5 ms·

Why Tipping Prompts Are Suddenly Everywhere

13 points by malshe 3y ago

malshe 3y ago
Without paywall: https://archive.ph/n7kjn https://archive.ph/n7kjn
thx-2718 3y ago
"Liz Vayda, who owns Baltimore plant store B.Willow, says the tipping option she added to transactions during the pandemic generates about $1,000 every two weeks. Five employees split the money. She acknowledges the requests aren’t perfect. “It makes me feel uncomfortable as a business owner to know people are like, ‘Why doesn’t she just pay them more?’ It’s just not that simple,” Vayda says. Ultimately, she says retaining staff is more important than the possibility of annoying some customers. " She can't afford to pay her employees an extra 200 a pay check? Yet she is bringing in that much extra money through a tip screen. She can afford it. Edit: some spitball math, if she's getting an extra %15 in revenue from a quarter of her sales (if 1-in-4 tip), she's taking in approximately $27k every 2 weeks. She could raise her prices by less than 4% to cover paying her employees more.
- solarmist 3y ago
  Yup. She just doesn’t want to pay them more.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  You have no reason to believe that charging 4% more would have the same level of sales. Some people tip a lot. Others tip 0.
  - thx-2718 3y ago
    Raising prices isn't the only way to raise revenue. Especially if it's a product that consumers are very price consciousness of (though I suspect a bespoke flower/pottery shop isn't one). She can lower prices through sales to increase revenue needed to pay her employees more and grow her business. She has options that are alternative to frustrating or bothering her customers to subsidize her wages.
- somethoughts 3y ago
  I agree it for sure sucks - its kind of like hidden fees at hotels. I think from a game theory perspective it makes rational economic sense in that if all of your competitors are going the tipping route and you don't, then you will appear to be 20% more expensive than the competition to people who are walking by on the street. A nice way to handle this would be to heavily advertise that gratuity is included on the menu and spell out per item what the pre-charged gratuity is. In order words instead of just showing the price+gratuity on the menu: Hot Dog - $12 show the breakdown: Hot Dog - $10 + $2 Gratuity
PaulHoule 3y ago
The odd thing to me was that this story was ‘everywhere’ about two years after the tipping prompts were ‘everywhere’. Or was this just something that happened first in the flyover states and later got picked up in the media hotbeds of NYC and Los Angeles.
glitcher 3y ago
I was sympathetic and open to tipping in more situations during the height of the pandemic, but now it has become such an annoyance. Lately I've drawn a hard line in the sand and only tip full service wait staff and bartenders, with only a few other exceptions. The whole idea in the first place was that those jobs are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because providing good service could earn the employee potentially far more money through tips. That's the social contract we agreed to, which is now being contorted to absurd extremes.
- SahAssar 3y ago
  > The whole idea in the first place was that those jobs are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because providing good service could earn the employee potentially far more money through tips. Why not pay them the wage for the job as described and have tipping as the reward for exceptional service?
  - glitcher 3y ago
    Good question, I don't know why the United States does it this way or how/when it started. I realize other countries have different practices, some arguably much better, this is just what I grew up being familiar with.
- bsder 3y ago
  It's even worse than that. All these "tipping" and "donation" are primarily there to earn the credit processsor more percentage. A lot of the money never goes to where it should. I don't tip on credit card except at restaurants. Everywhere else, if I'm tipping, it's cash into a jar, or I'm simply not tipping. And if I see your "charity" on a processor screen, I will add you to my "never donate to them list".
malshe 3y ago
My major concern with this trend is that sooner or later this will become mandatory. Even now they make it so difficult to set the tip to zero, effectively making it mandatory.
nine_zeros 3y ago
Sorry. I refuse to partake in this scam any longer. If there isn't a service where someone walks to me and takes effort to make my life easier, I am going to blatantly select 0% tip.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Why does FOH deserve a tip at all? A job is a job. The cook made your life easier by cooking. So did the cleaner and carpenter and car manufacturer doing g their jobs.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    And what about the poor people who made your smartphone? Why aren't they being tipped every time you use the phone...
    - catchnear4321 3y ago
      easy. no tip jar.
dustymcp 3y ago
For a european this tipping thing just seems crazy, why not just pay them enough to live for?
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Becuat they like getting paid more via tips.
- eschaton 3y ago
  Because that reduces the degree of control an employer has and many, many small businesses in the US—as well as wholly corporate-owned stores—are run by petty tyrants for whom control over employees’ lives is nearly as important as (and in some cases more important than) making a profit.
- mikecoles 3y ago
  Tips have generally been cash, at least in the past. This allows the tips to be collected and never reported for taxes. On paper, a pauper.
soupbowl 3y ago
In Canada over COVID the tipping prompts showed up everywhere. Buying liquor or weed? Leave a tip. Buying a premade sandwich? Leave a tip. I went to a gas station last week, there was a tip option. Not seeing tip prompts is actually rare.
lockhouse 3y ago
Feel free to ask for tips but don’t be mad at me if I don’t give you one for doing literally just your job. I consider a tip to be something I give to reward exceptional service, and I’m definitely not tipping you before you actually do anything other than take my money.
jfengel 3y ago
Tipping is obviously a bad idea, and yet experiments with getting rid of it always seem to fail. As dumb as it is, Americans are comfortable with it. They feel weird not doing it. Even the employees usually end up preferring it, because they can do quite well on it. Tip pooling smooths out some of the worst inequities, even though some days employees do indeed get boned. I think if we could just wave a magic wand and make it all go away all at once, we'd settle into that and tipping would seem as weird to us as it does to everybody else in the world. If doing it piecemeal could work, it would already have succeeded. Instead, most attempts at it get reverted.
sandspar 3y ago
My pro-tipping comment on Reddit broke my record for most down votes ever. It's kind of cute that, even in a highly polarized environment where every comment has high stakes, we still have issues where people can simply be disgruntled. It feels idyllic, like the kind of comforting, thoroughly canvassed arguments that we'll have in Heaven.

13 points by malshe 3y ago

Without paywall: https://archive.ph/n7kjn https://archive.ph/n7kjn

"Liz Vayda, who owns Baltimore plant store B.Willow, says the tipping option she added to transactions during the pandemic generates about $1,000 every two weeks. Five employees split the money. She acknowledges the requests aren’t perfect. “It makes me feel uncomfortable as a business owner to know people are like, ‘Why doesn’t she just pay them more?’ It’s just not that simple,” Vayda says. Ultimately, she says retaining staff is more important than the possibility of annoying some customers. " She can't afford to pay her employees an extra 200 a pay check? Yet she is bringing in that much extra money through a tip screen. She can afford it. Edit: some spitball math, if she's getting an extra %15 in revenue from a quarter of her sales (if 1-in-4 tip), she's taking in approximately $27k every 2 weeks. She could raise her prices by less than 4% to cover paying her employees more.

solarmist 3y ago
Yup. She just doesn’t want to pay them more.
hgsgm 3y ago
You have no reason to believe that charging 4% more would have the same level of sales. Some people tip a lot. Others tip 0.
- thx-2718 3y ago
  Raising prices isn't the only way to raise revenue. Especially if it's a product that consumers are very price consciousness of (though I suspect a bespoke flower/pottery shop isn't one). She can lower prices through sales to increase revenue needed to pay her employees more and grow her business. She has options that are alternative to frustrating or bothering her customers to subsidize her wages.
somethoughts 3y ago
I agree it for sure sucks - its kind of like hidden fees at hotels. I think from a game theory perspective it makes rational economic sense in that if all of your competitors are going the tipping route and you don't, then you will appear to be 20% more expensive than the competition to people who are walking by on the street. A nice way to handle this would be to heavily advertise that gratuity is included on the menu and spell out per item what the pre-charged gratuity is. In order words instead of just showing the price+gratuity on the menu: Hot Dog - $12 show the breakdown: Hot Dog - $10 + $2 Gratuity

PaulHoule 3y ago

The odd thing to me was that this story was ‘everywhere’ about two years after the tipping prompts were ‘everywhere’. Or was this just something that happened first in the flyover states and later got picked up in the media hotbeds of NYC and Los Angeles.

glitcher 3y ago

I was sympathetic and open to tipping in more situations during the height of the pandemic, but now it has become such an annoyance. Lately I've drawn a hard line in the sand and only tip full service wait staff and bartenders, with only a few other exceptions. The whole idea in the first place was that those jobs are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because providing good service could earn the employee potentially far more money through tips. That's the social contract we agreed to, which is now being contorted to absurd extremes.

SahAssar 3y ago
> The whole idea in the first place was that those jobs are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because providing good service could earn the employee potentially far more money through tips. Why not pay them the wage for the job as described and have tipping as the reward for exceptional service?
- glitcher 3y ago
  Good question, I don't know why the United States does it this way or how/when it started. I realize other countries have different practices, some arguably much better, this is just what I grew up being familiar with.
bsder 3y ago
It's even worse than that. All these "tipping" and "donation" are primarily there to earn the credit processsor more percentage. A lot of the money never goes to where it should. I don't tip on credit card except at restaurants. Everywhere else, if I'm tipping, it's cash into a jar, or I'm simply not tipping. And if I see your "charity" on a processor screen, I will add you to my "never donate to them list".

malshe 3y ago

My major concern with this trend is that sooner or later this will become mandatory. Even now they make it so difficult to set the tip to zero, effectively making it mandatory.

nine_zeros 3y ago

Sorry. I refuse to partake in this scam any longer. If there isn't a service where someone walks to me and takes effort to make my life easier, I am going to blatantly select 0% tip.

hgsgm 3y ago
Why does FOH deserve a tip at all? A job is a job. The cook made your life easier by cooking. So did the cleaner and carpenter and car manufacturer doing g their jobs.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And what about the poor people who made your smartphone? Why aren't they being tipped every time you use the phone...
  - catchnear4321 3y ago
    easy. no tip jar.

dustymcp 3y ago

For a european this tipping thing just seems crazy, why not just pay them enough to live for?

hgsgm 3y ago
Becuat they like getting paid more via tips.
eschaton 3y ago
Because that reduces the degree of control an employer has and many, many small businesses in the US—as well as wholly corporate-owned stores—are run by petty tyrants for whom control over employees’ lives is nearly as important as (and in some cases more important than) making a profit.
mikecoles 3y ago
Tips have generally been cash, at least in the past. This allows the tips to be collected and never reported for taxes. On paper, a pauper.

soupbowl 3y ago

In Canada over COVID the tipping prompts showed up everywhere. Buying liquor or weed? Leave a tip. Buying a premade sandwich? Leave a tip. I went to a gas station last week, there was a tip option. Not seeing tip prompts is actually rare.

lockhouse 3y ago

Feel free to ask for tips but don’t be mad at me if I don’t give you one for doing literally just your job. I consider a tip to be something I give to reward exceptional service, and I’m definitely not tipping you before you actually do anything other than take my money.

jfengel 3y ago

Tipping is obviously a bad idea, and yet experiments with getting rid of it always seem to fail. As dumb as it is, Americans are comfortable with it. They feel weird not doing it. Even the employees usually end up preferring it, because they can do quite well on it. Tip pooling smooths out some of the worst inequities, even though some days employees do indeed get boned. I think if we could just wave a magic wand and make it all go away all at once, we'd settle into that and tipping would seem as weird to us as it does to everybody else in the world. If doing it piecemeal could work, it would already have succeeded. Instead, most attempts at it get reverted.

sandspar 3y ago

My pro-tipping comment on Reddit broke my record for most down votes ever. It's kind of cute that, even in a highly polarized environment where every comment has high stakes, we still have issues where people can simply be disgruntled. It feels idyllic, like the kind of comforting, thoroughly canvassed arguments that we'll have in Heaven.