9 ms·

Tech Is Allowing Businesses to Overcharge You in Tips

42 points by lxm 4y ago

medellin 4y ago
Im not sure how it was normalized to tip 20% to someone who is taking your order at a fast food restaurant but here we are… and I absolutely hate it.
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- geodel 4y ago
  Well, they decided if they charge 20% as tip they will be fine dining establishment. I mean this does feel like a fine to me.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    And at that point I would expect fine dining service. Someone coming to my table asking for order. Then bringing it with condiments. And when I leave someone will come and pick up the trash.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Your base bill is lower because it’s a built in assumption that your gratuity is part of the service worker’s pay. It was normalized for most service jobs that actually pay a living wage in the US over a long period, and it’s been extended to other jobs as they’ve become part of gig work. If you don’t like it, I agree, but we have to be willing to pay workers a decent wage to do work for us.
  - geodel 4y ago
    Well we have to be willing to pay when we hire those worker directly. I don't find it okay that I need to pay worker separately when I am paying business for whatever product/service they provided to me.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      I don’t like it either! But I also don’t like projecting my wishes and wants onto people whose livelihood depends on accounting which is inconvenient to me.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I don't know how normal this is across the country, but in my area fast food workers are paid starting at about $15/hour, they are not the service workers getting the sub-$3 "tipping assumed" base wage.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      $15/hr was considered a living wage when that movement started approximately a decade ago. It’s not a living wage now. People aren’t getting rich on $15+tips, they’re trying to pay their bills and afford their car or transit to get to work to serve you.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        Sure, we can agree that $15/hr isn't enough to be considered a living wage. But it is comparable to other low-skill/manual labor jobs that don't have any exposure to customer tipping.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        So fuck ‘em don’t pay them because tipping is bad?
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I'd like to think HN is above this kind of nonsense.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        I looked back and tried to take the most charitable interpretation of your original response as I can imagine. Here’s what I came up with: I actually do want underpaid workers to be paid a living wage, but I’m consciously posting ammunition for people who want to selfishly deny them that. I don’t want to misrepresent you, but I’m grasping for more charitable interpretations than that.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Meanwhile, in every other developed nation, the cost of restaurant food is significantly lower than in the US, even though servers there are paid a decent wage.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      Meanwhile workers in the US don’t live in other countries.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        Irrelevant. The point is that restaurant food is ridiculously expensive in America for some reason, and it shouldn't be: America is a huge food producer and exporter, so if anything, it should be cheaper to eat out in America than in other places that have to import a lot of their food (like Japan). Instead, it's the opposite. So something is fundamentally very wrong. Many other things are significantly cheaper in America too, such as electronics and cars and gasoline, so it's not a case of everything being more expensive. Even grocery store food in America is fairly cheap-to-reasonable in my experience, compared to other developed nations, it's just restaurant food that's ridiculously overpriced.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Huh? Where people live is irrelevant to what they experience where they live??
        midoridensha 4y ago
        We're talking about how ridiculously expensive restaurant food in the US is, not where people live.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        We weren’t before, and you certainly changed the subject to that, but I’m still talking about the topic we started on. Which I know annoys people, but you replied to my comment to change the topic.
observer987 4y ago
Historically, I’d round up and put the leftover change into the tip jar. But with digital payments I routinely skip if it’s someone just bagging a pastry I chose from a case. Of course, if they’re giving me an extra level of service - I’ll tip.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  They’re literally getting in a car and bringing things to you. That’s a potentially deadly level of service.
cebert 4y ago
I’m getting irritated with how common it is for every service organization to now prompt for tips when paying electronically. A Venti plain Starbucks coffee is over $4 now. I’m sorry, I’m not tipping for that.
- beezle 4y ago
  Back in the day I went to the same bagel shop every morning for the commute. I'd tip by giving all of the counter guys/gals mini-champagne bottles at holiday time. Put a smile on their faces and prorated over 250 days was next to nothing for me to spend.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Why would anyone tip a fast food restaurant? It’s bizarre they even ask.
  - nightski 4y ago
    I mean, tipping in general is bizarre imo. But at the end of the day I don’t see a lot of difference between that and a regular restaurant.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Fast food places pay at least minimum wage and these days are so desperate they often pay $15+ an hour where the minimum wage is still $7.25
    - petodo 4y ago
      You have to walk to counter each time you want something in fast food restaurant, in a regular restaurant you have waiter for that. But yeah it's his job for which he is paid, so tips still don't make sense just for doing the job, I don't get tips for doing my job, neither does my wife and most of the occupations.
      - nightski 4y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
We should of course just eliminate tipping as a standard practice and just pay people more, but I imagine then there'd just be a lot of belly aching about how expensive a coffee is now and it was better when they could just not tip but feel justified because they still thought the coffee was too expensive.
geodel 4y ago
Yeah, it is in fact promoting it. These kinds of things just makes me reluctant to buy any food/snack/drink that is not from grocery store or its in-house deli. So far I have not seen this forced tipping there. I think the day is not far where there will be tip for paying tip because tips cause extra calculation for businesses hence they need to be tipped for processing tips for you.
usui 4y ago
I don't tip, ever. I've never done it in my entire life. I'm not legally obligated to. What are they going to do, arrest me? If they actually need the money, I'm sure they can bake it into the price of the product or service they sell me. I'm used to it, coming from a non-tipping culture. It works perfectly fine overseas. Overall what I noticed is that tipping is a sub-strategy among others in the American shopping experience where companies try as long as possible to hide the total price charged to a customer. You can see it everywhere from various fees, taxations, and tipping. I am shocked that it is so difficult to know the final cost of things until the very last second. Tipping is just one strategy in the toolkit, but tech companies are deploying it everywhere now, it's hard to escape.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  It's tricky in some situations. Delivery drivers cannot see whether they got a tip or not, so they can't choose whether to serve you or decline, and they end up working for close to nothing. But of course, I blame the food delivery brokers.
  - dcow 4y ago
    > I blame the food delivery brokers. As you should. It's illegal to pay below minimum wage. If they don't get tipped enough to make minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. Of course minimum wage needs to be increased but that's another topic.
  - nanidin 4y ago
    > Delivery drivers cannot see whether they got a tip or not, so they can't choose whether to serve you or decline This is not true for DoorDash - they can see the tip amount before accepting the order. I think that such a "tip" should not be treated as a tip for tax passthrough purposes - it's a bid for service.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  "They" are two rather different groups of people- the people who get tipped, and the people that can "bake it into the price of the product"
reaperducer 4y ago
Every time tipping comes up on HN, someone chimes in to say what a strange American custom it is, and how nobody ever tips in Europe. Historically, tipping came to America from Europe in the 1920's and 30's. When it started, it was very divisive and considered un-American. You can see it in the background of certain old films of the era. It is a sub-plot in the Humphrey Bogart movie Petrified Forest.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  Please fix your multiple typos. You have a very interesting point, and I'm worried it will be lost for some. Particularly those for whom English is not their first language. The Old World will be awake soon.
dcow 4y ago
I used to be a tip supporter. Not anymore with the amount of deceptive BS that's happened in the last 10 years. I am very close to deciding not to tip, ever. I have no moral qualms with this I've decided. If everyone got onboard it would all work out. Can we just make it illegal to pay below minimum wage even for service work already? Until then, I have a rule: I only tip when someone is working outside of regular working hours to act as my servant. That's like evening dinner service where someone is actually waiting my table. Sometimes I'll tip at lunch for pleasant service even though it breaks my rule because I'm human. And sometimes a dollar or two for coffee early in the morning or bar service at night out of habit. I also have "tip bands" structured such that I tip at least 10% when de-facto expected. I tip $5 up to a $50 ticket, and $10 up to a $100 ticket, on the pre-tax and pre-other-fees price. My logic here is that if restaurants are supplementing wages with baked in fees, those fees should be deducted from the tip I'd otherwise have been expected to pay. So a standard 15% less a 4% surcharge post tax becomes 10% additional (tip). In any case, things average out such that I over-tip anyway, sigh. I guess my latter point here is that I'm still made to feel guilty when tipping at least 10% because of how establishments suggest you should be considering 20%, 25% and 30% gratuities on top of all the fees they slip in at the end and taxes. It leaves me disillusioned with the entire notion.
- eurleif 4y ago
  >Can we just make it illegal to pay below minimum wage even for service work already? Note that the sum of wage + tips must reach the minimum wage, or else the employer is required to make up the difference. It's a common misconception that tipped workers can earn less, in total, than minimum wage.
  - ents 4y ago
    That is the law. That law is generally not followed in the real world.
    - eurleif 4y ago
      The comment I replied to said there should be a law. I pointed out that there already is. If we're talking about whether the law is sometimes violated, that's a whole different discussion. Also, I don't see any reason why violating the law in that way should be any more common than violating it by paying non-tipped workers less than minimum wage. Either one would require the same degree, and same kind, of fraud. So tipped workers should be no worse off in practice than non-tipped workers.
photochemsyn 4y ago
#1 reason to carry cash is so you don't have to go through the forced tipping protocol. Otherwise, I've just quit going to any place that does this. Making your own coffee and packing a thermos is no big deal. Ideally, we should just raise the employee's wages and end the practice of tipping. For servers in high-throughflow establishments, where actual service is being provided, give them a percentage of every bill, then they're rewarded if the place is busy (which it will be if they're providing good service and the food is good). If they upsell on wine bottles or whatever, they're then essentially earning a commission, and it's baked in, not some customer whim thing.
tptacek 4y ago
It seems like, if you're going to write an article like this, you have to start by understanding what the norms of tipping were before POS screens made it easy to ask for tips everywhere. So: yes, I think it's a new phenomenon to suggest tipping your grocer? But tipping your mechanic is not a new thing. It didn't start with POS terminals. Pretty much across the whole personalized service industry (ie, not mass-market retail jobs like grocery and department stores), there is a soft norm of tipping. You're not required to tip any of them the way you are with restaurants, but people have been for generations; it's a way of signaling customer loyalty and getting potentially better service. Don't tip your grocer unless you really want to. Seriously consider tipping your mechanic if given the option, at least, if you expect to use them in the future. Probably tip the barista (a buck or so), the same way you would a bartender. Definitely tip your hotel housekeeper! And: you are required to tip at full-service American restaurants.
- smeagull 4y ago
  If my grocer forces a tip through a machine, I'm going to just leave the shopping there and leave the store. This is American nonsense that needs to stay in that god-forsaken country.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    None of these systems force tips. Even the restaurant POS systems don't.
  - olliej 4y ago
    In the US, jobs with tips are often subject to a significant drop in minimum wage. If a company for a usually non-tip industry has started including tip options you may want to investigate whether they've started underpaying staff.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      Generally, you can't simply pay employees less than the minimum wage; you can take a "tip credit" against your required wage level, but either way the employee has to "take home" at least minimum wage, whether or not the tips got them there.
koolba 4y ago
Tipping is great but for it to be effective it needs to be before any services are rendered. It’s more of a down payment on a bribe. Tipping after the fact, especially to a heartless POS machine, is utterly pointless. You’ve already received the goods or services. They’re just preying on your perceived social contract and fear of confrontation (especially when there no “$0.00” button).
- x3n0ph3n3 4y ago
  The problem with your suggestion is that there's still a perceived social contract, just from the other direction, to provide you "excellent" service.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Actually, this runs counter to the theory that tipping addresses the principal-agent problem wherein an owner cannot observe the behavior of all employees, but the person being served can. According to this theory, the tip is supposed to reflect the quality of service, and therefore must be paid after service is rendered.
rootusrootus 4y ago
I know that it is irrational, but I have this fear that if I refuse to tip when paying for food in advance (fast food, or food carts, etc), that it might be reflected in the quality or quantity of food in my meal. So I pay the damn tip.
arealaccount 4y ago
A nefarious use of these systems is reclassifying normal wage earners as lower paid tipped wage earners. There is a popular brewery in Boston called Trillium brewing that collects tips with these systems for people buying canned beer from behind the register. It’s crazy because you order a case of beer for about $100 and then they default to 20% tip for what is basically a retail transaction, and a lot of people refused to tip. Turns out they started paying people like $5/hr, below normal minimum wage for Boston, because they were classified as tipped staff. https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2018/11/21/trouble-brewing-craft-beer-darling-trillium/FIztA8DiIGUqmAO0Ia5yYI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2018/11/21/trouble-bre...
- winternett 4y ago
  The best way to protest it all is to just pay in cash.
  - dcow 4y ago
    Now, if only we had some form of digital cash. Some type of coin made from bits.
- tptacek 4y ago
  I'm not totally sure I understand the scam here. An employee in Boston must be paid $15/hr in some combination of tips and wages. If tips don't get them there, the employer is obligated to. (You also generally can't use the tipped wage for work that isn't tipped; like, if you have these employees do back-of-the-house work, or cleanup, you can't pay them the tipped wage for those hours --- but I didn't verify that this was the rule in Massachusetts like it is elsewhere). Like: I see what's egregious about this: it would be better for employees to take home $15/hr plus tips, rather than $15/hr and no tips, even though customers tipped. It's a scummy move. But I don't think it could have meant that employees took home $5/hr, right?
  - kasey_junk 4y ago
    The federal department of labor has loosened tip pool rules recently to allow back of house staff to share tips with front of house. That doesn’t speak to this issue or mass laws, but it’s something that’s new Germaine to the general conversation
gazpachotron 4y ago
The way to fight this is to devise some kind of certification for service businesses that says, “This establishment pays livable wages, provides excellent service, and does not accept tips.“.
olliej 4y ago
As a reminder: tips belong to the workers, not the business. It's a crime for an employer to withold any portion of a tip from the employees, or redistribute it to non-server/wait staff (the inability to pass tips on to bos folk is frequently pointed to as a problem with tips so restaurants, etc created "surcharges", except those aren't tips so can be retained by the business). Seriously: if you have boss/manager/employer who is taking tips ("fees", "penalties", excuse less theft), you should talk to an employment lawyer. If you complain about anything like this to your boss, do it in writing/email/text messages (saving everything and/or screenshotting) - while most of the US is "at will" employment there are plenty of illegal reasons to be fired, and retaliation when complaining about wage theft is likely to be. Again: talk to an employment lawyer. Similar for protected medical leave, maternity leave, etc - ensure all communication is in writing. I've said elsewhere: your employer is not your friend, and it's not your family, and you cannot ever assume it is - even if your manager is on your side, their's may not be, and HR is not.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  > It's a crime for an employer to withold any portion of a tip from the employees > if you have boss/manager/employer who is taking tips ("fees", "penalties", excuse less theft), you should talk to an employment lawyer. Can you spell out the common scenario where it's fairly trivial for an employee to right this wrong? A good place to start might be the employment lawyer who works on contingency for the most common tip-withholding scenarios.
nsxwolf 4y ago
My rules for tipping are locked in 1995. You tip servers, bartenders, cab drivers, pizza deivery, and a few other select people. No fast food workers. No baristas.
- lsj0627 4y ago
  I'm with you. Those standards still make sense to me; don't need to think twice or stress about it.
preommr 4y ago
I find it bizarre the mental gymnastics people will do to draw arbitrary lines on when to tip. All the reasons for tipping in restaurants apply to tipping in every other situation they're being asked for now. It was never about fair market value. It's entirely social convention and nonsense like how attractive the server is. In 50 years, there's a good chance that tipping for everyday interactions will be the norm simply because a generation will grow up with.
theGnuMe 4y ago
Everyone has these toast wireless tap to pay things with the default 18% tip on them. They are super annoying. I want the paper receipt and pen to work out the tip on the pretax amount. I actually refuse to go to restaurants that use this system now. The other crazy thing is default living wage charges and all of that malarkey. It’s just the same as Fees more fees and bogus charges.
TheJoeMan 4y ago
Bringing the discussion more in line with the “tech” angles, the article has a quote claiming they aren’t “dark patterns” on the tip screen. But I’ve seen the “20%” suggested based on total + tax + addional restaurant fee. At Chili’s I’ve never gotten the dollar amount and percent listed to make sense.
glacials 4y ago
As a consumer who dislikes tipping, here are your ways to deal with it: 1. Find, frequent, and favorably review establishments that do not accept tips. 2. Express desire for policy at local, state, and federal levels. (Listed in decreasing order of ROI.) There is no option 3. You cannot refuse to tip on a moral basis. You are just punishing the victim. No one will join you in your revolution and nothing will get done.
- dubrocks 4y ago
  When tech bro capitalists pit customer vs. worker in order to artificially increase their profits, we're all the victims. The only moral option is to tip 0% on iPad counter screens, all the time.
- falcolas 4y ago
  I haven’t found a single option 1 for food/beverage service. Not a single one.
  - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
    I've been in 1 in Los Angeles, somewhere in Century City. Mediocre food though.
- dcow 4y ago
  If we live in a world where we allow victims to be punished regularly by other members of our society, often times inadvertently, and I behave in a way that perpetuates such a norm, is that also moral? If I disobey and stop tipping, and society cannot tolerate my actions, shouldn't I be punished? Two sides of the same coin. Serious questions.
- usui 4y ago
  I am made highly uncomfortable being put in a position where I can victimize someone and punish them by not tipping... I have trouble understanding why any society would find it morally acceptable to have this power dynamic become possible at all during a financial transaction, so my only genuine guess is that the real underlying purpose is to financially exploit customers by preying upon an ambiguous notion of social normality that is ever-so shifting all the time and not at all clear...
petodo 4y ago
Just don't tip, simple as that, unless you are big supporter of tax evasion, low pensions and unfair salaries. Btw. I just finished rewatching X-Files and I strongly recommend everyone here (especially to people who like Black Mirror) to watch episode S11E07 from X-Files reboot called Rm9sbG93ZXJz , which is about what happens if you refuse to tip machine/AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GuGMn7n04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GuGMn7n04 And btw. in China you don't tip and you can even bring your own drinks to restaurant, why not, you are paying for the meal after all.

42 points by lxm 4y ago

Im not sure how it was normalized to tip 20% to someone who is taking your order at a fast food restaurant but here we are… and I absolutely hate it.

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geodel 4y ago
Well, they decided if they charge 20% as tip they will be fine dining establishment. I mean this does feel like a fine to me.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  And at that point I would expect fine dining service. Someone coming to my table asking for order. Then bringing it with condiments. And when I leave someone will come and pick up the trash.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Your base bill is lower because it’s a built in assumption that your gratuity is part of the service worker’s pay. It was normalized for most service jobs that actually pay a living wage in the US over a long period, and it’s been extended to other jobs as they’ve become part of gig work. If you don’t like it, I agree, but we have to be willing to pay workers a decent wage to do work for us.
- geodel 4y ago
  Well we have to be willing to pay when we hire those worker directly. I don't find it okay that I need to pay worker separately when I am paying business for whatever product/service they provided to me.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    I don’t like it either! But I also don’t like projecting my wishes and wants onto people whose livelihood depends on accounting which is inconvenient to me.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I don't know how normal this is across the country, but in my area fast food workers are paid starting at about $15/hour, they are not the service workers getting the sub-$3 "tipping assumed" base wage.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    $15/hr was considered a living wage when that movement started approximately a decade ago. It’s not a living wage now. People aren’t getting rich on $15+tips, they’re trying to pay their bills and afford their car or transit to get to work to serve you.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      Sure, we can agree that $15/hr isn't enough to be considered a living wage. But it is comparable to other low-skill/manual labor jobs that don't have any exposure to customer tipping.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        So fuck ‘em don’t pay them because tipping is bad?
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I'd like to think HN is above this kind of nonsense.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        I looked back and tried to take the most charitable interpretation of your original response as I can imagine. Here’s what I came up with: I actually do want underpaid workers to be paid a living wage, but I’m consciously posting ammunition for people who want to selfishly deny them that. I don’t want to misrepresent you, but I’m grasping for more charitable interpretations than that.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Meanwhile, in every other developed nation, the cost of restaurant food is significantly lower than in the US, even though servers there are paid a decent wage.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    Meanwhile workers in the US don’t live in other countries.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Irrelevant. The point is that restaurant food is ridiculously expensive in America for some reason, and it shouldn't be: America is a huge food producer and exporter, so if anything, it should be cheaper to eat out in America than in other places that have to import a lot of their food (like Japan). Instead, it's the opposite. So something is fundamentally very wrong. Many other things are significantly cheaper in America too, such as electronics and cars and gasoline, so it's not a case of everything being more expensive. Even grocery store food in America is fairly cheap-to-reasonable in my experience, compared to other developed nations, it's just restaurant food that's ridiculously overpriced.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Huh? Where people live is irrelevant to what they experience where they live??
        midoridensha 4y ago
        We're talking about how ridiculously expensive restaurant food in the US is, not where people live.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        We weren’t before, and you certainly changed the subject to that, but I’m still talking about the topic we started on. Which I know annoys people, but you replied to my comment to change the topic.

observer987 4y ago

Historically, I’d round up and put the leftover change into the tip jar. But with digital payments I routinely skip if it’s someone just bagging a pastry I chose from a case. Of course, if they’re giving me an extra level of service - I’ll tip.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
They’re literally getting in a car and bringing things to you. That’s a potentially deadly level of service.

cebert 4y ago

I’m getting irritated with how common it is for every service organization to now prompt for tips when paying electronically. A Venti plain Starbucks coffee is over $4 now. I’m sorry, I’m not tipping for that.

beezle 4y ago
Back in the day I went to the same bagel shop every morning for the commute. I'd tip by giving all of the counter guys/gals mini-champagne bottles at holiday time. Put a smile on their faces and prorated over 250 days was next to nothing for me to spend.
Waterluvian 4y ago
Why would anyone tip a fast food restaurant? It’s bizarre they even ask.
- nightski 4y ago
  I mean, tipping in general is bizarre imo. But at the end of the day I don’t see a lot of difference between that and a regular restaurant.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Fast food places pay at least minimum wage and these days are so desperate they often pay $15+ an hour where the minimum wage is still $7.25
  - petodo 4y ago
    You have to walk to counter each time you want something in fast food restaurant, in a regular restaurant you have waiter for that. But yeah it's his job for which he is paid, so tips still don't make sense just for doing the job, I don't get tips for doing my job, neither does my wife and most of the occupations.
    - nightski 4y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

We should of course just eliminate tipping as a standard practice and just pay people more, but I imagine then there'd just be a lot of belly aching about how expensive a coffee is now and it was better when they could just not tip but feel justified because they still thought the coffee was too expensive.

geodel 4y ago

Yeah, it is in fact promoting it. These kinds of things just makes me reluctant to buy any food/snack/drink that is not from grocery store or its in-house deli. So far I have not seen this forced tipping there. I think the day is not far where there will be tip for paying tip because tips cause extra calculation for businesses hence they need to be tipped for processing tips for you.

usui 4y ago

I don't tip, ever. I've never done it in my entire life. I'm not legally obligated to. What are they going to do, arrest me? If they actually need the money, I'm sure they can bake it into the price of the product or service they sell me. I'm used to it, coming from a non-tipping culture. It works perfectly fine overseas. Overall what I noticed is that tipping is a sub-strategy among others in the American shopping experience where companies try as long as possible to hide the total price charged to a customer. You can see it everywhere from various fees, taxations, and tipping. I am shocked that it is so difficult to know the final cost of things until the very last second. Tipping is just one strategy in the toolkit, but tech companies are deploying it everywhere now, it's hard to escape.

Bilal_io 4y ago
It's tricky in some situations. Delivery drivers cannot see whether they got a tip or not, so they can't choose whether to serve you or decline, and they end up working for close to nothing. But of course, I blame the food delivery brokers.
- dcow 4y ago
  > I blame the food delivery brokers. As you should. It's illegal to pay below minimum wage. If they don't get tipped enough to make minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. Of course minimum wage needs to be increased but that's another topic.
- nanidin 4y ago
  > Delivery drivers cannot see whether they got a tip or not, so they can't choose whether to serve you or decline This is not true for DoorDash - they can see the tip amount before accepting the order. I think that such a "tip" should not be treated as a tip for tax passthrough purposes - it's a bid for service.
ravi-delia 4y ago
"They" are two rather different groups of people- the people who get tipped, and the people that can "bake it into the price of the product"

reaperducer 4y ago

Every time tipping comes up on HN, someone chimes in to say what a strange American custom it is, and how nobody ever tips in Europe. Historically, tipping came to America from Europe in the 1920's and 30's. When it started, it was very divisive and considered un-American. You can see it in the background of certain old films of the era. It is a sub-plot in the Humphrey Bogart movie Petrified Forest.

chitowneats 4y ago
Please fix your multiple typos. You have a very interesting point, and I'm worried it will be lost for some. Particularly those for whom English is not their first language. The Old World will be awake soon.

dcow 4y ago

I used to be a tip supporter. Not anymore with the amount of deceptive BS that's happened in the last 10 years. I am very close to deciding not to tip, ever. I have no moral qualms with this I've decided. If everyone got onboard it would all work out. Can we just make it illegal to pay below minimum wage even for service work already? Until then, I have a rule: I only tip when someone is working outside of regular working hours to act as my servant. That's like evening dinner service where someone is actually waiting my table. Sometimes I'll tip at lunch for pleasant service even though it breaks my rule because I'm human. And sometimes a dollar or two for coffee early in the morning or bar service at night out of habit. I also have "tip bands" structured such that I tip at least 10% when de-facto expected. I tip $5 up to a $50 ticket, and $10 up to a $100 ticket, on the pre-tax and pre-other-fees price. My logic here is that if restaurants are supplementing wages with baked in fees, those fees should be deducted from the tip I'd otherwise have been expected to pay. So a standard 15% less a 4% surcharge post tax becomes 10% additional (tip). In any case, things average out such that I over-tip anyway, sigh. I guess my latter point here is that I'm still made to feel guilty when tipping at least 10% because of how establishments suggest you should be considering 20%, 25% and 30% gratuities on top of all the fees they slip in at the end and taxes. It leaves me disillusioned with the entire notion.

eurleif 4y ago
>Can we just make it illegal to pay below minimum wage even for service work already? Note that the sum of wage + tips must reach the minimum wage, or else the employer is required to make up the difference. It's a common misconception that tipped workers can earn less, in total, than minimum wage.
- ents 4y ago
  That is the law. That law is generally not followed in the real world.
  - eurleif 4y ago
    The comment I replied to said there should be a law. I pointed out that there already is. If we're talking about whether the law is sometimes violated, that's a whole different discussion. Also, I don't see any reason why violating the law in that way should be any more common than violating it by paying non-tipped workers less than minimum wage. Either one would require the same degree, and same kind, of fraud. So tipped workers should be no worse off in practice than non-tipped workers.

photochemsyn 4y ago

#1 reason to carry cash is so you don't have to go through the forced tipping protocol. Otherwise, I've just quit going to any place that does this. Making your own coffee and packing a thermos is no big deal. Ideally, we should just raise the employee's wages and end the practice of tipping. For servers in high-throughflow establishments, where actual service is being provided, give them a percentage of every bill, then they're rewarded if the place is busy (which it will be if they're providing good service and the food is good). If they upsell on wine bottles or whatever, they're then essentially earning a commission, and it's baked in, not some customer whim thing.

tptacek 4y ago

It seems like, if you're going to write an article like this, you have to start by understanding what the norms of tipping were before POS screens made it easy to ask for tips everywhere. So: yes, I think it's a new phenomenon to suggest tipping your grocer? But tipping your mechanic is not a new thing. It didn't start with POS terminals. Pretty much across the whole personalized service industry (ie, not mass-market retail jobs like grocery and department stores), there is a soft norm of tipping. You're not required to tip any of them the way you are with restaurants, but people have been for generations; it's a way of signaling customer loyalty and getting potentially better service. Don't tip your grocer unless you really want to. Seriously consider tipping your mechanic if given the option, at least, if you expect to use them in the future. Probably tip the barista (a buck or so), the same way you would a bartender. Definitely tip your hotel housekeeper! And: you are required to tip at full-service American restaurants.

smeagull 4y ago
If my grocer forces a tip through a machine, I'm going to just leave the shopping there and leave the store. This is American nonsense that needs to stay in that god-forsaken country.
- tptacek 4y ago
  None of these systems force tips. Even the restaurant POS systems don't.
- olliej 4y ago
  In the US, jobs with tips are often subject to a significant drop in minimum wage. If a company for a usually non-tip industry has started including tip options you may want to investigate whether they've started underpaying staff.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Generally, you can't simply pay employees less than the minimum wage; you can take a "tip credit" against your required wage level, but either way the employee has to "take home" at least minimum wage, whether or not the tips got them there.

koolba 4y ago

Tipping is great but for it to be effective it needs to be before any services are rendered. It’s more of a down payment on a bribe. Tipping after the fact, especially to a heartless POS machine, is utterly pointless. You’ve already received the goods or services. They’re just preying on your perceived social contract and fear of confrontation (especially when there no “$0.00” button).

x3n0ph3n3 4y ago
The problem with your suggestion is that there's still a perceived social contract, just from the other direction, to provide you "excellent" service.
gnicholas 4y ago
Actually, this runs counter to the theory that tipping addresses the principal-agent problem wherein an owner cannot observe the behavior of all employees, but the person being served can. According to this theory, the tip is supposed to reflect the quality of service, and therefore must be paid after service is rendered.

rootusrootus 4y ago

I know that it is irrational, but I have this fear that if I refuse to tip when paying for food in advance (fast food, or food carts, etc), that it might be reflected in the quality or quantity of food in my meal. So I pay the damn tip.

arealaccount 4y ago

A nefarious use of these systems is reclassifying normal wage earners as lower paid tipped wage earners. There is a popular brewery in Boston called Trillium brewing that collects tips with these systems for people buying canned beer from behind the register. It’s crazy because you order a case of beer for about $100 and then they default to 20% tip for what is basically a retail transaction, and a lot of people refused to tip. Turns out they started paying people like $5/hr, below normal minimum wage for Boston, because they were classified as tipped staff. https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2018/11/21/trouble-brewing-craft-beer-darling-trillium/FIztA8DiIGUqmAO0Ia5yYI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2018/11/21/trouble-bre...

winternett 4y ago
The best way to protest it all is to just pay in cash.
- dcow 4y ago
  Now, if only we had some form of digital cash. Some type of coin made from bits.
tptacek 4y ago
I'm not totally sure I understand the scam here. An employee in Boston must be paid $15/hr in some combination of tips and wages. If tips don't get them there, the employer is obligated to. (You also generally can't use the tipped wage for work that isn't tipped; like, if you have these employees do back-of-the-house work, or cleanup, you can't pay them the tipped wage for those hours --- but I didn't verify that this was the rule in Massachusetts like it is elsewhere). Like: I see what's egregious about this: it would be better for employees to take home $15/hr plus tips, rather than $15/hr and no tips, even though customers tipped. It's a scummy move. But I don't think it could have meant that employees took home $5/hr, right?
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  The federal department of labor has loosened tip pool rules recently to allow back of house staff to share tips with front of house. That doesn’t speak to this issue or mass laws, but it’s something that’s new Germaine to the general conversation

gazpachotron 4y ago

The way to fight this is to devise some kind of certification for service businesses that says, “This establishment pays livable wages, provides excellent service, and does not accept tips.“.

olliej 4y ago

As a reminder: tips belong to the workers, not the business. It's a crime for an employer to withold any portion of a tip from the employees, or redistribute it to non-server/wait staff (the inability to pass tips on to bos folk is frequently pointed to as a problem with tips so restaurants, etc created "surcharges", except those aren't tips so can be retained by the business). Seriously: if you have boss/manager/employer who is taking tips ("fees", "penalties", excuse less theft), you should talk to an employment lawyer. If you complain about anything like this to your boss, do it in writing/email/text messages (saving everything and/or screenshotting) - while most of the US is "at will" employment there are plenty of illegal reasons to be fired, and retaliation when complaining about wage theft is likely to be. Again: talk to an employment lawyer. Similar for protected medical leave, maternity leave, etc - ensure all communication is in writing. I've said elsewhere: your employer is not your friend, and it's not your family, and you cannot ever assume it is - even if your manager is on your side, their's may not be, and HR is not.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
> It's a crime for an employer to withold any portion of a tip from the employees > if you have boss/manager/employer who is taking tips ("fees", "penalties", excuse less theft), you should talk to an employment lawyer. Can you spell out the common scenario where it's fairly trivial for an employee to right this wrong? A good place to start might be the employment lawyer who works on contingency for the most common tip-withholding scenarios.

nsxwolf 4y ago

My rules for tipping are locked in 1995. You tip servers, bartenders, cab drivers, pizza deivery, and a few other select people. No fast food workers. No baristas.

lsj0627 4y ago
I'm with you. Those standards still make sense to me; don't need to think twice or stress about it.

preommr 4y ago

I find it bizarre the mental gymnastics people will do to draw arbitrary lines on when to tip. All the reasons for tipping in restaurants apply to tipping in every other situation they're being asked for now. It was never about fair market value. It's entirely social convention and nonsense like how attractive the server is. In 50 years, there's a good chance that tipping for everyday interactions will be the norm simply because a generation will grow up with.

theGnuMe 4y ago

Everyone has these toast wireless tap to pay things with the default 18% tip on them. They are super annoying. I want the paper receipt and pen to work out the tip on the pretax amount. I actually refuse to go to restaurants that use this system now. The other crazy thing is default living wage charges and all of that malarkey. It’s just the same as Fees more fees and bogus charges.

TheJoeMan 4y ago

Bringing the discussion more in line with the “tech” angles, the article has a quote claiming they aren’t “dark patterns” on the tip screen. But I’ve seen the “20%” suggested based on total + tax + addional restaurant fee. At Chili’s I’ve never gotten the dollar amount and percent listed to make sense.

glacials 4y ago

As a consumer who dislikes tipping, here are your ways to deal with it: 1. Find, frequent, and favorably review establishments that do not accept tips. 2. Express desire for policy at local, state, and federal levels. (Listed in decreasing order of ROI.) There is no option 3. You cannot refuse to tip on a moral basis. You are just punishing the victim. No one will join you in your revolution and nothing will get done.

dubrocks 4y ago
When tech bro capitalists pit customer vs. worker in order to artificially increase their profits, we're all the victims. The only moral option is to tip 0% on iPad counter screens, all the time.
falcolas 4y ago
I haven’t found a single option 1 for food/beverage service. Not a single one.
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  I've been in 1 in Los Angeles, somewhere in Century City. Mediocre food though.
dcow 4y ago
If we live in a world where we allow victims to be punished regularly by other members of our society, often times inadvertently, and I behave in a way that perpetuates such a norm, is that also moral? If I disobey and stop tipping, and society cannot tolerate my actions, shouldn't I be punished? Two sides of the same coin. Serious questions.
usui 4y ago
I am made highly uncomfortable being put in a position where I can victimize someone and punish them by not tipping... I have trouble understanding why any society would find it morally acceptable to have this power dynamic become possible at all during a financial transaction, so my only genuine guess is that the real underlying purpose is to financially exploit customers by preying upon an ambiguous notion of social normality that is ever-so shifting all the time and not at all clear...

petodo 4y ago

Just don't tip, simple as that, unless you are big supporter of tax evasion, low pensions and unfair salaries. Btw. I just finished rewatching X-Files and I strongly recommend everyone here (especially to people who like Black Mirror) to watch episode S11E07 from X-Files reboot called Rm9sbG93ZXJz , which is about what happens if you refuse to tip machine/AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GuGMn7n04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GuGMn7n04 And btw. in China you don't tip and you can even bring your own drinks to restaurant, why not, you are paying for the meal after all.