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You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

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Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#381

Post by Symbiote »

tptacek wrote: post #258
jasode wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US tipping is not complicated. [...] just always tip. Anywhere there's a tip line. Well, it's been too complicated for me because the comments in this thread show I've been doing it wrong. For example, I sometimes picked up "to go" orders from Chili's restaurant[1]. In my mind, if I sat down to eat, I tipped the server. On the other hand, if I phoned in an order and picked it up, I didn't tip . Yes, I noticed that…

You want to feel real great? Here's a question: do you always tip your hotel housekeeping? It's gotten harder over the last 10 years since we're carrying so much less cash, and there's no tip line on the hotel bill. But you are hella expected to tip housekeeping: that is a rough job, and a very poorly treated workforce.

"Today I learned", except it was about a year ago when this discussion was last on HN.

I've spent about six months in the USA, mostly on family holidays and business travel, and never knew it was expected to tip housekeeping.

Pay the staff a decent wage, or at least a fair wage, then charge me accordingly.

How do I put a tip on my work expenses?

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#382

Post by function_seven »

joezydeco wrote: post #346
tptacek wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to feel real great? Here's a question: do you always tip your hotel housekeeping? It's gotten harder over the last 10 years since we're carrying so much less cash, and there's no tip line on the hotel bill. But you are hella expected to tip housekeeping: that is a rough job, and a very poorly treated workforce.

Even worse - do you tip every day ? Since you can't be sure it's the same housekeeper every morning, how do you distribute the cash fairly?

Yeah. $2-5 a day.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#383

Post by skh »

tptacek wrote: post #314
skh wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the tenor of your post but there has been tipping creep. A line must be drawn! It wasn't too long ago that coffee shops did not have tips. I'm old enough that it's been ingrained into me that I don't need to tip if I'm placing the order and waiting for it to be fulfilled. I don't tip in fast food places and I certainly never tip in coffee shops.

You might be older than I am (I'm in my early 40s) but there has never been a time when I went to coffee shops where tipping was unusual. Is it possible you just didn't notice? The cue was "a glass jar full of cash" by the checkout". There might be tip creep (I doubt it), but coffee shops aren't, I don't think, part of it.

Your response is condescending. Especially the “the cue was a....” part.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#384

Post by notacoward »

dragonwriter wrote: post #380
notacoward wrote: post #377

Some of the anti-tipping points might be good in an abstract kind of way, but people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars moralizing to people who make much less and have no control of the situation over a couple of bucks ... it's not a good look. I tip because the people I tip seem to appreciate it. It brings a little more happiness into the world. I could adopt an attitude that makes neither of us happy, but w…

> I tip because the people I tip seem to appreciate it. It brings a little more happiness into the world. I could adopt an attitude that makes neither of us happy, but why? Each individual tipping decision in isolation is a positive, but the aggregate together preserves a system which is a negative. There's a collective action problem, and the moralizers are trying to drive defection from the existing regime to the p…

All of which only has any effect other than to hurt service workers only if everyone goes along. Which ain't gonna happen. Therefore, those who continue in that vein either consider the outcome acceptable, or just don't really even care enough to think about it for that one second. Either way, still not a good look.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#385

Post by combatentropy »

tptacek wrote: post #209

Hacker News threads about tipping are always rough. US tipping is not complicated. You are being asked to share with a service worker's employer some of the burden of compensating them. The notion that you're rewarding exceptional service is a polite fiction. Depending on where you are, the tip is either expected or it isn't. Unfortunately for the mindset of a typical software developer, there won't be much clarity o…

> You are being asked to share with a service worker's employer some of the burden of compensating them.

The entire burden of compensating them is on me either way, isn't it? The employer doesn't pay the employee out of his own money. He pays it out of the money that comes from customers.

The question is simply the route. Either I pay $4 for a muffin, and all of it goes to the employer before any reaches the employee, or I pay $3 for the muffin to the employer, some of which gets passed on to the employee, and $1 directly to the employee.

Tipping complicates things. That's why I don't like it. Not only does it reintroduce math, but it also introduces complexity in my relationships with every server of every kind. Did I tip enough? Did I tip enough in his opinion? Did I need to tip that guy that did that little thing? Do they hate me now? Will they do something to my food? Will they slack off next time, out of resentment? These are not things I need to be thinking about after every transaction.

Down with all tipping! And daylight savings time! I don't know why, but in my heart they are connected. And maybe I'm finally ready to adopt the metric system.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#386

Post by JoeAltmaier »

simonsarris wrote: post #368
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Espresso been around since 1903?

Kevin is right, at least in terms of terminology: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=barista&year_s...

Very cool tool!

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#387

Post by vec »

mojomark wrote: post #353
vec wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right about "rewarding exceptional service" being a lie, but I don't think it's correct to frame tipping as "burden sharing". If the muffin just cost 20% more and the untipped barista got paid a higer wage the burdens would still be split the same. In practice, it seems like tipping serves two main functions, neither of which are great for society at large. First, it allows businesses to advertise lower prices…

> If the muffin just cost 20% more and the untipped barista got paid a higer wage the burdens would still be split the same. That sounds true in principle, but your ignoring the commision aspect of the service. In the tipping model, a very efficient server could, say, serve 100 miffins/hr and be tipped 20% each accordingly. A fast, but rude server could serve 100 muffins, but perhaps get 0-10% tip each sale. A slow,…

I am ignoring the commission aspect of the service, because in practice there often isn't any. Tips are frequently pooled, meaning all three servers in your hypothetical would end up with the same cut of the day's take regardless of their personal performance. Besides, if muffin vendors want to incentivize their staff with a commission scheme, why not just incentivize their staff with a commission scheme? Why force the general public to do it (badly) for them?

And the idea that eliminating tips would be "jacking up" prices is exactly the line of faulty reasoning that tips are designed to exploit. The muffin already costs 20% more than the number on the little plaque in front of it claims. Without tips the same amount of money would leave the customer's pocket and the employer and employee would still ultimately split the proceeds from that sale the same way. No prices actually change, but the numbers become a lot more honest and simpler for all parties to reason about.

The truth is vendors don't want prices to be simple to reason about because when they're difficult to reason about the other actors in the system will, on average, tend to make mistakes of reasoning in the vendor's favor.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#388

Post by snowwrestler »

fermienrico wrote: post #341
Dylan16807 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher tipping expectations are generally matched by higher discounts on the pre-tip price. So there is no limit, and that's not itself an issue.

This NEVER happens from a economic incentive standpoint. Restaurant owners NEVER say "Oh look, expectation for tipping in the general public is up 5% this year, let's cut down our menu prices to balance this out." I don't know what logic is behind your statement - could you please elaborate?

Restaurant owners definitely track how much their customers are paying for meals and correlate it to how much business they're doing, both in terms of number of customers and in terms of revenue per customer.

They know that their customers judge the night based on total cost, which includes tips and taxes. That's why restaurant owners tend to be so militant about local meals taxes.

Restaurant owners do not ignore tips when setting prices, or when setting wages. It's kind of nuts to think that they would.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#389

Post by tptacek »

skh wrote: post #383
tptacek wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be older than I am (I'm in my early 40s) but there has never been a time when I went to coffee shops where tipping was unusual. Is it possible you just didn't notice? The cue was "a glass jar full of cash" by the checkout". There might be tip creep (I doubt it), but coffee shops aren't, I don't think, part of it.

Your response is condescending. Especially the “the cue was a....” part.

I sincerely didn't intend for it to be, and really thought you might have been someone who missed the tip jar.

Re: You Want 20% for Handing Me a Muffin? The Awkward Etiquette of iPad Tipping

#390

Post by tptacek »

baumandm wrote: post #323
tptacek wrote: post #209

Hacker News threads about tipping are always rough. US tipping is not complicated. You are being asked to share with a service worker's employer some of the burden of compensating them. The notion that you're rewarding exceptional service is a polite fiction. Depending on where you are, the tip is either expected or it isn't. Unfortunately for the mindset of a typical software developer, there won't be much clarity o…

If it's not optional for rewarding exceptional service, then it should be part of the price. If everyone pays the same expected tip, there's no real benefit to having a separate line item on the bill. But practically, certain customers end up paying a larger share of the service worker's take home pay. Dynamic pricing based on customer's willingness/ability to pay is an interesting pricing model, but in this case the…

It's not optional for rewarding exceptional service, and it's not part of the price. Those are both straightforward accurate positive (not normative) claims.
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