I went to a little coffee shop in a museum the other day. I ordered a little sandwich from behind a display, as well as some tea. When I put my card in the machine, the gentleman taking orders immediately said, "press here, just press one of the buttons here," jabbing with his finger in the directions some on-screen buttons for adding a 15, 18, or 20% gratuity. It's true that the buttons weren't very noticeable but I was still taken aback by his forthrightness. I left a tip anyway, but then he handed me a pre-made sandwich, an empty paper cup, and a tea bag; and curtly announced, "Hot water's over there. Next!" So not only had he insisted upon a tip but he wasn't even planning on preparing my beverage. If people wonder why customers get turned off of tipping it's because of entitled people abusing the process. He did nothing but ring me up, but he was expecting the same tip as a full-service table waiter.
Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one nice thing about living in the EU, that it mandates full price disclosure for some industries. (Anyone got a list?) In particular, when it says your airline ticket is NNN€, you will pay than NNN€. No screwball fees up the wazoo.
Still plenty of restaurants with “service charge” at the bottom of the menu
Yep, in the UK it's almost always a 12.5% service charge. Almost always with terrible service of course.
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how one person opened a coffee shop which basically operates like every single coffee shop in the world apart from the US , and you guys need a detailed write up, charts, flow charts, tips for the secret sauce :)
There are other tipping cultures outside the USA, you know? Tipping is very common in the Balkans and other countries that were influenced by Ottoman culture, for example. While it is not expected, many coffee shops all around Europe also have tipping jars. It's really not common in much of Europe at least for people to actually discourage tipping (though they may seek to refuse what they perceive as exorbitant tips)…
> While it is not expected,
That's the key point.
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how one person opened a coffee shop which basically operates like every single coffee shop in the world apart from the US , and you guys need a detailed write up, charts, flow charts, tips for the secret sauce :)
The point is, that isn't how coffee shops typically operate in the United States, which is what makes it interesting. Operating a coffee shop without tips has special and unique considerations in the United States - chiefly, how to retain talent and employees when conventional wisdom would say it is better paying to get a job at a traditional tip-based coffee shop, which again, are plentiful in the United States. I w…
Are tips tax favourable? Because if not then replace $4 coffee and $1 tip with $5 coffee and just pay the staff more.
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Thanks for making your attitude towards people with disabilities clear upfront. Comparing a car dealership with a coffee shop... I am lost on words.
It’s unfortunate that you feel like I have an attitude about it at all. I empathize with you, and I know it must be difficult, especially in everyday life.
That being said, you are not entitled to anything more than anybody else just because of your disability. Nobody is entitled to free coffee, just like nobody is entitled to free cars.
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#706A few days ago I got dinner delivered, and I added a $5 tip through the app (which came out to about 22%). When the delivery person came, he expressed disappointment about the size of the tip, which really surprised me. As much as I know that it would be better for businesses to pay better wages rather than tips being expected, I also know that the system being unfair isn't any consolation to workers who are just try…
It's hard to say. I would argue that yeah, that baseline tip %age is creeping upwards in the US at least, though the rate at which is hard to quantify. There seem to be a lot of social factors at play that are continuing to put upward pressure on that number. I was taught 15-20% a decade or more back, but that feels to be closer to 25-30% now.
Delivery app tip culture is a fascinating rabbithole in and of itself. /r/doordash is a great repository of posts to look at. You can get a sense of expected order pricing/tip amounts/driving distances sufficient to compel a dasher to pick up your order. Much like with the restaurant industry you will notice that quite a few (I would say a majority of posters there) take issue not with Doordash but with the delivery recipient as the cause of their low earnings. Tips are the name of the game, and any fervor to change or push Doordash into changing their payment models are hushed by the collective din that laments "stingy customers".
Whether it was planned or a happy coincidence, that mentality is a sociocultural win for doordash as a company. The customer, who themselves can make no guarantees how much of that tip a driver will receive if paying digitally, is to bear the burden of blame more than the company that contracted that service to a driver when said driver feels underpaid. It feels me with a sense that's hard to describe. Disheartenment maybe? That new markets and services appear and the tipping culture we crafted for ourselves comes in with them, absolving some companies of paying market wages and sometimes shielding them from certain wage laws.
I wish we in the US could collectively agree that this culture of tipping is (imo) a net negative for everyone involved. But with an economy looking over an uncertain horizon, and the recent bottom-to-top wealth transfers facilitated by the chaos of covid, I think the simple act of throwing a few bucks to the service worker will remain the average American's daily act of "helping the little guy" regardless of how real that benefit truly is.
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#707Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how one person opened a coffee shop which basically operates like every single coffee shop in the world apart from the US , and you guys need a detailed write up, charts, flow charts, tips for the secret sauce :)
There are other tipping cultures outside the USA, you know? Tipping is very common in the Balkans and other countries that were influenced by Ottoman culture, for example. While it is not expected, many coffee shops all around Europe also have tipping jars. It's really not common in much of Europe at least for people to actually discourage tipping (though they may seek to refuse what they perceive as exorbitant tips)…
I was just going to say - from Croatia - in most of my circles if you don't leave a 10% tip you're either poor or a miser. Frankly even if you're poor, you likely won't go rather than count cents - only relatives in retirement don't leave tips when they insist on paying.
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should write a longer piece about your coffee shop! and the process behind it. If you do, you should submit it to HN - and if you do that you should email us (hn@ycombinator.com) because we might put it in the second-chance pool ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 ).
Seconded. Opening a coffee shop anywhere is an act of bravery, but in L.A., well… Godspeed, my friend.
A business model where if you get it just right, you could earn as much as a wagie!
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mandatory minimum wage where I live is $18.69/hr, which is higher than the median wage in many European countries. Any tips or mandatory service charges are always in addition to this and many waiters make more than the minimum wage. Replacing tipping with a 20% mandatory service charge -- tried many times here -- results in the employees earning less money, empirically. Eliminating tipping is unpopular with empl…
Generally, minimum wages are lower for tipped professions than non-tipped for this reason. Assuming you're talking about Seattle, which is the only place I could find with an $18.69/hr minimum wage, tipped employees make $16.50 in comparison [0]. [0]: https://www.seattle.gov/laborstandards/ordinances/minimum-wa...
what about the entire state of California which has a higher population than most European countries?
Re: Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
#710I've just opened a coffee shop in Los Angeles last month, and we don't take tips. We only use self-ordering iPads (I've custom coded an iOS app w/ Stripe Terminal for it), and we don't accept cash either. We've had a few customers baffled by the no-tipping policy, and still insisting that they leave a tip. Some even left cash on the counter or on the table. We had to chase a few of them down to return their money. Al…
I’m in process of opening an all you can eat pancake shop and doing the same. I’m thinking of charging a small ~$x per table fee for bussing tables. Refundable if they self bus. Probably would always refund it unless they wreck the table. Not sure I want to administer it, or if it would be perceived as a punitive thing and get bad reviews. Just an idea I had while coding the self checkout app. Also, pancakes are made…
If you want to go thay route, it might be better instead to add a % to all the prices, and then at the end give it back if someone left a clean table. Something like "as a small token of gratitude for leaving the place clean and saving us time, here's 1% of your price back!"
One is punitive, other one is rewarding.