Perhaps you’ve noticed. We have reached a tipping point in the country over tipping.

To tip or not to tip has led to Shakespearean soliloquies by customers explaining why they refuse to tip for certain things.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers were grateful for those who seemingly risked their safety so we could get groceries, order dinner or anything that made our lives feel normal. A nice tip was the least we could do to show gratitude.

But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained; and customers are upset.

A new study from Pew Research shows most American adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Tipping was always stupid from day 1. I’ve spent most of my life being told I’m a moron for being against tipping culture and instead wanting fair wages and clear prices. Suddenly in recent years people realize how stupid tipping is simply cause it went to its logical extreme. People are morons.

    • TurdFerguson@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Every moron who doesn’t tip thinks this way. Nobody wants to tip, and hopefully someday it will be universally abolished, but until then, this is the way it is and people are just trying to supplement their minimum wages to make a livable income. So just tip them appropriately for the work they do for you already, you moron. I guarantee that as a non-tipper, you are on many service workers’ shit lists, so I guess if you’re not getting good service, it’s your own fault.

      • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        FYI, I don’t go to places that expect tipping. But thanks for presuming I don’t tip at all.

        Also, as a previous tip-based service worker, I know all this already. But again, thanks for presuming only YOU know things.

  • Eezyville@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Tipping needs to end. It’s the employer’s responsibility to make sure their employees are paid reasonably. Instead they pass that responsibility to the customer, ensuring tension between customers and staff.

    • enki@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      There’s nothing wrong with tipping. I like the option to reward someone who made my experience great. Keyword there is option. Employers should pay employees a living wage, and if customers want to reward a great job with a few bucks on top of that, that should be allowed, even encouraged, but should never feel obligated to tip or shamed for not tipping.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        You should feel ashamed for making someone act as your slave for minimum wage. The least you could do is pay them what they’re worth.

        If you don’t like it, don’t force tipped workers to work for you. You have full control here. You could just cook your own damn food.

        • enki@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          I said living wage, homie, not minimum wage. I think everyone should be paid at least a living wage, I just said tipping in general isn’t bad - it just shouldn’t be used to supplement poor wages.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            Okay, but they don’t have a living wage, so you don’t get to have that option. Either tip or stop using those services.

            • enki@lemm.ee
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              8 months ago

              What fucking conversation do you think you’re a part of? Because you’re clearly not reading my comments before responding to them.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                8 months ago

                You said customers should never feel obligated or ashamed. Never. I definitely feel ashamed of using these services and feel obligated to tip generously, and you should too.

                • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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                  8 months ago

                  You’re either intentionally being obtuse or are just plain stupid. Customers SHOULDNT be in a position of being forced to tip or be ashamed for normal acitivitues. Absolutely required tipping should not be a thing. It should be optional. It doesn’t matter what the current culture is, because that’s not the conversation. That’s the point.

                • enki@lemm.ee
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                  8 months ago

                  So we’re in agreement then? Why are you lighting me up when we’re clearly on the same side? You need to learn to recognize an ally and save the anger for someone who deserves it, or you’ll find yourself without any allies.

  • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Pizza Hut box: The delivery fee is not a tip to the driver.

    Me: Then why TF am I paying it?

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    The “pure greed” framing makes a lot more sense when talking about CEO pay ratios or something. Of course the server making the $2/hr tipped wage is “greedy” for more money, that’s called “wanting to live.”

    • NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Maybe instead of tipping more we should just get rid of tip wage.

      If businesses close, then they couldn’t be im business without exploitation of their workers and don’t deserve to be in business.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    it’s not your waiter’s fault that they’re stuck in a scam on the scale of a whole culture

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        It is of you decide they can starve over it.

        When sustainable wage ain’t the minimum wage tipping ain’t a reward for good service, it’s the wage earner’s solidarity tax.

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It is of you decide they can starve over it.

          Wanting them to work somewhere with they are paid fairly does not equate to that you have no problem with them starving.

            • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              No, it doesn’t.

              You can wish the best for them, and want them to have a happy and healthy life, and not tip them when they don’t do anything deserving of a tip.

              • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                Deserve ain’t the metric when they’re being paid below a living wage.

                You’re arguing they should provide five star service and suck your dick to “deserve” not needing to choose between heating and electricity that month.

                • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Deserve ain’t the metric when they’re being paid below a living wage.

                  The two are not connected though either.

                  You’re arguing they should provide five star service and suck your dick to “deserve” not needing to choose between heating and electricity that month.

                  No, I’m not. Please don’t put words in my mouth, especially emotionally hyperbolic ones.

  • snoopfrog@midwest.social
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    8 months ago

    There’s only one thing I still do that requires tipping, and that’s because I want to get tattoos. After I started seeing tipping screens at restaurants where I pick up my food at the counter, I stopped eating out entirely. I don’t even do fast food. I’m tired of trying to remember or decipher what is socially expected and am just done participating in that system. Just pay people a living wage, charge what you need to charge for that, and if you’re offering a worthwhile service, you’ll be fine.

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Just pay people a living wage, charge what you need to charge for that, and if you’re offering a worthwhile service, you’ll be fine.

      Someone tell me the reason why this would get downloaded?

  • SCB@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    We aren’t anywhere near a “tipping point” with regard to tipping. This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they’d still pay the same fucking total cost.

    If your server makes a living by your 15% then the actual service you’re being charged for costs 15% more than your menu price. You’re just paying part later.

    Your alternative to tipping is just servers being paid out X% of food sold, which means that food is going to cost more.

    Being bad at math is no basis for an argument.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      This is just a small number of people not wanting to pay for things, and not realizing that if tipping went away they’d still pay the same fucking total cost.

      That’s far better than my tips subsidizing the people who don’t tip. Tipping creates a perverse incentive to fuck people over.

  • SuperDuper@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I went to a brewery recently where they swipe your card at the entrance and hand you a little black credit card type thing. You find your own seats, you go grab a glass, and you insert the card into a slot at a beer tap and pour your own beer, priced by the ounce. If you want food, you go to a kiosk, put your card in, and order food. When it’s ready, you go to the kitchen and pick it up to bring back to your seat. When you leave, you bring the card back up to the register and they charge you for all the food and drink. But then it asks you how much you wanna tip. Who the fuck am I tipping? I was my own host, my own bartender, my own waiter, my own bus boy. I haven’t seen an actual employee here except for some woman who swiped my credit card during a 5 second interaction.

    • HorseWithNoName@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Wtf is the point of this. Even if they wanted to save on labor costs of wait staff and everything why not just use your own card instead of trading it for a temporary card.

      It’s like this pizza place I went to recently. They had a little arcade so I went to put some quarters in and realized I had to go buy tokens at a machine first. It wasn’t Dave and Busters or anything, just a hole in the wall with a few games in a corner. I didn’t buy any tokens. Same with laundromats that now want you to buy tokens ahead of time.

      There isn’t a single business anymore that isn’t trying to just blatantly scam you out of your money. They used to at least be more subtle about it.

        • wahming@monyet.cc
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          8 months ago

          You’re comparing weeks of spending to a couple hours at a bar though, I’m not sure if that’s really comparable.

          There’s a couple other reasons that apply as well:

          Because they get charged less by the bank for lower quantity of bigger transactions, instead of high number of small transactions. Also allows for people who have cash but no card to use the system.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.

    Versus how is always worked before?

    Because there is consensus on that, it was a very straightfor rule.

    The tip was a private transaction between a customer and an employee who went above and beyond the service that the employees’ boss require them to do, to perform the job to the customer’s satisfaction.

    It had nothing to do with the boss or the company they were working for (no tipping automation on the registers, etc.).

    And it wasn’t ever used in lieu of the employee receiving enough of an income at the company they worked at.

    • vonbaronhans@midwest.social
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      8 months ago

      And it wasn’t ever used in lieu of the employee receiving enough of an income at the company they worked at.

      Unfortunately that is not true. Restaurants in most states in the US have a law that allows employers to pay tipped employees a much lower wage (about 2 bucks an hour) with the expectation that tips will bring them back up to minimum wage or higher.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Restaurants in most states in the US have a law that allows employers to pay tipped employees a much lower wage

        You should check the year that those laws were implemented. They are a more recent phenomenon.

        Also as it’s been mentioned by someone else already, those laws included clauses to make sure if the tips were below minimum wage the employees income earned would be raised to minimum wage.

        And as an aside (as I’m sure somebody will mention this), I’m not saying that minimum wage is a living wage.

        But that is a different subject than the one that’s being discussed here, the responsibility of customers to tip employees so that they may have a living wage, in lieu of employers paying employees a living wage directly.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’m talking about the past, not the current situation.

        Versus how is always worked before?

        Because there is consensus on that, it was a very straightforward rule.

        The vast majority of people had living wages back then.

        • theragu40@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          The article is saying “before” as in “before the changes that happened because of COVID”. I don’t know when the inflection point was where we shifted to shit wages for traditionally tipped jobs, but it was many many years ago. When COVID hit we were not giving living wages to servers.

          • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            The article is saying “before” as in “before the changes that happened because of COVID”.

            During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic

            But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained;

            • theragu40@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              No. Tipping culture 100% existed before COVID. This isn’t an opinion. It’s well documented. You are either willfully ignorant or a troll. This discourse has run its course.

              • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                This discourse has run its course.

                “So shall it be written, so shall it be done.” /waveshandsabout

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    It was understood if you take a bottle of water from the cooler and place it on the counter, the only extra was a thank you to the cashier.

    I’ve run into this and it’s bullshit. No.

    I wanted to know if it’s ever appropriate to walk away and not leave a tip?

    “No,” Sokolosky said.

    Also bullshit.

    ETA: And this was a stupid article that was poorly written. The interview subject also had little insight. This wouldn’t have been upvoted if the topic wasn’t viscerally felt by USA citizens because there was nothing said.