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

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

#401

Post by mrep » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

onetimemanytime wrote: post #249

miketery wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been struggling with this for a while and you put it really well. However it frustrates me to no end, that customers are expected to do compensation sharing with the employer. The nefarious thing about this is that the employer has put the negotiating for fair wages between the customer and employees instead of between the employees and the employer. End of the day its manageable as you say, just price in the ti…

>> However it frustrates me to no end, that customers are expected to do compensation sharing with the employer A debate, perhaps worth having. Meanwhile your server makes less than minimum wage because tips are expected to fill in the gap. A while back it was $2.13 an hour. Not giving him a tip is only going to ruin his day, not start a revolution. As of right now, the chicken dish cost $16 plus an unofficial but ex…

FYI, While their base is below minimum wage, if their hourly pay with tip does not meet minimum wage, then the employer has to fill in the gap by law. This is also why a lot of restaurants in Seattle force a 20% gratuity now that minimum wage is $15 an hour to reduce the chance that customers skimp on the tip and thus the employer would have to pay out the remaining $15 an hour.

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

#402

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

b1r6 wrote: post #342

simonbarker87 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, there is some actual work being done or service rendered for the tip. No, that isn’t for the tip, that is literally the job they are paid to do by their employer. Choosing to tip should only be if they have gone above and beyond what you would expect. I’m from the UK and find the US tipping culture bizzare and stressful - I had truly terrible service in a restaurant in New York once and they liter…

I'm saddened that this is part of what you remember when you think about visiting the US. You absolutely should not tip if the potential recipient of the tip treated you poorly. They were bullying you by threatening to call the police. The cops would have been annoyed to show up for that, and nothing about what you did is illegal.

Forgetting to tip is a fairly common tourist memory, though fortunately I've never had any threat. Not knowing when or how much to tip is also a problem.

- I was 12 the first time we visited the US. My dad was at first confused, since the hotel porter was hanging around, then he was embarrassed, as he didn't have any small cash.

- In New Orleans on a business trip, I kept forgetting to tip the barmaid. Other people at the bar were throwing her dollar bills on my behalf.

- Most recently, chip cards were fairly new — although I've had one for 14 years. I don't want to tip by card, it complicates my expenses, but navigating the dark-pattern UI on the payment machines was often confusing. Several waiters assumed I was stuck with the "new" chip card.

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

#403

Post by EpicEng » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

DtnB wrote: post #379

EpicEng wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a waiter for years. I personally never made under min, but I knew people who did. They got paid. I also got paid every cent of every cc tip. What are you basing this on?

worked BOH for years, had friends in FOH of many small restaurants and bars for years. Saw all sorts of shady stuff.

Sure, and murder is still a thing even though we have laws against it. All laws are broken by some people, but the matter at hand isn't "does this ever happen?", it's "does this happen so often as to constitute a massive and consistent pattern of wage theft?"

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

#404

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #384

dragonwriter wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> All of which only has any effect other than to hurt service workers only if everyone goes along.

It doesn't require everyone, or even close to everyone, but it does require a sufficiently large portion of the customer base to render the tipping regime untenable.

> Which ain't gonna happen.

I don't think that's actually clear, once you recognize that it doesn't take everyone.

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

#405

Post by smnrchrds » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #299

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A very easy, relatively pleasant way to get through life in the US if you're well-off enough that you routinely buy coffee in expensive coffee shops: just always tip. Anywhere there's a tip line. You never have to figure anything out, and sometimes people really appreciate it. This echoes the sentiment that 'if you can't afford to pay a X% tip, you can't afford to buy the product'. Problem is that it seems to keep g…

Tips shouldn't be expected if you're on regular minimum wage rather than the tipped wage.

In my province in Canada, we have one minimum wage, $15 per hour, and at least 15% tip is still very much expected.

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

#406

Post by derefr » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #286

addicted wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US "tip" is a misnomer. Minimum wages for jobs where you can be tipped drop from $8 or so otherwise to something like $2. It's not a "tip". It's an expected (and the expectation is in law, as evidenced by the lower minimum wage) part of the employee's salary. This is a really bad system, (as David MItchell would say, it's a tax on conscience), but it's the system the US has. It's very different from almost all…

It’s not actually a lower minimum wage, employees must make minimum wage including tips or employers are legally required to make up the difference. In practice this is unlikely, but it’s still the legal requirement.

The parent commenter meant that the tips are being "stolen" by the employer by an equal subtraction from their wage up to a given amount (the point where the wage + tips surpasses minimum wage.) Sort of like how an advance works in publishing: your revenue is "stolen" by an equal subtraction from your royalties up to the total amount of the advance.

A tip, in the classical sense, is expected to be something that the person you're tipping gets to keep in addition to their wage.

A minimum wage isn't supposed to guarantee a minimum level of welfare (that's what direct-transfer welfare programs are for); it's supposed to guarantee a minimum proportion between labor-in and compensation-out.

In fact, think of the alternative case: it would piss most people off to realize that giving $20 to a person on welfare, means that—if the recipient is honest—the government will subtract that same amount from their welfare check for that month.

That's the way that system is supposed to work, and people still find it unjust. So why don't they find it unjust when it's a system (minimum wage) that's not supposed to keep people "at level", but rather to increase their compensation as they provide more labor?

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

#407

Post by MauranKilom » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #400

Dylan16807 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they didn't allow tipping, restaurants would charge more to make up the difference (margins in service work are almost always very low). Neither good nor bad. > In a tipping system, when things are going well, everyone tips; if things aren't going so well, not so much. There's some wiggle room between the list price and the actual price, which might offset price stickiness. That's terrible! Instead of the burden…

The restaurant doesn't still make money—the under-tipped employees quit to seek better employment, and at the going wage the employer is offering, there is no further demand for that job to replace the employees who have quit. So fewer employees have to take on the slack of "doing more", and thus each one ends up making roughly as much in tips as before (at equilibrium, if they manage to take up that slack); or they…

> at the going wage the employer is offering, there is no further demand for that job to replace the employees who have quit

That assertion comes out of nowhere...

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

#408

Post by Udik » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #395

fermienrico wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They don't lower the prices; they just fail to raise them. I.e., the costs of paying their employees would have gone up, and thereby forced them to raise (visible) prices; but since what went up instead is the societally-expected tip, their employees have already had their compensation adjusted to match inflation, and so the employees are not costing the employer any more than previously, and so the employer doesn't…

And if an owner has to raise the prices because of an increase of the rent, or because of a spike in the cost of coffee, why are the waiters going to get a cut out of that?

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

#409

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

MrEfficiency wrote: post #86

sillyquiet wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet strangely, the loudest voices AGAINST doing away with tipping in favor of a wage are often wait staff themselves.

This seems like such a non-issue, I'm not sure why articles are written about tipping. Wait staff love tips because it gets them paid significantly more than if they worked a retail job. After visiting Europe, tips are necessary for good service. The rudeness and lack of service was culture shock.

Appropriate behaviour of the waiter differs significantly in America compared to most of Europe.

Over here, more than a single interruption ("is everything OK?") is intrusive. Fake smiles and fake enthusiasm aren't desirable either.

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

#410

Post by _bfhp » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

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…

I agree with the "Always tip" mentality. But maybe the problem is deeper than tipping. I'm interested in Nathan Robinson's thoughts grappling with the service industry as a whole, e.g. in his essay "Service With A Smile."[0] He writes: "There is something about the nature of the relationship between server and served that just doesn’t sit well with me." Why can't we just make our own food and brew our own coffee? Isn't it orders of magnitude less expensive?

[0] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/12/service-with-a-smile