5 ms·

I've always been a good tipper (> 20% even before the pandemic), but I'm increasingly unwilling to do so. My argument is fairly simple. Tipping is a tax on dece

I've always been a good tipper (> 20% even before the pandemic), but I'm increasingly unwilling to do so. My argument is fairly simple. Tipping is a tax on decency. Decent people tip well. Assholes don't tip. And it's the decent people who get screwed. I'd much rather a restaurant tack on a 20% or even 25% service fee that everyone, including the assholes, must pay rather than asking for tips and depending on my decency to compensate for the restaurant underpaying its employees, while allowing assholes to get away with contributing nothing.

babyshake 3y ago
One thing to add to this is tipping with POS systems at fast food restaurants, coffee shops, etc. is always done before you receive your items. I much prefer to tip after I have received everything, since the tip is supposed to reflect your satisfaction with service and is a useful incentive for good, quick service.
- scelerat 3y ago
  > is a useful incentive for good, quick service This is frequently said, but has anyone done any work to show that it's actually true? That tips work as an incentive for measurably better or improved service? Or to what degree it is true? Just wondering. I have a lot of friends in the service industry and, like people in many other careers, beyond a particular baseline of compensation and satisfaction, it seems that good performance is as much about intrinsic motivations as it is about extrinsic factors. The best people often simply want to do a good job. If the tips or overall comp isn't satisfactory, they either find a different place to work or take additional shifts at another bar or restaurant.
  - achates 3y ago
    I've never seen a study but Planet Money interviewed some waiters back in the day and they all said the trick to making a lot in tips is turning over tables as fast as possible.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      So tipping is accomplishing the opposite of encouraging good service?
ugh123 3y ago
why not just raise prices by 20%? or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage?
- techsupporter 3y ago
  > why not just raise prices by 20%? Because if every restaurant doesn't do it, the one that holds out from doing it and hides the extra cost behind a noticed-on-the-menu-later surcharge (or simply keeps asking for tips) will get more business because customers have trained ourselves to sort by lowest-price-first-then-choose-that-one. > or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage? Several states and cities don't have the tip-credit restaurant wage and do require restaurants to follow minimum wage, regardless of tips. Tipping is still incredibly prevalent in those places because it's still a way for employees to make more money without the owner having to figure out how to pay for it through prices.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
tdehnel 3y ago
Imagine thinking the world is so simplistically assholes vs decent people and you’ve magically chosen to be decent. Here’s a hint: Being a “good person” aka compassion is not the only virtue. Contrast with conscientiousness which is doing what is right (even when it hurts someone).
tuvrai 3y ago
"Assholes don't tip" How so? I mean, when you go to restaurant there is some sort of the contract, that for paying X you get Y food. Why would anyone not willing to do anything more beyond this deal should be considered an asshole? People work hard outside restaurants also, often harder, and they don't get tipped anything.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  Unfortunately salaries for service jobs have the assumption of tipping built in. In some states the minimum wage for tipped jobs is lower than the minimum wage for other jobs. So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed.
  - wkearney99 3y ago
    And thus the reason "people don't want to work any more" gets heard. People do want to work, for decent wages, not exploitation and begging via 'tips'.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed. I'm sympathetic to this, but surely the customers who don't tip aren't the ones screwing them. It's their employers screwing both them and the customers.
  - rascul 3y ago
    > In some states the minimum wage for tipped jobs is lower than the minimum wage for other jobs. So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed. Federal law requires that the tipped employee be paid at least the regular federal minimum wage. I'm sure various state laws have something similar for when the state doesn't just match the federal minimum wage. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-emplo... There are, of course, plenty varying of ideas about the minimum wage.
Fervicus 3y ago
> Tipping is a tax on decency. Decent people tip well. Assholes don't tip. Or how about we just just get rid of this tipping ridiculousness altogether and the social judgement associated with it?
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I would be ok with that, but a lot of people would probably be priced out of the market. After all the costs associated with that business don't vanish, they'll just have to be inserted into the up-front costs. People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping. Again I think that's the way to go, instead of the weird shell game of value we have now, but I think a lot of people will not agree. What people really want is for tipping to become purely voluntary or go away, but also for nothing else to change.
  - Fervicus 3y ago
    Works fine in Europe. Plus I pay the price I see on the menu, instead of 3 different taxes and service fees tacked on.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping. Uhm, much of the rest of the world works without tipping, and it seems to work out just fine for everyone (even in the developed world). Tipping is a weird America thing, and it has made me mostly avoid full service restaurants...and now I'm being asked to tip at self service and take out places, ugh.
    - nonameiguess 3y ago
      We seem to get these comments all the time from any Europeans gawking at the US here on Hacker News. Just to be clear, you understand much of the rest of the developed world has strong social safety nets, abundant public services, free to the payer healthcare, often free college? The US has none of this and workers are expected to bear all of these costs out of their own wages, so those wages need to be higher than they are in Europe for that to be possible. You can stare at us like we're all idiots, but what do you expect anyone reading this to do? If every American reading Hacker News agreed to all vote for candidates who would put in place stronger safety nets and public services and subsidize wage earners so they didn't need to bear every cost out of their own wages, we still may as be pissing in the ocean both because of how small a portion of the voter base we represent but also because our legislative system is more or less intentionally designed to make that kind of thing impossible. Do you realize we just went through a crisis where the country nearly defaulted on its debt because our Congress somehow has the legal ability to pass a budget but then not agree to actually fund the budget they themselves passed just a few months earlier? The only way out of that was to agree to pass a law saying we'd cut public spending even further, outside of the regular budgeting cycle, even if the budgets themselves don't say to do that. We just pass laws saying we're going to ignore and contradict other laws we just passed, mostly because the structure of our representative system severely overweights the representation given to underpopulated states, originally because that prevented slavery from being banned and we had to give them that power for them to agree to be part of the country, but now who even knows why? Uncharitably, because billionaires and gigantic businesses that don't want to get taxed have convinced people in these states that stronger public spending would benefit atheists and foreigners and not them. Charitably, it's more inertia than anything else and it's more or less baked into the American identity that this is how we do things and it's why we're special and successful, not that we have a resource-rich country that was underpopulated because of smallpox killing all the natives and across two vast oceans from a couple of world wars that destroyed any plausible industrial competition for most of a century. But again, what are any of us supposed to do about is? My choice as just a single person who happens to make more than enough money to pay well above the posted price for anything I regularly purchase is to tip generously or take this kind of principled stand that I'm going to singlehandledly change centuries of cultural habits and expectations by stiffing hourly service staff, because well, the rest of the world has done it.
neilv 3y ago
I like this idea, even though I dislike it. I'm a good tipper, and it's not to feel good about myself, but because it seems the right thing to do. (Some people don't think there's a distinction there, often voiced as "they're just trying to feel good about themselves" to excuse one not doing the right thing themselves, but others do think there's a distinction.) So long as tipping exists, I'll now have to try not to think of my tip as subsidizing jerks who tip poorly, since that's a little annoying, and I can't do anything about that.
sorokod 3y ago
I also tip, but don't see as tax on decency, just decency. Let assholes do their asshole things, I do mine.

babyshake 3y ago

One thing to add to this is tipping with POS systems at fast food restaurants, coffee shops, etc. is always done before you receive your items. I much prefer to tip after I have received everything, since the tip is supposed to reflect your satisfaction with service and is a useful incentive for good, quick service.

scelerat 3y ago
> is a useful incentive for good, quick service This is frequently said, but has anyone done any work to show that it's actually true? That tips work as an incentive for measurably better or improved service? Or to what degree it is true? Just wondering. I have a lot of friends in the service industry and, like people in many other careers, beyond a particular baseline of compensation and satisfaction, it seems that good performance is as much about intrinsic motivations as it is about extrinsic factors. The best people often simply want to do a good job. If the tips or overall comp isn't satisfactory, they either find a different place to work or take additional shifts at another bar or restaurant.
- achates 3y ago
  I've never seen a study but Planet Money interviewed some waiters back in the day and they all said the trick to making a lot in tips is turning over tables as fast as possible.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    So tipping is accomplishing the opposite of encouraging good service?

ugh123 3y ago

why not just raise prices by 20%? or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage?

techsupporter 3y ago
> why not just raise prices by 20%? Because if every restaurant doesn't do it, the one that holds out from doing it and hides the extra cost behind a noticed-on-the-menu-later surcharge (or simply keeps asking for tips) will get more business because customers have trained ourselves to sort by lowest-price-first-then-choose-that-one. > or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage? Several states and cities don't have the tip-credit restaurant wage and do require restaurants to follow minimum wage, regardless of tips. Tipping is still incredibly prevalent in those places because it's still a way for employees to make more money without the owner having to figure out how to pay for it through prices.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

tdehnel 3y ago

Imagine thinking the world is so simplistically assholes vs decent people and you’ve magically chosen to be decent. Here’s a hint: Being a “good person” aka compassion is not the only virtue. Contrast with conscientiousness which is doing what is right (even when it hurts someone).

tuvrai 3y ago

"Assholes don't tip" How so? I mean, when you go to restaurant there is some sort of the contract, that for paying X you get Y food. Why would anyone not willing to do anything more beyond this deal should be considered an asshole? People work hard outside restaurants also, often harder, and they don't get tipped anything.

amanaplanacanal 3y ago
Unfortunately salaries for service jobs have the assumption of tipping built in. In some states the minimum wage for tipped jobs is lower than the minimum wage for other jobs. So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed.
- wkearney99 3y ago
  And thus the reason "people don't want to work any more" gets heard. People do want to work, for decent wages, not exploitation and begging via 'tips'.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed. I'm sympathetic to this, but surely the customers who don't tip aren't the ones screwing them. It's their employers screwing both them and the customers.
- rascul 3y ago
  > In some states the minimum wage for tipped jobs is lower than the minimum wage for other jobs. So if people don’t tip, the person doing the job is getting screwed. Federal law requires that the tipped employee be paid at least the regular federal minimum wage. I'm sure various state laws have something similar for when the state doesn't just match the federal minimum wage. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-emplo... There are, of course, plenty varying of ideas about the minimum wage.

Fervicus 3y ago

> Tipping is a tax on decency. Decent people tip well. Assholes don't tip. Or how about we just just get rid of this tipping ridiculousness altogether and the social judgement associated with it?

EA-3167 3y ago
I would be ok with that, but a lot of people would probably be priced out of the market. After all the costs associated with that business don't vanish, they'll just have to be inserted into the up-front costs. People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping. Again I think that's the way to go, instead of the weird shell game of value we have now, but I think a lot of people will not agree. What people really want is for tipping to become purely voluntary or go away, but also for nothing else to change.
- Fervicus 3y ago
  Works fine in Europe. Plus I pay the price I see on the menu, instead of 3 different taxes and service fees tacked on.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > People already think restaurants are expensive, wait until they see restaurants that don't allow tipping. Uhm, much of the rest of the world works without tipping, and it seems to work out just fine for everyone (even in the developed world). Tipping is a weird America thing, and it has made me mostly avoid full service restaurants...and now I'm being asked to tip at self service and take out places, ugh.
  - nonameiguess 3y ago
    We seem to get these comments all the time from any Europeans gawking at the US here on Hacker News. Just to be clear, you understand much of the rest of the developed world has strong social safety nets, abundant public services, free to the payer healthcare, often free college? The US has none of this and workers are expected to bear all of these costs out of their own wages, so those wages need to be higher than they are in Europe for that to be possible. You can stare at us like we're all idiots, but what do you expect anyone reading this to do? If every American reading Hacker News agreed to all vote for candidates who would put in place stronger safety nets and public services and subsidize wage earners so they didn't need to bear every cost out of their own wages, we still may as be pissing in the ocean both because of how small a portion of the voter base we represent but also because our legislative system is more or less intentionally designed to make that kind of thing impossible. Do you realize we just went through a crisis where the country nearly defaulted on its debt because our Congress somehow has the legal ability to pass a budget but then not agree to actually fund the budget they themselves passed just a few months earlier? The only way out of that was to agree to pass a law saying we'd cut public spending even further, outside of the regular budgeting cycle, even if the budgets themselves don't say to do that. We just pass laws saying we're going to ignore and contradict other laws we just passed, mostly because the structure of our representative system severely overweights the representation given to underpopulated states, originally because that prevented slavery from being banned and we had to give them that power for them to agree to be part of the country, but now who even knows why? Uncharitably, because billionaires and gigantic businesses that don't want to get taxed have convinced people in these states that stronger public spending would benefit atheists and foreigners and not them. Charitably, it's more inertia than anything else and it's more or less baked into the American identity that this is how we do things and it's why we're special and successful, not that we have a resource-rich country that was underpopulated because of smallpox killing all the natives and across two vast oceans from a couple of world wars that destroyed any plausible industrial competition for most of a century. But again, what are any of us supposed to do about is? My choice as just a single person who happens to make more than enough money to pay well above the posted price for anything I regularly purchase is to tip generously or take this kind of principled stand that I'm going to singlehandledly change centuries of cultural habits and expectations by stiffing hourly service staff, because well, the rest of the world has done it.

neilv 3y ago

I like this idea, even though I dislike it. I'm a good tipper, and it's not to feel good about myself, but because it seems the right thing to do. (Some people don't think there's a distinction there, often voiced as "they're just trying to feel good about themselves" to excuse one not doing the right thing themselves, but others do think there's a distinction.) So long as tipping exists, I'll now have to try not to think of my tip as subsidizing jerks who tip poorly, since that's a little annoying, and I can't do anything about that.

sorokod 3y ago

I also tip, but don't see as tax on decency, just decency. Let assholes do their asshole things, I do mine.