Perhaps you’ve noticed. We have reached a tipping point in the country over tipping.

To tip or not to tip has led to Shakespearean soliloquies by customers explaining why they refuse to tip for certain things.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers were grateful for those who seemingly risked their safety so we could get groceries, order dinner or anything that made our lives feel normal. A nice tip was the least we could do to show gratitude.

But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained; and customers are upset.

A new study from Pew Research shows most American adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.

  • SCB@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We aren’t anywhere near a “tipping point” with regard to tipping. This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they’d still pay the same fucking total cost.

    If your server makes a living by your 15% then the actual service you’re being charged for costs 15% more than your menu price. You’re just paying part later.

    Your alternative to tipping is just servers being paid out X% of food sold, which means that food is going to cost more.

    Being bad at math is no basis for an argument.

    • Uprise42@artemis.camp
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      1 year ago

      Tipping is bad culture because we as customers should not need to directly subsidize the employees paychecks. There is too much variability in that. I’ve worked in restaurants where there is a slow day. I’ve seen servers on busy nights leave with $10 in tips because tables just refuse to tip anyone.

      The restaurant should raise their prices and pay all employees a livable wage regardless of position. It’s not about being bad at math. It’s about some people not wanting to tip and the only one getting fucked over is the person on the very bottom with no control. It’s about that same person having to spend 8 hours on a slow Wednesday morning with maybe 2 customers all day just not getting the tips to feed their family. It shouldn’t matter how many customers a server gets. They should get paid for the hours worked, not the customers served

      • jackoneill@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Then get a job that isn’t tip based. Folks take those jobs because “I usually make more in tips” but that’s literally the gamble you sign up for with that mentality. I don’t want to take that gamble, so I work a job that isn’t reliant on tips. I don’t have good days where some rich dude gives me 100 bucks for no reason, but I also don’t have bad days where I make less than I expect and don’t know how to pay my bills. Tipping culture is bullshit and it’s the owning class exploiting us all, but workers who sign up to work for tipped based jobs know what they are getting into and don’t get my sympathy any more than some dude working at Best Buy hating his life does

      • SCB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Tipping is bad culture because we as customers should not need to directly subsidize the employees paycheck

        This is literally what all business transactions are.

        The restaurant should raise their prices and pay all employees a livable wage regardless of position

        Right, so the discussion is about how you want the pay to work, and there are lots of opinions on that. As a person who served for a long time, I would have not wanted to go by percent of food order at one restaurant but would have vastly preferred that at another, literally in the same chain of restaurants.

        I think the concept of ending tipping and paying more works, but I think there will be some sticker shock for a lot of goods. This is really baked into the system.

        It won’t actually cost more but it’ll seem like it does, and perception is everything.

        • XbSuper@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I simply don’t tip, it’s not my responsibility. How the workers and owners figure out how to deal with it, isn’t my problem.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well then honestly, you’re way better off by encouraging tipping culture, and still continuing not to tip.

            You’re effectively getting a discount on labor across the board, of 15-20% of total purchase cost. Not a bad deal.

            • jackoneill@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              But I’m not an asshole and I want society to improve, so I’ll shit all over tipping culture every chance I get and only tip when I actually get good service, as it should be

        • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          And yet people pay significantly more tipping than they would if prices just increased to cover actual wages. Tipped workers make a lot of fuckin money.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Tipped workers will still need that same income or you lose the tipped workers for worse workers (at best).

            The price increase will need to be roughly the average percentage made in tips, at minimum.

                • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Unlikely. Around 15% is the generally recommended tip, and many people don’t tip even that. Plus basically no restaurant is going to pay them what they would used to earn in tips.

                  • SCB@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Plus basically no restaurant is going to pay them what they would used to earn in tips.

                    They will if they want employees. It’s crazy to me people think servers would just work for free so you get a small discount lol

            • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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              1 year ago

              No, they don’t, actually. Workers in other countries don’t make nearly as much as tipped workers in the same job here, and they manage perfectly fine.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                What happens in other countries is irrelevant. No one is going to accept the same job for less pay because people in France make dog shit money

    • Sarmyth@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      I would still rather just see the price ahead of time and not have a range of tipping % applied. It’s similar to how I think taxes should be included in all prices.

      The alternative definitely won’t become the profit sharing it is now, though.

      I actively deduct service fees applied to my cheque from the tip at restaurants when they say it’s to pay for increasing labor costs. I also never go back and tell the lead why on my way out, though. It’s too much. They say they do in in lue of raising prices, but they are just obscuring the raised prices again! And it hasn’t stopped any place from raising the listed menu price as well.

      Consequently, I rarely go out anymore.

    • marx2k@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why would the total price to the customer be more? I mean, the customer is already paying 20% on the total in tips.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they’d still pay the same fucking total cost.

      That’s far better than my tips subsidizing the people who don’t tip. Tipping creates a perverse incentive to fuck people over.