I read yesterday one of the simplest - and therefore probably true (see Occam's Razor) - explanations of why all sorts of payment apps are suggesting tips for the shop staff.
American tipping culture has spiraled out of control, with more consumers opposed to higher service charges and suggested tipping amounts, according to a new Pew Research study published last week ... The problem isn’t tipping per se—it’s the pressure of leaving a gratuity when the service doesn’t warrant it. This so-called “tipflation” is irritating and confusing.
. . .
There’s a good reason businesses continue to nudge their customers with excessive tipping requests: wage inflation.
The service industry is struggling with labor shortages as more workers “reshuffle” into higher-paying jobs, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Meanwhile, a recent survey by the National Restaurant Association revealed that 62% of operators don’t have enough employees.
Coffee shops, restaurants, and other service establishments have ramped up wages to attract and retain workers. But they’re weary of raising menu prices to accommodate those higher wages.
“The wage workers are receiving isn't sufficient,” Boston University professor Sean Jung told NPR. “So now everybody is using this very weird way to increase wages while maintaining the same menu price.”
There's more at the link.
It's relatively easy for consumers to simply refuse to tip, or tip negligible amounts - particularly if they're financially stressed and can't afford the expected 15% or 20%. (I don't know why some payment apps are suddenly suggesting even higher percentages. Do they think I'm Croesus or something?) Sadly, the people caught in the middle of this fuss are the shop staff. Their employers pay them as little as possible, because they're also financially stressed; but their customers refuse to tip, because they've never tipped for that kind of service in the past, and see no reason to do so now. If the employees ask customers to tip, the refusal is often less than polite.
I've seen this in many settings. I've never bothered to tip someone who merely gives me advice on where to find something in a store, or rings up my purchases, or makes a pizza behind the counter for me to collect. They're not rendering me any personal service like a waiter or waitress. My wife and I try to tip well, because we've both been short of the ready more than once, and we know what it's like to not be able to afford the necessities of life; but we're both getting tired of the increasing tip entitlement attitudes (for want of a better description) that we're seeing around us. The other day I heard a friend complain that she'd been asked to tip at an oil quick-change shop - something I've never heard of before. Why? I can't for the life of me see any personal service involved in that transaction.
How about you, dear readers? Let's hear your tales of tipping woe and inflated expectations. I'm sure there are plenty of stories out there.
Peter
If you take the muffin out of the display case and put it on top for me to pick up, you don't deserve a (preselected) tip. Another example is the pizza delivery. $2.50 delivery charge tacked onto the bill, and they want a (large) tip on the total bill.
ReplyDeleteNo.
I was told the proliferation of tip requests was because the software that runs the POS system defaults to Tips, and it is extra cost to have it removed.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, I tip my hairdresser, my waiter, and the staff at my local coffee shop. I don't live in a part of the country where there are more people than that to tip - no taxi drivers, doormen, or delivery people in my rural town.
I have always been opposed to tipping. I think that tipping is a custom that has needed to go away for a long time.
ReplyDeleteMy rule goes something like this:
ReplyDeleteGet my own drink/order at the counter, no tip
Get my own food but not my own drink, like at a buffet place, 10%-ish
Full service/delivery, somewhere close to 20% unless the service is extraordinarily bad or good.
I've also been blessed so far to not run into tip entitlement.
As to the story, while I can understand restaurant owners not wanting to raise menu prices because it means less business, I also can't help but think that changes that push people towards cooking for themselves rather than hiring it out are good in the long-term for everyone. If nothing else, just for health reasons--if I eat a full lunch at a restaurant I usually don't need supper.
I tip the barber, and the waiter or waitress who waits on me for entire meal. And the guy who gets my pizza to the door while it's still hot, in 30 minutes or less. Baggage handlers and bellmen, sure.
ReplyDeleteThe folks at the package place who hold parcels for me get a plate of Christmas cookies every year.
(The mailman gets jack, because I get the newbs learning how to walk a route every month, and they screw up harder than the DMV.)
Handing me my order across the counter doesn't rate a tip.
Neither does anything else I can think of.
But the first guy who prints those gun show fake $3 bills, and leaves the back blank, is going to see me buy 5 pads of them.
Stamped on the blanks side will be: "Here's your tip: Get a better job."
I pay with cash, and that usually defeats the tipping app. I do tip good service generously, but the thing with the card where they expect me to add in a tip for doing nothing extra at the register...no.
ReplyDeleteI worked in a restaurant in '76. Tips were 10%. Then waitress started complaining that inflation was eating away at their income. Note the the cost of meals goes up from inflation just as the cost of rent goes up from inflation.
ReplyDeleteI still base tips on a 10% norm. Really great service will get you 15. I once tossed a penny across a room into a empty beer pitcher as a tip for bad service.
Like LL, I prefer to pay cash, that way I don't have to deal with the idiocy... Having spent time overseas where there is NO tipping (because people are paid a decent wage) I much prefer that mode of operation.
ReplyDeleteFor good service, tip in cash handed to the server, that way they can avoid tax on it, if they so choose.
ReplyDeleteI admit to doing the one penny thing a couple of times myself. Once in England when the waitress told me I was embarrassing her by eating the peas wrong. Other than that it varies. Usually 10% and then up (or down) depending on service but not for things like oil changes. Primarily I tip at restaurants. The last time was at a buffet style place my grand daughter wanted to go to. Waitress was extremely busy but still had time to keep the drinks at our table and brought replacement silverware immediately when one of the grandkids dropped the silverware on the floor. She also asked if everything was all right and could she get us anything a couple of times. Tip was 30% (yeah it was Christmas time).
ReplyDeleteOccam was a 13th century monk often tasked to investigate claims of miracles. He claimed that the most obvious solution was probably the right answer . This is the 21st century solutions exist in the realms of chaos and increasing entropy using occam as an arbiter of truth in modern times is begging confusion
ReplyDeleteIf I fel a tip is warranted I leave it in CASH. My tip is NONE of Uncle Sam's business!
ReplyDeleteWhat gets me is the restaurants that include a MANDITORY gratuity! I ALWAYS push back if I see this on my bill! If there is no signage stating mandatory gratuities will be charged, then there is NO WAY the restaurant can charge you for one! The price of the food is right there in the menu. So is the price of the drinks. THAT is ALL I will pay! ...And believe me; I can get LOUD when necessary...
Bottom line has the state tax so always make sure that you are not paying a tip on the tax. Caught that on two last week.
ReplyDeleteThe underlying issue behind tipping is... The Mandatory Minimum Wage.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because that has driven inflation more than the OPEC oil embargo ever did. Raise the minimum wage and ALL prices get adjusted up. ALL of them.
Thus, the tip for everything has become a common feature.
The only way to really defeat this cycle of inflation is kill off the minimum wage, which is actually "$0.00/hr."
Tip monkeys can go rotate themselves.
I have a friend who works at the local diner. She rescues dogs and cats. She gets thems spayed, neutered on her dime. I know her situation and I alway tip very well. It's one way to help her that doesn't look like charity. Not that there is anything wrong with charity.
ReplyDeleteMy DH and I are retired federal employees, now full time farmers, and parents/grandparents. We are OK financially, but certainly are not any threat to the 1 percenters.
ReplyDeleteWe live a few miles from a smallish County Seat. It offers pretty much everything my farm and family needs to operate. There are the usual small town shops, theatres, farming supply and heavy equipment stores. We also have fast food and about a dozen sit-down type restaurants of various quality. Tipping and tipping requests have spread noticeably, but not to the point where it's bordering on the InYourFace mode. I do not suffer from guilt in any form and only leave cash tips on the table.
No tipping is expected in the retail shops, though the pizza places and sandwich shops have a tip jar, or if someone is having a hard time, they put out a donation jar for a specific task (food, clothing, Christmas gifts for needy folks or people who lost homes in fires, have medical bills, etc.) Tipping is not even expected at the farm stores where the loading dock guys have to load 50lb bags of feed and equipment into your truck.
The primary places that tipping affects me are the restaurants. DH and I like to go out to eat (or get carry out) about 2 or 3 times a month, esp Sr. Night at IHOP or lunch at Chili's if a friend or relative is in town.
We never do delivery - most places are only 15 minutes away on the hard road. Food prices have gone up, alcoholic and soft drink prices have gone bonkers, desserts are not ever on the diet, so we are mindful when ordering, but as for tipping, about 20 percent is our usual for wait staff and always based on the totality of the bill before discounts, etc. These are our neighbors and they work hard to do a good job. It's a blessing that we can afford to be somewhat generous and help our community out a bit here and there.
We also support our local charities and community "help" banks - focusing on benefiting the people who live here. Charity begins at home.
I hate tipping and wish it would go away, but frankly that means that wages will have to go up, prices will go up regardless (to whatever point customers will tolerate), and we will simply stay home or cook from scratch those 3 or 4 days a month that we are now using as Date Nights.
I was a Girl Scout and am a pretty good cook, but even I get sick of my own cooking from time to time. When I include the very basic entertainment value of going out to the Silver Diner or picking up a pizza, the small tips are OK. And yes, we consider the drive from and back to the farm to be "entertainment." You can get really cabin-fevered on a rural farm where most people living there aren't people at all.
The food and drink are better and less expensive at home. So we're never in a tipping situation anymore.
ReplyDeleteBeans, inflation is caused by pushing more money into the money supply. The minimum wage has contributed more to lost jobs when people can be economically replaced by automation. While I agree that the min wage should be eliminated try this exercise. Take min wage in 1980. Figure out what CPI adjusted min wage should be today. Look up your state's min wage and compare. Now, do you believe the CPI? Peter's run enough posts on it and frankly I look at my own tracking sheet to measure inflation. Other indices are price of a big mac or a can of tomato soup.
ReplyDeleteSome of you guys who sound like you don't tip, check the local wages. Many service staff only make a couple of dollars an hour and the rest of their pay is in tips. Peter's run enough posts about inflation that you should know what is going on. I work part time in a big box store and they have raised wages 6% in a year which I think is much better than many other employers around me. My wife is working for an employer who doesn't do raises, only bonuses. We tip around 20% for good service. Wait staff are NOT highly compensated and are not keeping up with inflation. In Europe you have career wait staff who make a livable wage, in the US not so much. Yes there are exceptions, especially in the cities.
Where businesses are pushing for tips that did not do so previously, they are trying to pass inflation on to you by keeping wages below inflation. Small businesses know they are in a price battle against the conglomerates. Don't hurt the worker caught in the middle. We can't all be CEOs and in fact many folks that I work with are there just to pay the bills. Strangely enough waiting on you is probably not their sacred purpose. Have a little compassion.
I am so glad to live in Japan where tips are generally perceived as an insult. Also where we haven't had as much inflation so there's less of this trickery. Not none, shrinkflation is absolutely a thing and grocery prices are certainly up on pre-wuflu levels, but not as much.
ReplyDeleteJPY1000 will still buy you a good sized lunch tax included and no tip required - even in Tokyo. With the yen's weakening this year that equates to about $7, but even if you ignore that and look at the prior exchange rate of $9-$10 I think you'd be pushed to get a similar amount of food in a US fast food place and it would be impossible in places of similar urban density to Tokyo (NY, SF, LA, DC etc)
I don't know when the expectation changed, but in my youth a standard tip was 10%. And that was limited to things like restaurant wait staff, barbers/hairdressers, and bartenders. If you went someplace fancy you might tip the hotel staff or parking attendant, but those are things that most places in flyover country don't have. Now they're asking for 15%-20% standard and go up from there. It's ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had been out of work for some good time, like months, and literally about a week from moving into my car, and then landed quite a nice situation, I treated myself to a sumptuous prime rib feast.
ReplyDeleteAnd left the waitress $100 cash tip, by way of thanks to a generous Deity for my new situation. It was mid-December too.
I never missed the cash, it probably made her whole month, and everybody won.
But that was my choice.
I don't tip. I give them a gift. A tip gets taxed and/or divided. A gift is not taxable or shared, unless they want to share. If they don't know the difference between a tip and a gift, I explain it. Some folks are VERY appreciative, thank full about the difference.
ReplyDeleteOnline ordered a pizza for pickup last week. *I* will drive, I will park and go in. I won't mess up their tables, and I won't generate their trash. And on the online order form they wanted to know how much tip I wanted to add.
ReplyDeleteI killed the order because I don't want to have to second guess what they are doing to my food when I put tip=zero.