81–90 of 186 posts
I tip wait staff, hotel staff, uber drivers, barbers, and that's it. We seem to have entered this era of everyone asking for tips, in addition to the online buy-me-a-coffee micro donations culture but sorry, I can't tip everybody. Throw away the tip jars and demand higher wages from your bosses.
It can sound controversial, but can we please stop with tipping altogether? Leaving aside for a second the fact that now tipping is basically asked everywhere (even at automated machines) - as an European I consider it an extremely stupid trend. If you're "forced" to tip, then it's not a tip anymore. The concept of tipping, at least in Switzerland, has always been to show gratitude for an *exceptional* service. I tot…
What does the average tip-receiving worker who isn't a bartender/waiter/waitress look like wage wise?
Probably $14/hr base salary, get a split $20 worth of tips a night
Say you work 6 hours a night. $104 -> $84 is like getting a 20% paycut.
Reworded:
> It can sound controversial, but can we cut all barista pay/takeout food baggers pay/etc. 20% with no replacement
Everyone on here is complaining about the tips, but I don’t see a way to break tipping culture. Are we going to keep ratcheting up tip percentages forever or is there a solution?
The problem is that if everyone stops tipping, the only ones being affected are the restaurant staff - not the owners. So the message won't be delivered and might actually cause more harm than it should.
It's just that they prefer to get more risk and more money with tipping over a traditional employee job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh most workers prefer tipping as they can usually make more with tipping then they can with an increased wage. The real problem is where tipping is now demanded when no customer service is given or before.
Or when the tip is requested before any service has been rendered. Delivery apps are the worst at this - I had a bad enough experience on one delivery that I reached out to support to reduce the tip. But realistically I'd rather it just be built into the price.
This is the only way to be sure that the money you're tipping are going directly to the rider.
It's paywalled, but yeah I just do what I learned growing up: 15% is a solid tip, with more, e.g. up to 25% for excellent service or less - down to 0 - for bad service. $1 per drink at a bar. Or if I'm broke, I don't tip at all and feel bad about it. The young people who tip 25% and up and sneer at you if you don't can get right off my lawn and their sneers have no effect on me.
So it used to be, you would order something for delivery, they would charge you the in-person price for each item, add them up, subtract discounts, and give you a number called the “subtotal.” To this they would add a delivery fee, taxes, and you would add your tip as 15% of subtotal.
In the dark pattern world that we find ourselves, the menu items on a typical delivery app are secretly priced 25% higher than in-person. (Go ahead, look up Applebees’ “2 for $28” menu item on a delivery app, tell me it doesn't cost $35.) This is so that they can advertise “Reduced delivery and service fees if you subscribe to our monthly service so that we can get MRR from forgetful people!!”. Then the tax and service fees are added to the cart total, but the discount is NOT subtracted, before they provide helpful tip buttons. Doordash doesn't even tell you the percentage, they just expect you to pick the smallest one and it's a 30 or 40% tip or whatever, Uber will tell you “oh you’re only giving this person a 10% tip you monster” even though it's a 15% tip calculated the “hard way.”
It all adds up, picking up a big nice breakfast in bed for me and the kid and my wife on my wife's birthday from Starbucks was like $30 via the Starbucks app, I punched it into Uber Eats and they wanted to charge me almost double for the identical order. So if that ~180% had a 15% tip in it, then it was actually ~57% marked up to begin with and you actually paid a 24% tip. (I don't know if that's typical of Uber Eats but it suggests that on Uber Eats you should only tip what-they-call-10%.)
But they will be unlikely to play these games with the tax man, so “double the tax” is probably slightly safer?
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I’ve seen more and more places just include an obligatory 20% service charge. Should that just be priced in? Yes. But I think it’s a baby step in the right direction.
I hate that even more than tipping. Just hike the prices by 20%, and I might come back a second time. Hit me with a surprise 20% surcharge, and I surely won't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or when the tip is requested before any service has been rendered. Delivery apps are the worst at this - I had a bad enough experience on one delivery that I reached out to support to reduce the tip. But realistically I'd rather it just be built into the price.
For this one the easiest solution is to always tip 0% in the app, and tip in cash directly. This is the only way to be sure that the money you're tipping are going directly to the rider.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that if everyone stops tipping, the only ones being affected are the restaurant staff - not the owners. So the message won't be delivered and might actually cause more harm than it should.
If everyone stopped tipping, the restaurant would have to shut down, because the staff would seek alternate employment.
For years now, whenever I've pointed out that tipping makes no sense, people hit back with how that's just the way it is or point out how servers would make way less with it.
Fine then, everybody should start charging a tip until it's normalized, until people start tipping at counter service, at self-checkouts and wherever else because the people working at those places also work hard and deserve to be rewarded.
Also fun is how messed up the tipping system is in Canada:
- American style tips (20% minimum)
- The percentage increased from 15% (and 10% even earlier) because of inflation even though it's a percentage value and increases with inflation anyway
- We (in Ontario) have minimum wage unlike in some states where they make like 2.30 and are expected to make the remaining in tips
- We have higher food prices because of things like dairy protectionism (lookup dairy cartel)
- We have high living costs in general because of things like our really expensive real estate, and canadian salaries are on average lower than US counterparts.
- We have free healthcare compared to America, so that's another expense that servers don't have to pay for (especially if they get their tips in cash and don't report it for tax purposes)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate that even more than tipping. Just hike the prices by 20%, and I might come back a second time. Hit me with a surprise 20% surcharge, and I surely won't.
It’s always put on the menu