At what point did tipping culture get out of hand?
Posted by Certain_Hat9872@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 38 comments
[removed]
Posted by Certain_Hat9872@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 38 comments
[removed]
GooseStrawberries@reddit
I'm in the industry and I still tip based off the service given; if the server is bad I tip lower but wont go below 10% but I wont go above 15%. If the service is good ill do 25% at max. I think people just over think it or use it as a moral high horse.
porkbuttstuff@reddit
Covid
notthegoatseguy@reddit
It's been 15-20% my entire adult life and I'm 40. Anyone telling you it was ever 10% or whatever is karma farming or lying
Food delivery has always been a tipped thing, decades before Uber Eats even existed.
I'm not sure what you think credit cards have to do with tipping
ljb2x@reddit
Less lying and more location dependent I imagine. It was 10% for me growing up and I'm 36.
MrLongWalk@reddit
Anecdotally I feel like Covid was when businesses started adding a tip option to every transaction where there hadn’t been before, I work and attend a lot of brew shows with a lot of diverse vendors and I’ve noticed it jump since been.
nsbsalt@reddit
100% Covid and touchless payment adding making a pain to find 0 tip.
TillikumWasFramed@reddit
Today, when I was going to order a watch from a website and they asked for a tip.
fornefariouspurposes@reddit
I experienced that for the first time a year ago. I was flabbergasted.
Ravenclaw79@reddit
Past 10 years for sure. Suddenly everyone wants tips for counter service, and suddenly everyone thinks you have to leave 20%. It’s wild.
mordan1@reddit
COVID is when the predators struck.
Both_Painter_9186@reddit
They guilted middle and upper middle class folks who could work from home during Covid into thinking servers and service workers were basically heroes on the level of doctors and nurses. I honestly don’t remember it being that big of a deal pre Covid. Then people started tipping generously to be nice in early pandemic days and it never stopped- the bar just moved up.
snokeweed@reddit
It gets out of hand when people don’t work in the service industry themselves.
Hypnox88@reddit
I hate percentage based tipping. My sushi place I can get a drink and three rolls during their happy hour for about 35-40 dollars. OR I could get like ten orders of Fatty Tuna Belly and a drink for 200ish dollars. Same plate, some drink, same place, so why should I have to pay a 40 dollar tip for one of them?
Due-Use-3707@reddit
This is the exact conversation I had the other day. If I’m getting a coors light at a bar for $4 and then my buddy orders a local IPA for $12, why should the tip be the same for both beers? It’s literally the same amount of effort and work being put in.
Ok_Orchid1004@reddit
When Congress amended the Fair labor standards act in 1966 and formally allowed a “tip credit”, at which point employers could start counting tips towards the required minimum wage. And what was the logic? Businesses said that servers who make tips were making substantially more than minimum wage and it’s hurting their profit margins, so they should be allowed to pay them less than minimum wage and in theory, the servers will still be OK financially. IMO you should just pay people a living wage and do away with tips entirely.
pinniped90@reddit
Covid is really when the capital class realized they could fuck over Labor pretty much everywhere. That's when it went wild. The more tipping there is, the less pressure there is for Capital to pay for Labor and the more vulnerable workers are.
The next ten years will be telling as it begins to grip more and more of Europe. It starts innocently enough - a little "service charge" here or "optional" tip in places that didn't have it before. But it's definitely spreading as their corporations realize that they too can use this as a tool to undermine Labor and governments won't stop them.
MissFabulina@reddit
Covid. It was supposed to be temporary. Here were these service folks forced to risk their lives to serve us food. They should be tipped very well!
When the lock downs ended and things calmed down, tipping didn't go back the "normal". There was now a new normal. A much pricier normal.
1029394756abc@reddit
iPad point of sales.
TheBimpo@reddit
Covid, from what I’ve noticed.
It’s really easy to avoid this new phenomenon, just say no.
I tip my waiter, I tip my barber, my barista…I tip everybody that got tips 10 years ago. I’m absolutely not tipping somebody who’s asking for it.
Only_Presentation758@reddit
When they started handing you a screen with the tipping options on it. Why should I pay $50 minimum for average meal/service that costs $40? Just pay your employees better.
TsundereLoliDragon@reddit
It's not out of hand for me. I tip the same as I always have.
94grampaw@reddit
1947 is when it started to get out of hand
Kinetic_Silverwolf@reddit
I think it got out of hand the moment businesses and Congress felt it was appropriate to supplement wages with additional direct pay from the customer. If a business can't afford to pay it's staff a living wage it's not budgeting properly.
I personally think it was the introduction of Square and other services that allowed for payment processing on an iPad instead of needing a fully dedicated Point of Sale system. When every store can request a tip, even when they already pay a decent wage, it creates tipping fatigue for the consumer.
RudeCauliflower6785@reddit
It was all fine and understood until the rise of digital (iPad) cash registers prompting for tips on transactions which traditionally were not tipping situations.
Previously most Americans had an agreed upon understanding of what was and was not a tipping situation, and no one wanted to sound gauche by asking for a tip when it wasn’t appropriate. But now the Machine asks for the tip and lets the service prover avoid social awkwardness, and so we have seen a vast expansion of situations where the Machine asks for a tip and relies upon the customer feeling too guilty to refuse.
EmploymentEmpty5871@reddit
The entitled generation got older.
Dapper-Presence4975@reddit
The Boomers are already old and secure in their entitlements. It’s the rest of us tryna scrape by.
Quenzayne@reddit
People who live on tips are facing the same inflation and ridiculous living costs as the rest of us.
SphericalCrawfish@reddit
Except their 15% goes up with costs. Mine doesn't.
Dapper-Presence4975@reddit
Maybe, but their volume typically goes down as costs go up too.
Quenzayne@reddit
15% of the cost increase is pretty negligible compared to the increase in rent and groceries.
SphericalCrawfish@reddit
Sucks to be them just like it sucks to be the rest of us not getting a raise. They can have 15% or 0% it's up to them to mouth off about it.
Dapper-Presence4975@reddit
I’ve never been a fan. I think it’s degrading.
LankyJeep@reddit
I’m not tipping at a fast food joint, or buying a random item at a market
tipping is for sit down restaurants, bars, a thank you for manual labor help think movers, outfitters who help give you an experience like fishing, hunting, rock climbing etc., and some places like ice cream joints. The fact every store has a tip option now makes me hate the idea of tipping even though I know tipping actually allows people to earn more money than if they were paid a higher wage
GradStudent_Helper@reddit
I feel like COVID really ramped up the tipping culture. Businesses were struggling, home delivery was booming, and we were all experiencing new ways of doing things. It kind of made sense to tip the person loading your car with your pre-ordered groceries (something I had never experienced until COVID) or over-tipping the driver who was delivering your food to your house because they were out there risking interactions with other humans.
Things were out of wack, but we didn't mind because we thought it was temporary. But when coffee shops and other things started to open back up, we noticed that they were now using "contactless" payments where you could just touch your card or phone to a terminal to pay. But those turnkey solutions for businesses had tipping built-in... and now we were tipping for someone to literally hand us some ibuprofen from behind the counter, or whatever.
So, the standard tip went up, "asks" for tips went up, and now we basically are paying/tipping people just to have a job, because businesses won't pay them a decent wage. It really sucks and I hate it. Pay your staff, let us give them a star-rating if they warrant it, and then maybe give the "highest rated" employee a plaque on the wall and a $500 bonus for being a great employee.
Chronic_Iconic_Lady@reddit
I know part of it was when more companies moved to the ipad style till instead of a regular cash register. Those tip screens are a standard setup for the system the shop is using and the shop should have elected to turn it off, but didn't. Sometimes its because they thought it would bring in more money for the staff, and sometimes its just because they didn't want to pay or take the time to work out any customizations outside of importing their menu. But because at the time people were conditioned to tip when asked, it suddenly felt like we were being asked to tip everyone and everything. Eventually word got out, and nobody needs to feel bad about selecting no tip on those.
javiergoddam@reddit
Anecdotal: By the late 2000s the 15% thing was no longer standard for dinner service if you chose to eat someplace nicer than like... Applebees. But it was still fine and expected for lunch. Even by the mid 2010s, less than 20% was still acceptable for lunch at even nicer places. Even now 18% is still totally fine.
This has alot to do w what income bracket the restaurant is serving though, and what tier or type of restaurant that demo is accustomed to going to.
It "got out of hand" around the pandemic and a little after but I think the culture has swung back to people just doing what they wanna do and feeling fine pressing 0% when it's something like counter service, takeout, etc.
"Service charges" idk if you mean mandatory tip for table service in which case ok thats totally fine, I've never seen it be over 18% for parties of 6 and I've never seen it be over 15% as a blanket thing. Otherwise it's a name some BS the restaurant tacks on for itself and has nothing to do w a tip. If it is mandatory it is almost always bc a LOT of people don't tip at all. For example I noticed some places started doing mandatory tip when they started getting frequented by international students.
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