I ordered food from a place with zero human interaction. I ordered from a tablet and picked up my food from the counter after receiving a text. I was still asked to tip. At that point, I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be tipping for.
I used to not tip for takeout (since I had thought there was not really “service”), but I’ve since learned that the packaging for take away can be rather involved. So, I do tip now for the labor of readying the meals to go
That makes sense, I just wish they included those costs in the price rather than making me guess how much I should pay, especially when it’s less clear who the receiver of the tips will be.
@wholemilk @Harold exactly! The tips should be the exception not the norm. I tip when the service, the quality or the experience was so good to me that I want reward the ppl o made it possible as complimentarily. An incentive to them keep doing an exceptional job. No job should be dependent of charity. That is subverting how a business should be run. Can’t accept it as a rule.
How do you know if your tip went to the person who did that labor though?
The problem I have with that is you have to tip before you even eat the food. They could have screwed up your order, burnt your food, etc., but you won’t know until after you’ve already tipped them.
Went to a concert the other day and they were asking for tip on their $6 hot dogs. The options were 20% 25% and 30% and no option for custom lol.
I’m not tipping at a concert concession stand when stuff is already outrageously overpriced. GTFOH.
I was ordering a pizza online for pickup. When it prompted for a tip at checkout I canceled the order. This is the worst case scenario in my book.
I just hit 0.
When someone said something to me, I stopped picking up pizza from there….
I’ll tip and quite well (usually 25-30%) for full service stuff. But for buffet style/sandwich lines and takeout. No thanks
Same here… If I’m being served I will tip well. However if I call in my order, go pick up my order, and the “server” who took my order doesn’t even collect my money, then what my tips are really going towards is making up for the fact that the restaurant isn’t actually paying their staff a livable wage. During the COVID shutdowns, sure I was willing to help keep their doors open. Everyone is back to full business now, so what exactly are you asking me to pay for?
Yeah same mindset.
Also those other schemes like round up or add $2 to “donate to help first responders” or “save the puppies” I opt out of too. Because when I looked into it I found a company only needed to actually donate like 10% of that total donation to remain in the clear from a tax standpoint and the rest can be used to “administer the program”.
So no, never do those either.
Wow, a whole 10% you say? How can these companies afford to operate on only a 90% commission? /s
Tipping is absolutely everywhere and it feels like a lot of these screens default to 20% or more. And the employees usually give you a look if you change it to below that or no tip at all.
A sit-down restaurant I understand for your server, but I still disagree with it and feel that they should just be paid a normal wage, not dependent on the tips. But I’m not going to tip for takeout 9/10 times.
Also how do we even know, as customers, if the tip is actually going to the employees?
I never tip with takeout. The only way to stop the cancer of tipping from spreading is to refuse to buy in to it. Pay your damn employees a living wage and then they don’t need tips!
No no, don’t feel bad about hitting that 0% button. I feel like this is a PSA but in the USA if you tip a minimum wage (untipped) employee, THEY WILL NOT GET YOUR TIP. Severs get paid on tips and a minimum wage (tipped) of about $2.50. Tipping a normal employee (on screens, not cash) will just mean that the employer has to pay them less wages. Seriously? Yes seriously. You can tip at subway, the only person getting that money is subway.
This is only true for positions paid in tips. (Workers making below minimum wage like waiters/servers)
This is not true for people working jobs at or above minimum wage, like baristas at coffee shops. The vast majority of those places give their employees the tips on top of their wages. Most employees don’t put up with tips going to the owners and will let you know they don’t get it.
That’s the worrying part of this trend. The local coffee shop might still give their employees the tips. But the local chain fast food place? No. I’ve had subway workers tell me that directly. They said “don’t tip me, I don’t get any of it” and sonic employees will sometimes tell you the same.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t true throughout the entire US. Wait staff in Washington, for example, get paid the full state minimum wage, and the minimum wage act explicitly requires that tips be paid to employees rather than retained by the restaurant. Of course, actual practice or compliance can differ, but there are a few states with better laws than the norm.
I appreciate the added details. As far as I’m aware, they aren’t keeping the tips. But it is legal to pay a tipped employee down to about $2/hr in every state. So most places like Sonic will reduce your pay when you get tips and you claim the tips (which you’re required to do wink wink). So rather than Sonic just paying their employees $10/hr at minimum wage, they’ll pay them $5/hr assuming $5 in tips. Saves the company money and the servers don’t make much more than normal minimum wage while the customer fronts their wages.
Isn’t that lovely?
I feel like how you’re describing it makes it sound more complicated than it is.
All employees are required to make minimum wage.
If your tips don’t take you over minimum wage, your employer has to pay the difference.So tips given before you get to minimum wage just reduce how much your boss needs to spend to make up the difference. Once you get there, your boss has to pay you at least some very small quantity and the tips increase your take-home
It’s a stupid system and exploitative, but it’s not as “wink wink nudge nudge” as you made it sound.
Thats fair but I don’t think this description is entirely accurate either. And I do think it’s a big scummy because minimum wage is already very low. So putting employees tips into their wages is just employers taking advantage. It’s legal, yes, but it’s bad for everyone except the employer.
not in every state. in Washington, my home state, there’s no such thing as a tipped wage and employers must pay all tips to employees. does this always happen? no, but it is illegal unlike what you’re claiming
Yeah I have no idea who the tip even goes to sometimes.
And really in those cases, I assume straight to the business/owner. And then it’s like why am I volunteering to buy this at an additional markup?
Tips go to employees and it’s even illegal for managers to get tips. You know exactly who it’s going to, you’re just playing games rather than accepting you don’t like to tip
No? 1) I’m perfectly happy to say I don’t like tipping in general, too. I do it because that’s how we’ve apparently agreed service workers make any money at all. 2) I didn’t explicitly say I’m in the US, altho I did imagine our tipping culture to be a bit unique, so to be clear - I also don’t have much faith in labor laws getting consistently enforced here. 3) Who is getting tipped from self-service machine screens?
You can also take the smug armchair psych somewhere else, guy.
Related, but has anyone else noticed the “default” tip amounts (on registers and such) are higher now, too? In the past I would see 15-18-20% as kind of the standard options, and now I don’t seem to see anything lower than 20% on those preset options. I saw one the other day that had 35% as a default option.
I forget if there’s a term for it but I think it’s intentional because it raises the expectations for what people think the minimum acceptable tip is.
You might be thinking of anchoring. Some restaurants have a couple of outrageously expensive wines on top of the menu for that reason - everything else looks cheaper in comparison, since the first thing you saw is “anchored” in your mind and used as a point of reference.
Is it price anchoring maybe? Seems like I knew the term for it and can’t remember it now, ha ha!
Yeah, it’s ridiculous, but that’s why other -> 0% is always a valid option. I’ll tip if I’m paying after eating a meal or if someone delivered some food to me, otherwise miss me with that shit.
Tipped wages are disgusting.
Every business should pay their employees stable wages.
I have no problem with putting some extra cash down for the waiter that looks no older than me and is working at the roadhouse down the village back road for minimum wage.
If a fuckin Pret a Manger opened up in center Philly and defaults to 30% tips, wtf man, wtf.
@Dankenstein @RotaryKeyboard as an European, US tips things is just ridiculous. Seriouly can’t understand that shit. Why don’t you pay your ppl for the work they do?
With so many things in this country, the origins are racism. While tipping originated in Europe, it became popular in the States post-slavery as a way to not have to actually pay black people. Haven’t shaken it yet.
And annoyingly, the ones who often push the hardest to keep tipping culture are the servers themselves as they can take home a lot of money on a busy weekend evening. Hopefully, we’re getting closer to getting rid of it though.
For the longest time tipping was very stable and nobody said much but with the covid-inspired tipping greed hopefully you’re right. If enough people get pissed off maybe something will happen for tipping to be eliminated. I personally haven’t sat down in a restaurant since the end of 2019, haven’t done a food delivery since 2021, and that won’t change until tipping is gone.
Yeah, I actually stop going out for any restaurant or outing ever since the tip inflation went out of control. I just rather spend the money on a cooking class and cook things myself. I really encourage everyone else to do the same, you save a lot of money, and you can add whatever creativity you want to the meal.
Same here. For me it was the realization that what I thought was appropriate tipping – 15% – was actually an insult to servers. Thanks to the internet, I saw how servers retaliate against what they think is a bad tipper. I realized that proper tipping is subjective, and there was no way to be sure I wouldn’t be punished for something I did wrong unknowingly. So rather than risk it, I just decided to learn how to live without eating out.
Yeah, 15% was considered good in the '90s, but it’s been upped to 20% for a couple decades now.
The alternative is 0%, because i just won’t eat out anymore
It’s bonkers how much money you can save making food yourself by just planning meals based on what’s on sale this week. People don’t believe me, but chicken thighs/legs go on sale here every 3/4 weeks for 99 cents a pound. Week’s worth of meat for the equivalent price of a McD’s meal.
I don’t really eat meat. The thing that gets me are the vegetables. If I want anything fresh, it costs so much more than canned or frozen. Frozen/canned veggies are fine for some meals, but for others they can really taste a bit off. We just moved and I’m hoping there are some good farmer’s markets around where I live now with decent prices (the place I moved from were worse than the grocery store).
I love that vast majority of Europeans don’t tip. At least the ones thinking rationally.
Here in the Netherlands, we only tip for fancy restaurants, if the service was good.
I hate the tipping culture, and wish it would go away. But I’ll still do it for sit down service as that’s part of the deal. The ones that really get me are for pickup as well as the fastish food services where you go to the counter to order, prepay, you pick it up from the counter and bus your own tables. What exactly am I tipping for?
And why do taxis need tips? Or hairdressers?
Over covid we would tip fairly frequently for takeout. We still on occasion tip to local places, but most of the time we don’t. I’m literally picking up the food, no service is being provided.
Here is a crazy idea, Pay Workers A Livable Wage and price goods accordingly… that is the easiest step forward as I would be tempted to ask for more because profits are unpaid wages.
I ordered some stuff to get delivered from Walmart, and they wanted me to tip the delivery driver! Fuck that! I’m not going to tip for that. Pay the drivers a living wage! If they don’t get tips and don’t get paid enough, then these companies just wont have drivers anymore.
Yes because capitalists are known for running out of service-sector workers due to low wages. Also learning from labor shortages.
I just don’t get how not tipping workers is supposed to teach corporations a lesson. They’ll just churn through willing bodies all the same.
I would not object to a law banning establishments from requesting tips before service has been provided.
They shouldn’t request tips at all. Tips only should be provided if a customer feels like the service was above and beyond normal.
Sure, but that’s a societal and cultural change. I’m talking about a legal change.
There is a legal solution too. It’s called: regulate the minimum wages.
FYI: Denmark doesn’t have minimum wage.
Guess what’s the difference between minimum salary of McDonalds worker in Denmark vs USA.
Keyword: labor union.
That’s not true in the US. They have a tipped minimum wage; there, if you’re not tipping you’re stealing someone’s labour.
It is a sucky system, as the buried lede in that article shows:
However, data from the very checkout system that prompted tipping revealed disparities in pay. Neitzel noticed that Black employees were earning less tips than their White counterparts.
But, until it is burned to the ground, that is the system and (in the US) you should not use it to exploit people.
Technically the employer is stealing their labour, the customer is paying the advertised price in a perfectly legal exchange.
If the staff don’t like this, they need to unionise and fight the employer to pay a proper living wage.
Some areas in the US have tipped minimum wage. Some areas have an actual minimum wage that is paid regardless of tips. Don’t accuse others of exploiting people when it is truly the employer backed up by the local state law. Blame your state and do something about it.
I didn’t expect one of the things to carry over from reddit is the rabid anti tipping culture and abunch of people making up shit to justify their preferences.
I now have a job that gets tips, if someone doesn’t tip IDC, the overall tips are good and I don’t know the story of the person not tipping. When I give a funny look is when someone hits the no tip button and looks up at me like they’re waiting for some kind of response.
I don’t have time to care about your financial state, you all are just making up shit in your heads to justify shit to yourselves
It’s not just people being cheap. I encourage you to read this piece and think about the ideas in it:
Tipping isn’t prevalent here so your comment seems strange to me. I’d never tip unless service was above and beyond. The reason why is that I feel companies use tips to depress wages, and tipping culture puts pressure on customers and not the company.
I don’t see why you’re angry at people who choose not to give you money in a system that allows them to choose, when the system is clearly the issue.
This seems like a weird take. Put another way, you’re withholding what you know to be fair compensation for services rendered as a form of protest against the company, but at the workers’ expense? Just trying to make sense of your perspective.
Then the workers need to unionise and bargin with their employer to get a living wage. It shouldn’t be on the customer being guilted into topping that up.
The fair compensation for the service is the actual price of the service I have to legally pay. How the worker gets compensated for their work is not my concern. The service worker is employed by the restaurant for example, not by me just wanting to eat a pizza.
Tipping is an optional reward for outstanding service, and american companies realised their employees could survive (probably) on tips so they don’t have to fairly compensate their employees. If you have to ask for optional donations from people just to survive you are just a beggar, the fair compensation for your work needs to come from your employer.
Hear hear. I’ll support any workforce if they unionise and fight for better pay. I won’t support them passively aggressively shaming customers for not wanting to pay more than the advertised price to top up wages they agreed to in their contact.
The way I see it is that the company is already withholding pay for this situation to even exist.
Americans are being led to believe tipping is the only way “unskilled” low paying work can exist. Yet these companies often make money hand over fist. They’d just make less money if they had to fairly pay their staff. But Americans seem to look down on the workers that do these roles, so companies get to exploit them.
If you’re salaried, imagine your boss randomly said to you “Sorry, I can only afford half your salary. But you can ask our clients if they could graciously donate a small percentage of what they’re paying for our services. Hopefully it makes up the difference.” You’d be furious! You wouldn’t agree to such a change. So why agree to it for food service workers?
I’m sorry, I misunderstood who I was responding to. I don’t get how to see the parent comments on this service.
I don’t care if someone tips or not. If you provide top tier service regardless of the tip amount, then the tips you get at the end of the pay period are quite good.
I’m upset and tired of the near conspiratorial tone and constant complaining about tipping. Would it be better if wages were better? Yes, but they are not, tip or don’t, that’s fine. Some people may get upset if someone doesn’t tip but I find it really unlikely that servers will even remember who you are by the end of the night much less hold or grudge or try and mess with anyone’s order over you not giving a couple bucks or so.
You know lots of us on Reddit were anti tip as we come from countries without the “pay your stuff under minimum wage and let customers top it up volunterily” culture. In the UK, I don’t feel guilty about not giving a tip as I know the waiter, delivery driver, etc is being paid a living wage to begin with. I may leave a tip of I think the service or food is above anf beyond what’s expected, but it’s not for every meal. I’ve noticed a lot of food places have delivery costs now they didn’t have before Covid so I’m less likely to top those drivers.
from the netherlands where this nonsense is starting to take root, i refuse to pay more than it said on the bill
i do not order or buy from places that dont include taxes in the price tag and report them whenever i come across them, i refuse to order from places that dont include the deposit on cans and bottles in the price tag, and i refuse to to tip people for just doing their job
ill tip if i messed something up, but i dont see any reason why i should pay someone extra for doing what their job requires them to do, especially since theyre at worst making the same minimum wage i am
Same in NZ. We have a high minimum wage and already pay pretty high prices for everything.
Some Eftpos/Credit card terminals will even ask if you want to tip when you make a payment. Such an awkward moment pressing “No” right in front of the person serving you.
Something I’ve noticed in the UK post Covid, is that take aways have a delivery charge and an option to tip the driver. Maybe I would have chucked him a few quid in cash when it was free delivery, but what’s the delivery cost for if not to pay their wages already?
Honestly I think the delivery cost is there because people are willing to pay it. Because they’d be “leaving money on the table” if they didn’t levy fees that people are willing to pay. I dont think the fee exists for any other reason.
