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If you can't afford to pay your employees a decent wage, you should raise your prices or you shouldn't be in business.
There are a few places here in Seattle which have eliminated tipping, raised prices, and raised wages. I greatly prefer this, personally speaking. Add no, I'm not going to start tipping every random cashier just because they start prompting me to.
The problem is - restaurants in most parts of the states cannot reliably do that. They’re going to see a higher price and they’re probably walking out soon after. Or worse - they stay and leave a shit review because they set their expectations at a higher bar of food quality than was provided.
If we could unilaterally remove exemptions for tipped wages, I’d see the possibility of it becoming much more common.
Most restaurants in America as they exist now should not exist. We're essentially all subsidizing low quality, frozen food.
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.
I hate the tip before service prompts so much! If I am gonna tip, it’s coming down to service. If you ask me before to tip you based on the price alone, I’m out.
I made an online order for a restaurant a while ago, and there was a tip option with a message that said "100% of tips go toward supporting the restaurant." First of all that's a super vague statement, and secondly, that's not what tips are for. Tips are for supporting the specific people who serve me, not for supporting the restaurant as a whole. Why would I want to leave a tip when I don't even know where the money is going.
Obviously I can't be sure without knowing exactly which restaurant it is, but it is probably a message in response to how the delivery apps were capturing customer tips and delivery fees for themselves and sharing nothing with the restaurant. There was a period of time where restaurants were getting added to delivery apps without the restaurant's consent. They're probably trying to make you feel like you're supporting them by paying the tips and fees directly to them.
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 would not object to a law banning establishments from requesting tips before service has been provided.
They shouldn't request tips at all. Tips are only shops 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.
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.
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.
When I was a kid 10% was the standard. I don’t know of any other profession whose pay has doubled in real terms during my lifetime. As far as I’m concerned, if 15% isn’t enough, too damn bad.
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
Which means the longer that the minimum wage for tipping remains $2.13 for nearly half the United States - we’re probably going to see that social expectation rise to 25%.
Which honestly- sucks more for the workers than most of us who will be shifting to that level of tipping. Because it will be met with social resistance to wanting to pay more, and probably a period of actually less income for them.
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).
Exactly and I also love spicy black beans and beef, it's delicious and cheap. Cost like $0.75/meal and you can cook them in a large batch that feed you for a week. People are basically addicted to consumerism and it really shows when they don't know how to cook.
my favorite thing is places that have a 20% gratuity automatically added to every bill to compensate employees fairly (i am begrudgingly accepting of this even though it should really just be on the menu price) but then have an extra line for tip on top of that. and sometimes that extra tip line calculates a tip for you based off of the already added 20% gratuity. insane.
I love that vast majority of Europeans don't tip. At least the ones thinking rationally.
Lately I've been at some finer diners in my country, and the payment terminals now have an option if you want to tip.
I've made it a rule never to tip. Even if the service was magnificent.
Out of all the things I don't want my country adopting from the US, the tipping must be somewhere in the top.
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?
I was browsing a retail website and when they automatically added a +10% tip on the advertised price I noped out immediately.
- Pay employees a decent wage.
- Long past time to get rid of the lower tip minimum wage
- I will choose to go to no-tip places
How do Americans budget when you don’t actually know how much things are going to cost you? I’d be lost without my spreadsheets
We generally estimate for the same percentage tip every time, and we keep careful track and then we have an accident and go bankrupt from the medical bills anyway.
(Canada). Sit down table service, delivery and taxi I tip standard % pretax, everywhere else, will be only after if I really enjoyed the experience and not more than $5. Also I tip less if their sign has a price less than what I actually get billed (it's happened several occasions). I try to pay tips only in cash so that they actually go to the waitstaff and not to the creditcard company or the manager.
I work inside at a popular pizza chain. While tips for pickup aren't required, they are appreciated. But it's wild to think that $16/hr isn't cutting it and rather than pay us more than the minimum, they give us an option to shake a tin cup to our customers. Fucked up.
Bad idea. If you get enough tips they can start paying you as if you're a tipped wage employee, shooting your pay down to like 2.13 an hour + tips federally in the US. States have different allowances that can be higher than that, but most don't. You only need to be making 30 dollars a month in tips for your employer to legally start paying you as a tipped wage employee.
src: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
That's protected from happening in my state of Washington, thankfully.
I've never heard of this happening to insiders in other states, though, because other places already pay minimum wage for kitchen staff. If one place decided to pull tipped wage trickery they'd have a massive exodus to a competitor. Delivery drivers on the other hand rely mostly on tips and management figures that they can take the abuse and tipped wage if they're making more than most inside staff anyway.
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
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?
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.