- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Summary
Tipping in U.S. restaurants has dropped to 19.3%, the lowest in six years, driven by frustration over rising menu prices and increased prompts for tips in non-traditional settings.
Only 38% of consumers tipped 20% or more in 2024, down from 56% in 2021, reflecting tighter budgets.
Diners are cutting back on outings, spending less, and tipping less. Some restaurants are adding service fees, further reducing tips.
Worker advocacy groups are pushing to eliminate the tipped-wage system, while the restaurant industry warns these shifts hurt business and employees.
Key cities like D.C. and Chicago are phasing in higher minimum wages for tipped workers.
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Tip fatigue is real. When every interaction with a touchpad asks you for a little something extra on top of inflation, it gets old fast.
I tip 20% when I get served by a person. I typically add 10-15% on carryout, for their troubles.
A brewery I go to weekly for dinner with friends recently changed the tip buttons on the pad to 18, 22, and 25. I like them a lot, but the place is pricey, and you have to go to the bar to order. They get the 18% button now. (I could do the math, but… beer)
A gas station that I go to added a tips jar a few years ago. Wtf. You aren’t doing shit but tapping on a sale screen. I really like the people working there. They remember me and we chat. But I’m not tipping you because I bought a Gatorade and you rang it up.
On the other hand, I dated someone from another country who didn’t live a tipping culture. When she covered a meal and didn’t tip, I’d leave cash because I know it’s expected. I was embarrassed that she didn’t agree with our custom.
Tipping needs to go. Just pay people a fair wage.
Door dasher in Australia here: after about 500 completed orders, I can say I’ve been tipped once, by this old lady like A$5.
Tipping is stupid. I’m not incentivised to do anything better. The app would just give everyone crappier orders if everyone tipped.
And now that Trump wants to make tips tax free, I’m about to tip even less. At least by the amount of the tax deduction.
I’m not in the best health so I do a lot of order at home.
GrubHub/DoorDash/etc. all calculate the tip based on the order + their fees, not the order itself.
If I order a $60 dinner, I’m tipping 20% of $60. Not 20% of $60 + your delivery fee and your service fee.
Stop tipping culture. Pay your workers.
I think at some point we need to agree as a society on a no-tipping day in which we stop paying tips, and just keep it up. After that point, no tipping for anything, and rather than not tipping being a stigma, tipping becomes a stigma.
Not tipping doesn’t fix the problem, it just hurts those barely getting by who are also victims of a shitty capitalist system.
Going Luigi on those furthering income inequality would be better.
We can do both. And the first encourages the second, as well as encouraging unions.
The whole threat of workers suffering without tips is the financial equivalent of terrorism. “Fork over the cash or these innocents get it”.
It needs to end, and it’s not going to end by giving into those demands.
Blame the companies, not the customers. I bought a $12 water at a concert and the attendant acted offended I didn’t tip. Don’t get mad at me.
I would never go back to that venue. $12 for a water…
Yea, we’re getting exhausted from being constantly barraged by demands for tips.
This is only going to get worse as late-stage capitalism continues to wring every last penny it can out of the working class.
American tip culture is fucked, and it has been for a very long time. Once gas stations started begging for a tip on my soft drinks I figured it was about time to rip the band aid off.
Unfortunately tipping less means wait staff are gonna get fucked – no way to soften that. We need to get to a place where their livelihoods aren’t dependent on generosity.
at one point they need to learn that to protect their livelihood unionize is the answer, not asking customers to subsidize what the employers are not giving.
I still tip wait staff 20% I just don’t tip at the grocery store. The most egregious I’ve seen was a tip at a full self-service counter. Like who am I even tipping? The cash register?
Worker advocacy groups are pushing to eliminate the tipped-wage system, while the restaurant industry warns these shifts hurt business and employees.
Imagine having to pay a living wage, burger prices would explode!
Except, for example, there is a 12.82€ minimum wage in Germany and a hamburger ist still around 2€ at Burger King (about 1:1 in $ atm). Food and work safety are stricter too iirc. Workers also have 20 days of vacation minimum (if your work full-time), 60h weeks maximum @ 40h on average, as well as extra pay for night, weekend and holiday shifts. And health insurance is about 200 a month at that income I think.
Edit: Oh, and of course still 5-20% tipps.
You are getting screwed over completely. Anyone who claims otherwise is your enemy.
We had 150 million people decide to keep things going the way they are. Until a major slice of shit hits the proverbial fan, nothing will change. The American population is too fat, stupid, and lazy to make the change on its own.
I think it’s more of a subsidizing thing. In the UK they get all these things and can’t budge due to pushback and culture, so they subsidize those costs with cuts to other places, like shrinkflation in the US, and other places. Costs went up to ship their foodstuffs all over the world, buuuut they enabled tipping at POS in the US, getting poor suckers to make up the difference (they hope)
Not an excuse, but if the US put in place the same things the UK has, fast food would lose their biggest cost subsidy for more expensive places like the UK, and prices would actually go up (because the corpo suits can’t take a fuckin pay cut obviously!)
People who earn tips don’t want “liveable” wages. They would hate the pay cut.
You can bet there was some more tolerance for it when there was some guilt for office workers staying at home while service roles had to stay on site during the height of covid.
The fact that so many point of sale make it a default thing to put it directly out there for someone to tip before any service is done and with that decision in view of everyone around doesn’t sit well either
I’m so fucking done with it, that I just assume everyone behind me is too. I happily hit that “No tip” button. Unless you provided an active service for me, or went above and beyond to get me something, then why do you deserve a tip? I have to pay you extra money for you to do your job correctly?
It’s actually driven moreso by the point-of-sale vendors. They enable it by default, because they make a percentage of the transaction as a processing fee. The merchant has to request that it be disabled.
You think you’re tipping the worker, you’re actually tipping Jack Dorsey.
I only tip at restaurants and when I get my hair cut. All of this new tipping stuff, I have always assumed was just a generic update to enable it basically everywhere… I’ve always hit no tip… I don’t feel bad for it… You’re not getting paid 2 dollars an hour working at some random place that’s not a restaurant… I’ve heard stories of employees not even getting those tips… It’s a push for greed… That’s it
And the default options are 20, 25, 30 some places.
Ive been at multiple places starting at 30. Fuck that.
I was in SoCal several months back and ended up in a candy shop. Nothing but drawers of candy on the walls and one desk in the middle with a young woman sitting behind the checkout tablet. I had a question or two, but she was neither helpful or knowledgeable (it’s candy. not a difficult topic). She seemed very disinterested in engagement.
Well, I finish my selection, she scans and the tablet shows the totals with the big tip screen (NoTip-15-20-25%). I was taken aback that her job would get tips and wondered if she was paid enough before I smashed the NoTip button to finish up since she hadn’t done a thing to merit one.
Wasn’t trump talking about making tips tax-free? It’s only going to make the problem a lot worse. Maybe the problem getting so bad will reach a breaking point and we’re seeing some of the effects of this aggressive push to shove tipping everywhere now.
When was a kid in the 90s, tip was 10% of the $20 bill. By the time I was eating out a lot in my 20s we left 15% on the $35 because we liked the servers. Now the check is $50 and the “recommended” is creeping past 30%.
Yes this irks me to no end. The tips were going up on their own, so why did the percentage go up?
Because wages didn’t go up
Wages don’t matter. Nobody working for tips wants to exchange it for wages. The money is in the tips, and that kept going up.
Im glad I never eat out due to dietary restrictions. Why does ordering more expensive food entitle a server to more money for doing the same amount of work?
I assume I’m probably just too poor to understand.
