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Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

maxinomics.com

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Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#231
Why not expand tipping to other services? Let's say police stopping you for speeding. The judge and prosecutor in court. Or maybe the border personnel. Aren't those people providing you personalised service and you should be happy to give them little extra for their hard and under appreciated work?

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google: As of Nov 2, 2022, the average annual pay for a Waiter in New York City is $35,180 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $16.91 an hour. This is the equivalent of $676/week or $2,931/month.

This presumably doesn't include tips. The tips are also untaxed, giving them an even greater advantage

> The tips are also untaxed

afaik tips are taxed as income tax. Yes I'm sure practically it gets underreported but servers definitely would raise suspicions if they reported $0.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can, and should give employees dignity and a fair wage. We can each start right now by directly transferring a tiny portion of our wealth to the individuals that we interact with who could benefit from it (at least in this specific context, not exclusive of others who could also benefit). I figure, I have it, they could use it, and I don't need to change everything about our economy and society to do it. I can jus…

I’m sorry but why should it be our wealth? Billionaires seem to have a lot more spare cash sitting around, let them pay for it.

Back in the occupy wallstreet days I did some rough calculations, I wondered "If we appropriated the wealth of every billionaire, how much of a boost in the economy would we have?" It turned out surprising low. It was something like (iirc) 3 months of the economy and the money would be gone. And then who are we going to rob? They are massively relatively wealthy, but accumulated wealth is nearly nothing compared to the aggregated flows of the economy.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it's more likely that most wealthy people that are the type to let you know they're wealthy either didn't tip at all or very little. There's plenty of wealthy people that tip very well, but many of them don't flaunt it in any way.

I figured this would be a response. I knew just about everyone pretty well, it was in a very nice area of town and is a small rural community.

Interesting. I haven't seen this in the areas I've lived in. I wonder if it's more of a "big fish" type thing, where people that are the "big fish" in an area tend to tip worse (and expect people to be impressed / overly thankful when they tip well). If you're in a small area, people that are wealthy may very well map to the people that consider themselves to be the big fish. For areas with a higher population, being wealthy is much more common, so doesn't really mark one as "special" in the same way.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#235
post #54

Some (many?) countries have demonstrated that no-tipping can work just fine. > makes them less competitive to any nearby coffeeshops that haven't raised prices Maybe I'm an outlier but for me I'm sick of the mental game of "Am I good member of society for the % I selected, and how much will my date judge me if I choose what used to be the norm -- 10%-15%... and am I the sucker if I choose a high amount while other pe…

It seems different in the US, where everyone is expected to tip as part of the overall price, like the article describes, and there is tipping Europe where the tip is not needed to boost the wage to an acceptable level but is simply to reward people who have gone above and beyond. In many restaurants in the UK, a "tip" is automatically included for large parties to reward the extra work required but can be removed on…

What extra work required? It seems to me that the attention paid per individual is always less for large parties than, say, a party of two. It's much less personal.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but most people tip fine. We tip out of guilt. I literally freaking hate it, and I'm starting to tip less and less and prices go up. Why should I tip you to pour me a drink? You are literally just doing your job. I don't call up my customers for a tip when I release an update to their program. I don't send them invoices with a TIP line and show how much 15, 18, 20% of the invoice is so they can add on to it. Tipping…

You literally don’t have to think about it. Just tip 20% every time you’re at a bar or restaurant. That’s it. It’s a way for us to make better money. If that 20% was included and hidden I know you wouldn’t care as much, but it makes it tougher for us to get legally paid as much. Did you even read the article?

> I’d rather risk a slow shift with less tips than work a job with a slightly higher hourly rate and no tips

You can't argue both at once. You literally say above that you prefer tips because even if they increased prices you make more because of tips (i.e., making people feel guilty and throwing extra money at you).

But then you tell me if it was 20% higher I wouldn't care. Both of those can't be true.

I know you and I are being exploited when they want me to add 20% to the current prices. You literally just told me you make more money when I have to tip 20% than if prices were increased. Thus that means the TRUE price would not be a 20% increase. Therefore I'm being taken advantage of. And you are being taken advantage of because the employer is putting the variable risk on YOU. If there is less traffic in a place, that is on YOU. Why should that be your concern? If you work 8 hours, you work 8 hours. You don't control who comes in to the place. That's the employer's concern to choose a good location, advertise or whatever. But nope.. you are perfectly fine bearing that risk and perpetuating this stupid system.

And you are correct- if they showed true prices with no expectation of tips and I know everyone is being compensated fairly then I don't care about the price. I lived the UK for many years. What you see is what you pay, including tax. People are paid, there is time off, national medical coverage etc etc etc. There's not a thought about it. And I hate the mind games here.

Tipping is OPTIONAL. Live with it.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#237
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see that for restaurants, the price of a good portion of meat at home isn't all that cheaper, but for coffee shops? That $6 lattee probably cost them thirty cents of milk sugar and beans and less than a dollar in labor to put in front of you.

If I were to facepalm any harder I'd knock myself out... This is legit among the worst takes I've ever heard. Edit - especially puzzling to hear since software has little to no marginal costs and is almost all capital costs and labour. First of all, typical rent for a coffee shop sized space in a major city is around $8-10k per month. So factor that in. Second, baristas don't get paid on demand... They get paid hourl…

Anywhere you read suggests margins are a lot higher on cafes than restaurants so my point stands I think. I've also been seeing figures like 80 cents thrown around for the true cost of a latte with $7lb beans and $3gal milk, cup included, not rent though. All businesses bear overhead costs, but at least you can sell your used espresso machine for the price you paid for it when your cafe tanks and can get away with staffing one or two people for most of your working hours. 70 orders a day would be easy to hit I would think for a cafe; from my cursory research independent cafes average 250-300 cups a day while your starbucks or places as busy as them might be pushing 600 cups a day.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#238
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a customer supposed to know that?

Why would a customer automatically assume the opposite?

I assume a tip jar sitting at the front of the house goes to the front of the house staff, honestly. Especially at bakeries, the baker comes in at midnight and is gone by 4am, there's no sense you are interacting with the baker nor any guarantees that the front of house staff will leave a pile of money behind for the bakers at midnight to distribute amongst themselves.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#239
post #109

Being slightly more cynical now, I'm wondering if this push is merely the payment processor realizing they could increase their cut by shaming the customer into paying more. And I don't believe we can measure this purely financially, as simply not tipping in a coffeeshop with a tablet now comes with a bigger sentiment of shame, which is especially levied on the ones for which that extra 20% actually matters.

I always assumed that was it. The tip for paying at a counter started when clover and other touch tablet point of sale systems came around. Some genius figured out that asking people to write down a tip on a receipt and signing it was too much friction and off putting, but on a touch screen, where a tap takes a fraction of a second and zero effort, at least some people would not mind hitting the tip button. And it wo…

Also there is the psychological factor of the staff member watching the ipad screen the entire time, and looking at it again immediately after you are done. Like are you going to put zero and have them think "Fuck you cheap asshole" or are you going to be guilt tripped into throwing $3 away that the staff member might not even see? It taps into the same moral dilemma as a beggar accosting you on the street.

Re: Why Is Tipping Everywhere You Checkout?

#240
post #70

Arguing that new (or newly-conspicuous) PoS tipping is just a way to get price-insensitive spenders to pay more ignores the social dynamic which will cause many price-conscious customers to tip when they can’t really afford to or else to not tip and feel uncomfortable. In either case, these price-conscious customers are less likely to come back. But since this PoS tipping trend seems strongest in hip, gentrified shop…

>new (or newly-conspicuous) PoS tipping Increasingly, in the US, people don't carry cash/coins with them. I might have a "just in case" $20 or two but I mostly don't have currency to cash tip which is probably one reason you see it appearing more on PoS devices.

I feel like its just a feature thats on with default settings than a careful analysis of cash on hand of the average american by the restaurant owner. Anecdotally, you are more likely to have cash on hand if you frequent street food or weed dispensaries so it probably varies by local culture quite a lot.
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