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No, tipping is a way of directly compensating people who are directly doing work for you, even in the context of an organization managing the transaction. You
by Gormo 2y ago
No, tipping is a way of directly compensating people who are directly doing work for you, even in the context of an organization managing the transaction. You tip people who are personally responding to your requests -- that's why the dishwasher and other people you're not directly interacting with don't usually get tipped.
- Larrikin 2y agoSo like the accountant filing your taxes, the person who fixes your bug in the bug report, the electrician adding power to a new room, the plumber fixing a leak?
- Gormo 2y agoNo. Most of those people are self-employed, so you are usually already paying 100% of the compensation directly to them in the first place. Tipping is for when someone is doing work directly for you, but as an employee of another party.
- johannes1234321 2y agoWhy is there a difference between somebody carrying a plate from the kitchen to my table and somebody preparing that plate just for me?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wiradikusuma 2y agoDo people in the US tip flight attendants who serve them meal?
- School-Cotton 2y agoTipping flight attendants happens often enough that it wouldn't be considered bizarre, especially in business/first class. But it's not the norm, no.
- rangerelf 2y agoThis comment made me gag. "Tipping culture" has definitely gone too far. What about the pilot and other members at front? Do the tipped flight attendants kick some bucks over to them? It definitely feels like an abdication of responsibility (and obligations) of the company that those people work for.
- adolph 2y agoDoes one leave a flight attendant tip in the seat or in that envelope in the seat pocket? (Handing a tip to someone directly feels so gauche, like I'm pretending to be some fancy person.)
- Closi 2y agoOr the checkout workers at Walmart?
- DowagerDave 2y agoDo people choose to dine on airplanes? Do airlines even still serve meals?
- drpgq 2y agoI don't think I've ever had the electrician who showed up to my house or business be the owner. I guess it is possible, I've just never seen it.
- rqtwteye 2y agoI guess I will start tipping my dentist and dental hygienist. Also will tip at the DMV
- djtango 2y agoDo you tip your nurses and your bus drivers?
- DowagerDave 2y agoWhat exactly does a bus driver do directly for just you? Everyone tips private drivers though. Nurses don't get tips but it's very common for them to get thank-you gifts and treats.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thruway516 2y agoIn my city, it is common courtesy and sometimes expected that you say 'thank you' to the bus driver when getting off at your stop. It's not too much of a stretch to the scenario where bus drivers are tipped, except that most bus riders (at least in the US) tend to be poor. Maybe we'll have bus drivers tipping well behaved passengers instead lol.
- wolpoli 2y agoDo you tip the mortgage specialist at the bank that prepared the mortgage for you?
- Gormo 2y agoNo -- it's also not customary to tip people who get a commission from your purchase.
- jdgoesmarching 2y agoMost of those people are self-employed? Citation heavily needed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 2y agoThat doesn't change the fact that it's near-universally used as an excuse to underpay workers.
- bastawhiz 2y agoIf that was actually true, minimum wage for tipped employees would be equal to the standard minimum wage.
- Gormo 2y agoWhy? I'm not sure I see how that follows.
- bastawhiz 2y agoBecause the employee tips are effectively taken by the restaurant up to the point where they make "normal" minimum wage. If tipped employee compensation was actually about compensating those folks for their effort, they should received the tips they earn. (Tipped minimum wage gets increased to standard minimum wage if you earn fewer than the difference in tips—which is functionally identical to having $5 and a bit of your tips withheld every hour) As it stands today, if you're tipped and you work a shift where there are fewer customers, you implicitly get paid less (and have more of your tips soaked up by your employer) for exactly the same amount of effort. If you work a graveyard shift for eight hours and see $40 in tips from eight customers, you effectively worked minimum wage with $0 in tips, not minimum wage plus $40. For the people working those jobs, that's multiple meals or tank of gas. There's no practical reason for having a lower minimum wage for tipped employees, it's literally just an excuse for employers to pay their tipped employees less. If we as a society actually believed that some professions should be compensated based on effort, there would be a different minimum wage for people compensated by commission. But that doesn't exist. So to answer your question, you're not necessarily "directly compensating" the employee, because a non-trivial percentage of your tip goes towards subsidizing their employer.
- CalRobert 2y agoThis varies by state, though.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoYou don't seem to see a lot of things. If anyone ever tried to tip me when I was on-site I don't know what I'd do. Whatever your job is or was, are you not a professional who already gets paid well for your work? You're at my office as a consultant already getting paid a good salary by your company, and I try to flip you a 50, you just take it? Oh right, that's why you laughed at all my jokes. Well good boy. I like that. Tipping reduces the tip receiver to a prostitute. The only people who are ok with that are people who like the feeling of being on the top side of that power dynamic.
- liotier 2y ago> No, tipping is a way of directly compensating people who are directly doing work for you From a European point of view, this is ludicrous. Why don't workers in the USA receive a salary from their employer instead of resorting to charity from their employer's customers ? How is not paying employees even legal ?
- vundercind 2y agoThere’s a history in the US (in, like… the 1930s) of attempting to dismantle tipping culture on the grounds that it sets up a degrading servant/master relationship (you choose whether to tip, and how much) that’s inappropriate for a free people. They were entirely right but didn’t win, for whatever reason. [edit] I mean, I don’t know why, but if I had to guess, based on the timeframe, I’d guess the reason was racism.
- thruway516 2y agoEvery couple of years someone attempts to tackle this but it usually goes nowhere. Just a few years ago it was Danny Meyer (one of the most well known restauranteurs in the country) trying to revive the no-tipping movement by eliminating tips at his restaurants. There was a big todo about it at the time but it seems to have fizzled out as I havent heard anything about it recently. Seems the tipping lobby (aka Big Tipping ie the workers receiving the tips) is too powerful on this one lol.
- dingnuts 2y agoif you ask professional wait staff in the US you'll find that tips are more popular than set wages. They wind up making more from tips than they would via salary. Occasionally you'll read about a restaurant trying to eliminate tips and they lose good servers to their competition. Was just reading about this somewhere else.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoSeems like the problem here would be that employers tried to pay too little.
- Dylan16807 2y agoWhy should I be favoring the specific workers that get within 5 feet of me? And why should they be getting less indirect pay?