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Yep. Our Applebees put in self-serve payment stations recently and the level of service went down precipitously. Servers know the computer will force 20% tip on

Yep. Our Applebees put in self-serve payment stations recently and the level of service went down precipitously. Servers know the computer will force 20% tip on the diner regardless of the quality of service. People are too lazy to reduce the tip appropriately.

harryh 9y ago
I don't think that it's laziness that makes people not reduce the tip. I think that, somehow, when there is a default that becomes a kind of anchor and going below that is seen as ruder than it would have been if the customer was able to choose their own tip% independent of a suggestion. At least that's kind of how I feel when I take a cab in NYC where the default tip% buttons on the credit card machines are 20/25/30.
- Simulacra 9y ago
  Tip anchoring really makes me angry. It's manipulative.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    If you look at tips as a cost sharing mechanism that allows the restaurant to push some of its personnel costs onto customers, it's irrational to be angry about this, just like it would be irrational to be upset about a 10% increase on the menu prices. If the food isn't worth it (spoiler: it isn't), eat elsewhere.
    - harryh 9y ago
      Further, to the degree that tip anchoring reduces tipping variance, the anchoring should actually make the system work better overall.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Further, to the degree that tip anchoring reduces tipping variance. Does it do that at all? I would suspect that it increases the mean but also the variance.
        harryh 9y ago
        That's a good question. My intuition is that it would decrease the variance as people would be drawn towards the anchor. But I could be wrong. We'd need empirical data to know. There is public data available on credit card purchases in NYC cabs. That will just give you the data for payments with the anchor though, not the cash payments made without it.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > My intuition is that it would decrease the variance as people would be drawn towards the anchor. If it's anchor vs. no norm, sure. But anchoring is trying to move a pre-existing social norm as to tipping rates, so its an additional competing standard to which some but not all people will be drawn from whatever their prior basis was, not a standard introduced where none existed before.
        harryh 9y ago
        Ya, that makes sense. Could go either way. Def one of those "not gonna know without looking at the data" situations.

harryh 9y ago

I don't think that it's laziness that makes people not reduce the tip. I think that, somehow, when there is a default that becomes a kind of anchor and going below that is seen as ruder than it would have been if the customer was able to choose their own tip% independent of a suggestion. At least that's kind of how I feel when I take a cab in NYC where the default tip% buttons on the credit card machines are 20/25/30.

Simulacra 9y ago
Tip anchoring really makes me angry. It's manipulative.
- tptacek 9y ago
  If you look at tips as a cost sharing mechanism that allows the restaurant to push some of its personnel costs onto customers, it's irrational to be angry about this, just like it would be irrational to be upset about a 10% increase on the menu prices. If the food isn't worth it (spoiler: it isn't), eat elsewhere.
  - harryh 9y ago
    Further, to the degree that tip anchoring reduces tipping variance, the anchoring should actually make the system work better overall.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Further, to the degree that tip anchoring reduces tipping variance. Does it do that at all? I would suspect that it increases the mean but also the variance.
      - harryh 9y ago
        That's a good question. My intuition is that it would decrease the variance as people would be drawn towards the anchor. But I could be wrong. We'd need empirical data to know. There is public data available on credit card purchases in NYC cabs. That will just give you the data for payments with the anchor though, not the cash payments made without it.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > My intuition is that it would decrease the variance as people would be drawn towards the anchor. If it's anchor vs. no norm, sure. But anchoring is trying to move a pre-existing social norm as to tipping rates, so its an additional competing standard to which some but not all people will be drawn from whatever their prior basis was, not a standard introduced where none existed before.
        harryh 9y ago
        Ya, that makes sense. Could go either way. Def one of those "not gonna know without looking at the data" situations.