4 ms·

I'm so happy to hear this. I cannot stand tipping and genuinely get anxiety when I'm out with friends and the wife and she sometimes pays without knowing what t

by vecinu 6y ago

I'm so happy to hear this. I cannot stand tipping and genuinely get anxiety when I'm out with friends and the wife and she sometimes pays without knowing what the right "tip amount" is. It happens to me too, where I have to pay attention to what the waiter/waitress is doing that is exceptional or bad so I can adjust my tip accordingly. It's bad for the customer and the employee, the employer is the only one winning by exploiting its own workers. I wish we would just pay our servers a living wage with health benefits and stop hiding those as "Extra surchages" as San Francisco is doing. While we're at it, show me the final price with taxes included please.

tptacek 6y ago
You do not in fact have to pay attention to how well the server performs. You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. You should look at tipping as a cost sharing measure, not an incentive system.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  Fascinating. Are we now at 20-23% (exclusive of taxes, as I think they're usually calculated, so the variance here is entirely how much meals tax you have on your meal) tip rates as the new normal?
  - tptacek 6y ago
    15-20% has been the norm for my whole adult life, and the upper range (1) doesn't often materially change the price of a meal and (2) simplifies the math. Use whatever system you want, though; the point is: you are not actually on the hook to evaluate the server's performance. Think of it as tipping the institution of table service.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      Oh interesting! My impression was that it was 10-15% about two decades ago and has now risen to 15-20% with most people I know tending closer to the 20% edge. Maybe it's simply that my social circles have become more generous tippers.
      - findyoucef 6y ago
        That's my impression as well.
      - moltar 6y ago
        It’s because wages haven’t been catching up with inflation for decades also. Not just food service, pretty much in every sector, maybe with the exception of tech.
        dwohnitmok 6y ago
        Hasn't wage growth been even with inflation? I don't have sources at the moment, but that was my impression. That's still not good (you'd hope for an increase in purchasing power), but not as bad as sliding backwards.
        jolux 6y ago
        >Hasn't wage growth been even with inflation? Definitely not: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
        dwohnitmok 6y ago
        The headline and article content both say that it's been even, i.e. no real growth, but no backsliding either. > For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades and > today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.
        jolux 6y ago
        Ah, yes. Sorry. Even with inflation but no growth. You would hope for growth given it’s been 40 years.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  It just occurred to me maybe the reason some people find tipping so stressful, is that they think they're supposed to be grading someone with it. Because in the US it's not like taxes are included either, and and the "default" tipping percentage is much easier to calculate than tax percentages. I've lived in countries that tip and don't tip, it's honestly not a huge deal. The fact the menu says a service charge is included or not doesn't really change much at all.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    I think people in the US (and perhaps visitors to the US) would be surprised how much more expensive high-end restaurants would need to be to account for tipping --- of course, what seems to be happening instead of tip abolition is just a mandatory standardized tip. Which is fine! It's the same thing either way.
- Jedd 6y ago
  > You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. a) this sounds horrendous, and b) so there's zero pretence that tipping is somehow related to quality of experience? (I ask as a fairly well-travelled Australian, but who rarely sojourned into North America.)
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    There's still some correlation to quality. Personally, and I think my friends all do this as well, I have a default rate in mind that I then adjust up or down depending on service. Usually criteria for adjusting up is whether the server has a noteworthy level of service or whether I'm being an unusually needy customer. Adjusting down usually requires something fairly egregious.
  - skj 6y ago
    That's correct.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Why is that horrendous? (I get "annoying"). It's the restaurant sharing the cost of labor with the diner, which you're doing one way or the other, but tips have less price stickiness than list prices. There's certainly a "pretense" of tipping as an incentive, and you can treat it that way if you want to (to a point; you can't reasonably tip much below 15%). But you should ignore the pretense; it's not worth the psychic energy.
    - Jedd 6y ago
      > Why is that horrendous? Hmm. Imagine that you never had to consider any kind of unstated, fuzzy mathematical wrangling at restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, in taxis, at stores, etc - your entire life every financial transaction was straightforward. If you came from that environment, this arrangement would seem horrendous (and annoying). I understand that there's some cultural exceptionalism involved - there always is - but for most of the (rest of the) world this kind of intentional, onerous, relentless, and needlessly complex obligation is some combination of bewildering, disrespectful, and anathema.

by vecinu 6y ago

tptacek 6y ago

You do not in fact have to pay attention to how well the server performs. You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. You should look at tipping as a cost sharing measure, not an incentive system.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
Fascinating. Are we now at 20-23% (exclusive of taxes, as I think they're usually calculated, so the variance here is entirely how much meals tax you have on your meal) tip rates as the new normal?
- tptacek 6y ago
  15-20% has been the norm for my whole adult life, and the upper range (1) doesn't often materially change the price of a meal and (2) simplifies the math. Use whatever system you want, though; the point is: you are not actually on the hook to evaluate the server's performance. Think of it as tipping the institution of table service.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    Oh interesting! My impression was that it was 10-15% about two decades ago and has now risen to 15-20% with most people I know tending closer to the 20% edge. Maybe it's simply that my social circles have become more generous tippers.
    - findyoucef 6y ago
      That's my impression as well.
    - moltar 6y ago
      It’s because wages haven’t been catching up with inflation for decades also. Not just food service, pretty much in every sector, maybe with the exception of tech.
      - dwohnitmok 6y ago
        Hasn't wage growth been even with inflation? I don't have sources at the moment, but that was my impression. That's still not good (you'd hope for an increase in purchasing power), but not as bad as sliding backwards.
        jolux 6y ago
        >Hasn't wage growth been even with inflation? Definitely not: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
        dwohnitmok 6y ago
        The headline and article content both say that it's been even, i.e. no real growth, but no backsliding either. > For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades and > today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.
        jolux 6y ago
        Ah, yes. Sorry. Even with inflation but no growth. You would hope for growth given it’s been 40 years.
BoorishBears 6y ago
It just occurred to me maybe the reason some people find tipping so stressful, is that they think they're supposed to be grading someone with it. Because in the US it's not like taxes are included either, and and the "default" tipping percentage is much easier to calculate than tax percentages. I've lived in countries that tip and don't tip, it's honestly not a huge deal. The fact the menu says a service charge is included or not doesn't really change much at all.
- tptacek 6y ago
  I think people in the US (and perhaps visitors to the US) would be surprised how much more expensive high-end restaurants would need to be to account for tipping --- of course, what seems to be happening instead of tip abolition is just a mandatory standardized tip. Which is fine! It's the same thing either way.
Jedd 6y ago
> You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. a) this sounds horrendous, and b) so there's zero pretence that tipping is somehow related to quality of experience? (I ask as a fairly well-travelled Australian, but who rarely sojourned into North America.)
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  There's still some correlation to quality. Personally, and I think my friends all do this as well, I have a default rate in mind that I then adjust up or down depending on service. Usually criteria for adjusting up is whether the server has a noteworthy level of service or whether I'm being an unusually needy customer. Adjusting down usually requires something fairly egregious.
- skj 6y ago
  That's correct.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Why is that horrendous? (I get "annoying"). It's the restaurant sharing the cost of labor with the diner, which you're doing one way or the other, but tips have less price stickiness than list prices. There's certainly a "pretense" of tipping as an incentive, and you can treat it that way if you want to (to a point; you can't reasonably tip much below 15%). But you should ignore the pretense; it's not worth the psychic energy.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    > Why is that horrendous? Hmm. Imagine that you never had to consider any kind of unstated, fuzzy mathematical wrangling at restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, in taxis, at stores, etc - your entire life every financial transaction was straightforward. If you came from that environment, this arrangement would seem horrendous (and annoying). I understand that there's some cultural exceptionalism involved - there always is - but for most of the (rest of the) world this kind of intentional, onerous, relentless, and needlessly complex obligation is some combination of bewildering, disrespectful, and anathema.