"Tipflation" may be causing tipping backlash as more digital prompts ask for tips
"Tipflation" may be causing tipping backlash as more digital prompts ask for tips
Where I live, there are plenty of restaurants with tipflation.
And then there are the worker-owned pizza joint and coffee shop, which do not even have a tip jar on the counter. They don't ask for — or make room for — tips. They pay their worker-owners well enough that they don't have to beg.
That's what tipping culture is. It's putting the worker in the position of begging from the customer instead of being assured a fair wage by the employer. And now, the management even wants to tax the receipts of this mandatory panhandling.
Now, I understand that authoritarians love this. When I was a kid, I was explicitly told that tips were necessary; otherwise the waiter might spit in your food. That is, as a child of the professional class, I was instructed that service workers must be appeased with donations to keep them from committing crimes against us.
Yeah. That's pretty messed up.
But the worker-owned venues make it clear: the restaurant doesn't need tips to attract capable & honest workers; they just need to give a fair deal.
Another solution is profit sharing programs. E.g. an employee gets wage+(net income/all workers hours)*hours worked or a similar but fair formula or set of formulas.
It always amazes me that that tipping is still a thing. If your business can't survive paying a proper wage to your employees without the need for supplemental income from the customer your business isn't meant to survive. Isn't that the capitalism they're always on about?
"capitalism", hah
Yet another thing that has been eye opening about living in Europe is how fucked and terrible tipping is in the states. Twenty percent AS A MINIMUM? When I’m picking up food at the counter??? AYFKM?
Not to mention, you can't have a percentage go up and blame it on inflation.
If a business can't afford to pay its workers a living wage that business should not exist. If we all stopped going to these places they'll be forced to fix it.
But Reddit Vs Lemmy is like a microcosm of this issue. Most people will stay on Reddit because god forbid they get inconvenienced or have to do something differently.
The same way people won't leave twitter, won't stop getting food at McDonalds or shopping at Wal-Mart, etc...
I'll tip for sit down service or delivery.... Anything else you can fuck right off.
I don't really think it's caused backlash in me - just the ending of feeling bad for not tipping. Do I want to tip for you handing me something? Do I want to tip for self checkout? Do I want to tip for you checking me out?
You make a normal wage and haven't done anything outside of the norm. Why on earth do you deserve a tip?
Pretty soon there's going to be tip options on the self checkouts.
The other day I went to a pub, and the machine at checkout suggested a 10%. You mean you expect me to tip 10% to this person whose contribution to my life was literally just putting my glass to a tap, pulling on the lever, then putting the price into the machine??
How about instead you just pay the person a proper wage to do that alongside all the other non-customer facing stuff they already have to do instead of making us top-up their wages.
Tipping culture was meant to be a bonus for exceptional service, not an expectation for all bloody services!
I’m American but lived in Japan for a couple of years. I was so shocked by the amazing customer service the Japanese workers gave me but never asked or expected a tip.
I was so confused coming back here and seeing all of stores implementing an option to tip and I’m trying to figure out… for what? Most of the workers hardly acknowledge me when I’m there and it feels as if I’m bothering them coming to order something, and then they turn the iPad around asking for a tip.
This honestly needs to stop.
I was so shocked by the amazing customer service the Japanese workers gave me but never asked or expected a tip.
That's how the entire world works outside of NA.
I always say it’s shocking what us Americans are accustomed to here in the US, and those that have never been outside of the country would never know these things. I also visited Australia for a bit and noticed no one asked or expected a tip as well.
Glad I had the opportunity to see how other countries do things outside the US 🙂
And yet there's this myth that without tips all the workers would be lazy and you'd get no good service.
I've heard and seen that repeated constantly.
I think thats more to do with Japanese culture than anything. Staff at even convenience stores were super nice and helpful when I stayed in Japan. But here people don't really care that much. You cant expect a culture of people to change. Id much rather permanently live in Japan if my work and family didnt tie me down.
I just don't like tipping as an expectation. If you genuinely want to tip, you'll know and you won't need to be asked. There's nothing wrong with the idea of giving someone a tenner if they go out of their way for you, but being guilted into making a voluntary donation because someone did their job is an example of completely losing the plot. Of course tipped minimum wage shouldn't be lower either.
I also don't like the recent trend of being asked to tip before even receiving the service. Uhh... I dunno how much to tip you, you haven't done anything yet. In the context of delivery apps, it also incentivizes blackmail.
Last thing I'll point out - tipping is associated with racial and sex-based discrimination, and managers often pocket tips even though it's technically illegal in most places. So even if you don't mind it for any other reason, that alone should be enough to discourage it.
I also don’t like the recent trend of being asked to tip before even receiving the service. Uhh… I dunno how much to tip you, you haven’t done anything yet. In the context of delivery apps, it also incentivizes blackmail.
Yeah that's not a tip, that's straight up bribery. Fuck doordash.
Fuck doordash for so many reasons outside of that, but yeah, fuck doordash.
It's worth noting for anyone who does tip on delivery apps - don't. Part of your tip is a direct donation to DD. They're not technically lying when they say it "goes to the driver", but they can sure as hell lower base pay accordingly. If you can't fight the urge to tip, then tip cash.
I'm fine with tipping in the places where it's already expected. Wait staff and delivery and such. There those people live on the tips being given. Yeah the system is shit and we should pay them appropriately from the start, but refusing to tip doesn't fight the system; it just stiffs a worker.
I don't like it when a bakery or ice cream stand sale terminal prompts me to leave a tip. It makes me feel awkward for hitting no, even though not tipping for ice cream has been and still is standard.
You gotta learn to get past the guilt. Just hit zero. They're relying on your guilt to extract more money from you.
Oh I hit zero consistently for the normally non-tipped services. I just feel awkward doing it. Feeling awkward isn't enough to get me to do so, but it is enough to make me unhappy about being asked.
My girlfriend and I went to a retail store one time and at checkout the cashier turned the iPad around and showed us a tip screen……
We need a competition for "most ridiculous place to ask for tips".
Someone in this thread said that their self-checkout asked for a tip. I don’t know how one could top that!
One time at the Starbucks drive thru, waiting several minutes for a cold brew, only a cold brew, I was irritated to see a very obvious tip cup on the drive through. After waiting much longer than it should have taken to pour a cold brew, the guy tried to solicit a tip on my card... seriously....It is absolutely irritating to have them not only provide slow service but then aggressively demand a tip for shitty service. I'll tip when it's appropriate, bartenders, waiters (20+%) and straight food delivery (fuck Uber eats, door dash etc, I won't pay 50.00 for 30.00 in food and then tip, that's stupid, so I don't use it.)
Edit(I don't use the food delivery services, I am not going to stiff their folks delivering food. )
I did takeout at a Dominos the other day, and it took the idiot a full minute to figure out how to bring my order up on the computer. He's tap, tap, tapping away at the computer with no idea what he's doing. Probably high as hell. And then he's like, "It's going to ask you a question", and I was actually angry that it even gave me the option. WTF! And I still felt slightly guilty for hitting "no tip". Fuck tipping!
If anything, the fact that every business is asking for a tip makes it easier for me to feel less guilty about not tipping now.
May be? I was at a sandwich place here that had the minimum tip option at 18%.
It's getting fucking stupid
Other > $0
:)
Exactly what I did, but that was enough to put me off the restaurant
if a business cannot pay their workers a living wage without having customers subsidize their wage with tips, then that business shouldn't exist.
I just wish jobs payed livable wages.
I had no idea until recently that coffee shops are allowed to pay tipped wages instead of regular minimum wage. Right now, I am reading up on my state (Florida)'s minimum wage laws, and apparently any employee who receives tips can be considered a tipped employee, meaning if your workplace has a square POS, congrats, they are allowed to pay you $5.44/hr! The tip credit explanation is also absolutely blowing my mind with a combination of confusion and corporate greed. The fact that there is an under-20 minimum wage of $4.25/hr is absolutely mind-boggling. I could MAYBE understand this for people under 18, but people from 18-20 are adults and plenty of them have already moved out of their parents' homes. How is this okay?!?
In some places it's $2.13/hr. It's not ok. It's never been ok. We need to change.
Which leads to a more ridiculous expectation that customers should know local labor laws, and then start asking employees about their wages to determine if we should tip them or not. Its really frustrating, and I just wish people paid for labor instead of playing on our emotions.
Not going to happen as long as tipping culture persists.
If patrons stopped tipping, and restaurant staff stopped working until a living wage is paid to them, what options do restaurant owners have? They'll have to accommodate or close their doors.
Either way is better for everyone, since a business that can't pay their employees isn't a viable business anyway.
shoutout to !workreform@lemmy.world, or /c/workreform@lemmy.world
Tip culture is ridiculous. Places like self-serve froyo shops shouldn't even have tips as an option. Unless the cashier is helping me make the froyo and holding it for me while I lick it, there's no way to justify tipping.
Typing culture needs to die. Pay your damn employees a living wage.
And that’s how it is in most of the world. It’s possible. 😛
My general guide for tipping
charge more for the food
Yes! Just do this! I promise you seeing more expensive prices on the menu will annoy me FAR less than getting the check and seeing a surprise 18% "service fee."
Even for point 1 it's just wrong. They should not work there for that wage and if the business needs to charge more money to pay them more then charge more money.
Relying on tips for worker pay not only shifts the responsibility for paying the employees away from employer to the customer but also makes employees getting paid optional (depending on how a random person that walked in feels).
If I know owners of a particular restaurant don't take care of their employees or treat them badly, then I probably won't want to eat there anyways.
I'm curious how many of these POS (Point-of-Sale, not Piece of Shit) systems have the default settings to ask for tips. If so, I wonder how many of these places are committing wage theft by not actually paying tips out to the employees.
Given their reliability, both are accurate.
I went for a beer at a local brewery the other day and their point of sale tips started at 25%. Just to pour beer!
When they default that high I almost always enter 0.
If you don't want to pay a tip, don't do business at a place that underpays their staff.
If you go out to a restaurant and deprive the servers of tips, you aren't hurting the restaurant. If you want to make a principled stance against tipping, then you have to stop giving those businesses your money.
The problem with tipping culture is that it works.
I read an article the other day about airlines moving toward cheaper air fares, but charging more and more fees for basic things that should be part of the air fare. That trend is accelerating because customers reward it, period.
People only look at the base price of things, and shop around the best base price. Mentally, humans are mostly awful at factoring in extras and comparing one place's apples to another place's oranges. The company with the lower base price wins, and shifting prices over toward fees and extras doesn't seem to hurt them as much as just including those costs in the base price does.
Same story with tipping. If a Moe's burrito costs $10 but you're asked to leave a $2 tip, while a Joe's burrito simply costs $12, then I'm pretty sure the average consumer is only going to look at that $10 vs. $12 comparison and favor Moe's. It's dumb. It's awful. We all say on social media and chat forums that we don't think that way. But most of us kinda sorta DO, unfortunately.
The result is that generous people end up accommodating the increased tip culture, while less generous people just stop tipping altogether. So instead of employer paying their workers fairly, and spreading the costs among their customers fairly... we get an awful system where the employers still make the same profit, but the workers and customers are negatively impacted. For the employees, the dignity of honest work erodes, as they shift toward being part worker and part panhandler. For the customers, generosity is punished and a selfish mindset is rewarded. It's an extremely toxic cultural trend, all around.
I don't know what the solutions are. I fear that there really IS no solution other than changes to law and regulation, but our culture is too fragmented and government too broken for that.
Well said. Such huge culture shifts are hard because of the pain involved in the transition. On the Other side we have employees being paid fairly and predictably and customers not being punished for their generosity. But the in-between will be employees being paid less but not earning via tips which just keeps the status quo.
I still can't understand why americans still tolerate tip culture.
We don't have mandatory tips in Europe and still have people working at McDonald's or similar restaurants : In France, it's even one of the biggest employer of the country.
Because in some places it's the only way for the staff to make livable wages. If our store didn't allow tips I'd be missing 10 - 20% of the pay I get, and with the situation I'm in, everything helps.
And while I would love for tips to go away, and for our minimum wage to reflect the reality of our economy, that doesn't seem to be happening nearly fast enough, or in some places, at all.
I see accepting that is part of 'tolerating tipping culture'. Indeed, the system as it is now would not realistically allow for tipping to be obliterated. But just saying "it doesn't work, for this and that reason..." and then continuing the status quo, will not change anything.
You've seen what happens in France when the workers are unhappy. What America needs, first and foremost, is powerfull unions, make the minimal wage reflect a decent living wage at least, make the waiters wage an acceptable wage, and then abolish tipping. Accepting the status quo is tolerating it.
Fucking Starbucks is asking for tips.
If you're spending $7+ on a coffee you probably aren't concerned with being frugal 😀
This topic is unrelated to frugality.
If one is spending $7 for coffee, that should be enough to have the employer pay their employees.
No, I don't pay $7 for Starbucks coffee.
I only tip at full service restaurants, barber shops, and for specialized full services that I want prompt responses (bars, hotels, rideshares).
Convenience stores, fast food, self service kiosks, medical services, oil changes, I'm not tipping you for doing a low skilled task or something insurance covers.
Do barbers also depend on tips? That’s need to me.
With these payment processors making it a simple option, more and more businesses are thinking "why not?" and sticking tipping in places it used to never be expected. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this backlash will actually cause any change because for businesses it's a win as long as even one person decides to tip and it costs them nothing to have the option on.
It's similar to paid DLC in video games. People laughed at paying for horse armor but as long as at least one person bought it, it was money that the company wasn't getting before. Now games not being sold in pieces is the exception rather than the norm.
I’m not sure if this backlash will actually cause any change because for businesses it’s a win as long as even one person decides to tip and it costs them nothing to have the option on.
I'm a university lecturer, and this sounds a lot like students who will ask for extra credit/more points because "it can't hurt". And if one of their professors/lecturers gives them extra points one time, it's worth it for those students. To them, it costs nothing to ask, they can only gain, and there are no downsides.
But there are, just not directly. My students think that the worst thing I can do is say no and their score stays the same. But I can also be less lenient in the future (which I definitely am with grade grubbers). I will also refuse to write letters of recommendation or supervise theses for students that do this shit, because I genuinely don't want to deal with those students anymore.
You are right that it does not directly cost businesses money to have that option. But it can still cost them in the long run. I know I'm less likely to support businesses that pull this bullshit, especially if they try harder to guilt you. Also, it's increasingly giving the appearance that needing to give tips means that workers are underpaid, so by turning on that option, the business is effectively announcing that they underpay their staff, which is a bad look for the business.
I'm not really a tipper but i don't have a problem with them asking. my problem is when they don't list no tip as an option..
Does anyone have a concern about what happens when NOT leaving a tip at these places? I don't enjoy tipping before I have received service (fast food) but am unsure of the ramifications of not doing so 😬
Wait you have to tip before getting anything? US tipping culture is so fucked holy shit.
edit: also the thought of tipping for fast food is fucking ridiculous lmfao. You threw it into the deep fryer asshole I'm not tipping you for that
I tried to do grocery shopping at instacart recently.
The prices looked good, I spent some time making a bigger basket(around 100$) and went to checkout. Then I found out that they charge service fee about 13$, delivery fee 4.50$, heavy fee and at the very end they also added tax. My 100$ shopping was now over 120$ but then they asked me to tip the driver and options were 10% or 20%. I tried to enter custom amount but was discouraged with a scary prompt saying that my driver will see the tip and that tips under 15% are highly discouraged as my order might be deprioritised... so all those service fees, delivery fees and heavy fees are just used to run the website?! But actually paying your own employees? Nooo... that's up to you, kind stranger on the internet! Please, be generous (we are tired to look for another poor bastard every two weeks or so)!
I'm not going to engage in any class warfare... restaurant staff actually get LESS than minimum wage, because tips are supposed to offset the loss. Of course they're going to want more money; they probably NEED it. Having said that, I rarely have two dimes to scrape together, and my tip limit is 15%, give or take. I mean, I'm not going to count it out to the penny, I'm not that much of a tightwad, but I've got my own expenses. If I can't realistically afford to eat out, I'll just make a sandwich at home.
Not in California - in LA they get $17/hr + tips.
The biggest advocates for tipping culture are the restaurant workers - if they were paid commensurately they’d lose money since it’d be all taxable. And we all know that tipped employees all definitely mark the accurate amount of cash tips received on their taxes each year…
restaurant staff actually get LESS than minimum wage, because tips are supposed to offset the loss.
In the US, tipped minimum wage + tips must be greater than or equal to regular minimum wage. If not, employers must make up the difference.
It’s absolute BS that the “tipped” minimum wage is lower than for everyone else. Tipping is supposed to reward you for excellent service, not subsidize the fucking company
yeah, whoever lobbied for that and got that bill passed was evil.
Yeah, whenever I see a fast food restaurant ask for tips before I receive my food, I give them nothing. Is this a threat? Will my food have boogers in it if I don't tip?
Pro tip: Don't work at a fast food restaurant if you expect a livable wage. There are other options, especially in the US.
You're implying that certain jobs don't deserve a living wage, but it's fine because higher wages exist in other jobs. So should fast food just disappear? Who is going to work these jobs that don't deserve a living wage? Slaves?
Teenagers looking for part time jobs, recent retirees looking for additional cash, folks that have partners witb 'living wage' jobs. And I never said anything about anyone deserving anything. My pro tip was, if you want a living wage, you will not find it at a fast food job. Try harder. Or, continue to piss and moan on the internet.
If this backlash kills off tipping in America forever, good.
Employers should be paying their employee a living wage anyways, instead of shifting the responsibility to the customers.
In states that don't still need to pay minimum wage, I get your point. The last two states that I've lived in, though, still require min wage (or higher, depending on some municipalities).
Restaurants operate on notoriously small margins and are tough to make it as a mom and pop, a lot of the time.
I'd rather tip, and have the assurance that money is going to the worker, than pay $30 for a burger and be told the employee is getting a cut.
If they can't survive because they have to pay their employees their business model is unsustainable.
Except at some restaurants that money isn't going to the employee, but to the employees* front/back of house... So you're still only being told the employee is getting a cut... And the bigger company can still outdo mom and pop by volume.
If your business model does not support paying your employees a fair wage, you do not have a viable business model.
Amen!