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.
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.