Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

411–420 of 508 posts

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

#411
I live in the U.S. Here tipping is almost always expected or at least asked for. It can be uncomfortable. Plenty of comments here about this.

However, I grew up being told that I should work hard, everyday and earn my paycheck. I was taught that expecting a tip was wrong because I should give my very best, always, regardless of how much money I was earning. If I was unhappy with the money, find a job that paid better. But always give 110% at every job.

When I was younger I worked at a Starbucks. I was in charge of counting the tips each week and distributing them. The formula was based upon how many hours you worked that week. It usually worked out to be around $20-something, sometimes more, around holidays maybe $40-$50 something. I never cared how much. However other co-workers would cry if it was low because they felt like they were "stiffed". Not because they did a bad job, but because they just expected good tips.

Recently in China, I stayed at the same hotel for a few months. When it was time for me to leave I asked my co-workers how much should I leave the maid for a tip. After all she cleaned my room for months. They told me don't leave her anything. It would be considered an insult because it implied that she didn't do her very best and maybe more money would have made her do better work. I was a bit taken back because I expected to tip her. I asked a few more co-workers and they all said the same thing. Don't tip her. Instead what I could do if I really wanted to was to leave her something that wasn't money. Like a gift of some sort. I left her a new Vivo X20 Android phone.

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

#412
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Industrywide, about a third of hotel guests leave tips for housekeepers." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/business/hotel-housekeepe...

Yes, and that sucks.

Yes, it most certainly does suck for an assertion claiming it's a norm and "hella [sic] expected".

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

#413
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes to the workers though. Are you claiming that the owners are not distributing them back?

Not the parent but: I would imply exactly such a thing. Just like how, in some/most states you are supposed to pay a tipped employee minimum wage if they don't make the equivalent in tips. As far as I can tell from having worked in food service: that payout never happens.

This is my personal experience from having worked in a restaurant when I was 17: the owner would "pool" the total tips for the night and then distribute them to the workers before we went home. The owner said pooling would keep the tips distribution "fair" because some workers wouldn't get a chance to wait tables if they had to handle takeouts behind the register for most of a shift.

However, pretty quickly us workers discovered the math wasn't adding up. We would pool $300 of tips for the night and only have $200 equally distributed to us. When we asked the owner, he would say something like "you must have added wrong" or "the receipts only show $200", which was bullshit. After that happened, us workers made it a point to always make up an excuse to the customers why we couldn't handle electronic tips, and then immediately pocket the cash tips and split them ourselves.

Fortunately, most of us left before the owner caught on to the point of becoming confrontational (it was a short job before university). Moral of the story is some guy in his mid-40s, who made enough money to drive a BMW, felt that he could deceive some young kids because he had the chance. In hindsight, now I know more about things like labor laws and enforcement hotlines, but at the time most of us were also being paid under the table (which we didn't even understand because this was our first real job) and were scared of having to face the IRS and lose the money we made.

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

#414
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be this way. But American tourism has spread tipping to many countries.

Our worst export, surely.

I would say the worst export was a hard stance against drugs.

And sugar-heavy foods (coca-cola and soft drinks, sugar-heavy processed foods, etc)

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

#415
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I never tip on take-out. If I’m not sitting down and taking up a turn at a table, but still paying the price on the menu for the food, the tip is already there just in another form.

> the tip is already there just in another form. That is making a lot of mistaken assumptions about how restaurant service works. I can only speak for myself and former colleagues, but very often increases in takeout orders correlated with fewer in-house patrons. Whether that was because Foodler was running a promotion, people who came in to sit down got discouraged by the sight of all the takeout business or what, I…

Even if take out orders are canibalizing dine-in orders, how does that have any bearing on my tipping strategy?

The front of the house should be staffed appropriately based on the dine-in load, and the back of house should be staffed appropriately for the full cooking load. I don’t tip the front of house to hand me a bag. The hostess probably isn’t sharing the tips at most places anyway!

If your manager is running a take-out only promo that bombs the dine-in business, they should be running dine-in only promos to balance it out. I think your gripe is with the manager not the customers!

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

#416
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess I see the point. But why not just tip? The coffee shop tip is like, a buck. For the reason I already gave: you can't seriously expect everyone to accede to every demand for paying 20% more. That's not an actual, practical decision theory. "I can afford 80 cents" isn't responsive.

First they came for the 20% at Per Se, and I did not speak out, for I wasn't the person paying the tab. Then they came for the 20% at Ruth's Chris, and I did not speak out, for I had gotten tipsy on cabernet. Then they came for the 20% at Olive Garden, and I did not speak out, for I thought the server was attractive. Then they came for the 20% at Intelligentsia, and I did not speak out, for the creeping norm of payin…

If this is trying to be clever, it could use some work, and if there's a substantive point, I'm not seeing it.

The point is that your purported, self-glorifying norm asks one to pay the default PoS tip of everyone who demands or might demand it in the future, to say "yes" to all of them. Counter purchases, grocery stores, fast food, whatever.

Could you maybe consider that there might be better and more practical heuristics?

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

#417

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.

> do you always tip your hotel housekeeping? Being UKian I didn't even know that this was a concept. The hotel advertises a per-night fee, I pay it on departure.

Being a USian, I didn't even know this was a concept. And I remember googling how much to tip when I started travelling as an adult. I'm pretty sure all the advice was to consider leaving a tip for housekeeping if you make an unusual mess or get great service. Not that it was hella expected or the norm.

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

#418

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…

Just like internet discourse would improve if people refrained from typing what they wouldn't say to someone's face, these tipping issues would be practically nonexistent if the owners tried to force workers to verbally request a tip after handing over a muffin. To me, these tip requests deserve as much respect as the old inner city window washer routines[1]. They are insulting and show a complete lack of respect for…

If a poor person asked me for money, why wouldn't I give them a dollar if I could afford it? If I couldn't afford it, why wouldn't I just tell them the truth like "I have student loans" or something?

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

#419
post #260

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 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.

I believe the tip jar at the coffee shop started when coffee shops, like Starbucks, started making more and fancier drinks. When I get a simple cup of plain black coffee I don't tip but when my wife and I are together, I get my black coffee and she usually gets a latte or whatever they call some of their more complicated drinks. I'll tip then because they actually put some effort into making it and I want them to remember us and make nice drinks for my wife the next time we're there.

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

#420

If anyone here has been to Japan, tipping is handled much more elegantly and with a lot more business integrity. Instead of guilt-tripping customers into tipping, businesses in Japan up their prices if they need more money. I remember once when I was in Osaka I was at a really good sushi place that I had visited several times prior. There was no tip option on the receipt (didn't see it anywhere in Japan) and there wa…

Used to be like this too in much of Europe, but now they expect tips from you if they think you're American.

It's true, but I reckon[1] I can ask for the bill in 6 European languages :-)

I've had Danish waiters press the "No tip" button on their machine. One of them even said it was only used for "foreigners", which I took to mean Americans.

[1] Bad Anglo-German pun?

Post reply on HN