When I was a kid, Emily Post said always tip 10%. In college, the buzz around campus was that 15% was what the proletariat deserved. The past decade or so, I keep hearing you need to give 20% if you don't want to make enemies of the servers. Now, are you telling me it's become 25%?

I've always done 20% because it's easy to do in my head. Nowadays it's a low tip for those tip prompts and I punch it in manually if I tip at all.

When I delivered food my tip spread was funny. Many people wouldn't tip at all, many would just let you keep the change or give you a token amount (~5-10%), and a few people would give you over 50% tips. Not many gave me 15-25%.

Do workers usually get a say in what those tip levels should be? I can't imagine that being the case.

I had this debate with a server once. She exclaimed ! You have to increase the tip, don't you know about inflation.

I held my tongue about exponential functions, and just said "ok", I'll choose my battles...

I guess that's why I'm an engineer and she's a server.