It's getting out of control in the US. Tips are supposed to be for service workers, not for anyone who you interact with in any way while conducting a basic business transaction. People who are performing a direct personal service for you. In the US now, businesses expect you to tip on take-out orders, at drive through windows, at every form of eatery, there's even tips expected now at some retailers.
The roles that are appropriate to tip didn't change just because everyone felt like it was okay to ask for a tip. You tip barbers, doormen, bellhops, shoe shines, wait staff, delivery drivers, and bartenders. That's basically it. If a worker is not rendering you a direct personal service, they should not be tipped and their employer being passive-aggressive about it is hoping enough of their staff get tipped they can start paying the tipped minimum wage instead of paying a normal wage for their job role.
What a lot of people don't get is that opposing the expansion of tipping isn't a negative for the workers, it's a negative for the business owners. The business owners /want/ society to expect to tip workers, because they can pay them $2.15/hr instead of $17/hr in a major metro as long as they clear federal minimum wage after tips. Stop the madness, and stop tipping people who are not in direct service roles.
What's super fucked is that in SF I am seeing most businesses just add it on the check as a mandatory service charge and require you to argue with them. Like, why the fuck am I paying you a 15% service charge for me to walk to your restaurant and pick up my order off a shelf and walk back to where I'm staying after I ordered online. We both know that money isn't going to the kitchen staff, it's lining the business owner's pocket and is a fraudulent way for them to raise prices by forcing a fee on you that you have to argue about. If I'm ordering on the web and picking up, and not even speaking to anybody in the process, what "service" did I receive?
I'd be even more restrictive than that: everyone should get a proper minimum wage, regardless of the line of work they're in, regardless of whether they're performing a direct personal service for you.
Tipping should be for exceptional service. Nobody should need tips to make ends meet.
> everyone should get a proper minimum wage, regardless of the line of work they're in, regardless of whether they're performing a direct personal service for you
In America, this is the law. It’s poorly enforced, unfortunately.
I'm not sure why this is (currently) getting downvoted. This is legally correct, at the federal level [0] and at every state level that I'm aware of.
Also, wage theft is a huge issue in the US (and part of the problem is tipped employees not receiving the difference between what they actually made and the minimum wage) and is poorly enforced - https://wageadvocates.com/wage-theft-huge-problem-infographi...
> Minimum wage is not a living wage for the vast majority of the population
Minimum should be just that: minimum. For higher COL cities, the minimum (and tipped minimum, with an obligation to make the minimum if tips prove insufficient) should be higher.
Raising the minimum nationwide to New York City’s COL basically depopulates lower COL places; this is a source of generally misrepresented rural backlash against these broad-based schemes. Imagine if Germany and Greece had the same minimum wage; the latter would get screwed.
(Not arguing that the federal minimum shouldn’t be raised. Just that it should be too low for most of the country, because if it isn’t, it’s too high for some, and that’s a policy failure for a minimum. I haven’t seen a scheme for a dynamic federal minimum; that would make sense.)
The US has two minimum wages (there's also a "youth" one, but that's a separate issue): the minimum wage for non-tipped employees, and a much lower one for tipped employees, which essentially boils down to whether you're service staff or not.
Now, while individual state may have their own laws around minimum wages above the federal minimum, I find the idea that there two in the first place abhorrent. The current rates are US$7.25 and US$2.13. Neither are remotely livable, but the one for tipped staff is essentially peonage.
So no, this isn't a matter for enforcement. The law is set up to encourage this behaviour.
The law is that if someone on the tipped minimum wage doesn't make enough in tips to reach the non-tipped minimum wage the employer has to make up the difference.
In effect if the law is actually enforced the minimum wage is $7.25 for both tipped and non-tipped workers, but if you are tipped the first $5.12 of tips goes to the employer.
My understanding is that enforcement of this is not the best.
What's so special about direct personal service? Why does the person cleaning the rest rooms or the person cooking you food deserve less than the person who's transporting plates?
Mostly, it's a nuance that has legal and tax implications, but the original reason is that a tip is an optional (not required) direct gift from the person receiving service to the person doing service. It's a thank-you gift.
This is heavily diluted when you expect tips for anything else, and it makes it very obvious it's just a hidden fee that may or may not even be going to the workers. Wage theft is the largest type of theft in the US, and a non-insignificant amount comes from tip pooling schemes where owners and managers take a dip.
I tip my barber because they took extra time and attention to ensure I had the perfect hair cut and beard shaping to look good in my workplace or on a date, or whatever. I am not generically tipping for having done a business transaction, the person who took my appointment over the phone is not the person who cut my hair. I am giving a thank you gift to the barber because they took time and attention for /me/ /personally/.
FWIW, I appreciated restaurants that had a menu option to buy a round of beers for the kitchen. I would do that every time it was presented to me, above and beyond a tip. To me, when I tip someone who rendered me a personal service (especially a service where I have a conversation with them), it's me saying "I'd buy you a beer and say thank you, but I can't do that right now and you have other customers, so here's some cash as a thank you.".
Diluting that meaning eliminates the reason I'm willing to tip in the first place.
That's a direct 1-1 transaction. You are getting a hair cut, so if it's good, you'll come back. If it's bad you won't. Charge what it costs and give the best service possible.
Granted if they go above and beyond maybe I would tip (buy yourself a beer as you say, but it would have to be more than "they cut my hair").
That's the slippery slope though, whereby if you don't tip you are deemed to not be happy with the service, and so the emotional imperative is to tip to not offend.
Maybe I'm just a bit of a Karen, but I am always very direct about it if I am not happy with a service so they have an opportunity to make it right. This is especially true with a hair cut. I'm not leaving till it's to my satisfaction. the tip is a thank you for 1. putting up with my particularness and 2. getting it done correctly and 3. bigger if they get it done right without needing correction.
Possibly related, I moved last Summer and it took me until January to find a barber I've now been to repeatedly. I have really high expectations and before moving I had been going to the same shop in my previous city for more than a decade, and was on a first-name basis with my barber there and his wife and eldest son and sometimes hung out with him outside of work (mutual interest in classic cars). For me, the tip is absolutely a direct and personal thank you gift, because I have very high standards not many people can meet, and few that do get it right the first time and as a matter of course. I generally tip well, though.
I always ask for a "regular haircut", but the haircuts I get with that request can differ a lot. Sometimes I get a quick buzz around the ears and neck, and other times the barber chooses to use scissors for that and really takes his time to get everything looking neat. In all cases the haircut is satisfactory and I'll come back (I've been going to the same barber for 10 years), but when he's in the mood to take his time I'll give him a tip.
> charge for what it costs
I think that's a bit tricky, I don't think the true cost of a haircut is fixed day to day. On slow business days when there is no line, a slow and careful haircut doesn't really 'cost more' than a quick haircut because the daily throughput is the same. But on days when there are a lot of people lining up for cut, slow haircuts will reduce throughput and therefore have an opportunity cost. (This is for a walk-ins only barber.)
Charge what it costs and give the best service possible.
All barber shops are different, but usually the person cutting your hair is renting space from the owner of the shop, who may set prices. You can use this knowledge to affect your willingness to tip (or not), just in case you're not tipping because of an assumption that may or may not be valid.
> It's getting out of control in the US. Tips are supposed to be for service workers, not for anyone who you interact with in any way while conducting a basic business transaction. People who are performing a direct personal service for you. In the US now, businesses expect you to tip on take-out orders, at drive through windows, at every form of eatery, there's even tips expected now at some retailers.
As a European living in the USA, the distinction always seemed made up for me. If someone delivers a take-out order, why is that less worthy of tipping, than if you're in a restaurant? What about the person who bundles the order together for delivery? What about the person doing the cooking? Etc etc etc.
The answer is that you're used to tipping at a restaurant and never questioned it, but when some other tipping is introduced you rightly recognize it as an abuse.
> If someone delivers a take-out order, why is that less worthy of tipping, than if you're in a restaurant?
It's not. If you were at the restaurant, you'd tip the server. If you were home, you'd tip the deliverer. If you picked it up yourself, why then you could tip yourself :)
> you're using to tipping at a restaurant and never questioned it
Now that's a bold assumption :) How about, tipping at a restaurant is part of the culture, and many people do so begrudgingly?
Dissecting this meme reveals that people are comfortable tipping for the act of waiting on them (the so-called service). The person who cooks and the person who bundles supposedly serve the institution, and so they should be paid by the institution.
Or so it would seem. The waiter and the driver also ultimately work for the institution, so one could argue that they, too, should be paid adequately by the institution. Tips should be reserved for exceptional service to you beyond what they're expected to perform for the institution.
So if the cashier at the takeout place made you happy and you wanted to tip him/her for that... you could knock yourself out. It's worthy of tipping because you felt like it.
> In the US now, businesses expect you to tip on take-out orders, at drive through windows, at every form of eatery, there's even tips expected now at some retailers.
This does not match my experience at all. You may see tip jars in those places, but there is never an expectation (in the soft-obligation sense) that anybody tip into any tip jar ever. The only place where tips are considered soft-obligatory are waitresses and food delivery, and in those cases you leave the tip on the table or hand it to the person yourself. Tipping into jars may be desired but is never expected.
Are you perhaps an immigrant to or tourist of America? I can see how foreigners might get confused by the tip jars and not pick up on this nuance since it isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere on the jar, but I don't think people integrated into American culture perceive any sort of obligation to tip into jars. If you sit in a shop and watch people order, you'll surely see that the overwhelming majority of people never put anything into the jar.
(From what I have seen in Canada, all of this is true there as well. Tips for waitresses are socially obligatory, while tips into jars are not.)
In Canada, almost everyone pays by debit or credit card instead of cash. What has happened in the last few years is that the tipping function has been enabled on debit/credit terminals at many more businesses than it used to be, including many fast food chains. On the machine it pops up with recommended tip percentages like 15%, 18%, 20%, which are all calculated on the final total post-tax (which isn’t how it should be done but results in higher tips). So you could argue that this is just the digital equivalent of a tip jar (since many people don’t carry cash), but by presenting it in this way (with recommended percentages) it creates the implication that tipping is normal, and you don’t want to be the jerk who doesn’t leave a tip. So that’s why there’s this outrage (at least in Canada) about “tip creep.” It may be similar in the U.S. for people who pay by card vs. cash.
I have seen the tip buttons on those terminal screens before in America and Canada, but have never felt any obligation at all to tip through them. Same deal as terminals in supermarkets asking for charity donations, pressing the "No" button is just muscle memory and I don't even think twice about it. If anything those screens make it easier to not tip, since you're interacting face-to-screen instead of face-to-face.
I don't think tipping on those screens is considered soft-obligatory in America, but maybe I'm guilty of a few social faux pas in Canada..
It’s basically a “dark pattern,” especially when the UI gives different presets and highlights one as “recommended” even though that amount isn’t actually normal to locals. If nothing else it’s taking advantage of visitors who don’t actually know the correct local customs, or trying to subversively change the norm by guilt-tripping the customer into thinking the workers depend on tips the way restaurant waitstaff do. I think that’s the root of the feedback reflected in the original survey.
> > In the US now, businesses expect you to tip on take-out orders, at drive through windows, at every form of eatery, there's even tips expected now at some retailers.
> This does not match my experience at all. You may see tip jars in those places, but there is never an expectation (in the soft-obligation sense) that anybody tip into any tip jar ever. The only place where tips are considered soft-obligatory are waitresses and food delivery, and in those cases you leave the tip on the table or hand it to the person yourself.
What about taxis? I've been harassed by taxi drivers when I forgot to add a tip because I've not been in a country with tipping for a while.
> Are you perhaps an immigrant to or tourist of America? I can see how foreigners might get confused by the tip jars and not pick up on this nuance since it isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere on the jar, but I don't think people integrated into American culture perceive any sort of obligation to tip into jars. If you sit in a shop and watch people order, you'll surely see that the overwhelming majority of people never put anything into the jar.
I don't know where in the US you are but every time I'm in california all the electronic payment systems (essentially an Ipad running some special software) ask you for a tip when paying by card. The minimum selection unless putting in manually is usually 15%. I haven't seen a top jar in the US in ages, they are very common in countries without tipping culture like Australia and NZ (funnily enough I feel much more inclined to put something in those instead of tipping in the US).
I've seen this service charge bullshit in Chicago as well, but at restaurants. 3% and 5% "service charges" with no explanation other than "we'll remove it if you want." It's not a tip, the waitstaff almost never knows what it is or where the money goes, only that it got added post-COVID and 99% of people don't even notice, and half the people that notice just pay it.
I really, really wish people would leave negative reviews at Yelp and Google and everywhere else when they see these 3% "service charges" that were never disclosed before I walked in. I will never knowingly choose to eat at a restaurant that does that kind of thing.
My personal pet peeve here is asking for tip before the service at places where you order and pay first, sit down and they bring you the food. There is SOME service here; they bring you water, napkins etc. But how would I know what the service is going to be like before hand?
I know you're being facetious, but honestly this is basically what I've been told by people not being facetious in person when I complain about it. How is this any different than the Mob shaking people down? "It'd be a real shame if we 'inconvenienced' you."
Why would I care? US is bloody expensive already, some small fee is not going to save it. And I only visit US on business trips, that are covered by company.
I can see this argument, although I don't agree. It's only marginally acceptable if it's either 1. VERY up front, or 2. Doesn't exist and is incorporated directly into the price.
The biggest issue is it is mandatory and its impersonal. If it's mandatory and impersonal, it's /not/ a tip, and it shouldn't be percentage based. If the business wants to raise prices, raise prices. Tacking on additional costs that are not correctly and appropriately represented in the price is basically fraud, and it's doubly uncouth because my understanding is that most businesses don't give this service charge to the workers, it's just treated as revenue.
No. I don't tip for counter service, only table service or bar service. Counter service is basically take-out. There is no logical reason anyone should tip at an ice cream parlor or a coffee shop, and the fact it's become commonplace is part of what I'm railing against.
Well I asked because putting gelato on a cone could be perceived as a personal service, since the amount of gelato that goes on a cone varies in size based on the server.
As I said, it's not black and white.
And don't get me wrong, I'd ban tipping if it was possible.
The roles that are appropriate to tip didn't change just because everyone felt like it was okay to ask for a tip. You tip barbers, doormen, bellhops, shoe shines, wait staff, delivery drivers, and bartenders. That's basically it. If a worker is not rendering you a direct personal service, they should not be tipped and their employer being passive-aggressive about it is hoping enough of their staff get tipped they can start paying the tipped minimum wage instead of paying a normal wage for their job role.
What a lot of people don't get is that opposing the expansion of tipping isn't a negative for the workers, it's a negative for the business owners. The business owners /want/ society to expect to tip workers, because they can pay them $2.15/hr instead of $17/hr in a major metro as long as they clear federal minimum wage after tips. Stop the madness, and stop tipping people who are not in direct service roles.
What's super fucked is that in SF I am seeing most businesses just add it on the check as a mandatory service charge and require you to argue with them. Like, why the fuck am I paying you a 15% service charge for me to walk to your restaurant and pick up my order off a shelf and walk back to where I'm staying after I ordered online. We both know that money isn't going to the kitchen staff, it's lining the business owner's pocket and is a fraudulent way for them to raise prices by forcing a fee on you that you have to argue about. If I'm ordering on the web and picking up, and not even speaking to anybody in the process, what "service" did I receive?