4 ms·

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail. tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced wo

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail. tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the same number of hours, the higher skilled driver earns more because they get more tips. this "work harder => more pay" incentive is pretty unique in the industry; in manual labor jobs where each day has a set limit on the amount of work that can be completed, like grocery merchandising, workers that work harder get paid less than average workers. stock incentives are the closest comparison, but it's too far removed from the individual worker's output when the company's size grows above 100 employees. the point is, part of the problem is the lack of other incentives that reward the hardest/best skilled workers.

tayo42 1y ago
If more pizzas per hour is important then who ever is running the pizza place should be the one incentivizing that, not customers.
- lazystar 1y ago
  there's been attempts to do just that, but it doesnt work because tipping is engrained in the surrounding culture, which exists outside of the pizza place's control. a single store cannot fix the tipping problem on their own; it has to be a cultural shift towards a better system that similarly rewards harder working individuals.
- BobbyTables2 1y ago
  At some point “more pizzas per hour” will be achieved at the cost of quality. I’d love to seem them incentivize actually not putting a whole pizza’s worth of toppings on just 3 slices. And also putting enough of a topping where it becomes visible. When I add “onion” to “pizza”, I don’t intend for them to add a single tiny spec to a single slice — finding it should be easier than Where’s Waldo.
bigyabai 1y ago
1. Tips are not a reliable source of income (I am an American who also survived on tips). 2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips. 3. If any computer science job ever contemplated adding tipping to my compensation package, I'd go get my pink slip within the hour.
- lazystar 1y ago
  > 2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips. im not saying that the current tipping system is a good design - your example is one of the most glaring flaws. to put it another way, my point is that the current system will stay in existence due to the lack of other incentives that reward harder working individuals. in order to get rid of tipping culture, you can't simply appeal to morality/shame tippers; you have to replace it with a new system that also incentivizes harder work.
- echaozh 1y ago
  What do you think of the donations to open source project maintainers or photographers or musicians? What about gifts sent to tiktok hosts? I'm from a country where there're no tips, and I'm not defending tips at all. But I do think the tiktok gifts are basically tips right? Is it a good idea to live off the gifts like the tips?
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Donations aren't tips. I'm an Open Source maintainer as well, and I don't ever expect to be paid for my work. It's a hobby, whereas the code I write at work is what people pay me to do. Growing up, I knew a fairly popular musician from the internet-era, and I'll just say she made less money than I did working the cash register. She worked more hours, too. Tipping, as an American culture, exists to reward "above and beyond" behavior from service workers. Tiktok performers, bedroom musicians and FOSS developers aren't service workers, and most of the time they aren't salaried either. Expecting to live off those wages is an unfortunate mistake.
giingyui 1y ago
There is nothing I would like more than seeing tipping implemented in retail. And then the more you think about it the more you realise everything should have a tipping option.
- lazystar 1y ago
  personally id love to see something like tipping implemented in frontline support. kpi's that focus on monthly case resolve goals and TTR are incentives that reduce quality, and 5 star kpi's are easily gamed. if customers could tip frontline support engineers based on their experience with a support case, we'd see quality go way up.
  - bigfatkitten 1y ago
    Why would I pay a company’s support rep extra to deliver the service that I’m already paying their employer for?
    - lazystar 1y ago
      why would you tip a pizza delivery driver or a bartender, when youre already paying their employer for a pizza/drink? over time, your experiences with any company will vary, due to the cycle of new workers joining the company and experienced workers leaving. tipping after a good experience incentivizes the skilled worker to stay longer in their position, thus increasing the odds that your future interactions will also be handled by a skilled worker.
      - bigfatkitten 1y ago
        A robust performance evaluation process does this just fine. If they do well they get a bonus, if they do poorly they get fired. There is also no massive and obvious corruption risk in me paying either of those people to do a job as there is with a support engineer. Maybe I should tip customs officers too, for processing my passport quickly and not looking too closely at my luggage? Or perhaps if I take a speeding ticket to court, maybe I should tip the judge based on the outcome?
mrweasel 1y ago
I was watching a YouTube video in the background while reading the comments, and I think it pretty much explained the issue, for the consumer: I feel pressured to pay a two dollar tip, on a seven dollar coffee, that was only worth one dollar to begin with.
- lazystar 1y ago
  ..and then you start visiting other coffee shops with higher quality/lower cost, right? you, the consumer, are not alone in this behavior - so this causes a pattern where skilled baristas have a higher rate of exodus from that coffee shop where no one tips, which leads to even lower qiality, and eventually that shop has to lower its prices in order to get new customers. its capitalism all the way down.
pseudocomposer 1y ago
Why do you associate tipping with “work harder => more pay,” exactly? I don’t see a clear logical route from “socially-forced customer tipping” to that, at all. If anything; tipping leads us to “leverage information to ensure you get a large amount of high-tipping customers => more pay.” Continuing that logical process, we might realize that “make your coworkers have to deal with the bad tippers => more pay.” Which might lead us to “socially manipulate management to get optimal shifts and locations => more pay.” If you really want “work harder => more pay,” then just pay a high/fair/livable hourly rate, and add a bonus for number of orders fulfilled in the shift (or total sales volume during the shift). Certainly, some perverse incentives remain with this approach. But nothing nearly so bad as tipping. And like with tipping, the higher the hourly rate compared to the bonus, the more those problems are reduced. But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult.
- 9x39 1y ago
  Work harder for more pay is limited to American full service gigs, and a weird employer-driven labor retention push elsewhere. The tipping process works for servers who have the performative and service skills to work a crowd of tables, modulo peculiarities of the patron population. There can be a very strong connection between a server who works tables hard and their tip take-home versus one who merely gets the food to the table.
- phil21 1y ago
  > But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult. I have had more than a few conversations with tipped service workers. Some are even friends of mine. While a lot of what you say is true (the manipulation of shifts and spotting/monopolizing desirable customers) it really fails to capture what most folks tell me about these jobs. They like tips. The ones that hustle and build up a bank of "regulars" do quite well. It takes a lot of work, and if you hustle on your shifts you usually get more tables assigned to you or drinks poured per hour, etc. This means even more pay. A slow unskilled bartender is making far less money than a highly skilled efficient experienced bartender with a stable of regulars taking up half the bar stool seats every slow night. It is a night and day difference in total pay rates - all to do with skill. This can be two bartenders behind the same bar on the same nights. The unskilled bartender is not going to be known in these closely knit industry circles as good talent, and will likely never get the opportunity for a position at the top-tier establishments known for good tippers. Those positions are highly competitive. While we can pontificate about how businesses "should" reward the top tier employees, it isn't happening. In this area of work these are often the only types of jobs available that offer significantly more hourly pay by working harder or being better at your job than your peers. Tilting at windmills only goes so far - sometimes you take the only options available to you to immediately improve your lot in life. And yes, some of that is "manipulation" of your work environment - just like how we call it "managing upwards" in our white collar world. Same thing.
Workaccount2 1y ago
The key detail you are missing is that this new wave of tipping is all tipping that is done before the service is given. Waiters/drivers/bartenders/barbers, all are classic tipped jobs and you tip them after they serve you. Smoothie Shop instead asks for a tip before they do anything. And they are paid a full wage anyway.
- lazystar 1y ago
  sure, it is a different approach than the old model - but i think it's only a guess when you visit a place for the first time. personally, i tip high on my first visit to a new place, any tips i give on my followup visits are based on my previous experiences with that restauraunt. workers remember good tippers, and when they go the extra mile on my followup visits, i keep tipping well.
  - lazystar 1y ago
    followup - got downvoted hard on this, so i reflected a bit on my opinion here. i think its cognitive dissonance on my part, and its definitely a flaw in the new tipping model.
torginus 1y ago
Except all the jobs where the job is repetitive and salary is tied to performance inevitably start out as comfortable ways of earning easy money, and turn into nightmarish hellscapes as the owners do the frog boiling routine. Food delivery is the perfect example. Right before covid, and during lockdowns, in my country, it was a lucrative job with easy work that earned a decent chunk of change, while being so cheap for consumers, that I've once or twice skipped out on going around the apartment block to the pizza place and just ordered it to my door. Nowadays, prices are sky high and the wages are so low, and the system so punishing, is the only delivery drivers you see are illegal immigrants hanging on for dear life.
popoflojo 1y ago
There are plenty of non tipping ways to reward hard workers. Managers can track performance and reward it through bonuses and/or wage increases.
- lazystar 1y ago
  ive seen that work at smaller size companies (sub 2000 employees) but with a caveat - it causes some political stress for the recipient. jealous teammates are less likely to work with you after you get a bonus. and FAANG size companies dont have random bonuses for frontlines; stack ranking is supposed to reward top performers, but when manager kpi's conflict with work that benefits the customer experience, managers will intentionally rank the best performers as average.

tayo42 1y ago

If more pizzas per hour is important then who ever is running the pizza place should be the one incentivizing that, not customers.

lazystar 1y ago
there's been attempts to do just that, but it doesnt work because tipping is engrained in the surrounding culture, which exists outside of the pizza place's control. a single store cannot fix the tipping problem on their own; it has to be a cultural shift towards a better system that similarly rewards harder working individuals.
BobbyTables2 1y ago
At some point “more pizzas per hour” will be achieved at the cost of quality. I’d love to seem them incentivize actually not putting a whole pizza’s worth of toppings on just 3 slices. And also putting enough of a topping where it becomes visible. When I add “onion” to “pizza”, I don’t intend for them to add a single tiny spec to a single slice — finding it should be easier than Where’s Waldo.

bigyabai 1y ago

1. Tips are not a reliable source of income (I am an American who also survived on tips). 2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips. 3. If any computer science job ever contemplated adding tipping to my compensation package, I'd go get my pink slip within the hour.

lazystar 1y ago
> 2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips. im not saying that the current tipping system is a good design - your example is one of the most glaring flaws. to put it another way, my point is that the current system will stay in existence due to the lack of other incentives that reward harder working individuals. in order to get rid of tipping culture, you can't simply appeal to morality/shame tippers; you have to replace it with a new system that also incentivizes harder work.
echaozh 1y ago
What do you think of the donations to open source project maintainers or photographers or musicians? What about gifts sent to tiktok hosts? I'm from a country where there're no tips, and I'm not defending tips at all. But I do think the tiktok gifts are basically tips right? Is it a good idea to live off the gifts like the tips?
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Donations aren't tips. I'm an Open Source maintainer as well, and I don't ever expect to be paid for my work. It's a hobby, whereas the code I write at work is what people pay me to do. Growing up, I knew a fairly popular musician from the internet-era, and I'll just say she made less money than I did working the cash register. She worked more hours, too. Tipping, as an American culture, exists to reward "above and beyond" behavior from service workers. Tiktok performers, bedroom musicians and FOSS developers aren't service workers, and most of the time they aren't salaried either. Expecting to live off those wages is an unfortunate mistake.

giingyui 1y ago

There is nothing I would like more than seeing tipping implemented in retail. And then the more you think about it the more you realise everything should have a tipping option.

lazystar 1y ago
personally id love to see something like tipping implemented in frontline support. kpi's that focus on monthly case resolve goals and TTR are incentives that reduce quality, and 5 star kpi's are easily gamed. if customers could tip frontline support engineers based on their experience with a support case, we'd see quality go way up.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  Why would I pay a company’s support rep extra to deliver the service that I’m already paying their employer for?
  - lazystar 1y ago
    why would you tip a pizza delivery driver or a bartender, when youre already paying their employer for a pizza/drink? over time, your experiences with any company will vary, due to the cycle of new workers joining the company and experienced workers leaving. tipping after a good experience incentivizes the skilled worker to stay longer in their position, thus increasing the odds that your future interactions will also be handled by a skilled worker.
    - bigfatkitten 1y ago
      A robust performance evaluation process does this just fine. If they do well they get a bonus, if they do poorly they get fired. There is also no massive and obvious corruption risk in me paying either of those people to do a job as there is with a support engineer. Maybe I should tip customs officers too, for processing my passport quickly and not looking too closely at my luggage? Or perhaps if I take a speeding ticket to court, maybe I should tip the judge based on the outcome?

mrweasel 1y ago

I was watching a YouTube video in the background while reading the comments, and I think it pretty much explained the issue, for the consumer: I feel pressured to pay a two dollar tip, on a seven dollar coffee, that was only worth one dollar to begin with.

lazystar 1y ago
..and then you start visiting other coffee shops with higher quality/lower cost, right? you, the consumer, are not alone in this behavior - so this causes a pattern where skilled baristas have a higher rate of exodus from that coffee shop where no one tips, which leads to even lower qiality, and eventually that shop has to lower its prices in order to get new customers. its capitalism all the way down.

pseudocomposer 1y ago

Why do you associate tipping with “work harder => more pay,” exactly? I don’t see a clear logical route from “socially-forced customer tipping” to that, at all. If anything; tipping leads us to “leverage information to ensure you get a large amount of high-tipping customers => more pay.” Continuing that logical process, we might realize that “make your coworkers have to deal with the bad tippers => more pay.” Which might lead us to “socially manipulate management to get optimal shifts and locations => more pay.” If you really want “work harder => more pay,” then just pay a high/fair/livable hourly rate, and add a bonus for number of orders fulfilled in the shift (or total sales volume during the shift). Certainly, some perverse incentives remain with this approach. But nothing nearly so bad as tipping. And like with tipping, the higher the hourly rate compared to the bonus, the more those problems are reduced. But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult.

9x39 1y ago
Work harder for more pay is limited to American full service gigs, and a weird employer-driven labor retention push elsewhere. The tipping process works for servers who have the performative and service skills to work a crowd of tables, modulo peculiarities of the patron population. There can be a very strong connection between a server who works tables hard and their tip take-home versus one who merely gets the food to the table.
phil21 1y ago
> But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult. I have had more than a few conversations with tipped service workers. Some are even friends of mine. While a lot of what you say is true (the manipulation of shifts and spotting/monopolizing desirable customers) it really fails to capture what most folks tell me about these jobs. They like tips. The ones that hustle and build up a bank of "regulars" do quite well. It takes a lot of work, and if you hustle on your shifts you usually get more tables assigned to you or drinks poured per hour, etc. This means even more pay. A slow unskilled bartender is making far less money than a highly skilled efficient experienced bartender with a stable of regulars taking up half the bar stool seats every slow night. It is a night and day difference in total pay rates - all to do with skill. This can be two bartenders behind the same bar on the same nights. The unskilled bartender is not going to be known in these closely knit industry circles as good talent, and will likely never get the opportunity for a position at the top-tier establishments known for good tippers. Those positions are highly competitive. While we can pontificate about how businesses "should" reward the top tier employees, it isn't happening. In this area of work these are often the only types of jobs available that offer significantly more hourly pay by working harder or being better at your job than your peers. Tilting at windmills only goes so far - sometimes you take the only options available to you to immediately improve your lot in life. And yes, some of that is "manipulation" of your work environment - just like how we call it "managing upwards" in our white collar world. Same thing.

Workaccount2 1y ago

The key detail you are missing is that this new wave of tipping is all tipping that is done before the service is given. Waiters/drivers/bartenders/barbers, all are classic tipped jobs and you tip them after they serve you. Smoothie Shop instead asks for a tip before they do anything. And they are paid a full wage anyway.

lazystar 1y ago
sure, it is a different approach than the old model - but i think it's only a guess when you visit a place for the first time. personally, i tip high on my first visit to a new place, any tips i give on my followup visits are based on my previous experiences with that restauraunt. workers remember good tippers, and when they go the extra mile on my followup visits, i keep tipping well.
- lazystar 1y ago
  followup - got downvoted hard on this, so i reflected a bit on my opinion here. i think its cognitive dissonance on my part, and its definitely a flaw in the new tipping model.

torginus 1y ago

Except all the jobs where the job is repetitive and salary is tied to performance inevitably start out as comfortable ways of earning easy money, and turn into nightmarish hellscapes as the owners do the frog boiling routine. Food delivery is the perfect example. Right before covid, and during lockdowns, in my country, it was a lucrative job with easy work that earned a decent chunk of change, while being so cheap for consumers, that I've once or twice skipped out on going around the apartment block to the pizza place and just ordered it to my door. Nowadays, prices are sky high and the wages are so low, and the system so punishing, is the only delivery drivers you see are illegal immigrants hanging on for dear life.

popoflojo 1y ago

There are plenty of non tipping ways to reward hard workers. Managers can track performance and reward it through bonuses and/or wage increases.

lazystar 1y ago
ive seen that work at smaller size companies (sub 2000 employees) but with a caveat - it causes some political stress for the recipient. jealous teammates are less likely to work with you after you get a bonus. and FAANG size companies dont have random bonuses for frontlines; stack ranking is supposed to reward top performers, but when manager kpi's conflict with work that benefits the customer experience, managers will intentionally rank the best performers as average.