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Starbucks: "No, we won't raise your wages, but we'll add digital tipping."
Seems like a win for the consumer. You don't have to tip but if they raise the wages you'll be paying more for the same service and same product.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The existence of restaurants, barber shops, delivery services, all over the world in first world and developing countries indicates it's possible to run a business successfully without relying on charity or variable pricing models.
Cost sharing isn't charity.
I hate tipping. It's an unwanted cognitive intrusion with no upside for me whatsoever. It also reflects a broken (wage / reward) system, and obviously my preference is they fix that.
In Australia I may tip - iff the service is really good. And only at sit-down / eat-in restaurants. Cafes, cabs, ubers, couriers, hotels, etc - these are not tipping places. If I'm tipping at a restaurant, in addition to exceptional service / food, it'll be a) only if I feel there's zero guilt or implied obligation to tip, b) 5-10%, and c) cash (ie. not via the EFT / POS device).
One thing I've never understood is the argument for tipping. It has always been "because servers are being paid less than minimum wage." Which the issue with that is that that varies state by state. Most west coast states do not have a separate tipped wage[0]. So the question is, why do we tip at all on the west coast[1]? Worse, it seems to be expanding and increasing in size[2] The followup argument is often "well t…
The ideal all consumers should be pursuing for all forms of financial transaction is that all advertised prices are the out-the-door ceiling. Fees, taxes, surcharges, tips, etc may not be added, though discounts are ok. Tipping should not even be an option, though we've seen a lot of evidence that a visible percentage would much prefer to lord their power to tip over the heads of their servers, and get very upset when that's taken away. So this is a hard position to reach from where we are, even though it's clearly better than the current state.
But we don't live in that world. In the current world, many things are advertised at prices lower than are actually sustainable. And no, I'm not talking about loss-leaders. I mean the entire menu at a restaurant, for instance. If that is all their income, they can't afford to pay servers enough to be livable. So they underpay servers, and expect tips to sort of paper over the gap. And because that gap exists, I recognize tipping as sadly necessary, even though it is forbidden in my ideal world.
I don't like it, but of the options I have available when I choose to eat out, it's the least bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When I delivered food A "token amount" is pretty reasonable if you take tipping at face value, no? It's supposed to be a reward for good service. Waitstaff engage with you many times over the course of about an hour, and every person at a table receives service. It's fairly reasonable in this case to tip in proportion to the total bill. On the contrary, it's roughly the same amount of work for a delivery driver to…
See my below post. The issue is the delivery driver has to pick up the order from a full service restaurant much of the time. The full service restaurant workers will blackball the delivery driver if he doesn't tip them, and that happens proportionally to the cost of the food. After 2-3 times the delivery driver not tipping the restaraunt at the food he's picking up, he will be waiting forever until his customers can…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tipping is a system in which customers explicitly, optionally, and variably share some of the cost of labor. It has the features of allowing individual patrons to modulate the labor subsidy they provide, based on their current price sensitivity, the value they place on warm fuzzies (don't dismiss this!), the relationship they want to build with the business, and the service they perceive themselves to be getting. You…
I disagree with this. I'm reading your claim as "you should pay people so they become your friends." There's plenty of stores I've been regulars at that don't have a tipping system that I've become friendly with staff with. When I was a teenager and worked at movie theaters I became friendly with many regulars and tipping doesn't exist there. The warm fuzzies come from social interaction, face recognition, and being…
That relationship with the servers, by the way, also has a name: it's a principal-agent problem. Servers have competing incentives: to serve the interests of customers (better service) or the business (reduce ongoing costs). Tipping shifts the incentives around. You could attempt that shift with other mechanisms, like after-dinner surveys, but you know how well that'd work.
It costs time, effort, and money to provide better service, so I'm not from where you get the moral dimension of having to buy them. They have a cost; of course you have to buy them.
Given that even retail stores have added tipping prompts to their checkouts, I'd say yes. Plus many restaurants with placeholder tip icons that start at 25%+ You also don't know what the tip is really going towards in many cases. In the classic restaurant/waitstaff case you can reasonably expect it to go to the workers, in the random knick knack or general goods stores ??? Tipping in general is a system to transfer w…
This is the most egregious part of it. Who ever invented that a percentage should inflate? The price is already inflating so a percentage of it goes up. You don't get to inflate both.
Tipping was always 10% to 15% if particularly exceptional. Although even that should be made illegal, just include all costs of doing business in the price like nearly every shop does.