'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
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Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#2Guess what, you still don't have to tip if you don't want to. Your "guilt" is your problem, not a problem with the iPad. Anything that increases the takehome pay of low paid service workers in SF seems fine. It is entirely opt in.
An article featuring complaints about some of the lowest paid people in SF getting paid a little more because of a new technology lacks some self awareness.
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#3Just click no tip, problem solved.
Another reason to use cash. No awkwardness with tips.
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#4Worth noting that California pays a "fair" minimum wage to tipped workers (as opposed to states that pay as little as $2.13/hr to tipped workers)
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#5Where I am there are a lot of restaurants with the Square tablets on a pivot, and what I've noticed is that with fast-food-type places the worker will turn their head away while you enter the tip amount. Or they'll preselect, "no tip"
I too am annoyed by the ubiquity of these tip prompts, but the manners haven't changed. (It's been on credit card slips forever.) People shouldn't feel obligated to tip just because, say, it's the owner serving cold brew from his food truck.
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#6[deleted]
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#7I give credit to the few shops that default to "no tip" — presumably because so little service is involved in their transactions. Of course, it's fine to offer an option to add a tip, which is basically just the digital equivalent of a tip jar. But for the shops where service is minimal, it is appropriate to set the default to be no tip.
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#8It seems to me that tipping has evolved from an incentive and reward for good service to a form of voluntary workfare where those who have something to spare decide to share with those still struggling in the low end of the service economy.
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#9Defaults matter.
If the 'default' tip on the app is 15% or 20%, then you need to make an affirmative choice to not tip. Yes, you can (usually) opt out, but the screen is telling you in no uncertain terms that tipping is probably a social norm here—if you choose to opt out, you are making the extra effort to break the norm.
Otherwise, why bother setting the default at all rather than force the user to enter an explicit amount every time, like on a restaurant bill?
Also, there's a whole subbranch of behavioral economics ('nudge' economics) that basically studies how to frame choices and set defaults to influence decision making [1]. Advertisers and politicians also take advantage of the power of framing and defaults.
So getting back to the ethics of the issue, it'd be interesting to see data on how much the default influences the actual tip paid, and how that incentivizes the actual business owner (e.g. set a higher tip rate, pay a lower wage?)
[1] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/richard.thaler/research/pdf/...
Re: 'Coerced into tipping'? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF
#10I give credit to the few shops that default to "no tip" — presumably because so little service is involved in their transactions. Of course, it's fine to offer an option to add a tip, which is basically just the digital equivalent of a tip jar. But for the shops where service is minimal, it is appropriate to set the default to be no tip.
The real question is wether the workers are being paid the tipped or no tips minimum wage. The former being much less than the later in much of the US