4 ms·

If the tip is a mandatory % that is charged directly by the business and not an amount you willingly decide to give, it's not actually a tip. I don't understand

• mikebenfield 4y ago
  Most of us understand this perfectly well. But there’s not a lot we can do about it.
  • jbirer 4y ago
    There's a lot you can do. Change restaurant, cook at home, demand to know beforehand etc.
    • bagels 4y ago
      I can cook at home for a decade, but that isn't going to change how tipping works.
• hacym 4y ago
  It’s not mandatory. Culturally, though, it’s expected so people raise a stink about it if you don’t do it. What gets me is people/businesses that say “if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out”. No. If you can’t afford to pay your workers a livable wage without tips, you can’t afford to stay in business.
  • pessimizer 4y ago
    Banning tipping is not for you, as the customer, it's for the worker. If tips were banned, they'd just be part of the price and you'd still be paying it. When you refuse to tip, it's just free riding.
    • hacym 4y ago
      No, really? I’d gladly pay 10%-15% more to get eliminate tipping. Tipping sucks for consumers, sucks for employees, and is rooted in the worst parts of our history.
      • pessimizer 4y ago
        > I’d gladly pay 10%-15% more to get eliminate tipping. Next time you tip, inform your server that it has nothing to to with their performance, you're actually just adding what they would have made if they were paid appropriately to the base price. edit: I'm not being facetious, I have added 20% no matter what for at least 20 years. I've tipped servers that I'm pretty sure I hated.
        • hacym 4y ago
          No?
          • pessimizer 4y ago
            Or, don't. I'm just saying you're a free rider. edit: You're paying less for your meals than you would in your hypothetical ideal circumstance irt tipping, and that difference is coming out of the server's pocket. If it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother you, but you're no freedom fighter.
            • hacym 4y ago
              Advocating for an annoying at best, repressive and anti-worker at worst, system doesn’t make you any better than me, and your assumption I think I am some “freedom fighter” for seeing it for what it really is makes you look disingenuous. Business owners are shirking their responsibility to pay a living wage. They’re also setting up a socioeconomic reality that pits customers against workers to absolve them of that responsibility. Go ahead and keep advocating for tipping though, I’m sure you’re really making progress.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  As Americans, we need to feel like we have the power to humiliate or praise servants, and when that power disappears we feel like our right to the freedom of expressions of magnanimity or resentment towards our lessers have been taken away. If you appropriately price and ban tipping, people will just tip on top of that to prove how much better they are to their servants than other customers, and walk away complaining about how expensive your restaurant is. If you set a mandatory tip of 20%, it means absolutely nothing: you could say the tip was 10,000% and set prices so that a 10,000% tip brought in exactly the same revenue. Setting an arbitrary mandatory 20% tip (the current customary routinely generous amount) will actually trick most people into not tipping.
  • Tool_of_Society 4y ago
    People always like having someone to look down on.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      I think people love demonstrating how much they don't look down on people even more.