If this backlash kills off tipping in America forever, good.

Employers should be paying their employee a living wage anyways, instead of shifting the responsibility to the customers.

I’m American but lived in Japan for a couple of years. I was so shocked by the amazing customer service the Japanese workers gave me but never asked or expected a tip.

I was so confused coming back here and seeing all of stores implementing an option to tip and I’m trying to figure out… for what? Most of the workers hardly acknowledge me when I’m there and it feels as if I’m bothering them coming to order something, and then they turn the iPad around asking for a tip.

This honestly needs to stop.

Yet another thing that has been eye opening about living in Europe is how fucked and terrible tipping is in the states. Twenty percent AS A MINIMUM? When I’m picking up food at the counter??? AYFKM?

The problem with tipping culture is that it works.

I read an article the other day about airlines moving toward cheaper air fares, but charging more and more fees for basic things that should be part of the air fare. That trend is accelerating because customers reward it, period.

People only look at the base price of things, and shop around the best base price. Mentally, humans are mostly awful at factoring in extras and comparing one place’s apples to another place’s oranges. The company with the lower base price wins, and shifting prices over toward fees and extras doesn’t seem to hurt them as much as just including those costs in the base price does.

Same story with tipping. If a Moe’s burrito costs $10 but you’re asked to leave a $2 tip, while a Joe’s burrito simply costs $12, then I’m pretty sure the average consumer is only going to look at that $10 vs. $12 comparison and favor Moe’s. It’s dumb. It’s awful. We all say on social media and chat forums that we don’t think that way. But most of us kinda sorta DO, unfortunately.

The result is that generous people end up accommodating the increased tip culture, while less generous people just stop tipping altogether. So instead of employer paying their workers fairly, and spreading the costs among their customers fairly… we get an awful system where the employers still make the same profit, but the workers and customers are negatively impacted. For the employees, the dignity of honest work erodes, as they shift toward being part worker and part panhandler. For the customers, generosity is punished and a selfish mindset is rewarded. It’s an extremely toxic cultural trend, all around.

I don’t know what the solutions are. I fear that there really IS no solution other than changes to law and regulation, but our culture is too fragmented and government too broken for that.

It always amazes me that that tipping is still a thing. If your business can’t survive paying a proper wage to your employees without the need for supplemental income from the customer your business isn’t meant to survive. Isn’t that the capitalism they’re always on about?

I’m curious how many of these POS (Point-of-Sale, not Piece of Shit) systems have the default settings to ask for tips. If so, I wonder how many of these places are committing wage theft by not actually paying tips out to the employees.

I just don’t like tipping as an expectation. If you genuinely want to tip, you’ll know and you won’t need to be asked. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of giving someone a tenner if they go out of their way for you, but being guilted into making a voluntary donation because someone did their job is an example of completely losing the plot. Of course tipped minimum wage shouldn’t be lower either.

I also don’t like the recent trend of being asked to tip before even receiving the service. Uhh… I dunno how much to tip you, you haven’t done anything yet. In the context of delivery apps, it also incentivizes blackmail.

Last thing I’ll point out - tipping is associated with racial and sex-based discrimination, and managers often pocket tips even though it’s technically illegal in most places. So even if you don’t mind it for any other reason, that alone should be enough to discourage it.

I’m fine with tipping in the places where it’s already expected. Wait staff and delivery and such. There those people live on the tips being given. Yeah the system is shit and we should pay them appropriately from the start, but refusing to tip doesn’t fight the system; it just stiffs a worker.

I don’t like it when a bakery or ice cream stand sale terminal prompts me to leave a tip. It makes me feel awkward for hitting no, even though not tipping for ice cream has been and still is standard.

My general guide for tipping

1. traditional service industry where their employer pays them $2/hr. YES, but I wish your employer would just pay you. I’m still tipping not going to punish their employer for that but seriously try not to even go to these places anymore.
2. Other traditional services industries, barbor, nail salon,etc. Yes as appreciation. They personally took care of me so yeah.
3. Baristas, it any other ipad station. NO. They are paid a standard wage. I might drop my change in a tip jar every now and then when paying cash but that’s it.
4. Food trucks and other independently owned stores. Generally No. Food trucks are independently owned and not service industry. If they need more money charge more for the food.

Typing culture needs to die. Pay your damn employees a living wage.

I tried to do grocery shopping at instacart recently.

The prices looked good, I spent some time making a bigger basket(around 100$) and went to checkout. Then I found out that they charge service fee about 13$, delivery fee 4.50$, heavy fee and at the very end they also added tax. My 100$ shopping was now over 120$ but then they asked me to tip the driver and options were 10% or 20%. I tried to enter custom amount but was discouraged with a scary prompt saying that my driver will see the tip and that tips under 15% are highly discouraged as my order might be deprioritised… so all those service fees, delivery fees and heavy fees are just used to run the website?! But actually paying your own employees? Nooo… that’s up to you, kind stranger on the internet! Please, be generous (we are tired to look for another poor bastard every two weeks or so)!

Tip culture is ridiculous. Places like self-serve froyo shops shouldn’t even have tips as an option. Unless the cashier is helping me make the froyo and holding it for me while I lick it, there’s no way to justify tipping.

The other day I went to a pub, and the machine at checkout suggested a 10%. You mean you expect me to tip 10% to this person whose contribution to my life was literally just putting my glass to a tap, pulling on the lever, then putting the price into the machine??

How about instead you just pay the person a proper wage to do that alongside all the other non-customer facing stuff they already have to do instead of making us top-up their wages.

Tipping culture was meant to be a bonus for exceptional service, not an expectation for all bloody services!

I don’t support tipping culture.

Where I live, there are plenty of restaurants with tipflation.

And then there are the worker-owned pizza joint and coffee shop, which do not even have a tip jar on the counter. They don’t ask for — or make room for — tips. They pay their worker-owners well enough that they don’t have to beg.

That’s what tipping culture is. It’s putting the worker in the position of begging from the customer instead of being assured a fair wage by the employer. And now, the management even wants to tax the receipts of this mandatory panhandling.

Now, I understand that authoritarians love this. When I was a kid, I was explicitly told that tips were necessary; otherwise the waiter might spit in your food. That is, as a child of the professional class, I was instructed that service workers must be appeased with donations to keep them from committing crimes against us.

Yeah. That’s pretty messed up.

But the worker-owned venues make it clear: the restaurant doesn’t need tips to attract capable & honest workers; they just need to give a fair deal.