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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

#451

Post by beatgammit »

Balgair wrote: post #39

The 'politics' of tipping aside, one thing that really grinds my gears is that they calculate the tip after taxes are applied. I feel that the tips should be calculated based on the exchange I had with the establishment/person and that the taxes should considered separate from our interaction. Like, here's the 20% tip on the 100$ I spent. Not, here's the 20% tip on the $100 + 5% tax, $105 total. I know why they do th…

Tipping shouldn't be based on a percentage of the bill either, it should be based on the service. If you give me good service, it doesn't matter if I spent $10 or $100, you should be rewarded the same.

I have kids, and I know they can be a pain for servers. If they handle my kids well (e.g. sitting us in a booth near a wall is better than a table in the middle of the room) and/or my kids make a mess, I'll leave a bigger tip. If they ignore is for more affluent looking customers, I'll leave a smaller tip. When I bring my kids, I'm not paying a sitter, so that money is up for grabs.

My wife and I will often order and give some to the kids instead of them having their own meal (they only pick at it anyway), so basing the tip on the bill isn't a very good way to do it. I also don't like to buy drinks (I don't drink alcohol and I prefer to avoid sugar), so my bill will always be way less than someone who goes all out.

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

#452

Post by asdff »

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.

Even in the U.S. if your tips + tipped worker minimum wage fail to reach untipped worker minimum wage, your employer pays the difference (1).

1. https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm

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

#453

Post by asdff »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #282
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…

>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…

I find that no one really bothers with the math anymore. If the bill is $11 most people will just put $1.50 or $2.00 rather than work out a fixed percent.

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

#454

Post by asdff »

derefr wrote: post #406
Retric wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree. Tips should be unknown to the employer. This can readily be done even with card transactions; staff usually swipe a card or enter a PIN anyway to use the POS system.

One of my biggest hesitations with tipping in places where it is unexpected, like a muffin shop in the OP, is whether the tip goes straight to the employee whose performance I tipped for, split among all staff indiscriminately, or more sinister straight to the employer.

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

#455

Post by JamesBarney »

acdha wrote: post #445
JamesBarney wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiters take home ~$20/hr. If tipping culture changed such that waiters made $25/hr the restaurant can't reduce prices to compensate because the are already being paid the minimum wage of 2.15. They can't legally cut server pay. Likewise if tipping culture changes such that waiters made 15/hr they wouldn't get a $5/hr raise, because servers are already overpaid relative to equivalent untipped jobs.

> Waiters take home ~$20/hr. The BLS stats have it at $10/hour or $20k per year: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/mobile/... . There are some people who are well paid but they’re generally in expensive areas and there aren’t very many of them. It’s like looking at Waymo engineers and making a general statement about software developer income country-wide. The other problem is that where you say “c…

I've known plenty of waiters, and none of them made $10/hr. The cities were Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. They all reported making 15-20/hr.

I usually trust the BLS numbers, but in this instance I think they might be off. They collects numbers from corporations, who can usually just report salary. But with heavily tipped positions they don't know how much the waiters earn except how much they declare for tax purposes as the end of their shift. And all my waiter friends who were making 15-20/hr were reporting $10/hr.(Almost all credit card tips).

This is similar to being a delivery driver, everyone was making $20/hr but the ledgers all said we were making 10.

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

#456

Post by asdff »

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…

>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.

Is this not true with every company in every industry? Pay is a major reason why people leave a job for another. If an employer is struggling to find labor at a low ball price, they will raise their offer.

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

#457

Post by asdff »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #450
CharlesW wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't tip 20% when I grab a coffee at Dunkin. Why not? Not a critique, just curious about your rationale when you note that "tips are expected to fill in the gap".

they make probably $10+ an hour and are not considered "tipped" employees, that's way more than a waiter's minimum (used to be $2.13 or so)

Employers pay the difference between tipped and untipped employee wages if the tips + wage don't beat minimum wage.

However in regards to Dunkin Donuts, I'm not sure the employees can even accept or keep any tips themselves. Maybe a Dunkin Donuts regular can comment whether they can accept tips; many franchise restaurants have a no tipping policy.

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

#458

Post by asdff »

paxys wrote: post #60
frereubu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the heart of it for me. If I tip cash, even if the tip jar is next to the register I always make a point of going back to tip at the end of my drink / food if the experience was good. A digital version should be some kind of contactless payment point at the door where you can easily set a tip amount and tap your phone / card.

Or just adjust your payment after the fact, like Uber and Lyft. It would be pretty easy for Square to implement this.

Do you use Square every day? The last time I went somewhere with specifically a Square reader was probably two weeks ago. Even if I went back tomorrow, am I going to remember my last experience enough to judge a tip?

Even if I go to the same coffee shop and use the same Square every morning, unless I'm holding a grudge it's de facto back to front end tipping rather than upon services rendered.

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

#459

Post by asdff »

scroot wrote: post #253
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also on that page: >If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any week, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate

Do you think in a real workplace people are going to constantly bring this up with their managers?

I think the IRS would spot this from a mile a way.

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

#460

Post by gbear605 »

asdff wrote: post #457
onetimemanytime wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they make probably $10+ an hour and are not considered "tipped" employees, that's way more than a waiter's minimum (used to be $2.13 or so)

Employers pay the difference between tipped and untipped employee wages if the tips + wage don't beat minimum wage. However in regards to Dunkin Donuts, I'm not sure the employees can even accept or keep any tips themselves. Maybe a Dunkin Donuts regular can comment whether they can accept tips; many franchise restaurants have a no tipping policy.

Employers are supposed to pay the difference, but often don't.

At least at some Dunkins, employees split tips among everyone working, but it stays with the employees.

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