[HN Gopher] Has gratuity culture reached a tipping point?
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Has gratuity culture reached a tipping point?
Author : mikhael
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-12-25 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Title pun intended?
| kristjansson wrote:
| Of course, it's the New Yorker?
| politelemon wrote:
| Please accept my gratuitude
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Betteridge's law says no, it hasn't.
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Gotta love betteridges law; it saves me so much time not
| reading bogus articles
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| IKR!
| matt-attack wrote:
| I've never heard of it but can tell what it is from context.
| I agree.
| raverbashing wrote:
| "Betteridge law of headlines, do they always apply?"
| IanHalbwachs wrote:
| This article has never been written because no example of
| the law not applying has ever been found ;)
| paulddraper wrote:
| Gratuities are useful when they _follow_ the service.
|
| The porter carries the luggage, the waitress brings the food, the
| vallet retrieves the car, the technician fixes the furnace, etc.
|
| Some of the payment is up to the consumer, who can pay more for
| quality service.
|
| Tipping prior to service is dumb and pointless.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Tipping prior to service is usually a bid for priority in the
| work queue.
| paulddraper wrote:
| I wouldn't be sad if that were true, but I've never seen it.
|
| Like tipping the hostess to get a table faster? That works?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know how realistic it is, but it is a common
| tv/movie show trope to slip the host/hostess some cash to
| get seated quicker or a better seat.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| I once heard a lawyer explain that tipping is legally
| problematic.
|
| Service quality affects tip amount very little (~1%), but what
| does affect it is race, age, and gender. The result is that
| people doing the same job are being paid meaningfully
| differently. While the policy isn't discriminatory, the effect of
| it is, which means that it would likely run afoul of EEOC rules.
|
| The lawyer said if anyone brought a pay discrimination case to
| them based on tipping they would strongly consider taking it to
| court.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Service quality affects tip amount very little (~1%), but
| what does affect it race, age, and gender. _
|
| No shit. There isn't much objective meritocracy in work
| involving human interaction. Even Mythbusters proved bigger
| breasts gets you bigger tips.
| simbolit wrote:
| Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but "proved" is a strong word for
| a two-day experiment of a single waitress with no control of
| outside variables.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Well yeah, they were an entertainment show, not a research
| institute but I doubt you'll find anyone refuting their
| find though.
|
| It's a known fact better looking people get treated better
| by their fellow clothed apes in all walks of life,
| including and especially, service industry work.
| simbolit wrote:
| I am not objecting to the finding or the show, I am
| objecting to the casual use of "prove" where something
| has merely been plausibly suggested.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Correct. Things can be disproved by a counterexample, but
| not proved.
|
| A theory that "tips are _always_ determined only by
| service quality " is indeed disproved by Myth Busters.
| But that's not what he said.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Who would the case be against? The employer? So my ugly mug
| could sue over not earning what other servers did if I got a
| serving job?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You could potentially sue the employer for creating a
| discriminatory environment by allowing tipping is what it
| sounds like. Seems reasonable based on a preponderance of the
| evidence (civil bar). Not an attorney but interested to hear
| one's opinion on the topic.
|
| https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/84c39daf-0ec4-4eac-a52b-9.
| ..
|
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-b.
| ..
|
| https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-4/fifteen-p.
| ..
| pierat wrote:
| > The lawyer said if anyone brought a pay discrimination case
| to them based on tipping they would strongly consider taking it
| to court.
|
| Better be pro-bono. Cause no tipped worker I know could even
| afford an hour of lawyer time, let along dozens or hundreds of
| billable hours for defeating tipping.
|
| You all realize that tipped wage is $2.35/hr, which isn't
| usually enough paid consistently either.
|
| Restaurants and tipped places are THE WORST.
| jamilton wrote:
| Maybe a union or other worker rights organization could
| support it.
| jraph wrote:
| There might be a more efficient way of obtaining this
| through a union: strikes until the base salary is not
| enough.
|
| But in a country _and_ a field where unions and strikes don
| 't seem very common, this is difficult.
| hollerith wrote:
| >Better be pro-bono.
|
| If it is a good case, a lawyer will take it "on contingency,"
| meaning the lawyer gets paid only if his client wins.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > You all realize that tipped wage is $2.35/hr, which isn't
| usually enough paid consistently either.
|
| That isn't true in all states, in California, Oregon, and
| Washington (and MT, NV, MN, AK) they make at least minimum
| wage, tips are always on top of that, no tip credits are
| allowed.
| graton wrote:
| > You all realize that tipped wage is $2.35/hr, which isn't
| usually enough paid consistently either.
|
| That is the federal tipped wage (which actually seems to be
| $2.13/hr). It depends which state you live in. Seems like
| only 15 states use the federal amount [1].
|
| Where I live in Oregon tipped workers get the full minimum
| wage of $15.45/hr in the Portland metro area. There is also
| $14.20/hr for the rest of the state, and $13.20/hr for some
| rural counties. Some other states also require tipped workers
| to be paid the full minimum wage, but not that many.
|
| 1. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
| simbolit wrote:
| Tipping is great, if it is optional.
|
| I feel in many parts of the US it is now expected, if not
| demanded.
|
| This is bullshit. If your business model doesn't work without
| tips, you need to raise the base prices. And in pubs and bars and
| such you need to pay your staff a proper wage.
|
| Tipping is great, if it is optional.
| jart wrote:
| Tipping is basically a soft form of bribery, which isn't great
| at all. When it becomes mandatory, it's even worse.
| baby wrote:
| I want to hear a real argument against individual action, aka to
| stop tipping. I guarantee you that if we all stopped tipping
| today the system would change. There really needs to be a
| movement to reverse the shaming of customers and to fight hidden
| fees in the US in general.
| techscruggs wrote:
| Because not tipping someone that makes their living off of tips
| is a jerk move.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No, expecting someone to pay you when you do not clearly tell
| them how much they owe you is a jerk move.
|
| Simultaneously, laws that allow employers to pay different
| minimum wages and required extra effort from the employee to
| get the full minimum wage are also jerk moves.
| peyton wrote:
| I dunno, it's just from noblesse oblige. If you don't want
| to be generous to the people feeding you, then don't tip.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The waiters are not feeding me. I have zero evidence that
| the money I give as a tip goes to the people making the
| food.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| What about the person making the food? They arguably do
| more work than the person who takes the order (if at all,
| with how you scan a QR code these days) and they bring
| you the food. The tips are almost always for the wait
| staff and doesn't go to the kitchen.
| theultdev wrote:
| The cooks aren't being paid server wages, so you don't
| have to tip them.
|
| And no, servers do a lot lot more. Have you actually
| worked any of these jobs? I did both.
|
| There's a reason it's so damn cold in a lot of
| restaurants, serving is really hard work.
|
| Kitchen work is kinda fun, serving is not, but you can
| make good money if you're good, due to tips.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Interesting that you think not tipping is the jerk move, in
| my mind the employer not paying them living wage is the real
| jerk move.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The only mechanism I can see to make it stop would be for
| businesses that clearly advertise no tipping being more
| successful than other businesses.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| 1. It's not going to lower prices - prices will just go up to
| compensate for higher wages
|
| 2. You can't force a market to act in a certain way, you can't
| make everyone stops tipping.
|
| It's a problem which exists only in your head, decide how much
| to standard-tip in advance and then just use that amount to
| think about how expensive a place is. If people treat you badly
| for it (either bad service or reputation among peers) raise it
| and shop in cheaper places.
|
| You can't change the world, change yourself.
| Nathanba wrote:
| >2. You can't force a market to act in a certain way, you
| can't make everyone stops tipping.
|
| of course you can, simply make tipping illegal and it will
| stop
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| "Everybody just stop" is not a solution to this or any other
| problem, because everybody is not going to just stop.
|
| I've seen restaurants that put "we will add a 20% gratuity to
| every bill" on the menu, which is a good idea but restaurants
| still need to do it. And "every restaurant just do X" is also
| not realistic.
|
| My suggestions are twofold:
|
| 1. Remove any exception in minimum wage laws for "tipped
| employees". So at least they're now making minimum wage.
|
| 2. Outlaw tipping. Hard to enforce, but it does mean that every
| piece of software (apps, in restaurant screens) will no longer
| have the option to tip. So if people want to tip they need to
| do so in cash, and paying in cash is rare and getting rarer.
| jrajav wrote:
| The obvious solution is #1. Tip credits were a greedy and
| completely unnecessary policy from the start that should
| never have made it into law. Removing them again will
| undercut one of the main reasons everyone still feels
| obligated to tip at restaurants.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Americans, please just stop tipping.
|
| Thank you.
| theultdev wrote:
| No, thanks. Server wages would have to be adjusted first,
| unless you want to screw those servers.
|
| Please hold while I tip my waiter extra for serving me and my
| family on Christmas.
|
| I'm sure there's some other cultural practice that you can
| crusade against, maybe in your own country?
|
| (I do not tip in other countries like Japan as I respect their
| customs and wages are factored for no tip)
| jraph wrote:
| > Server wages would have to be adjusted first
|
| Yep, that's what we wish for your waiters and waitresses: to
| be paid correctly, so they can enjoy a salary that does not
| depend on their appearance and the customer's mood and the
| state of mind of all parties involved, and so we can have the
| right price upfront when choosing from the menu and not feel
| pressured to pay more when leaving. If you want to sell me
| fries for $5, service included, just put it like this on the
| menu already. Abstract away the implementation.
|
| While we are at it, please display the prices with all taxes
| included, in your shops too, I don't care about the prices
| without taxes, and I don't care for computing the tax myself,
| which varies from cities to cities.
| tifik wrote:
| To stop tipping would be the first step. The market would
| take care of the rest.
|
| But I know its not that simple in this chicken and egg
| situation.
| theultdev wrote:
| Yeah all of those waiters could just fallback on their
| massive savings and wait out the period between not being
| tipped and the laws changing.
|
| Meanwhile I'm the dick that didn't pay these people for
| serving me, in the name of some crusade an article told me
| to do.
| jraph wrote:
| Or, we could stop tipping _after_ the law changes. I
| think we all agree waiters and waitress should have
| decent income at all times?
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes that's my point. I was replying to:
|
| > To stop tipping would be the first step.
| slau wrote:
| The problem is that the outrageous tipping policies that you
| have infect the rest of the world.
|
| Good on you for not tipping in places where it's not
| expected.
|
| Now could you please go fix every travel blog that has
| bullshit SEO articles on "should I tip in $country" and
| always has the same BS content "5% if you're unhappy, 10-20%
| if you were satisfied with service, at your discretion for
| outstanding service".
| theultdev wrote:
| If I had the power to fix blog content I'd do a lot more
| than that.
| jraph wrote:
| > 5% if you're unhappy, 10-20% if you were satisfied with
| service
|
| Looks reasonable in the US from what I saw, aren't these
| the correct numbers? I know it varies from place to places.
| slau wrote:
| That was my point, that's it BS copy paste content
| created for Americans, yet it doesn't apply nearly
| anywhere.
| m000 wrote:
| https://archive.is/zG174
| bedhead wrote:
| I feel like this became _much_ more acute when Starbucks jumped
| on the bandwagon and forced every customer to opt in /out of
| tipping on the POS terminal. Obviously, Starbucks is ubiquitous
| and a frequent purchase and for decades tens of millions of
| customers who were accustomed to getting coffee without
| tipping...and everyone was fine. Then they changed things up and
| shoved these tips in customers' faces when the notion of tipping
| for coffee was/is strange. To this day I find it really off-
| putting and that annoyance has bled into pretty much every other
| interaction involving tipping.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I recall it being Clover, or whoever started those tablet point
| of sale systems in the early 2010s. After those arrived is when
| I started seeing tipping prompts everywhere.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Tipping where you stand in line to check out at a cash
| register has to stop.
|
| That's not "service". The employee works for the seller.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The major problem here is hidden costs.
|
| Airlines, for example, are rife with "junk fees". My favoritre is
| "fuel surchages". That shouldn't be a thing. The service is just
| more expensive to provide and thus you need to charge more. Then
| there are checked baggage fees, choosing seat fees, wifi fees,
| etc.
|
| Tipping is externalizing labor costs while underpaying staff. If
| you're at a restaurant that food and service simply costs more
| than the ticket price. You can say "you don't have to tip" but in
| a lot of cases that's not really true. More to the point, if you
| object to tipping, you're not hurting the owners. You're hurting
| the employees. Personally, I have a problem with that.
|
| If you _really_ object to tipping, the correct choice is not to
| partake in whatever that service is. Don 't go to that
| restaurant. If you do go and cheap out on a tip to someone who is
| otherwise earning $7/hour, I'm sorry but you're just a POS.
|
| Now some states mandate a (more) livable minimum wage (eg
| $15/hour). You can reasonably argue that tipping shouldn't be
| necessary but I guarantee you that you may well get yelled at for
| not leaving a tip. And I have a problem with that.
|
| Oh, another favorite "junk fee": Uber introduced a "safety" fee.
| They simply pocketed it and did nothing [1].
|
| I really object to the tip screens on touchscreen checkouts.
| These are even worse because typically the staff doesn't get
| _any_ of it. Ask them. They 'll tell you. It's just a pure money
| grab. You should _never_ leave a tip like that. If you want to
| tip staff, give them cash.
|
| There needs to be more government regulation on hidden fees and
| that includes tipping. We need to force employers to pay a
| minimum wage. If that means your business is no longer viable,
| then that's a "you" problem. Businesses that rely on exploitation
| and paying substandard wages should go out of business.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-safe-rides-
| fee-500-mill...
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| As an Englishman, I tip at restaurants as it is the only feedback
| I am able to leave with respect to the quality of the
| food/service. When the waiter asks "how's the food?" I am of
| course obliged to always say "very good, thankyou".
| theultdev wrote:
| I never base the tip on food quality, unless it was cold or
| something.
|
| The server has no control over that, not really fair.
| slau wrote:
| In many places around the world the tip is shared with
| kitchen staff.
| theultdev wrote:
| Not in the place where I live, so not applicable.
|
| Generally the kitchen staff is not on server wages in
| America and do not received a part of the tip.
|
| But yeah, if that's the case for you, go ahead and factor
| that in.
|
| You see my point though right?
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Haha - it's the same in New Zealand: "Fine thanks!", then off
| to write a bad review online.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Not reporting income from tips is also extremely common. Cash
| income may as well not exist.
| saurik wrote:
| > The filet-mignon crowd usually chipped in. Some customers
| couldn't. (Food stamps can't be used for gratuities.) "The
| tipping system is there to keep the base price affordable for
| folks like them," Reed said.
|
| This is stated near the beginning of the article but then
| doesn't, as far as I am concerned, get anywhere near enough
| discussion later on (in fact, it is an idea which seems to just
| get dropped).
|
| It feels, to me, as if what we are really doing as a _society_
| with tripping, is trying to figure out how to deal with our crazy
| levels of wealth inequality using a social norm to establish a
| makeshift wealth tax used to subsidize costs.
|
| While there are always momentary shocks and disruptions, over
| time the market always ends up taking this stuff into account: in
| the same way that restaurants realize they can lower the base pay
| if the server receives tips, the server is mentally weighing the
| compensation of being a server as including them (a premise that
| this article does explain near the end, with a story of the
| restaurant who realized that they have to keep bumping the pay of
| their kitchen staff to prevent them from realizing they should
| quit and get a front-of-house job).
|
| While we stare at this often with how we pay people, _it also
| affects the price_ paid by customers, _driving the base prices
| down_. A lot of people seem to refuse to do this analysis as they
| just assume that businesses can charge whatever they want, but a
| business that can charge whatever they want is a good sign that
| they are some kind of monopoly (a good test to apply to cases
| where the monopoly status is less obvious, such as Apple /Google
| and their app payment schemes).
|
| If a restaurant is receiving a lot of tips, competition with
| nearby restaurants--which can be brutal and downright cutthroat--
| is going to cause the base prices see on the menu to be lower
| than they would be if no one were legally allowed to tip. Of
| course, competition isn't perfect and some psychology effects
| here lead to indirect price collusion, but the denser the market
| the more this effect is going to work...
|
| ...but, even if the revenue to the restaurant starts to equalize
| --with both the base wages to staff and the base prices of menu
| items going down--in the same way that specific servers are going
| to end up getting paid more for any variety of maybe-awkward
| reasons (the article early on mentions a pretty explicit one
| involving physical features), _customers are also going to end up
| now paying different amounts_.
|
| And so, in a world with tipping, while _on average_ we should
| expect most people to pay something similar for their meals
| (again: if you don 't think this is true, you must not really
| believe in capitalism very much), some people are going to be
| _paying less_ as they decide to feel OK not tipping (or maybe are
| forced not to, as in the example in the article I quoted
| involving food stamps) and yet are benefiting from the lower base
| price.
|
| This, to me, makes the situation really complicated. Like, I sort
| of don't think I actually mind the wealth tax that I feel like
| this causes: I _can_ tip and so I find myself tipping more than
| people who don 't have the resources to tip the same way I do...
| but, it also feels unfair to me that I know there are people who
| do have the resources but are choosing not to tip, and my tips
| are going to subsidize their meals being cheaper.
|
| Like, when you see someone saying they don't tip, you might think
| they are hurting wait staff... they actually aren't, really, as
| the existence of these people means the base price of menu items
| is going to trend a bit higher to compensate. What they are
| actually doing to wait staff is merely adding a force which
| equalizes their total compensation slightly by moving some of
| their wages from the tip column into the salary column: they are,
| very indirectly, causing people who tip a lot to attractive wait
| staff to also pay a bit more for their food and for that money to
| go to someone who fails to get as many tips.
|
| They also are getting food which is massively subsidized by the
| people like me who pay a lot more via tips because we can and
| feel bad if we don't (and also probably like the weird social
| high it gives us, a thing I have written about in prior comments
| on this topic).
|
| If you like the premise of tipping due to the wealth tax premise,
| this sucks, as we are actively paying these people to exist (by
| indirectly transferring wealth to them); if you want a wealth tax
| we should just add a wealth tax using government, so everyone
| pays for it fairly--and the people who benefit aren't heavily
| biased towards the most attractive people--rather than using
| awkward social pressure to make people feel bad for not
| participating in the broken simulation of a tax scheme. Remember:
| if you actively go out of your way to subsidize people who don't
| care about what society thinks of them you are just training
| people to be assholes on all sorts of topics :/.
|
| (And, if you don't like the scheme--whether because you dislike
| the wealth tax or you dislike the broken de fact implementation
| of it and the biases it results in on the other side of the
| payments--maybe you can learn from this kind of analysis that you
| can have an outsized-amount of impact when you refuse to
| participate, as you aren't just benefiting yourself: that benefit
| comes from harming the people who disagree with you, and you also
| are actively contributing to the effect you wanted to see.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You can call this "noblesse oblige" if you like, I don't care.
| You tip because you can afford it, and server needs the money
| more than you do.
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