7 ms·

Is America approaching peak tip?

helsinkiandrew 2y ago
https://archive.ph/EYxyp https://archive.ph/EYxyp
richrichie 2y ago
>In the 1950s tips ran to about 10% of bills. By the 1980s they rose to 15%. In recent years they have hit 20%. Whereas tipping used to be reserved for table service at restaurants, now buying a coffee or a muffin is likely to involve the employee flipping around a tablet screen to the customer to solicit a tip. That can be hard to refuse when the person behind you in line is peering over your shoulder. And these screens typically give three options—of, say, 18%, 20% or 23%—making it difficult to opt for something smaller. This is perhaps a consequence of student debt nightmare from worthless, over priced college degrees. People waiting tables and serving coffee now are "highly educated" with expectations!
- viraptor 2y ago
  Not just for that reason. A long time ago my home country had memes about people not being hired as a bus driver because they only had one PhD. The degree inflation is a separate issue and the tips won't happen unless people are paid really poorly. Instead in the us, the wages are too low and the social part of tipping works in employers' favour. Servers don't have high expectations - they want to afford a to live and food. In most places in the us that's not possible without tips.
  - kelipso 2y ago
    It is possible, just increase prices by 20% and pay servers. Not that hard.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      Convince the whole country to stop taking tips and pay 20% extra then. Let us know how easy that was... My whole point is that it's not reasonable not to take tips in the us today.
      - kelipso 2y ago
        The 20% part is easy enough, a year of inflation prove that pretty well. Now you just need to make tipping illegal, pretty straightforward really.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        randomdata 2y ago
        Not exactly straightforward when alcohol is sold. Alcohol laws see liability placed on the server, which means that technically transaction is directly between the customer and the server. Which is no doubt why tipping traditionally was only a practice in places where alcohol is sold. I can't imagine we want to change that. Allowing someone to give endless amounts of alcohol to a customer without any repercussions is rife with problems, and removing the ability for a customer to pay a vendor for services rendered would undo everything we know.
        gruez 2y ago
        >Not exactly straightforward when alcohol is sold. Alcohol laws see liability placed on the server, which means that technically transaction is directly between the customer and the server. Which is no doubt why tipping traditionally was only a practice in places where alcohol is sold. This is an absolutely bizarre take. The fact that bartenders have liability to not serve patrons absurd amounts of alcohol, has no bearing on what the transaction is "technically" between. If you really want to get down to brass tacks, I doubt the merchant account on the credit card machine is going to the bartender, nor is the revenue showing up on his tax returns. Moreover, bartending isn't the only profession where you take on liability. Doctors are liable for malpractice as well. Does that mean you should tip your doctors as well?
- eesmith 2y ago
  I strongly doubt the local staff have much say about the tip options on the tablet, no matter what level of education they may have.
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    In Denmark those staff will often press the "no tip" button themselves. They don't want to beg.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Not my experience running a restaurant. I just went through this last year. The last thing I wanted to add to my plate was changing the tipping options, but I also have to retain staff who were adamant that the tipping options needed to be higher. There is no business without them, so what do you do?
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Raise their salaries?
      - randomdata 2y ago
        No way they would go for that. That limits the potential upside. Tips have unlimited earning potential. A salary, even if higher, is a fixed quantity. I'd be okay with eliminating tipping. Frankly, it would be way easier for me to take my margin if the price was baked into the menu! In a vacuum, it would be silly for me to do anything else. But you don't have a business without the staff. You are pretty much beholden to their whims. There is a restaurant on every street corner and they are all hiring. If you don't keep staff happy, they aren't sticking around.
        eesmith 2y ago
        I wasn't suggesting to eliminate tipping, I was suggesting to raise salary as an alternative to changing the tipping options. The unlimited earning potential would still be there.
- rebeccaskinner 2y ago
  > This is perhaps a consequence of student debt nightmare from worthless, over priced college degrees. People waiting tables and serving coffee now are "highly educated" with expectations! I hate this sentiment. Not every degree is going to lead to a high paying career, but knowledge is worth having in it's own right. If people are passionate enough spend four years studying art history or poetry or underwater basket weaving then I'm glad we are sharing and preserving that knowledge in our culture. I don't like tipping culture, and I don't really think the two are related, but if tipping is the only way that we could get a generally well rounded educated population then I suppose I'll prefer tipping.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >I hate this sentiment. Not every degree is going to lead to a high paying career, but knowledge is worth having in it's own right. If people are passionate enough spend four years studying art history or poetry or underwater basket weaving then I'm glad we are sharing and preserving that knowledge in our culture. There's probably some non-zero value in learning underwater basket weaving or whatever, but I don't see why it should be publicly funded. I don't see any fundamental difference between someone wasting 6 figures on an useless degree, and someone wasting 6 figures on a useless hobby.
    - rebeccaskinner 2y ago
      Personally I think having a society that has a mix of educational background is desirable. I don’t really expect a national emergency that can only be averted my mobilizing our collective underwater basket weaving expertise, but I do think in a general sense it’s good for society to hedge its bets and invest some amount in a wide variety of expertise. Career prospects are already a good incentive for people to study in demand fields. Having a few underwater basket weavers is still a gain for everyone in society. On top of that, in the US a lot of time in an undergraduate program is spent on general education. Someone who’s degree is in underwater basket weaving still has more education in general than a person without a degree, and that’s also good for society.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
- freitzkriesler2 2y ago
  I only tip for table service and taxis. If I see a tip on anything else, I happily hit no tip. I don't do delivery either since even with tips delivery drivers still bring my food cold. I'd rather get off my bum and guarantee hot food immediately without the risk of the driver eating it.
whyoh 2y ago
>People feel good about themselves when they leave extra, deriving a sense of generosity. Interesting. I never feel good about tipping. If I tip I feel bad, because I caved in to the pressure. If I don't tip I feel bad, because the staff will wrongly think I didn't like them or their performance. Then there's the question of how much % is right... What an unpleasant social convention. Just give me higher prices on the menu.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  On holidays it really makes me think should I have frequented some other place where they paid staff better... Instead of seemingly exploiting them and their work...
  - zarathustreal 2y ago
    Isn’t it strange how employers can make the decision to pay their workers less than we think they’re worth, employees can make the decision to take a job working for less than we think they’re worth, and yet the person feeling responsible for all these decisions is us?
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      It is end result of free market. Every side, consumer, buyer, seller, employer, employee and so on try to get away with paying least they can. This is usually by choice, not many actually combat this... The strange bit is how we have ended up in situation that there is some moral mandate that there is extra payment between consumer and employee. In all other parts system operates rationally. You pay what you have to get something. Be it the product or the labour. Paying more will have indirect benefits like better retention and maybe better quality(more effective or better selling staff). On employee side, well there is usually not option to forgo work as money is needed for survival... So their only option is to take work that is less than they might think they are worth. But this often results in poor retention as they will move for better options when possible.
      - 2y ago
naveen99 2y ago
Feel free to not tip if you make less than the tipee or maybe 2x the tipee ?
- porksoda 2y ago
  My home currency is worth ~20x less than USD. I fall totally into this category. But I feel enough dumb pressure that I'll cave. As a result I simply avoid these types of interactions. USA is the weirdest place to be poor! One somehow feels shabby and less-than, even while walking past endless homeless.
  - stavros 2y ago
    What does it mean for a currency to be worth less than another currency? That makes no sense.
    - benfortuna 2y ago
      I read it as wages, which makes total sense. A well-off person in one country could earn less than a poor person in another.
      - stavros 2y ago
        I think they mean that 1 USD = 20 theircurrency, which is meaningless.
karmakaze 2y ago
Yeah, I saw a default tip for making a week-long hotel booking on online, which amounts to more than peanuts--oh and it was on top of the already mandatory 'service fees and taxes'. I would think only the taxes are mandatory and service fees should be in the advertised price. (I checked if booking different number of days changed the 'service fee', no it was a straight daily percentage). Same goes for shipping+handling that hides the actual price of items.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  Shipping and handling costs can vary widely with the number of items purchased. If I buy one shoe lace or three, the shipping costs are going to be the same... so if you price shipping into the item price, folks buying three pairs of shoe laces will pay excess shipping from folks buying one pair of shoe laces.
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    I'm not talking about reasonable rates but the ones on eBay that lists an item underpriced at $20 with $50 s+h. I've started seeing this pattern spread to other online sellers besides such platforms. This is similar to 'free delivery' on Uber Eats which still has a service charge--it's a delivery service! All it means is there's no extra delivery charge on top. Plus priority if you'd like that maybe still warm. It's all a meaningless cash grab.
    - ensignavenger 2y ago
      Oh, I can agree with that. Ebay has so much potential if they would clean the platform up of practices like that.
sunflowerfly 2y ago
I would love for my state to make all fees and tips included in the price like Europe. The price should be the price. Make asking for a tip illegal. Raise minimum wage for restaurant workers so they do not need the tip. Have a separate price for take away so that eating in includes a bit extra to cover the additional costs. But alas, I live in a red state so it is never going to happen.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > Raise minimum wage for restaurant workers so they do not need the tip. Servers at my mid-range restaurant bring in around $20 per hour in tips, on top of a base $16 minimum wage. So approximately $36 per hour is where you'd need it to land. Anything less and they ain't showing up. It is already hard enough to find anyone at that rate!
  - aeadio 2y ago
    Let the industry self-regulate that. You stipulate a reasonable minimum wage, but like most other industries, mid-level and above restaurants need to pay a competitive wage, or talent goes elsewhere. If the going rate post-tip is about $36/hour, then the restaurants can target that as their post-tip benchmark wage. I can tell you as a different type of talent worker, nobody is trying to pay me minimum wage. Minimum wage is set to ensure there's a reasonable floor on downmarket offerings. When you're 18 and fresh out of school and you work at your local Cracker Barrel, minimum wage ensures you don't get exploited. It's not the benchmark for experienced workers who have picked up a valuable skillset. You have all these restaurant operators crying that getting rid of tippers puts them out of business, makes their business unviable. Well for one, that's nobody else's problem -- there's no contract, no constitutional guarantee that you're allowed to be in business. Making something economically viable is the whole game. But it seems like everyone just flunked grade school arithmetic. The cost is a wash at the end. At mid-range restaurants and above, practically everyone tips the same 18-20% on top of the base cost of the meal. If tipping is made illegal, you can expect meal cost across the board to rise by about this much to make up the difference. It's the exact same cashflow. You can pay a living wage on what you're already charging customers on the final card settlement. They all seem to be imagining this nightmare scenario where they're forced to raise their menu prices, and that prices them out of the business versus their competitors who, somehow, don't need to do the same. The law shouldn't cater to business operators with no business sense.
craftkiller 2y ago
In Australia there is no tipping and the full price, including all fees and taxes, is the list price. So if you're in a bar and see a beer for $5 and you have $5 in your pocket, you can buy that beer. It speeds things up considerably because when paying for stuff, you can just tap your card. No need to click through a tip UI or fill out a receipt, just tap-and-go.
- benfortuna 2y ago
  I would add that tapping your card in Australia now will typically add a service fee on to the price. Also there are some cafes and restaurants that have 10% surcharge for public holidays, etc. So the hidden costs are creeping in, but thankfully not mainstream yet.
  - beachy 2y ago
    > Also there are some cafes and restaurants that have 10% surcharge for public holidays This is increasingly common in NZ but also entirely justifiable as staff must legally be paid time and a half on public holidays and wages is likely the largest component of the restaurant's costs
    - jemmyw 2y ago
      This has been common in NZ since at least 2007. It's not really justifiable. Wages aren't 100% of the costs, plus open cafes and restaurants make more on public holiday days. Seeing as it's busier on a public holiday I just avoid going out to places on those days. It feels like a tax on people who don't have a cushy remote job who can time shift their eating out pleasure time.
im3w1l 2y ago
I can imagine the possibility of the opposite happening. As we reach an economy of automation-based abundance, we might see a transition to a gift economy.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Molitor5901 2y ago
Tipping is so awkward for everyone involved but to get rid of it would upset a large segment of society. It's foremost out of control and I think it's because of greed, which is not a bad thing because everyone wants to get as much money as they can. The problem is that the greed has exacerbated beyond reasonable greed and now threatens social cohesion, and commerce. The guilt with tipping, or not tipping enough, or when they bring the card swipe to the table and look at you while you tip. It's.. awful. Simply awful. I am tired of tipping for what seems to be the basic function of a job, then being tacitly or overtly being guilted into tipping more. In my large American city is the reason I don't go out as often.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

https://archive.ph/EYxyp https://archive.ph/EYxyp

>In the 1950s tips ran to about 10% of bills. By the 1980s they rose to 15%. In recent years they have hit 20%. Whereas tipping used to be reserved for table service at restaurants, now buying a coffee or a muffin is likely to involve the employee flipping around a tablet screen to the customer to solicit a tip. That can be hard to refuse when the person behind you in line is peering over your shoulder. And these screens typically give three options—of, say, 18%, 20% or 23%—making it difficult to opt for something smaller. This is perhaps a consequence of student debt nightmare from worthless, over priced college degrees. People waiting tables and serving coffee now are "highly educated" with expectations!

viraptor 2y ago
Not just for that reason. A long time ago my home country had memes about people not being hired as a bus driver because they only had one PhD. The degree inflation is a separate issue and the tips won't happen unless people are paid really poorly. Instead in the us, the wages are too low and the social part of tipping works in employers' favour. Servers don't have high expectations - they want to afford a to live and food. In most places in the us that's not possible without tips.
- kelipso 2y ago
  It is possible, just increase prices by 20% and pay servers. Not that hard.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Convince the whole country to stop taking tips and pay 20% extra then. Let us know how easy that was... My whole point is that it's not reasonable not to take tips in the us today.
    - kelipso 2y ago
      The 20% part is easy enough, a year of inflation prove that pretty well. Now you just need to make tipping illegal, pretty straightforward really.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - randomdata 2y ago
        Not exactly straightforward when alcohol is sold. Alcohol laws see liability placed on the server, which means that technically transaction is directly between the customer and the server. Which is no doubt why tipping traditionally was only a practice in places where alcohol is sold. I can't imagine we want to change that. Allowing someone to give endless amounts of alcohol to a customer without any repercussions is rife with problems, and removing the ability for a customer to pay a vendor for services rendered would undo everything we know.
        gruez 2y ago
        >Not exactly straightforward when alcohol is sold. Alcohol laws see liability placed on the server, which means that technically transaction is directly between the customer and the server. Which is no doubt why tipping traditionally was only a practice in places where alcohol is sold. This is an absolutely bizarre take. The fact that bartenders have liability to not serve patrons absurd amounts of alcohol, has no bearing on what the transaction is "technically" between. If you really want to get down to brass tacks, I doubt the merchant account on the credit card machine is going to the bartender, nor is the revenue showing up on his tax returns. Moreover, bartending isn't the only profession where you take on liability. Doctors are liable for malpractice as well. Does that mean you should tip your doctors as well?
eesmith 2y ago
I strongly doubt the local staff have much say about the tip options on the tablet, no matter what level of education they may have.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  In Denmark those staff will often press the "no tip" button themselves. They don't want to beg.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Not my experience running a restaurant. I just went through this last year. The last thing I wanted to add to my plate was changing the tipping options, but I also have to retain staff who were adamant that the tipping options needed to be higher. There is no business without them, so what do you do?
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Raise their salaries?
    - randomdata 2y ago
      No way they would go for that. That limits the potential upside. Tips have unlimited earning potential. A salary, even if higher, is a fixed quantity. I'd be okay with eliminating tipping. Frankly, it would be way easier for me to take my margin if the price was baked into the menu! In a vacuum, it would be silly for me to do anything else. But you don't have a business without the staff. You are pretty much beholden to their whims. There is a restaurant on every street corner and they are all hiring. If you don't keep staff happy, they aren't sticking around.
      - eesmith 2y ago
        I wasn't suggesting to eliminate tipping, I was suggesting to raise salary as an alternative to changing the tipping options. The unlimited earning potential would still be there.
rebeccaskinner 2y ago
> This is perhaps a consequence of student debt nightmare from worthless, over priced college degrees. People waiting tables and serving coffee now are "highly educated" with expectations! I hate this sentiment. Not every degree is going to lead to a high paying career, but knowledge is worth having in it's own right. If people are passionate enough spend four years studying art history or poetry or underwater basket weaving then I'm glad we are sharing and preserving that knowledge in our culture. I don't like tipping culture, and I don't really think the two are related, but if tipping is the only way that we could get a generally well rounded educated population then I suppose I'll prefer tipping.
- gruez 2y ago
  >I hate this sentiment. Not every degree is going to lead to a high paying career, but knowledge is worth having in it's own right. If people are passionate enough spend four years studying art history or poetry or underwater basket weaving then I'm glad we are sharing and preserving that knowledge in our culture. There's probably some non-zero value in learning underwater basket weaving or whatever, but I don't see why it should be publicly funded. I don't see any fundamental difference between someone wasting 6 figures on an useless degree, and someone wasting 6 figures on a useless hobby.
  - rebeccaskinner 2y ago
    Personally I think having a society that has a mix of educational background is desirable. I don’t really expect a national emergency that can only be averted my mobilizing our collective underwater basket weaving expertise, but I do think in a general sense it’s good for society to hedge its bets and invest some amount in a wide variety of expertise. Career prospects are already a good incentive for people to study in demand fields. Having a few underwater basket weavers is still a gain for everyone in society. On top of that, in the US a lot of time in an undergraduate program is spent on general education. Someone who’s degree is in underwater basket weaving still has more education in general than a person without a degree, and that’s also good for society.
- ryandrake 2y ago
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
I only tip for table service and taxis. If I see a tip on anything else, I happily hit no tip. I don't do delivery either since even with tips delivery drivers still bring my food cold. I'd rather get off my bum and guarantee hot food immediately without the risk of the driver eating it.

whyoh 2y ago

>People feel good about themselves when they leave extra, deriving a sense of generosity. Interesting. I never feel good about tipping. If I tip I feel bad, because I caved in to the pressure. If I don't tip I feel bad, because the staff will wrongly think I didn't like them or their performance. Then there's the question of how much % is right... What an unpleasant social convention. Just give me higher prices on the menu.

Ekaros 2y ago
On holidays it really makes me think should I have frequented some other place where they paid staff better... Instead of seemingly exploiting them and their work...
- zarathustreal 2y ago
  Isn’t it strange how employers can make the decision to pay their workers less than we think they’re worth, employees can make the decision to take a job working for less than we think they’re worth, and yet the person feeling responsible for all these decisions is us?
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    It is end result of free market. Every side, consumer, buyer, seller, employer, employee and so on try to get away with paying least they can. This is usually by choice, not many actually combat this... The strange bit is how we have ended up in situation that there is some moral mandate that there is extra payment between consumer and employee. In all other parts system operates rationally. You pay what you have to get something. Be it the product or the labour. Paying more will have indirect benefits like better retention and maybe better quality(more effective or better selling staff). On employee side, well there is usually not option to forgo work as money is needed for survival... So their only option is to take work that is less than they might think they are worth. But this often results in poor retention as they will move for better options when possible.
    - 2y ago

naveen99 2y ago

Feel free to not tip if you make less than the tipee or maybe 2x the tipee ?

porksoda 2y ago
My home currency is worth ~20x less than USD. I fall totally into this category. But I feel enough dumb pressure that I'll cave. As a result I simply avoid these types of interactions. USA is the weirdest place to be poor! One somehow feels shabby and less-than, even while walking past endless homeless.
- stavros 2y ago
  What does it mean for a currency to be worth less than another currency? That makes no sense.
  - benfortuna 2y ago
    I read it as wages, which makes total sense. A well-off person in one country could earn less than a poor person in another.
    - stavros 2y ago
      I think they mean that 1 USD = 20 theircurrency, which is meaningless.

karmakaze 2y ago

Yeah, I saw a default tip for making a week-long hotel booking on online, which amounts to more than peanuts--oh and it was on top of the already mandatory 'service fees and taxes'. I would think only the taxes are mandatory and service fees should be in the advertised price. (I checked if booking different number of days changed the 'service fee', no it was a straight daily percentage). Same goes for shipping+handling that hides the actual price of items.

ensignavenger 2y ago
Shipping and handling costs can vary widely with the number of items purchased. If I buy one shoe lace or three, the shipping costs are going to be the same... so if you price shipping into the item price, folks buying three pairs of shoe laces will pay excess shipping from folks buying one pair of shoe laces.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  I'm not talking about reasonable rates but the ones on eBay that lists an item underpriced at $20 with $50 s+h. I've started seeing this pattern spread to other online sellers besides such platforms. This is similar to 'free delivery' on Uber Eats which still has a service charge--it's a delivery service! All it means is there's no extra delivery charge on top. Plus priority if you'd like that maybe still warm. It's all a meaningless cash grab.
  - ensignavenger 2y ago
    Oh, I can agree with that. Ebay has so much potential if they would clean the platform up of practices like that.

sunflowerfly 2y ago

I would love for my state to make all fees and tips included in the price like Europe. The price should be the price. Make asking for a tip illegal. Raise minimum wage for restaurant workers so they do not need the tip. Have a separate price for take away so that eating in includes a bit extra to cover the additional costs. But alas, I live in a red state so it is never going to happen.

randomdata 2y ago
> Raise minimum wage for restaurant workers so they do not need the tip. Servers at my mid-range restaurant bring in around $20 per hour in tips, on top of a base $16 minimum wage. So approximately $36 per hour is where you'd need it to land. Anything less and they ain't showing up. It is already hard enough to find anyone at that rate!
- aeadio 2y ago
  Let the industry self-regulate that. You stipulate a reasonable minimum wage, but like most other industries, mid-level and above restaurants need to pay a competitive wage, or talent goes elsewhere. If the going rate post-tip is about $36/hour, then the restaurants can target that as their post-tip benchmark wage. I can tell you as a different type of talent worker, nobody is trying to pay me minimum wage. Minimum wage is set to ensure there's a reasonable floor on downmarket offerings. When you're 18 and fresh out of school and you work at your local Cracker Barrel, minimum wage ensures you don't get exploited. It's not the benchmark for experienced workers who have picked up a valuable skillset. You have all these restaurant operators crying that getting rid of tippers puts them out of business, makes their business unviable. Well for one, that's nobody else's problem -- there's no contract, no constitutional guarantee that you're allowed to be in business. Making something economically viable is the whole game. But it seems like everyone just flunked grade school arithmetic. The cost is a wash at the end. At mid-range restaurants and above, practically everyone tips the same 18-20% on top of the base cost of the meal. If tipping is made illegal, you can expect meal cost across the board to rise by about this much to make up the difference. It's the exact same cashflow. You can pay a living wage on what you're already charging customers on the final card settlement. They all seem to be imagining this nightmare scenario where they're forced to raise their menu prices, and that prices them out of the business versus their competitors who, somehow, don't need to do the same. The law shouldn't cater to business operators with no business sense.

craftkiller 2y ago

In Australia there is no tipping and the full price, including all fees and taxes, is the list price. So if you're in a bar and see a beer for $5 and you have $5 in your pocket, you can buy that beer. It speeds things up considerably because when paying for stuff, you can just tap your card. No need to click through a tip UI or fill out a receipt, just tap-and-go.

benfortuna 2y ago
I would add that tapping your card in Australia now will typically add a service fee on to the price. Also there are some cafes and restaurants that have 10% surcharge for public holidays, etc. So the hidden costs are creeping in, but thankfully not mainstream yet.
- beachy 2y ago
  > Also there are some cafes and restaurants that have 10% surcharge for public holidays This is increasingly common in NZ but also entirely justifiable as staff must legally be paid time and a half on public holidays and wages is likely the largest component of the restaurant's costs
  - jemmyw 2y ago
    This has been common in NZ since at least 2007. It's not really justifiable. Wages aren't 100% of the costs, plus open cafes and restaurants make more on public holiday days. Seeing as it's busier on a public holiday I just avoid going out to places on those days. It feels like a tax on people who don't have a cushy remote job who can time shift their eating out pleasure time.

im3w1l 2y ago

I can imagine the possibility of the opposite happening. As we reach an economy of automation-based abundance, we might see a transition to a gift economy.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Molitor5901 2y ago

Tipping is so awkward for everyone involved but to get rid of it would upset a large segment of society. It's foremost out of control and I think it's because of greed, which is not a bad thing because everyone wants to get as much money as they can. The problem is that the greed has exacerbated beyond reasonable greed and now threatens social cohesion, and commerce. The guilt with tipping, or not tipping enough, or when they bring the card swipe to the table and look at you while you tip. It's.. awful. Simply awful. I am tired of tipping for what seems to be the basic function of a job, then being tacitly or overtly being guilted into tipping more. In my large American city is the reason I don't go out as often.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]