To tip or not to tip?

http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/tipping-polite-gift-or-demeaning-hand-out/

by sergeant3 • 11 years ago

42 54 11 years ago

grecy• 11 years ago

I'm from Australia (no tipping) and have been living in North America for 9 years (always tipping) so this issue is close to my heart.

I've come to see tipping as a form of slavery, the only twist being it's paid - albeit very lowly.

It's a way for people with money to say "Hey peasant: If you do what I want, and if I'm happy about it, and if I feel like it, I might give you a little of my money. Or not".

Sort of like a work contract where the employer has ultimate power and absolutely no rules to govern if they even have to pay their employees at all. Of course, there are labor laws against that sort of thing in developed countries, so tipping is just a way to circumvent those labor laws.

It would be much better if those people were simply paid what they should be paid by their employer in the first place, and the terms of that were bound by labor laws.

I personally feel dirty every time I tip - it almost feels like being at a strip bar or something similar.

(To be clear, I always tip, because the people in those jobs rely on it. It's not their fault I don't like the system.)

tptacek2• 11 years ago

Do you actually talk to service staff about this? Do they tell you they feel enslaved and demeaned by large tips? I have had this conversation repeatedly, and not one server has ever told me they felt bad about tips.

boomzilla• 11 years ago

That's not fair. The service staff do not have an option to work in a place whether the salary is good enough that they don't have to rely on tips. Given the choice of working for 20 dollars per hour versus 10 per hour + average 15 per hour tip, I would go for the first option.

pjmorris• 11 years ago

My experience is old, but I once spent five years working in restaurant kitchens. My friends included plenty of servers, bartenders and other tipped staff. A couple of the places were pretty popular, and the staff was happy to be raking in good tips on high-priced food. One of the places wasn't so popular or expensive, and people were pinching pennies to get by. Opinions about tipping varied by place.

I suspect, given your taste and profession, that you might be talking to more servers at the kinds of places where they'd be happy to collect tips that exceeded, say, minimum wage.

EliRivers• 11 years ago

Where is this? Stockholm?

acjohnson554• 11 years ago

I don't think the parent poster mentioned anything about large tips. I myself read complaints about poor tips constantly in my Facebook feed, usually from the same disgruntled couple of service industry friends of mine. But then again, I don't think I have that many more friends in the service industry.

As far as I can see, tipping is not adds frustrating unpredictability to their income, but it also exposes them to discrimination.

As a customer, I find it annoying because it makes paying for my meal a math problem, particularly when dining in a group.

I see nothing wrong with a true gratuity for stellar service, but when it's just an unwritten (or written) extra cost, it's absurd. Just charge me what it costs to pay your service people.

amyjess2• 11 years ago

Oh, trust me, there's no shortage of retail jobs that don't do tips. You can work at a supermarket or a department store or any other store that employs cashiers. Even at a restaurant, you can always be a busboy or a dishwasher. If you're working a tipping job, it's because you specifically sought one out over other retail jobs.

People who work tipping jobs do so because they pay better on average, not because it's the only job available. Tips scale tremendously. If you work at a high-volume restaurant or, better, a restaurant with high prices, you'll be pulling in decent cash. And every once in a while, you'll get that mythican high-roller who decides to be charitable and drops a wad of cash on the table. Hell, a server at a fancy restaurant will be pulling in so much money that it would be absurd to categorize them them with other retail employees (once you get into super-fancy restaurants, serving is treated more like a concierge job than anything else).

Restaurant staff has a pecking order, much like high school. Of all the non-manager positions, servers are the most prestigious. Why? Because they make the most money.

yodsanklai• 11 years ago

I personally feel dirty every time I tip

I understand what you mean. I used to find it odd. But in the US it's just part of the custom. My understanding is that tipping is expected and nobody really thinks about it. I consistently tip "tax times two" in New York, regardless of the service quality.

scarecrowbob• 11 years ago

In Texas, that would be pretty skimpy. Perosnally, I tip 25-30%, but things are cheap out here.

BTW, I also don't tip based on service quality; I generally won't go back to a place if I don't like the service, but it's kind of expected that you're tipping... to the point where it's an ethical mandate.

vmarsy3• 11 years ago

It's a trade-off:

With tips you get some clear advantages over non tipping. The waiters have a huge incentive to give you a pleasant meal experience. This is very annoying to go to a restaurant and it appears to be more complicated for you to get water than it is when you're eating at home. This is what you often experience in no-tipping-countries restaurants. The tip is like an implicit contract with the waiter: Deliver me a good service, I will pay the price.

The cons: What about the kitchen staff, the host/hostess, do they get part of the tip? What happen when the food is terrible but the service awesome, or vice versa. But most important, as acjohnson55 mentions : but it also exposes them to discrimination. Sadly discrimination is real and tipping here doesn't help.

eridius3• 11 years ago

I think you're drawing a false correlation here between no-tip countries and poor service. There may be countries that don't have a custom of tipping and also have poor service, but there's very little reason to think that the two are actually related. For the same reason, there's very little to think that level of service in restaurants in the US is related to the expectation of the tip.

More generally, if a country seems to have poor restaurant service overall, that's a cultural thing. Introducing tipping would be unlikely to change it. To think otherwise is to think that waiters are only doing their job on the hope that they get a consideration, and that without that financial lure, they'd become lazy do-nothings. And that's both highly insulting and also illogical, because there's nothing unique about the job of being a waiter that would cause people to be lazy who would otherwise perform their job adequately in every other industry.

vilmosi• 11 years ago

"This is very annoying to go to a restaurant and it appears to be more complicated for you to get water than it is when you're eating at home. This is what you often experience in no-tipping-countries restaurants"

I think you are mistaken here.

In tipping countries waiters basically beg you to leave as soon as you've eaten. They are always around you to upsell something (bigger tip) or to passive aggressively bring you your check. Eating out for only an hour is common.

In non-tipping countries however, the waiter simply leaves you alone to eat in peace. They don't ask you "Do you need anything else" every 5 minutes. People on average stay out more because of this.

Which is why you feel ignored. Different cultures.

enneff• 11 years ago

The waiters have a huge incentive to give you a pleasant meal experience.

This is not true, in my experience. I have dined extensively in the USA and in many other countries and have not noticed any difference in the level of service provided.

joshmn2• 11 years ago

I waited tables for a while at a range of restaurants from very nice steakhouses to exceptionally-high-profile clubs. I'm open to questions about my experiences with tipping, horror stories, weird guests, and my genuine thoughts on the matter.

ghrifter• 11 years ago

If you have a repeat customer that is nice, but doesn't tip (or tips very poorly, like say 5%) does the staff treat him with less quality?

joshmn2• 11 years ago

These do exist, and they always receive warm welcomes. They're considered like family.

bgilroy26• 11 years ago

To tip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQPIgm2FpU0

edroche• 11 years ago

Reservoir Dogs was what popped into my head when I saw the title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qV9wVGb38

nemo16182• 11 years ago

As someone who's both received and given tips, I love them. Why? Because they're a dead-simple way to convert money to happiness. When I received a big tip, it always brightened my shift a bit. And now, every time I go out to eat, I know that I can do the same for someone else.

efewf• 11 years ago

Do you stand in the street and give people money? You can buy other's temporary happiness there too.

nemo16182• 11 years ago

Haha not exactly, but I do frequently give to the homeless. The money goes even further there.

amyjess2• 11 years ago

I like tipping high on servers and bartenders who have been exceptionally nice to me.

If someone is just friendly and helpful way beyond the call of duty, I'll probably drop a 25% tip in their lap just because if somebody makes my day, I want to make their day in return.

And then there was when my favorite bartender left his job at my favorite bar... I think I tipped almost 50% on his last night as a parting gift.

rascul• 11 years ago

From what I've seen, almost all restaurants where servers are tipped also pay those servers something low like $3/hr. I don't like tipping, but I don't like shorting them the money they're counting on to survive.

heyheyhey• 11 years ago

From what I've seen, almost all restaurants where servers are tipped also pay those servers something low like $3/hr.

This isn't true for every state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_State...

joesmo• 11 years ago

"Tipping looks like an anachronistic hangover from a time when restaurant staff were the lowest of the low"

This is unfortunately still the case in America. I can't believe the author writes a long, elaborate article mentioning tipping in America without mentioning the minimum wage for food service in the US. Federally, it's currently $2.13/hr though employers are required to compensate employees so they make at least minimum wage ($7.25/hr currently). Waiting jobs are not minimum wage jobs, however. They require a ton of difficult work and I would venture to guess that if waiters/waitresses were only paid the typical minimum federal wage, we'd quickly see a shortage followed by a rise in wages (the current average wage in the US is $11.82) (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...).

At least in the US, this is not up for debate until we change the law. Until the 'to tip' is the only answer anyone who wants otherwise, no matter how good their intentions, is just greedy. The discussion, at least in the US, should be framed in terms of legal issues, not customary or other issues.

I think we would do best to change our stupid laws, pay waiters and waitresses a lot more, and be done with tipping. It really is un-American. But then again, sadly, so is paying someone a decent wage.

pzxc• 11 years ago

The author of the article certainly left that out.

However, you yourself left out the fact that in a few states, including California, this is not true: employers are required to pay at least minimum wage, upfront, to all employees, including waiters/waitresses -- they cannot pay the lower rate and then only bump it up to minimum wage if tips don't get you there (which is what happens in most states).

Just thought I'd point that out for the sake of completeness.

Kalium• 11 years ago

One of the hidden complexities of food service is that tipping often serves as a tax dodge. Servers often wind up taking home a fair amount of cash but reporting poverty-grade incomes.

I knew one lady who got a Section 8 voucher this way. She definitely did not qualify on what she regularly took home.

waterlesscloud5• 11 years ago

I've known bartenders who had issues related to this. Not from the IRS. They rarely seem to bother with service employees who report a "reasonable" percentage of their sales as tips.

The issues were with lenders, when the bartenders wanted to buy houses. They had enough income to easily afford the mortgage, but no records that indicated that. In the end, they dealt with a local lender that understood the situation, but it was definitely a hassle.

scotty79• 11 years ago

"Tipping looks like an anachronistic hangover from a time when restaurant staff were the lowest of the low" This is unfortunately still the case in America.

Which is enabled by tipping.

acjohnson554• 11 years ago

I argued on another HN article about tipping that it's better to change the law to protect lower-income employees first, and then change the custom, as opposed to trying to fight the custom by screwing over your server and hoping the law will eventually change. Fairly sure diners and businesses would change their tipping behavior pretty quickly to accommodate any change in the law.

eridius3• 11 years ago

This is a good article, and it goes into detail in the origins of tipping and why different countries tip differently that I hadn't seen before. But it only covers the restaurant industry. What about all the other jobs where tipping is expected? How about jobs where we're unsure whether to tip?

For example, since this is Hacker News, how about all the service industry startups, such as the transportation companies Uber and Lyft, or Postmates, or Instacart, or the many others that have sprung up? Of all of these, Uber is the only one I can think of that explicitly doesn't provide a means to tip. Most of these companies do offer a way to tip (although they generally leave the default at $0). When I use one of these companies, occasionally I ask the driver / delivery person / whoever what the expectation is, and usually the answer is something along the lines of the tip is completely optional and is provided because some people explicitly want to tip. But this answer is very unsatisfying, since I don't know if they're being truthful or if they've been instructed to tell people it's optional. Ultimately, I'm always left with a little bit of anxiety about whether I really should be tipping, and if so, how much is appropriate.

ilaksh• 11 years ago

Tipping should go away, since it is a classist holdover tradition, but not until wages in tipping countries increase significantly, and that depends on overall economic health and structures.

I think people consider not tipping mostly because of depressed economic conditions or situations and then they rationalize it.

fakename• 11 years ago

I ate at a restaurant in Berkeley a few weeks ago that doesn't accept tips, but instead automatically adds a 20% gratuity to your bill. This is a good first step, but I wish they would go one further and increase the price of menu items by 20%, rather than separating the prices.

technotony• 11 years ago

Sous Beurre Kitchen in the Mission does just this:

http://sf.eater.com/2015/2/6/7974123/sous-beurre-kitchen-san...

dyadic• 11 years ago

I like seeing the service included in the bill, it makes it explicit that it's a separate thing from the dinner and something that I'm paying for.

pavlov• 11 years ago

So how about separate charges for cleaning and accounting?

The restaurant pays for a lot of other things too that are not directly part of the dinner. I don't understand why service should be considered special.

tass2• 11 years ago

How is the server's wage different from the rest of the cost of the meal (profit, chef's wage, rent, electricity, carpet cleaning, etc.)?

crimsonalucard• 11 years ago

I have no problem with a society that tips regularly and normally. My problem is what happens when you don't tip.

readams• 11 years ago

This article from the chef at the Linkery (mentioned in TFA) is required reading on the subject.

I think the fact that there is good evidence that tipping is often racist and sexist is perhaps the strongest argument against it.

Part 1: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

Part 2: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

Part 3: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

Part 4: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

Part 5: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

Part 6: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

gmays• 11 years ago

I typically tip quite generously (20-25%), but I hate the idea of tipping. I'd much prefer it was just included in the bill.

What bugs me the most is that it makes me stop and think about what to tip, which is why I always tip around the same amount.

I also don't always know when to tip. For example, I have a house cleaner coming this weekend. Is it customary to tip a house cleaner?

To tip or not to tip?

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