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. Also, some customers seem to think that the screen froze at the very end because it didn't ask for a tip.
While it has been strange to see some customer's determination to leave a tip, I think overall it was well received by the great majority of people that just didn't say anything about it and made a mental note that the prices they see on the menu is what they'll actually end up paying.
We will probably need to highlight that we pay a higher wage for baristas & cooks to account for the lack of tips, and give customers an option to donate to a charity if they still wish to part with additional money.
I do believe that the incentive tips provide for employees to "act" friendly to customers can be transferred over into a review/feedback program, which is what we will be testing out. If customers rate their order and interaction with the barista to be satisfactory, a bonus payment will be made to the baristas on shift. Once we introduce this, I'll share the results.
Please no. That's how it usually starts. It was with small change but now McDonalds harasses you every time you make an order to round up for some charity I never heard about. I'd donate to charities on my own.
Needless to say I avoid these places like the plague.
If all you care about is rewarding employees who are good, Why not just do profit sharing for employees who been around longer then x months?
My customers complained that my prices were too high. So, I lowered my prices, added tax, then asked for a tip. About 50% of people tip, so my profits have actually gone up on average after this adjustment. People seem to be buying more, too.
I hate it, but this model seems to work better from a business perspective, despite it being a worse customer experience (subjective, I know).
How do you train your customers not to have sticker shock? Do I need to hang a banner that says “TAX AND TIP INCLUDED IN ALL PRICES” in comic sans?
Not accepting tips is one thing. But not accepting cash means you will never have me as a customer.
Edit: I've already walked away from a dozen different food places in airports because of this kind of trash: please install this app, can't pay in cash, can't see a menu without scanning a QR code, use an iPad with shitty touchscreen that I can barely see or use...
I just wanted to order some food and pay with legal tender.
Has anyone ever walked out of your coffee shop because they only had cash on them? I can’t remember the last time I paid or even saw someone pay cash for anything.
If the whole point of eliminating tips is to treat the workers fairly, why not institute some sort of profit share, or monthly bonus based on YoY revenue growth?
Either way, you should accept cash.
On the other hand, I recognize that there are plenty of businesses that still don't offer a way to tip at all (Starbucks until very recently), and more importantly, that none of these employees make anywhere near a living wage. Having worked service industry jobs and found my way out, I can't help but thinking that most of these jobs are merely dark patterns that take advantage of people who can't or won't demand what they actually should be paid.
The unfortunate conclusion I've arrived at is that US consumers simply aren't willing to pay the true price for many of the things they enjoy on a day to day basis. Just one example is that their daily coffee is subsidized through the misery of minimum wage coffee shop employees.
You say you pay a "higher wage" - what does that actually equate to for someone working 40 hours a week?
As a customer, please just leave well enough alone. I'd really prefer to just leave a tip if I'm going to be gently shamed into leaving reviews to make sure your employees somehow get the wages they were led to believe they would earn.
I would go a bit out of my way to frequent any non-tipping coffee shop/restaurant. And I'm quite happy to pay a higher price in the menu items to reflect the fact that the business isn't shifting some of their payroll burden to me in lieu of realistic pricing.
Yes, after the total confirmation (including tax if you can), where you'd normally be asked to tip, you should see if it's possible to display the no tip policy and higher wage explanation.
You could also tell customers that your business is donating to certain cause at this point. Just don't pass on the burden of deciding whether or not to donate to your customers. Another option is to dedicate certain profits from a specific product to a cause and note that on your menu.
You are brave. A friend opened a coffee shop elsewhere in LA County a few years ago. The LA County permit and inspection process was nothing less than a utopian nightmare. I have done lots of construction projects myself and have learned to absolutely detest that part of the experience (going to the DMV is actually better). The usual outcome is that projects end-up costing a ton more and take much longer to complete. The issues, in my experience, rarely have to do with actual safety concerns, etc. It's mostly about process and check-boxes. I hope your experience was better.
By all means, keep an eye on what's being said about you and look for red flags, but don't be that neurotic boss that rides your employees every time a review under 5 stars comes in. The best restaurants around that have stayed for more than a few years often are the ones with 3 stars -- 5 usually just means they're new, not particularly good, and people coming in are adventurous, rather than following what someone advised.
Ballard Coffee Works, corner of Leary & Market.
Just to dump an idea: Maybe instead of using a scale based rating, you could experiment with something that has not a clear maximum value to prevent the all 5-star rating effect described by others. The only thing that directly comes to my mind would be a button, that the user has to hold until the time matches the perceived rating.
It's especially bad if it's based on some variant of having scores "above average" or whatever, because that ends up being a lottery. At that point it's better to just establish a lottery among the employees. If you really have to do individual bonuses, I think it's better to take a leaf from Deming and only grant it for truly (statistically verified) outperformance.
Someone else suggested collective bonuses (e.g. profit sharing). That aligns incentives nicely: it is slightly lagged, meaning you can afford to experiment and learn. It's also not individual, so it fosters collaboration. It's still something of a lottery, of course, but one decided by the customers, not by a manager.
Can I ask why not? I see the rise of CBDCs as a threat to democracy (governments able to monitor and control what you spend your money on) and cash as a vital tool in a fight against that.
Though as a European I always find American tipping culture quite insane. Nothing wrong with tipping for good service, but they way it seems expected in the US is very off putting
New York City has a law preventing businesses from refusing cash because only accepting cards is discriminatory.
Continuing the geek vibe, I believe the best starting point to make sense of inner workings of incentive systems and rewards is SDT - Self-Determination Theory. It's 70+ yr old theory of motivation in psychology that originated in studies of how external rewards (i.e. tips or bonuses) crowd out intrinsic motivation.
In other words, if we want employees to act friendly to customers - should we design a system of external motivation (rewards and punishements) or design a system that boost intrinsic motivation for this behaviour. For example, SDT has many studies on how different rewards giving patterns affect motivation. As far as I remember, the least detrimental is task-noncontingent rewards (giving "reward" for just "showing up", basically). The most detrimental to motivation is competitive-contingent (give reward to those who outperform others).
I hope you'll be able to continue not taking tips because I really wish we'd abolish this practice. Good luck with your cafe and I would love to try it out next time I'm in LA!
Hopefully the rating system will work but I’d say you do need some kind of system.
On the other hand Chick-fil-A is able to make their employees act friendly. I wonder how they do it.
Finally I do wish you’d accept cash just for people that want to preserve their privacy.
By doing this, they appease the customer who wants to leave one and don't get in a back and forth with them over tips.
Haha, I think that's totally reasonable of them. As a consumer I would appreciate a notification informing me that I couldn't tip, no matter how much I thought they deserved it.
Edit: I wanted to add that there are a lot of places we're not expected to tip at whose employees deserve it just as much as the ones working at the places we are expected to tip at. Tipping culture may be out of control, but a lot of times people deserve a tip for providing exceptional service. That's our way of validating them and saying, "you're going to make it."
Give your employees the same stress free and untransactional experience you are trying to provide to the customers.
> I do believe that the incentive tips provide for employees to "act" friendly to customers can be transferred over into a review/feedback program, which is what we will be testing out. If customers rate their order and interaction with the barista to be satisfactory, a bonus payment will be made to the baristas on shift. Once we introduce this, I'll share the results.
Might as well go full hog and add rating to food/drinks they ordered. Not to judge the person doing the service, just get a feel for what your customers enjoyed and what they didn't.
It is almost never the case that the restaurant provides any of this to their employees and there is no transparency involved.
I honestly see it as a scam to charge higher prices without itemizing properly on the menu.
Even if you highlight the wage disparity in signage, I would have no way of knowing whether the information is accurate or just another piece of propaganda.
One idea is to print qr codes on coffee cups: customers can scan those and leave anonymous feedback later.
This seems to go out of the way to fight tipping culture and seems to cause more confusion than necessary.
Is the sales tax included in the listed price?
One of my pet peeves is how "tax and tip" are not included in the displayed prices in Ontario, Canada. I hate having to do arithmetic on every purchase I make.
I grew up in Sydney, Australia where what you see is what you pay - tax incl. Tipping is generally not part of the culture because the minimum wage is a livable wage (in most areas).
Most HN thing I've read all day. Sounds awesome.
Good luck!
That sounds like the end of transaction screen can be improved
Adding a message like "All Done" then "We're a tip free restaurant" go a long way
Even in Europe I tip servers and bartenders. It just seems nice. I've never had one turn it down.
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 by a robot
You're part of the problem, not the solution.
I won’t go into explaining and outlining exactly why that is for the time being, but suffice it to say that I have personal knowledge of the extremely manipulative industry that “non-profits” are. But I get it, some will not want to believe me, I mean they’re called “non-profits” and profits are bad, right?
The point of my caution is essentially this, what you are trying to avoid by stopping tipping, you will only far undo by essentially making “non-profit” executives and their friends and family rich instead of that money going to your employees.
Having worked in the service industry, I usually tip 25-30%, per drink or per meal. But here's the relevant point: When I encounter a place that doesn't allow tipping, I still want to tip, and make sure to tip, because it's for the worker. I absolutely loathe the new system that's come into trendy restaurants in Seattle where gratuity is supposedly included. That's a skinflint way for a restaurant to raise their prices and assure you that their workers are being paid, without you as the customer having any say (or direct contact) with the workers. You may put up QR code menus and try to isolate the service staff from the customers, and eliminate tipping, but does that make happier employees? Does it make happier customers?
Tipping serves several purposes. One of them is to get the employees to give customers who tip well better service. Sometimes at the expense of an extra ounce from a whisky bottle, sometimes just with more personal care. The insertion of the management into the situation - trying to say it's good for customers and employees - strikes me as a very false, self-serving line of bullshit. And from everyone I know in the service industry, it seems like it quickly turns into a racket against them as well.
My prediction is that by 2025, places that eliminated tipping will be seen as just as infamous as any of the scammy disruptors of the tech industry in the 2010s; the practice of banning tips will be seen as disreputable, and life will return to its natural equilibrium where customers pay extra for good service.
Add to this various "surcharges" and other mandatory fees added for this or that (my favorite: mandatory "resort fees" for hotels - seriously why is that not just rolled into the price of the stay?), and the service industry in the US has a serious price transparency crisis. It is quite literally impossible to predict the final cost of service, so as a rule of thumb I have come to generally expect to be out of pocket about 50% - 80% more than the listed price.
Any other country would call this fraud.
- Asking for a tip for takeout orders
- Asking for the payment including tip before you've received service, often via one of those stupid QR menus that does who knows what with your order data that is now tied to your phone
- Not having 20% as a tip option, but something like 18%, 23%, 27%
- Looming over your shoulder while you enter the tip
I want servers to make a livable wage. I'm willing to pay more. I want my prices transparent, and I don't want the mountain of guilt and social pressure.
Some of these places will also auto add grauituity charges as well for larger parties, and auto select a tip so if you don't look at the bill you could be footing out as much as 40%. Super shady UI practices.
I don't want to be guilt tripped in tipping for a baked item for instance, or a chipotle style served food restaurant.
In particular, when it says your airline ticket is NNN€, you will pay than NNN€. No screwball fees up the wazoo.
15/18/20 was in 2018
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 wealth from the charitable to the uncharitable (high tippers pay more and subsidize the business, low tippers pay less).
I believe in the spirit of tipping rewarding better service, but by and large it doesn't actually function that way. Most tip ~20% on everything outside of extreme circumstances.
Much better for everything to be baked into the price of whatever good or service it is.
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.
Really?! Which retail stores?
Tipped workers had to up their game because they can no longer do tax evasion with everything on the record. Back in the days where most paid their restaurant with cash, tips were more like 15%. The move from 15 to more like 20 to 25% almost perfectly corresponds with the amount needed to make the same earnings after tax.
The followup argument is often "well they are still being under paid." While I can buy this argument, I do not think the solution is tipping. Because if they are underpaid so are non-tipped jobs like the fast food worker, janitor, grocery worker, or movie theater employee. All tipping does is divide these people and reduce the pool for a larger collective to bargain for a higher minimum wage.
I feel we have this collective belief that tipping is bad (it sure confuses my foreign friends, who sometimes get dirty looks because they didn't tip), but once we've effectively created the criteria necessary to abolish it[3], we still maintained the cultural aspect of it: that we __need__ to tip (often thinking we'll get our food spat in if we don't). I've had others get upset with me for these opinions (I do tip btw) but I don't understand how we can think tipping shouldn't exist but continue in this direction. It's also interesting that in early America we thought of tipping as akin to bribery (I still believe this and I think this is common). It also has a history with slavery[4]
[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
[1] Obviously the argument no longer holds outside Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington
[2] When I was a kid (some 20 years ago) 10% was common for a standard tip. Now most places have an 18%/20%/25% option on screens. Some even higher! The second image in the article even shows a 30% tip
[3] I wouldn't completely abolish it, but I'd say it shouldn't be a standard.
[4] https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-land-of-the-fee
You can't do all these things with prices; prices apply universally across customers, and for the most part in the hospitality industry they can't float (see airline tickets as an example of a floating price, and the sheer loathing it creates in the customer base).
Later
I also should have added, and probably led with, the fact that tipping addresses a big agent-principal problem in hospitality: in restaurants where servers rely on tips, their incentives are strongly aligned with those of customers; without tips, virtually all the incentives are aligned with that of management.
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.
The alternative is getting a restaurant to entirely change its identity.
Their POS system will always have a spot for tip on a receipt.
Their prices are based on the fact that they expect customers to tip the servers at least 15-25%.
It's a monumental change. It's not just "pay the servers at least $15/hr and turn off tipping". Nobody I've ever met who waits tables is happy with $120/night out the door pretax ($15/hr * 8)
For a restaurant to pay a server what they make now ($150-$300/night tips), their labor cost would be through the roof and they would have to raise the price of the food.
The customer wouldn't like that.
Lose lose lose.
European here, from Italy, we don't tip much and it's not mandatory.
We do at dinner if it has been a long dinner usually as a way to show appreciation, but the tip is usually a modest amount (in the 5-10 euros ballpark for a table)
The argument for tipping here is that it is tax free money.
That's why here restaurants love American tourists and their very generous tips.
That's all there is to it.
Restaurant prices generally ran behind inflation; that's why tipping percentages increased.
Many of the comments here have discussed how without tips paying a living wage would compel higher prices. I ask, what's the difference between a higher up-front price on the menu for the item or a lower price with the expectation that at payment you'll pay 20% more? I prefer the simplicity and less pressure of a bill with no space for "tip", that the price you see on the menu is the price you will pay when finished eating.
This last one is going to be to hear, but if you pay your employees below mimimum wage and allow for tips to make up the difference, well.....
Always tip, in cash, direct to the employee.
I also went through a call to get back a tip I made on a Chipotle order (DoorDash I believe) up front after the driver failed to find the address and then chewed me out after driving through parking lots for 5 minutes.
The fact that tips technically need to be reported to the IRS and thus your employer aside, I believe it is a legally fireable offense to pocket cash in order to avoid any policies on splitting it with others working the same shift.
At a certain level I think this is just dishonesty. They want to raise prices, but they know some people will stop coming, so they try to hide it in extra fees instead. I don't mind tipping per se, but the hidden fees and tip inflation make me think that if this keeps going, we may need to pass some price transparency laws.
Reminds me why I do all the cooking in my house.
I particularly detest sneaky 'charges' that are not embedded in the prices.
I'm not condoning it, just clarifying what strikes me as the central point.
I don't know why here in the west it's common practice to actually not pay employees enough and rely entirely on tips. Without those tips, many job offers in the service industry would not be attractive, as they don't pay enough to make a living. Without tips, many of those positions never could be filled, unless wages were raised.
Of course, if wages were raised, the increased cost would ultimately have to be passed on to the consumer. So instead of paying €9 for your order, and placing a €1 tip - you might end up being billed €10 instead. At the bottom line, on average, this would work out to the consumer paying the same with or without tips, and the worker earning the same, with or without tips.
But with tips, that's just the average - while in actuality, some patrons will tip a lot more than others. And some workers might earn a lot more tips than others.
If you assume that workers are unfriendly by default, you could see this as an incentive to make them behave more friendly in an attempt to earn a tip. If you assume that workers are friendly by default, you could see that as a green-light for them to be unfriendly to those customers who don't tip. Not sure if creating a competitive environment between your workers is a good thing...
What tipping does, is make things more uneven. Some customer will pay more, some customer will pay less, some workers will earn more, some workers will pay less, some patrons will be treated more friendly, other patrons will be treated less friendly. The average stays the same, but the variance increases.
Without tipping, things would be more even. Individual cases would stay closer to the average.
It's really mostly the case in North America. In most of Europe, tipping is more an exception than a rule. "Normal" service (i.e. being nice to clients and appropriately responding to requests given the standing of the place) is expected to be included in the price. I tip only when I got really outstanding service, and even then, mostly as a symbolic gesture of appreciation (2-5% ballpark figure).
I’m 40ish and I gave a type twice in my life in France. Both were exceptional situations were I felt that the normal compensation was not enough and I felt bad for the worker.
And even then.. I might have been influenced in my reaction by a long period spend in the US.
You ought to try sitting down in a restaurant in the EU. They do the bare minimum to serve you.
Tying a possible bonus to the way you act in customer service facing role has a lot of benefits.
"In addition it gets rid of any bias in wages (more attractive people more attractive people" Why are higher wages for a subjectively attractive person a bad thing... Are they not driving better business? Do you think it's somehow more altruistic to provide subjectively uglier individuals the same wage? Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait. Your point is moot anyway, in a capitalistic society people can just choose to visit another business where the staff has the traits they desire.
The only reason it starts to breakdown is because there are really cheap people out there who will skimp on the tip and then complain when waiters treat them like shit.
If you are a regular at a place and you tip well, they'll spoil you.
Thought: Somebody should cook up an "AR" app that reads a menu and adds 20% tip plus local sales tax to every price. I'm just as guilty as anybody of visiting e.g. European countries and thinking everything's expensive, but that's because the prices on the menu are exactly what you'll pay, not 70% of what you'll actually pay.
Yes I realize I can just do basic mental math, but not everybody can do it, and it'd be kinda neat to point my phone at a menu and see all the prices instantly reflect what I'll actually have to shell out.
Just advertise the actual price, dammit.
And keep tipping for "OMG, this person was wonderful" not "this is 90% of their income".
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).
Now, tipping in USA has metastasized, but I haven't changed. You want to play a guilt trip game after every business engagement? You'll lose against me. Tip for pouring a cup of drip coffee?---nah. Tip for making fast food? Nope. I will not enable the tip-everywhere culture.
Yes I do tip sometimes, but only if the service has been fun / great. So off-putting when a place tries to squeeze a tip if they think you don't live here.
If we receive exceptional service, we pay a little extra - usually 10% or less.
Staff doesn't expect to be paid from tips, business owners don't expect their staff to be paid from tips, customers don't have a guilt trip because they feel like if they don't tip generously the staff will be underpaid.
U.S. tipping doesn't make any sense from a European point of view.
Just set the prices of things at a level where you can afford to pay your staff from your revenue.
Because you're thinking about it too hard or otherwise unaware of the inner turnings of the system.
Where it matters, servers are almost their own industry, swapping gigs at this or that restaurant to work with this or that regional manager. The restaurant gets their money from the bill, the server gets their money direct from the customer they helped.
My server goes to a different restaurant -- I go there and keep getting awesome service.
This type of arrangement gets really close to a guildhouse/coop more than a franchise.
In places with less stable relationships (tourist restaurants), asking for tips might be a predatory thing -- or you can see it as paying it forward: "hey person working to get people their demands in a moments notice, I hope this tenner will help you hold that smile in the face of another consumerist monster. Thanks for being a human."
Full waiter experience (seated, handed menu, food brought to table, plate cleared) gets 20%.
If the level of service is less than that, the percentage starts to go down proportionally.
Counter service is flat-rate $1 per person served.
This is the same every time regardless of quality of service (unless something truly malicious happens, but I’ve never experienced that.)
I don't understand this. Why do you Americans tip for this? Isn't being seated, handed a menu, food brought to the table, and plates being cleared part of a waiter's job?
Why does the customer have to 'reward' waiters for doing 'a good job'?
Why do restaurants not just drop a flat 10% service/cover charge (it's 10% where I am) and be done with it?
I have implemented the same policy of 20% BUT with strict process to make sure it isn't 20% of the full bill:
1) I tip 20% on the Sub-Total amount after subtracting all alcohol (see #2). I am not tipping 20% on the sales tax as well. So don't make a common mistake and tip on the total, go with sub-total.
2) Subtract alcohol from sub-total, calculate 20% on that new sub-total and then I add $1-2 MAX per drink or $5 for a bottle.
With the price gouging on alcohol at restaurants/bars (particularly wine - which they literally charge for a glass what a full bottle costs in the store) I refuse to tip 20% of their inflated prices. Sometimes wife and I can have 3-4 drinks total at a long dinner and can be like $50-100 just on alcohol. No WAY I am over-tipping our waiter $20 to walk the drinks over to our table.
This process drives my wife crazy sometimes and she calls me cheap, but just flat out giving 20% on the full total of the bill is over-tipping. Steakhouses drive me nuts too because they can be very expensive and 20% tip on the full total could be $60! That is just dumb for someone performing the same job at Applebees of taking order and bringing food/drinks to table.
I suspect enough people, when prompted with these uncomfortable requests, paid it reluctantly then just never came back. At least, I know I've never been back to any business that asked for or expected a tip.
I'm sure this showed up on the metrics as an immediate spike in revenue, followed by a large downturn some months later.
Honestly can't think of a quicker way to ruin your business.
I moved to Australia from the US in 2006. I swear that when I left the tip was more like ~15% (as the sales tax where I was was 7.5% and the rule was that you doubled the tax to work it out). Every couple years I'd go back and it would seem to creep up. All of the sudden it was 20% and, then when I was back last year, somebody told me 20% was minimum and 25% was really more expected if the service was good.
The last time I was there I was out with 6 people and the bill was $500 and I watched them tip $150 (and then expect us all to evenly split it). The service was not exceptional - if anything I remember waiting ages to get the second drink and the bill. I am sure that person was working at least 5 tables (likely more) and you'd think at least a couple sittings so they'd be making some quite good money for a night at those kinds of numbers.
I made a bit of a comment about how it felt generous and they said "if you can't afford to tip like this you can't afford to go out to eat in America" - and I remember feeling things had gone way too far. It is a bit of a strange flex?
In Europe, laws basically mandate that what you as a customer see on a price tag or price list, is what you ultimately pay.
You don't have to do any guesswork, looking at the fine print, compute anything in your head. You pay the price that is displayed, and there should be no expectation from any one that you pay anything above that.
When I go to a restaurant, I'm not like buying the food on the one hand, and the service on the other hand, and everything that the taxes cover above all that. I'm paying the restaurant for dining, which includes the food, the service, and whatever taxes the restaurant has to pay.
The details are none of my business... and I shouldn't have to do any contorsions to compare prices between restaurants!
I’m used to it now, but the only rational I could find by asking around “why is the tax not part of the final displayed price” were :
- “it depends from state to state.” Taxes are also different in Spain, France, Germany and Italy … we use the same currency and we don’t feel the urge to display our taxes by removing them from the displayed prices. Even in places like Andorra, where the tax on Tabacco is close to 0.
- a less common rationale; often find in the libertarian type of interlocutors. “It’s to show what the government is taking you”
Sadly; I think it’s the second one? I’ve ask that question a lot in the last 10 years. People just shrug it as un-important and we move on with the sale.
Or maybe nobody knows?
It is funny how words change meanings depending on which meaning is better for the person who says it.
I was just in Europe and it was refreshing to eat in restaurants and never have to worry about tipping. If a meal was €50, that’s exactly what I paid and not a cent more. Even though prices in many places were more expensive than in the US (also considering the USD to EUR exchange rate), eating out ended up being a lot cheaper than in the US in the end.
That said, the "need" for a tip does make the waiter/ress a lot more pro-active and helpful than in my country where waiter/ress's can be cranky even. In the US they introduce themselves ("Hi I'm Jerome, I'm excited to be your waiter today!" Made me smile every time), make sure you are ok, the level of service is pretty high.
We do tip here (Netherlands), but it's more when service was really good. But personnel won't bat an eye when you don't. Of course, we learned from Reservoir Dogs [0] that tipping is basically part of the income in the US. Is that still true? In the Netherlands we generally agree with Mr. Pink, minimum wage is higher here though (I think).
Over the past two years, I have greatly reduced the purchase of coffee and the like in coffee shops and the times when I eat outside because I am turned off by the tipping and the murkiness of the final price. When I see $10 as the price of the item I am buying, I expect it to be the final price. Instead, surprise! I have to add taxes, tips, and the cost of the air I breathe.
On the one hand, I don't want to be "culturally inconsiderate" and not tip; on the other hand, I don't have the same bovine acceptance toward money and spending issues that unfortunately many Americans seem to have -- see, for example, health care spending. I have therefore decided not to contribute to something that makes me uncomfortable. I wish many more people would say no.
Tipping has become a burden and nuisance for most Americans. We need a plan of action to remedy this.
Instead, I feel like the only ethical option available to me is to preferentially frequent no-tip restaurants. Unfortunately there aren't too many of those and although I hate the tip system, quality of food is usually more important except at the margins.
It seems like the sort of thing where maybe there's a regulatory answer, but I'm hard-pressed to think of one. California already takes the reasonable step of mandating minimum wage before tips, but that doesn't seem to remove the tip expectation.
It's the request for a tip at practically every cafe or donut shop, where a person is simply pouring drip coffee or placing an item in a bag, for to-go/carry out, which gets to me. Or the expectation to tip for a re-fill of a coffee mug, at a cafe. It's not service-- it's dispensing a product.
I am starting to wonder how much baristas make, for example, if it's $10-$15 per hour, plus 15 customers per hour (x$1-$2 tip each)... that's potentially $50-60k+ per year. Which is more than many teachers and healthcare workers make-- people with degrees, training, and who provide a skilled, emotionally-involved service.
It sucks, for sure. We do not have any no-tip restaurants in my area. But price transparency is something that is very important to me and I will stand by my principles on that matter. And since not tipping a person you are face to face with carries a social weight that renders such a move untenable I just don't go out for food at places that ask for tips in any capacity. I'm sure there's an argument one could make about my choice being harmful for tip-heavy employees that use that money to live on. But I have never chosen to subsidize businesses whose practices I don't agree with and tipping has hit a point where it has fallen squarely into that category. I'd like to think if more people thought like me, the market for tipping restaurants would begin to shrivel, but I have little reason to think such a thing will happen in my area at least.
Does this mean maybe we have a glut of restaurants operating in a preferential-to-the-business economic environment, and some might not survive such a change, maybe yeah. Does it mean those employees will have to look for work in a changed market if that does happen, yes. But I want everyone who works to be paid a fair, predictable, agreeable wage for the work they do and continuing to support places that are (I feel) diametrically opposed to that principle does not work towards that goal.
So cast iron chicken and rice pilaf at home it is!
They have the ability to choose another job (250k new jobs are created each month!) and they have the ability to negotiate/complain to their manager.
Just dont be surprised when the coffee shop starts to charge $10 for a drip. 50c of beans, 50c of hot water and $8 labor.
It's built into the price (bonus points if they add sales tax as well), so you just pay what it says on the menu, and the servers stay happy.
Or you can just pay a good hourly wage, but no one really seems interested in making that happen.
> Schenker says it’s hard to sympathize with consumers who are able to afford pricey coffee drinks but complain about tipping.
How will it reflect upon tipper if they in turn judge Mr Schenker for being in this position in the first place?
> Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they’re owed
This just sounds ignorant because the comment is pointing to the wrong entity - as in “who owes”. This is barking up the wrong tree. But society has enabled and allowed business establishments to create a situation like this. At the same time this is also entitled — the thought that the tipper is supposed to pay for service provider’s bills above the cost of the item purchased.
This is sad and outrageous. A person is driven to think like this. Is it society, or the culture and tradition? Or the businesses collectively doing this?
> Moore said she believes consumers shouldn’t be asked to tip nearly everywhere they go — and it shouldn’t be something that’s expected of them.
This is what I do. I leave a tip if I feel like. I exclusively do not tip if an establishment points to it, or asks me to tip. I say a simple no and that saying no is difficult but I always say no in this situation.
The last thing I want is this outrageous tipping culture, especially like USA, where I live.
This is why tipping still exists in America. Because there are urban restaurant workers, and busy bartenders being tipped absurd prices not because of their stellar service, but because they are lucky enough to work in a place with high prices and the cultural percentage mindset benefits them so much they will fight against a "living wage" because they are making more than that, and most of the time, not reporting it as income.
It's inequality disguised as being the "hard worker" when in reality, the shitty diner selling 8$ meals has servers working just as hard, or harder, than the upscale place selling 50$ meals.
Additionally, I assume you believe decent welfare state = a handful of 1st world western European nations and maybe Australia/NZ? You may want to check the average salaries of these locations. Higher welfare states come with a lot of cons... it's not all rainbows and daisies.
A safety net should be just that.... a safety net. Otherwise, you risk LA Skid Row type ramifications or feces/meth needle ridden streets in SF where essentially no one is benefiting.
Economically, exactly how does your plan work?
Tipping is just a cultural thing, the welfare state doesn't have a lot to do with it.
Sanctimonious without good argument.
If you think any of the following points are incorrect, please look for a study that reflects this. I'm willing to bet you won't find any.
Studies show that tipping is inherently biased in favor certain races, genders, and phenotypes.
Studies show that tipping is not strongly related to service quality. In fact most people in the USA tip even when they judge the service to be bad.
People in tipping professions are more likely to be living in (or close to) poverty than people in other professions.
Tipping on price makes no sense. A bottle of wine may cost $15 or $1500 but the effort to serve it will be the same.
Expected tipping is a scam to artificially lower menu prices and nothing more.
Actually tipping is making sure that the owner of a café can get away with paying a too low salary to the employee.
So best advice: don't tip! You are keeping alive a system where it is up to you, the customer, to (maybe) ensure the employee is making a decent amount of money. That is flipping the issue of money on the head. This should be a matter between the employee and the business, using a contract, you know, like every other normal business relationship works!
You use them when you are getting takeout, or when you are at a fast-casual place. If there is waitstaff, then they take your card and you never see a terminal. But tipping is only customary when there is involvement of waitstaff. Complete disconnect.
Printing receipts with a tip line in a circumstance where there is no involvement of waitstaff is also pretty sketchy.
They should just ban it on these terminals and on the receipts. Tip with cash if you want to. Let businesses set fair wages and prices accordingly. End of story.
To be clear - I will tip for exceptional service or if we have been a particularly difficult table (dietary requirements, number of people etc), but its an exception rather than the rule and its rarely more than 10%.
However often in these cases a surcharge is already added or the meal has been altered in such a way as to negate these issues (Set menu only for tables of 5 or more is common).
Asking me to tip for basic service is going to be refused.
I have a set of rules, I will not tip, regardless the social consequences, if a drink was not poured, food was not delivered to my door, my hair wasn't cut, a hostess didn't seat me and a waiter didn't come around and hand me a menu and ask me what I want, or someone didn't roller skate to my car. And then, the tip starts at 15%, it goes up for above and beyond service and goes down for sub par service. Everywhere else I proudly push no.
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.
They should complain to their employer. If it doesn't work, to government as policy maker. As mentioned at the end of the article, "If you work for a company, it’s that company’s job to pay you for doing work for them"
And this is fast casual where you don't even have a waiter.
Tipping is a cultural norm in the US that won’t be changed by the price on the menu going up a few bucks. If anything, the relationship is the opposite. You are socially expected to tip better for more expensive meals.
I see no benefit from the tipping, and the staff are not thankful nor do they seem to notice. and in most cases they do not do anything at all to benefit the tips..
During the covid pandemic instacart times would go as high as several days, but if we would tip $100 or so, we’d get our delivery within hours.
I like free markets, and I like being able to bribe service workers. In fact, I wish there were more people I could tip.
I quite often order food through apps like wolt or glovo and always think twice when going through "tip" section. First- the app asks for a tip before I receive service (even though uber eats used to state that tip can be cancelled). But what makes me more curious is if courier knows about tip, or is the tip included in fee collected so higher the fee more couriers are interested to take the call..
I also have local pizza shop, whenever I order pizza there I tip delivery guy even though he does not, in any way, makes me to do so. I do it more eagerly if there is bad traffic outside or bad weather, basically being happy not having to drive/walk to collect the food..
The checkout page asked if I wanted to tip the employees, with buttons for preset percentages, and an option to enter a custom amount.
I considered aborting my order.
So we can say that 15% was more than generous in 1996 according to the NY/LA TV writer set.
It's the stripe/square payment machines that started offering 18%, 20%, or other.
Many of the newer POS systems were first developed with the hospitality industry in mind. In those cases, tipping is on by default. These POS systems have since expanded into retail and convenience stores, leaving tipping on by default. The shop owners have little incentive to turn it off, or may not even know how to turn it off.
Additionally most older POS systems were not operated by the customer and so did not display set percentages. They relied upon manual input based on a signed receipt. So percentage norms were mostly word-of-mouth. Nowadays, with customer-facing POS systems, it’s easier to just provide a percentage button. And the owner or manager or even the lowly register attendant, can adjust as needed. And of course, higher defaults are better for all of them (within reason).
It is much better to make direct donations to associations.
I have gotten used to not having to carry/worry about cash and the idea I need all these $5 notes whenever I stayed in a hotel in the States stressed me out a bit.
Is this a thing?
Here's my take: I might already be doing charity work or donations elsewhere, and I'm at my limit. And I went to Panera for food and a place to sit a while. If Panera's ownership or rich executives want to donate somewhere as individuals, do that. If they want to make the biz itself donate, do that. If you want to pass this cost on to customers then simply build it into the pricing. But DO NOT hassle each customer and waste everyone's time with cognitive clutter. If anything it feels like a form of intentional guilt-tripping or griefing. What Panera offers isnt unique enough that a person cant go choose an alternate service.
Anyway, not a rant on tippping itself, but a very similar structure. I believe tipping too should just be built into the prices a business charges. Massively simplifies each transaction and reduces griefing and psychological games. (Really, its another case of a more general rule, imo: simplify, simplify, simplify...)
Shouldn't that be the employer's job? I'm not exaggerating when I say this tipping culture is a major reason why I wouldn't move the US. It's ridiculous.
But now since there's been no formal "end" to the pandemic, it's hard to say when/if you change that.
Seriously? If I have $10 in my pocket and want to buy something good for $10, why I'd choose something cheaper just to leave the tip?
> “Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they’re owed,” said Schenker...
This does not make sense to me. If I'm a CEO, manager, or working for Google, Ford, or any company, behind the desk, should I be expected to be tipped for my service? If people are working for below minimum wage and expecting tips to compensate for the difference, they should be negotiating a higher paycheck. Some things in USA do not make sense to me.
"Is companies not paying a fair and living wage getting out of control?"
But that's never been my experience. Over here in the UK, I almost always leave a tip when eating in a restaurant, as well as when getting food delivered or having a haircut. None of these folks are paid under minimum wage or rely on the tips to survive, they're just offered as a bonus for their service.
And most others I know act the same way. They'll tip those who provide good service almost regardless of the kind of job that's involved.
So is that uncommon or something? Are there really folks here who just... pay exactly what a restaurant charges and no more? Or am I missing something with these whole 'no one tips outside of America' discussions?
I always consider tips part of the entire price. If dinner is $30 and the customary tip is 20% then the dinner costs $36, not $30. Yes, it's annoying that the price you see is not the price you pay, but then in the US there's tax you're adding anyway.
This makes tipping good: If there's some sort of problem - someone's rude, they took their time, something's wrong with the food and they won't replace it - you can actually just legally pay less.
By the way - 10%, 15%, 20% are easy calculations to do: divide by 10 and multiply. Let's say your order is $35. For 25% halve twice.
10% = 35/10 = $3.5 15% = 35/10 * 1.5 = 3.51.5 = 3.5 + 1.75 = $5.25. 20% = 35/10 2 = $7 25% = 35/2/2 = 17.5/2 = $8.75
It's easy math once you get used to it.
For all the other places like coffee shops, I never pay, I take pleasure in not paying a tip on the digital pad, because don't try to jam me up. I so when there's a tip jar at those places, but now I make it a point never to tip on digital. And when it does happen, I start looking for an alternate location where they don't have that crap. I might not find one this month, or for six months, but I'll be low-level looking for alternatives.
It is a mind-blowingly terrible system, but until we fix it, "tips" (in the US, in industries that are traditionally tipped) are not a bonus, they're part of the base wage, and if you don't pay them you are absolutely freeloading.
Surprisingly, bartenders told me they don’t get the tip at:
An MLB stadium
2 large outdoor LiveNation venues
What sort of mortgage activity involves asking for a tip? The article didn't really go into this, but I'm very curious.
On top of that, in SF, prices are off the chart. Went to a bread store. One loaf of bread + 1 canele + 1 coffee + 1 sandwich, $47. Got chinese dumplings. 3 people 3 plates of dumplings and 3 side dishes, $135 (with tip). That same thing would have been < $30 in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei. Even Japan
This is good for the business as it encourages the server to provide good service (as long at they clearly understand the importance of the return customer), and also rewards them when the business gets really busy (the result of continually providing good service & good products).
It does eliminate the ability of the customer to play the role of generous or stingy aristocrat, but if they don't like it, they can just not come back.
I recently visited Australia and realized that each transaction at a cafe/restaurant was very quick, perhaps an entire 10x quicker than an equivalent transaction in the US. You just tap your card and go.
Transaction time at cafes can compound against people waiting in line as well, especially if the customer wants to tip but the default on-screen amount is too high.
Would be curious to know how much time is collectively spent on these minor transaction decisions in countries with tips. I'm sure it's substantial.
If you don't tip its because you were not satisfied with the service. Sure, recipients expect it and will look at you in dismay if you don't.
In countries like Italy or spain it's not common at all.
I tip more of late as unfortunately the US habit of earning less than being able to make a living became the rule and so service personell is dependent on the extra cash.
And if the service is bad, I'll require to fix it or decline to pay at all.
I guess that cultural thing.
From a non-US/middle European perspective[0]: the US-tipping system is weird[1] to say the least and easily exploitable.
Combine those two and yeah, "service" gets ugly on both sides.
I can understand why so many are upset in their experience about their respective situations (especially in the US) and trying to think about solutions to counter the "exploitation"/"inefficiency" in this new context. But it is also easy to get caught up by the dynamics at the ground exerted by the pressure from above (macroeconomics).
Historically, the issue of "tipping" seems to erupt in times of hard economical/societal challenges. Like US-Prohibition 1919 or my favorite example during German industrialization in the late 19th century:
>More generally, tipping, is a morally fraught issue in the history of hospitality and public education in Germany (more accurately, nationalen Pädagogik, or national pedagogy), going back to the nineteenth century. The jurist Ihering (more commonly referred to as Rudolf von Jhering, with a "J") argued that tipping encourages vices like begging, greed, false or feigned friendship, vanity, and hedonism among service personnel. He wanted service people to be penalized for receiving tips, and employers to pay enough that tipping would not be necessary. The controversy about tipping continues.[2]
Interestingly through this moral/social debate in late 19th century Germany, "tipping"/"Trinkgeld" didn't vanish (intention of Jhering) but people became more aware of the social situation and a balance has arisen out of it.
[0]https://switzerlandtimes.ch/lifestyle/the-impact-of-credit-c...
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity
[2]Touwal, Amital: Anthropological Study of Hospitality (2016): The Innkeeper and the Guest, p.70
In the pricing section of the brochure, there was an item described, completely un-ironically, as “compulsory gratuities”.
We need to get rid of tipping all together.
With the poor USD/GBP exchange rate, a $20 item on the menu would often cost me £25 or even more after tipping
From what I can see, tipping exists to subsidise awful wages so someone's ability to make a living and pay their bills exists solely on how well someone else perceives their customer service skills. As a brit, that's just wild to me.
The problem is that the cost of many things has just gone up, a lot. And the US has bent over backwards to ensure no one has to pay the real cost of gasoline.
If customers were really seeing the true cost of every good and service they bought with no manipulation, hidden fees, shrunken products, etc, demand would fall drastically and we'd go into a recession.
When they finished, they still asked for a tip. I said no because I paid a premium them for the very reason that I didn't expect that they'd ask for a tip.
Yes, this would be what some call "wages".
It's a terrible system. People are not valued by their employers. Employers distance themselves from employees.
Regardless of how good or poor the service is. 11% to Uncle Sam, 15% to the workers.
It’s become the fabric of life. I really do enjoy when I don’t have to tip. Even though the amount is slightly higher and the 15% is included in base price.
I do give generously to homeless though.
Additionally they wouldn't care is the % was standard.
From left to right: 15%, 18%, 20%. Leave it there and stop using dark patterns.
Japan is often called out as a tipless wonderland of excellent service, but while you don't tip in restaurants there, it is fairly common to tip doctors!
Then they'd be incentivized to show the tip screen by default, and maybe jack up the default amount to 20-25%.
The point of sale system can be shamed or regulated, or have codes for the merchant type that dictates whether they have the option of doing a compulsory tipping screen
The payment processor can dictate all or cut them off, payment processor can also be regulated from on high
We can also make viral articles shaming a random shop for their behavior. This is not normal now but we can make it so.
We can realistically address the conflict of interest from service workers wanting more tips that are shaming consumers for not tipping a certain amount. We pretend that because they’re closer to the environment then their thoughts should be more privileged, when it is so convenient to just gamble on getting more tips that its a conflict of interest.
And of course the crazier thought of raising wages, but we should stick to things we can control
Most of the situations in which you tip are already signs of you not being too frugal. If you are eating in a restaurant, buying coffee out, valeting your car - you are not penny pinching so you can give someone a few extra bucks without breaking your bank.
Of course you have to be culturally sensitive. In the US tipping is expected and appreciated. Other cultures don't expect it and would think it's rude.
* Don't tip at counters
* Don't tip the owner of an establishment
* Tip on the quality of the service, not the quality of the food
* Very low tips should be utilized only in case of very bad service. (A penny tip sends a much bigger message than no tip)
* Round up to the nearest dollar for taxi drivers or Ubers, since they are almost all self-employed, and you don't tip bus drivers do you?
Also, I only tip in cash, and only by putting that cash directly in the hand of one of my servers. Otherwise the manager, who is not supposed to be tipped will likely take a cut.
But credit card receipts show 18% off the price + tax, effectively 20-25%
Most don’t do the math, just pay.
When will police, customs start to accept and ask for them? For better and more personal service?
Or judges and prosecutors. A hundred given at start would sure improve the vital service they provide?
And before that, why not tip at any financial transaction? Maybe some money when meeting some person buying your SaaS product?
Can’t wait to see this prompt at the back atm!
But in other cases, I see the tip line and click Zero. It makes the math easy.
Here in AU we call that "wages".
Having to do quick maths while under social pressure and the threat of having your service quality degraded to make up for an employer or state being unwilling to pay workers enough to live might be called "coercion", but certainly it is externalising costs onto the customer.
if you are a highly paid technology worker, when you go to service establishments where people are working hourly and are desperate to work 40-50 hour weeks just to pay their rent and feed their kids, you *tip*. *generously*.
the US has an insanely out of control income inequality issue that is very intractible and structural. If you are so fortunate as to find yourself on the winning end of it, as is the case for a vast portion of Hacker News members, yes, (WHILE SAID STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY CONTINUES TO NOT BE SOLVED BY OTHER MEANS), you should be transferring to the members of your local community who are not so fortunate (AND ARE EXPLICITLY ASKING FOR TIPS AND/OR WORKING WHERE TIPPING IS CUSTOMARY) and you should be happy to do it.
hi - not as *a subsitute for raising the mimimum wage*, of course not, of COURSE wages should be raised. of COURSE if everyone were paid fairly in the first place, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. however, at the moment, the federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in 14 YEARS, so FOR THE MOMENT, until said inequality issue can be structurally modified, workers really could use tips. that's why they are asking for them.
