costs to both employees and employers alike is health insurance, something that if we nationalized, spreading the burden across the population as a whole, would be relieved from individuals and businesses. Especially small businesses.
I’ve stopped tipping at places where I wouldn’t have normally tipped pro-Covid. Probably perceived as an A-hole by the service worker, whose pay wasn’t raised in liu of tips. What irks me more are businesses who tack on a service fee (disclosed in small print on the menu) to cover minimum wage increases.
I don't like that tips are a trick to make you think things are less expensive than they are. However, I see it as my duty since I'm lucky to be paid a lot for my job to share that prosperity with the people in my community.<p>I would prefer that prices reflected their true cost, but in the meantime I'm not going to stop tipping because that is only hurting the workers and isn't fixing the core issue.
I have started generally going out to restaurants/service places less just to avoid this awkward interaction.<p>Another thing I have seen is the POS machines placing the highest tip amount next to the 'No Tip' option. So if I feel like tipping the least amount, and I intuitively select the button next to 'No Tip', it actually ends up being the most.
In general, tipping in Hospitality is an outdated practice in my view, mainly because :
1. eating out or holidaying is no longer treated as a special occasion or reserved for the wealthy or aristocracy etc as say decades ago or earlier
2. it's an unreliable income stream as markets adopt innovations like Food Delivery apps<p>However, it makes sense to tip in niche industries e.g casinos, special clubs, digital content providers/opensource software etc.
Doordash in particular has been trying to charge a ton of service fees and "suggest" high tips. Sorry/not sorry to say their service fees come out of the driver's otherwise generous tip.