I've drawn a line in the sand. I'll tip (and tip well!) for traditionally tipped jobs, like waiter, bellhop, barber, barrista, bartender, etc. The hundred new things that corporations are begging for? Hell no. Absolutely not.
I will not tip at a drive-through oil change service.
I will not tip at a fast food counter.
I certainly will not tip at a convenience store.
Every single new tipping situation is a company begging me to subsidize their employees' wages instead of increasing them. Screw that. I'm not participating, and they can't make me. Those existing jobs were grandfathered in: waiters make below minimum wage on the expectation they'll make it up in tips, and that's f'ed up, but I can't change that by myself and I'm not going to stiff someone making sub-minimum to prove a point. All the others? Those cheapskate bosses can get bent. Pay more if you want to keep good help. Don't literally beg me to donate money to your employees as a charity.
Indeed! Tip for where you think they added value. I tip for well deserved work. I tip the USPS postal guy once every few months and holiday season. I tip where services are free, but the employee has to deal with some kind of hazard or discomfort, or work that I would not do myself. If I have a delivery of a large item, I tip the UPS/FedEx. Don't tip anywhere where they trick you into tipping, but give tips to lots of others who never expect a tip, have a much tougher job than serving food.
I believe tipping is primarily cultural default and companies using human psychology to guilt them into it. Most Americans worked at restaurants while attending college. They are conditioned to think its perfectly acceptable for an employer to pay $2.13/hour and customers must pay tips to support them. This became a cultural default. There is another cultural phenomenon, people mostly go out on dates to restaurants, usually the man foots the bill, and wants the woman not to think of him as a cheap person.
All checkout systems now ask for a tip, and another asking to donate to their own charity (Ronald McDonald House Charities or some other garbage charity), guilting the buyer into giving a tip and/charity for the billionaires 'non-profit'. We foot the bill for the billionaires generosity and kindness, they will go give TED talks on how awesome they are.
Because Maria works so damn hard cleaning those hotel rooms, and if I take a stand on principle and don't leave her a tip when I check out, the only ones who will suffer for it are her and her kids. Should I instead write her a note about how we're helping society improve?
I don't think thats the problem. Moreso something like this that was intended to help people that needed it is being taken advantage of. Every cafe with $6 espressos will ask you for a tip nowadays. What's worse is that a lot of places default to adding a 15% tip when these screens show! And there is no way of knowing where these tips are going unless you pay cash.
Those are legally not gratuities in the US but a “service charge” if they are mandatory. The worst part is that you have no guarantee it is actually distributed to employees, and it is charged sales tax unlike gratuities.
Do you not work hard for your money? Do you not market your skills to the highest bidder? Why do you have agency but Maria can't be expected to?
Hotel cleaning staff are harder to find than you think. If Maria is made or broken based on your $2, she can find a job that pays better. You enabling her through a system of random rewards may actually hold her hostage in a bad situation.
No, she can’t. Cleaning staff ware not hard to find. Cleaning jobs for fair wages are. Our economy works because we negotiate the cheapest labor we can for the highest output. Tech isn’t even different. We give options to people in lieu of cash on the hopeful promise that we’re gonna blow up and be work silly money. When was the last time you worked an unskilled labor job?
It's literally one of the least racist possible names, having origins in Hebrew, then moving to Greek and Latin. You'll find 'Maria' as a name in most European languages, even non-Romance languages acquired it from Christianity.
I moved from US to Australia a couple years back, some notes on tipping.
- Not only is there no tipping here, things cost what they say they cost. Taxes are always added in. Worst case you pay 2% for a credit card fee.
- There is basically no tipping. I see jars occasionally but it's not a thing.
- Service is often not as good but fine. If you want a second drink, go up the bar, mate.
- However you NEVER self-bus your table here. I've seen almost no restaurants with bussing stations, which were very common in Seattle.
The wages are higher, healthcare is covered, taxes are higher. When I went back to US earlier this year the tipping culture shocked me - POS 22 / 25 / 28% -- wth?
Agree there is no way to change this as an individual consumer. But I sure don't miss it.
When restaurant food was cheap, tipping wasn't a big deal, especially before the trend of paying for your food first at the counter. A $10 meal and a $2 tip for a waiter/waitress that took care of you - not really bad.
Today, that same meal is $35 - $40 and wages haven't kept up for most, so not only does the tip have to increase, but people are also just eating out less. Lately it seems restaurants are closing left and right. So I think restuarant tipping as a percentage of all tipping is probably really on the decline
What's sort of come up in its place over the past few decades is the payment system asking you for a tip before you even get your food. I think there is a backlash against that, as well as tipping in non-food places. I'm seeing more and more Instagram posts about it.
WTF? A $10 to $40 jump? I haven't seen that anywhere around here, and I don't live in a cheap county, either. This is 100% about where you live and eat. This is not normal at all.
Just before the pandemic I'd go have a pizza and beer nearly every Thursday to a nearby place. A medium pizza and a pitcher of beer was ~$16-18 (depending on beer selection).
Today in that same place, same pizza and same beer, is ~$50. So I only go about once a year.
I live in Westchester county, just north of NYC, one of the most expensive places in the country. I get a large pepperoni pizza from the place down the street from me for $25 every week.
The Beefy 5 Layer Burrito used to be under $1. Yes, that was like 15 years ago, but we're still talking like a 300% increase. Even the regular bean burrito has doubled in price!
Because the minimum wage under US law for a tipped job is $2.13/hour and most find it socially and morally problematic to deny that person their primary source of income.
To break the cycle, we need to force all employers to pay their employees a living wage.
Maybe where you’re at, people working a job can afford to live. Imagine if you lived in a society where a waitress relies on tips to pay for their children’s doctors appointments.
> Because the minimum wage under US law for a tipped job is $2.13/hour and most find it socially and morally problematic to deny that person their primary source of income.
So if you feel you are morally responsible for a waiter's salary you have to tip. But if you feel their salary is not your concern you don't have to tip. Why aren't more Americans like me (I'm not American)?
>Because the minimum wage under US law for a tipped job is $2.13/hour and most find it socially and morally problematic to deny that person their primary source of income.
This is a common but incorrect meme and misunderstanding. Setting aside that the federal min wage of $7.25/hr is a universal floor and states can (and many do) go much higher, the difference for tipped jobs is that it becomes a "guaranteed minimum" instead of "guaranteed payment". Ie, for an untipped job, the employer must simply pay minimum wage or higher, period. For a tipped job, the employer must pay the $2.13/hr no matter what, but if the amount of tips the employee gets plus averages out to being equal or greater than $7.25/hr the employer doesn't need to pay more. However, if the employee does not get enough tips to reach $7.25/hr, the employer must make up the difference. So ultimately nobody is allowed to end up with less than minimum wage. The law just allows a different path to get there for tipped employees. If nobody tipped at all, employees would still get minimum wage (or higher).
Of course, it's completely reasonable to argue that federal minimum wage itself is disgustingly low. It doesn't auto-adjust to reflect inflation, and the highest purchasing power it ever had was back in 1968. Congress last increased it to $7.25 in 2009 and has left it that way 17 years later. Even by official definitions of the federal poverty line (themselves grossly outdated underestimates), minimum wage is below it. But it's still not good to confuse the matter by claiming any employer is legally allowed to let their employees end up with below minimum wage (that some certainly break the law is important too of course).
Edit: Straight from the horse's mouth (department of labor's FLSA page):
>The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires payment of at least the Federal minimum wage to covered, nonexempt employees. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 an hour in direct wages if that amount plus the tips received equals at least the Federal minimum wage, the employee retains all tips and the employee customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips. If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.
>Some states have minimum wage laws specific to tipped employees. When an employee is subject to both the Federal and state wage laws, the employee is entitled to the provisions which provides the greater benefits.
"However, if the employee does not get enough tips to reach $7.25/hr, the employer must make up the difference."
Not disagreeing, but I can recall a couple of workplaces that did not do that. (One at least was sued by a former employee after they quit, but my sense was that the employer treats even the lawsuit as just the cost of doing business.)
It’s a Lose for the employees of the current system. You’re cheekily superiorly saving a few bucks on a cause that isn’t going to be helped by snubbing a servicing worker.
There are a few tip free restaurants around, it’s sort of rare. Tipping at basically every random shop is out of control nowadays tho.
That’s not my experience at all, as a European who frequently travels to the US for work. If anything, I’d say that restaurants in the US are slightly more expensive without tips, definitely more expensive with.
> I’d say that restaurants in the US are slightly more expensive without tips
That's entirely possible, but then again people make far more in the U.S., so the cost of living is generally higher. Taking that into account, I don't think the cost of eating out is higher than in Europe.
Having seen some examples online I am pretty certain that in most areas prices in my high cost of living country are not more expensive. And that is with 14% VAT and no tips.
My experience is that European restaurants are cheaper and better. Especially in 2026 with the Trump inflation hellscape. Everything from McDonalds to local high end restaurants.
Certain commodities are even more shocking. You’ll get the best loaf of bread that you ever had. in France, Spain, or Italy for two euro. In most American cities, unless there happens to be a functional local bakery, you’re looking at a seven dollar defrosted loaf of bread at a supermarket that tastes like cardboard.
To formalize what other comments are saying, the current state is a Nash (dis-)equilibrium: no consumer can gain more by changing their own strategy if we hold all other consumer's strategies fixed.
Basically if you individually don't tip you're just hurting someone who's underpaid by the tipping culture system. I agree if _everyone_ stopped tipping simultaneously the system would become untenable and have to change, but it would be pretty painful for the workers involved in the interim.
Perhaps the only individual in the game who does have a positive incentive is the business owner, where going tip-free can gain a good rep among customers and get more business if viewed as ethical and stably priced. I've seen this grow a bit more common in California restaurants but it's certainly still rare. Most business owners would rather just participate in the dis-equilibrium and coast off the shadow subsidy.
Can someone even be underpaid by tipping culture? To my knowledge every tipped position has a federal fallback on the minimum wage, and untipped positions receive tips as bonuses on top of their hourly/salary wage.
Like, a waiter may start at $2.25/hr, and if they work for say 20 hours that week and get $150 in tips, for an effective wage of $9.75/hr, they’re above fed min wage. However if they only get $50 in tips? Now they’re at $4.75/hr, and their employer is federally required to supply the remaining $50, on top of whatever the state may require.
It would be interesting to hear from someone in the service industry (it was 40 years ago for me) since I believe that in practice employers get away with underpaying their employees all the time—even though legally obliged to compensate them.
I've drastically reduced my tips. I'm done with this system in the USA where they are allowed to advertise price X, but you're expected to pay X+Y, where Y might be a fee or a % of X.
And the way the system is trying to sneak it in everywhere more and more makes me revolt even more.
Last time I was in a restaurant and I tried to pay with the QR code thing it suggested I paid 20% tip on top of the total + tax. Tip is supposed to go on the part before tax. Sneaking it in makes it so that the people working there think they get paid better, without the employers paying their fair share.
It should be on the employer to ensure that (s)he is properly remunerated for the work (s)he does, not the customer who has no insight in that contract.
Last time I visited Miami Beach, I found out they have a forced 20% gratuity at restaurants. And still ask for a tip on top that. My friends and I were likely tipping >40% for subpar service and overpriced drinks for a few days until someone noticed it on their receipt.
No way. I routinely tip 20%, rounded up. If the place has a mandatory tip, I add max(0, 20-[service change]) to make up the difference between that and 20%. If it's 10%, I'll add 10% more. If it's 20%, I'll add 0. If it's 25%, I'll leave a bed Yelp review and never go back.
I’m visiting Austin tx and was in a restaurant last night. On the menu it said party of 4 means automatic 20% tip added plus a 4% “administrative fee”. So 24% tip automatically added to the bill. Fortunately only had two people with me. They got zero from me.
Because then you’re just being a dick. It would have to happen some other way, like regulation, or enough establishments explicitly banning tips and then demonstrating increased profit as a result.
The comments are talking about two different things. There's traditional tipping, like at restaurants, barber, etc, where you supposedly tip for good service, and there's the newish POS (point of sale) tipping screens that are showing up everywhere and are a dark pattern for extracting extra money for doing nothing.
A slightly more sensible minimum wage of $18/hr in Ontario has made it comfortable for me to avoid the most ridiculous tipping like fast food workers at Starbucks or when I pick up my own pizza. But I’m still happy to tip servers, cleaners, mohels, hairdressers, or anyone who could make me look ridiculous, really.
Short answer: More people rely on tips for their living than people who are bothered by it. Even the ones who are bothered by it, are not bothered enough to do anything about it.
It’s hard to stop because it means denying a dollar or two to a human in front of you who wants it and tried to earn it during your transaction. It’s not immoral, just less than ideal, so it’s endured.
The only reasonable stand is to advocate for living wages but we’ll never do that in numbers strong enough for it to happen. Tipping has gotten out of hand but so has the cost of living.
You don't tip because you are stingy as long as the minimum wage has not increased to the point where these people could live of it. (Hint: they currently can't.)
Studies show that people with these attributes consistently receive more tips than others: young, female, white, and beautiful. On average, that is; you may be completely fair when you tip. So societies would be less $X-ist if tipping vanished.
I'm American. I think the net effect for me is that I eat out less often since tipping frustrates me. I also leave five star reviews solely for places that don't ask for a tip at the counter when I do eat out.
Asking as a non-American: have any businesses (restaurants, bars, ...) ever tried operating with a no-tip-necessary policy? To see whether customers reward this business model?
Looking at the comments, can a business operate with transparent, "this is what you will pay at the end" prices shown (which include everything like taxes)? Is this even allowed?
You do not ethically have the option of not tipping in an American restaurant. If it's table service and they don't specifically say not to tip, you either tip or don't dine there. Tipping is part of the compensation structure for the front of the house. Refusing to tip is ethically comparable to wage theft.
Then just skip the BS and make a 15% tip be a mandatory minimum. Its so strange that you can be seen as an asshole by not spending money optionally, despite it being a societal virtue to be smart with your money and not spend more than you need in any other context.
Tip, don't tip, do what you like. Not everything needs to be regulated by social standards. Feel like tipping? Do it. Don't? Then don't. Pretty simple.
It's a tradition, it's how the system works, why would you change that.
That said, I feel like sometimes this is pushed with those tablets with tipping options that present 20% 30% and 35%. Especially in situations where you self serve by going up to the clerk, as a non american it feels like I'm being scammed by a tourist trap, I might press 30% out of feeling that it's customary, but then an American might know the actual rules and either tip 15%, or not tip at all since it isn't customary to tip for self service.
We should bring back the tradition of child marriage and cutting off hands for stealing a loaf of bread
...wtf kind of argument is "this how it been so it is how it will be"
This forum has no room to argue it's a different kind of place.
Now that software is a dead end career cause AI HN is the same old blue collar Main Street dogma and tribal gibberish of any old typical bulletin board
Second of all, this is a convention issue, like tabs vs spaces, it could be one way, it could be the other way, in that sense I don't see how arguing that it could be the other way is helpful.
Either restaurant bills can be higher, or they can be a tad lower and tip is soft mandatory. It doesn't make much difference which way it is, the end result is the same. There's problems if you come from other conventions, in the same way that your device might burn if it comes from EU and you don't have a transformer.
Mainly because it makes you look like a tremendous douchebag and does immediate harm to real employees for an intangible cause that looks like grandstanding. I say this as a person who hates tipping but mechanically leaves 20%.
I have no problem tipping for service. Tipping when I pay in advance and get no service beyond being handed my food — what exactly am I tipping for? I don’t think people are opposed to tipping in general, it’s just been applied to everything.
One time I was forced to pay a tip for self checkout at the Austin airport. I was in a rush for my flight, it prompted, and I could not find any way to opt out.
You are tipping because of an arrangement in America whereby you share the costs of table service with management. That arrangement was originally designed to solve a principal-agent problem, but it hardly matters whether that problem exists today.
It's a collective action problem, a massive scale prisoner's dilemma where if everyone cooperated we could be in a better world but that just sweetens the social rewards for those who turn traitor and keep paying the tip. And if we collectively do not hit the "tipping point" and force employers to pay better then the employees just suffer. And in the mean time I enjoy a meal that is cheaper than the market can bear because the whole system is propped up by this system of cost misdirection that I have sidestepped. So I am getting an unfairly cheap meal.
Disagree; dancing like a chimp for some coin jangling in grandpas pocket is where this sense of obligation to earn money started for us as kids
Sensory memory reinforces our agency more than philosophy; we're replaying visual memory just like we were shown
All these startups need to jump yeh high raises hand to arbitrary height to get funding because of gramps old rules
Better keep line go up for old rich will financially engineer this economy right off a fiscal cliff! (Google simpsons fiscal cliff for context)
And more specifically to the "no one is worried..." you should get out more cause I encounter "we owe it to our elders to carry on their ways for all they did for us" type conclusions a whole lot
We could collectively action around less stupid jobs like knowledge work. We're well outside the post WW2 rebuild that fostered "endless growth" mentality in elders
84% in the US live <100 miles from their childhood home collectively acting just fine
I think a majority are capably collectively acting where they are; not sure where you see a deficiency there
I just hate corner stores and take out places expecting tips. I flat out refuse to do that. Please tip only for real service and sit down restaurants, thank you.
> I've read lots of articles about how Americans hate their tipping culture.
You misunderstand.
There is tipping in restaurants, and then tipping in other places where it's much more traditional to not tip.
While some people don't like restaurant tipping, it's generally the other type of tipping the ruffles feathers. But in those cases, you don't have to tip.
> But tipping is optional
Again, you don't understand. No, tipping is not always optional. It's known and part of the bill in certain circumstances and this is known ahead of time.
> If you don't tip you both help society improve
I don't know, having been to European and American restaurants, I find the American restaurants to be far better at service. Couple that with free refills and other amenities (like again... actually good service), I wouldn't see it as better.
If the waiter interrupts you when you don't need anything, it's bad service. If the waiter is not there when you need something, it's bad service. American restaurants tend to err too much in one direction and European restaurants in the other. It's up to you to choose which way you prefer.
I personally prefer going to restaurants when I'm in Europe and using delivery in the US.
Good servers should have ways to anticipate our needs and be proactive.
I've got a real pet peeve about something. I order my drinks and meal and the server starts dropping stuff on the table, and when the main course comes, they set it down and then ask, "is there anything else you need?" and due to whatever mental issues I have, I am fundamentally unable to tell them, on-the-spot, "yes" because I do not know what is missing. As soon as they turn their back and walk away, my mind refocuses on the food and I notice that yes, I do need something else. But they have gone away.
Even worse: if I'm a regular and I know how their food is served, I may anticipate stuff, like "can you put a second cup of butter with that?" or "could you add more tortillas?" and they always go "yeah" and then they don't do it. Because there is some unspoken restaurant rule that says they are supposed to serve the dish as-is, and then the customer expresses his needs, and there is a back-and-forth like that. It feels like an absolutely ridiculous charade to me.
Many dishes are deliberately served with not enough bread, or not enough sauce or dressing, in order to induce the diner to speak up and say "yes please bring more" (implying "ooh I like this food and I want to keep eating the rest of it") which is, again, a ridiculous charade, but seems to be a universal written rule for table-service restaurants in the USA.
And guess how this plays out when a table-service restaurant packages up food for delivery instead? That's right: they can never include enough dip, enough dressing, or enough bread/tortillas to complement your entrée, because they are still adhering to the "back-and-forth with the server" rule, but there is no server, only a taxi for your burrito, so your taxi driver eats all the gratuity, and you eat half the meal before running out of dipping sauce.
I will give bonus credit to a particular Ethiopian eatery here which just closed down, but if you ate in their dining room you'd ask over and over for more injera, but their delivery orders were miraculously packaged with extra injera to consume with the entire meal. Bless their hearts.
I don't mean to be rude, but have you ever considered that most people simply don't ask for extras like that?
When asked "is there anything else you need?", the most common replies by far are going to be along the lines of the next drink order or where the restroom is.
If anything, most people never finish all the sauce or bread. The restaurant is not trying to gauge what you want, but what makes the most sense based on how everyone else consumes it. Why be wasteful?
Most people? Most people? Are you somehow a better fortune-teller who knows what transpires at "most people"'s tables?
I cannot even comprehend "next drink order or restroom". Waitress just set down my main course, hot and ready to eat, and I don't know where the bathroom is? Didn't I wash my hands on arrival, or just after ordering: here's the menu back and please direct me to the restroom? The waitress is literally asking if she can bring me something so that I can begin eating. That means: condiments, utensils, send this plate back it's wrong. If my drink's empty, she proactively points it out and offers a refill. She wants to know if she is gonna return to this table, or if she's done and she can serve others now.
This is an objective experience. I can promise you that I'm not being unreasonable about sauce or bread. It's not a matter of drowning food or trying to use more sparingly. There is always objectively less than half as much sauce, as food to put it on. I have literally argued with waitresses about how much sour cream to bring out for potato skins and they seem simply forbidden to anticipate that. They will come out with 1.5oz instead of 1 and point out how much bigger the container is... when I need 3oz or more just to finish the plate.
Or in a Mexican restaurant: fajitas or some other DIY dish, comes with tortillas alongside it. The customary method is to scoop the fajitas into a tortilla and make your own tacos as you go. But there are 5 servings on the plate and only 2 tortillas. The math ain't mathin' and there is literally no way to fit in a skillet full of fajitas in 2 of any size tortillas.
That Ethiopian restaurant knew exactly what they were doing. They gave enough injera to eat a little bit of the meal. The injera is your utensil, and you cannot eat Ethiopian food without it. Imagine if you gradually ate your fork during a meal and your fork disappeared 1/3rd of the way through it. You would probably ask for 2 more forks. That is injera in action.
How do you know that "most people" would never finish 2 tortillas? Do they just like, stop at 1 tortilla and 1 scoop of fajitas, and then tell the waitress to just trash the rest of their meal? I cannot comprehend this assertion. Often, running out of tortillas just prompts me to start eating with a fork. It's not wrong, but it's not customary Mexican dining: you put 'em in the tortillas because that's what tortillas are for, and tortillas are overflowing endlessly from every metate on the planet.
They know how to spam you with food, because the free tortilla chips know no bounds, and they'll refill your soda without asking first, but somehow it takes an Act of Congress to put down adequate, complementary servings of tortillas. It's fucking obvious.
No. When I finish half of my potato skins and the sour cream runs out, then I ask for more, because the full plate of potato skins is what I paid for off the fucking menu. I want to finish my meal in a normal way, please. I fucking ordered enough food to eat and I didn't order 3x as much so that they can throw it in the fucking garbage when I leave. I will do the tortilla dance and keep asking for tortillas until I finish the fucking fajitas plate because I paid them to eat in the customary fashion, and they know exactly how it works.
Restaurants do care about this charade, because if the diner sits at the table asking for more bread, they'll probably ask for more cocktails or dessert, and they'll consider raising the tip. More time spent dining, and asking for more, is profitable for them. It is profitable to over-serve large portions for the main course, because it looks generous, feels satisfying, and it doesn't cost much more to do so.
And again, this absolutely craps out when they wrap it for delivery, it gets to your door, you run out of sauce and/or bread, and you indeed trash 2/3rds of the fucking $60 meal because it's not worth eating incomplete food.
And yes, I do mean to be fucking rude, when I get second-guessed like that.
What would be examples of the tip
being part of the bill?
For me, if it IS on the bill it's a service fee and not a tip. If it's not on the bill, it's technically optional by definition regardless of social norms that'd make it practically mandatory.
Tips in America are not gratuities. Tips in America are wages. If you do not understand or accept that tips are wages, then you will not cooperate with tipping culture here.
Our federal administration recently decreed no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. This is a judicious move; although it unfortunately enshrines tipping even more firmly, it gives relief to the rank-and-file worker.
Generally, employees raking in cash tips always faced a tax-time dilemma: record and report all my tips from my job, and be taxed on them? Or just let it all slide under the table. Surely, nearly everyone does it. So, "no tax on tips" simply encourages you to report them without being docked for it.
Tipping culture is business-friendly. It gives business the opportunity to hire more workers for more hours, and simply offload the wages onto the customers. End-stage capitalism's finest hour.
As I mentioned earlier, tips in advance for services like food delivery? Those are bribes, not tips. They're also wages, but they're also bribes. It's fairly disgusting. I hate tipping. But I hate stiffing workers, and I personally enjoy a reputation as someone who cares about tipping people for services provided.
That being said, I encounter rampant “tip cheating” in my everyday life. In my state, there are businesses authorized to solicit tips, and the rest are not authorized to do so. However, a common sight on the countertop is a clear glass jar with cutesy decorations on it. They are not allowed to write “TIPS” on this jar, so you will see many creative turns of phrase. But, they are illicitly soliciting tips from you in the silence.
Ethical employees of ethical companies generally are discouraged from allowing customers to slip cash into their pockets. They do not want to get this kind of custom started when they are not authorized to accept gratuities. But it seems perfectly normalized to silently and passively solicit gifts from fake tip jars. The ubiquitous “take/leave a penny” tray is exactly the same low-grade tip cheating in convenience stores. So beware of this practice. If it is incorporated into their P.O.S. flow, I would expect it’s legitimate.
Found the USA-hater! No, it is not "corruption" when the IRS specifies non-taxable income. It is not "corruption" when workers are incentivized to report cash income! OMG it is the opposite!
It is obviously deeply ingrained corruption that cash tipping, and under-reporting, has been a national pastime for decades. In fact, as the "cash discount" policies increase nationwide, there will be more corruption at the till, with entire sales going unreported. However, since many Americans in 2026 are accustomed to cashless payments, cash tipping was on its way out, and it's really hard to falsify or under-report credit-card-based gratuities!
Now that the IRS specifies non-taxable gratuities, the workers have ample incentive to simply track and report it in the open, especially the cash, because they're not docked. That... increases transparency and consumer honesty. When workers are more accurate/honest in their tax returns, the IRS garners better metrics on wages and gratuities nationwide. Everyone wins.
If I seem to be repeating myself, I am. I have no idea how this is "more corrupt" than the status quo ante. Who is corrupt in this scenario? The IRS for passing up revenue??? Please make it make sense, America-hater.
If you're rich enough to consider an extra 20% on a meal "marginal" then good for you. I am too, at this point in my life.
But we need to recognize that as a privilege. For most people (including me, ten years ago) that's absolutely not marginal. Most people are having to budget and count their money carefully even at amounts you are privileged do dismiss as having no relevance.
Having the privilege of wealth is fine, up to a point. Being so wrapped up in it that you don't recognize it as a privilege is not fine.
I think many Americans feel a moral obligation to tip when asked, and when presented with the opportunity it suddenly becomes a decision between spending a few bucks or wondering if you won't be welcome to come back next time.
It can be insulting to be considered "cheap" and that's the label you might gain if you stop tipping.
We've heard from waitstaff and restaurants for decades that this is part of their income.
I think the only way this changes is through regulation or a seismic shift in this mentality causing people to stop tipping, resulting in waitstaff retention issues, resulting in restaurant owners paying better.
I wish the "morality gun" would point back at those who ask to be tipped, the same way a beggar who asks if you have some spare some change is castigated (in most places)
You aren't in the right for being "openly angry" at a customer who doesn't voluntarily pay an optional tip. Either raise the prices and pay your servers more, or shut the fuck up about it (the angry people, I mean).
It's not in any practical sense optional. Refusing to tip is stiffing service staff on their compensation. That's the arrangement, at least in table service restaurants. If you're not comfortable with that, don't patronize those businesses.
In any sense optional? What about the literal sense? If you're not comfortable with _that_ arrangement, stop making it optional.
The only people stiffing service staff on their compensation is their employer shrugging their shoulders and not pricing the server's labour correctly. Your compensation agreement is between you and your employer, I'm here to pay for goods/services in exchange for the amount of money that we agreed on.
It's just not really my problem, and getting openly angry at me means you're the asshole, sorry.
You can tell yourself that as much as you want, but there is a decent chance staff will confront you about this on the way out the door, and nobody in the restaurant watching that happen is going to think staff are the assholes.
Tips are part of the compensation structure for front of the house staff. You are ethically obligated to tip.
Yeah, the staff would be assholes by any measure. Publicly confronting a paying customer, demanding a tip. I've personally never ever witnessed such a scene. Have you?
I attended church for years without tithing at all. I didn't feel able to. I definitely did not get cornered or lectured or confronted by the priest for my deadbeat spirituality. My own conscience eventually prevailed, as surely a non-tipper's conscience would.
Actually, the receptionist called me once and brought it up in a non-judgemental way, and I was the one who lectured her, saying I was volunteering and contributing an abundance of my time and talent such that I was making up for the $0 tithing. And she noted that down in my record, and the notes were still there when I got her job years later. It was kind of amusing to me, remembered as the guy who mansplained stewardship to the parish office. But I also brought it up directly in private with my pastor, who was unwilling to... command me to begin tithing.
Waitstaff is literally paid to be kind and courteous to customers. Even if they personally obviously hate my guts they are still polite and non-confrontational. There are plenty of non-verbal ways for you to give bad service and express hostility to diners in the food-service industry, that do not involve confronting or insulting them.
The theory is that gratuities reward great service and so a gratuity paid should be commensurate with that outstanding service. I don't know if this is true anymore, because I only adjust upwards in exceptional circumstances, and it's not often that waitstaff goes "above and beyond" in obvious efforts to earn higher tips. Not even in those breastaurants like Hooters.
It is customary for a diner to leave $0 or $0.01 in retaliation for blatantly bad/rude service. It would also be customary to never return, if you're that offended. Surely, if the party did return, the staff would be entitled to treat them rather poorly. They could conceivably refuse service to a non-tipper. But why though? And why in the world "confront" a customer? That will surely earn 1 star on Yelp and Maps.
If a particular server earns $0 tips, rather than confronting customers, they should probably pause to consider what went wrong at that table. The management should take notice if this happens on the regular. Far from confronting customers, $0 tips should generally considered a signal of bad service or dissatisfaction, don't you think? If someone already felt they were mistreated, how does a confrontation address that issue?
Try to have some self esteem. If you don't feel like you can stand up for yourself feel free to give them a 100% tip or whatever, maybe they'll cheer for you as you leave. Perhaps other people watching will join in.
Again, your compensation is between you and your employer. If I don't tip, perhaps your employer should be paying you more. Raise the prices to account for this.
Not tipping your waiter is a dick move. A bad tip for bad service is one thing. No tip is just antisocial. You're not "sticking it to the man" by being a jerk.
I'm not trying to "stick it to the man" or imply the server is bad at their job. I'm paying the agreed upon price. If servers need to be paid more to do their job they can demand more in wages, and the prices can raise to account for that.
Not paying your employees and evading taxes isn't a dick move? As someone from the rest of the world that seems like the core definition of being societally anti.
If I lived in that utopia (/s), I'd go around with a labelmaker to print out the prices of menu items when 15% (is that enough, or still cheap) is included, and stick them next to the prices on the menu.
Heck, someone should vibe code a mobile browser extension to do that for online menues...
I've drawn a line in the sand. I'll tip (and tip well!) for traditionally tipped jobs, like waiter, bellhop, barber, barrista, bartender, etc. The hundred new things that corporations are begging for? Hell no. Absolutely not.
I will not tip at a drive-through oil change service.
I will not tip at a fast food counter.
I certainly will not tip at a convenience store.
Every single new tipping situation is a company begging me to subsidize their employees' wages instead of increasing them. Screw that. I'm not participating, and they can't make me. Those existing jobs were grandfathered in: waiters make below minimum wage on the expectation they'll make it up in tips, and that's f'ed up, but I can't change that by myself and I'm not going to stiff someone making sub-minimum to prove a point. All the others? Those cheapskate bosses can get bent. Pay more if you want to keep good help. Don't literally beg me to donate money to your employees as a charity.
Indeed! Tip for where you think they added value. I tip for well deserved work. I tip the USPS postal guy once every few months and holiday season. I tip where services are free, but the employee has to deal with some kind of hazard or discomfort, or work that I would not do myself. If I have a delivery of a large item, I tip the UPS/FedEx. Don't tip anywhere where they trick you into tipping, but give tips to lots of others who never expect a tip, have a much tougher job than serving food.
I believe tipping is primarily cultural default and companies using human psychology to guilt them into it. Most Americans worked at restaurants while attending college. They are conditioned to think its perfectly acceptable for an employer to pay $2.13/hour and customers must pay tips to support them. This became a cultural default. There is another cultural phenomenon, people mostly go out on dates to restaurants, usually the man foots the bill, and wants the woman not to think of him as a cheap person.
All checkout systems now ask for a tip, and another asking to donate to their own charity (Ronald McDonald House Charities or some other garbage charity), guilting the buyer into giving a tip and/charity for the billionaires 'non-profit'. We foot the bill for the billionaires generosity and kindness, they will go give TED talks on how awesome they are.
CVS was sued for using customer donations at checkout to fund a corporate philanthropy pledge: https://qz.com/cvs-customer-checkout-register-donations-laws...
Because Maria works so damn hard cleaning those hotel rooms, and if I take a stand on principle and don't leave her a tip when I check out, the only ones who will suffer for it are her and her kids. Should I instead write her a note about how we're helping society improve?
I don't think thats the problem. Moreso something like this that was intended to help people that needed it is being taken advantage of. Every cafe with $6 espressos will ask you for a tip nowadays. What's worse is that a lot of places default to adding a 15% tip when these screens show! And there is no way of knowing where these tips are going unless you pay cash.
What's even worse is when on presenting the check the waitress tells you 18% tip already included.
I've seen it normalized for parties of 6 or greater...but not for any party size until recently.
I find that completely wild. If that's the case it should be posted and announced prior to anything taking place.
Incidentally it was the worst service I had ever gotten in a very long time, presumably because it didn't matter at all
Those are legally not gratuities in the US but a “service charge” if they are mandatory. The worst part is that you have no guarantee it is actually distributed to employees, and it is charged sales tax unlike gratuities.
If you want to be nice donate to a homeless person? Maria's salary is between her and her employer, not you, isn't it?
Do you not work hard for your money? Do you not market your skills to the highest bidder? Why do you have agency but Maria can't be expected to?
Hotel cleaning staff are harder to find than you think. If Maria is made or broken based on your $2, she can find a job that pays better. You enabling her through a system of random rewards may actually hold her hostage in a bad situation.
No, she can’t. Cleaning staff ware not hard to find. Cleaning jobs for fair wages are. Our economy works because we negotiate the cheapest labor we can for the highest output. Tech isn’t even different. We give options to people in lieu of cash on the hopeful promise that we’re gonna blow up and be work silly money. When was the last time you worked an unskilled labor job?
> Because Maria..
Don’t be racist
It's literally one of the least racist possible names, having origins in Hebrew, then moving to Greek and Latin. You'll find 'Maria' as a name in most European languages, even non-Romance languages acquired it from Christianity.
then why wasn't Miriam or Mary used as the example?
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I moved from US to Australia a couple years back, some notes on tipping.
- Not only is there no tipping here, things cost what they say they cost. Taxes are always added in. Worst case you pay 2% for a credit card fee. - There is basically no tipping. I see jars occasionally but it's not a thing. - Service is often not as good but fine. If you want a second drink, go up the bar, mate. - However you NEVER self-bus your table here. I've seen almost no restaurants with bussing stations, which were very common in Seattle.
The wages are higher, healthcare is covered, taxes are higher. When I went back to US earlier this year the tipping culture shocked me - POS 22 / 25 / 28% -- wth?
Agree there is no way to change this as an individual consumer. But I sure don't miss it.
Title too long. "Why aren't Americans rising up?" is more appropriate ;-)
When restaurant food was cheap, tipping wasn't a big deal, especially before the trend of paying for your food first at the counter. A $10 meal and a $2 tip for a waiter/waitress that took care of you - not really bad.
Today, that same meal is $35 - $40 and wages haven't kept up for most, so not only does the tip have to increase, but people are also just eating out less. Lately it seems restaurants are closing left and right. So I think restuarant tipping as a percentage of all tipping is probably really on the decline
What's sort of come up in its place over the past few decades is the payment system asking you for a tip before you even get your food. I think there is a backlash against that, as well as tipping in non-food places. I'm seeing more and more Instagram posts about it.
> Today, that same meal is $35 - $40
WTF? A $10 to $40 jump? I haven't seen that anywhere around here, and I don't live in a cheap county, either. This is 100% about where you live and eat. This is not normal at all.
It's absolutely normal in most of the USA. Inflation in the last decade has been outlandish.
It's at least doubled since the pre-COVID times. The days of $20 large pizzas are mostly gone.
Just before the pandemic I'd go have a pizza and beer nearly every Thursday to a nearby place. A medium pizza and a pitcher of beer was ~$16-18 (depending on beer selection).
Today in that same place, same pizza and same beer, is ~$50. So I only go about once a year.
I live in Westchester county, just north of NYC, one of the most expensive places in the country. I get a large pepperoni pizza from the place down the street from me for $25 every week.
That's a good deal. It's closer to $30 here. What was it in 2019?
Been to Taco Bell lately?
https://www.tacobell.com/food/burritos
Doesn't look too bad?
The Beefy 5 Layer Burrito used to be under $1. Yes, that was like 15 years ago, but we're still talking like a 300% increase. Even the regular bean burrito has doubled in price!
Oh. That’s terrible, then. Also probably doesn’t taste 3x better.
I’ve seen kebab prices in Europe also rise from 2-4€ to 8-15€ within five (!) years.
Because the minimum wage under US law for a tipped job is $2.13/hour and most find it socially and morally problematic to deny that person their primary source of income.
To break the cycle, we need to force all employers to pay their employees a living wage.
Maybe where you’re at, people working a job can afford to live. Imagine if you lived in a society where a waitress relies on tips to pay for their children’s doctors appointments.
> Because the minimum wage under US law for a tipped job is $2.13/hour and most find it socially and morally problematic to deny that person their primary source of income.
So if you feel you are morally responsible for a waiter's salary you have to tip. But if you feel their salary is not your concern you don't have to tip. Why aren't more Americans like me (I'm not American)?
>Because the minimum wage under US law for a tipped job is $2.13/hour and most find it socially and morally problematic to deny that person their primary source of income.
This is a common but incorrect meme and misunderstanding. Setting aside that the federal min wage of $7.25/hr is a universal floor and states can (and many do) go much higher, the difference for tipped jobs is that it becomes a "guaranteed minimum" instead of "guaranteed payment". Ie, for an untipped job, the employer must simply pay minimum wage or higher, period. For a tipped job, the employer must pay the $2.13/hr no matter what, but if the amount of tips the employee gets plus averages out to being equal or greater than $7.25/hr the employer doesn't need to pay more. However, if the employee does not get enough tips to reach $7.25/hr, the employer must make up the difference. So ultimately nobody is allowed to end up with less than minimum wage. The law just allows a different path to get there for tipped employees. If nobody tipped at all, employees would still get minimum wage (or higher).
Of course, it's completely reasonable to argue that federal minimum wage itself is disgustingly low. It doesn't auto-adjust to reflect inflation, and the highest purchasing power it ever had was back in 1968. Congress last increased it to $7.25 in 2009 and has left it that way 17 years later. Even by official definitions of the federal poverty line (themselves grossly outdated underestimates), minimum wage is below it. But it's still not good to confuse the matter by claiming any employer is legally allowed to let their employees end up with below minimum wage (that some certainly break the law is important too of course).
Edit: Straight from the horse's mouth (department of labor's FLSA page):
>The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires payment of at least the Federal minimum wage to covered, nonexempt employees. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 an hour in direct wages if that amount plus the tips received equals at least the Federal minimum wage, the employee retains all tips and the employee customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips. If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.
>Some states have minimum wage laws specific to tipped employees. When an employee is subject to both the Federal and state wage laws, the employee is entitled to the provisions which provides the greater benefits.
"However, if the employee does not get enough tips to reach $7.25/hr, the employer must make up the difference."
Not disagreeing, but I can recall a couple of workplaces that did not do that. (One at least was sued by a former employee after they quit, but my sense was that the employer treats even the lawsuit as just the cost of doing business.)
It’s a Lose for the employees of the current system. You’re cheekily superiorly saving a few bucks on a cause that isn’t going to be helped by snubbing a servicing worker.
There are a few tip free restaurants around, it’s sort of rare. Tipping at basically every random shop is out of control nowadays tho.
In the US, restaurants are comparatively cheaper than say Europe who then pay their employees more.
Americans would riot if restaurants raised the prices to offset the loss of tipping.
That’s not my experience at all, as a European who frequently travels to the US for work. If anything, I’d say that restaurants in the US are slightly more expensive without tips, definitely more expensive with.
> I’d say that restaurants in the US are slightly more expensive without tips
That's entirely possible, but then again people make far more in the U.S., so the cost of living is generally higher. Taking that into account, I don't think the cost of eating out is higher than in Europe.
Never mind portion size in the U.S. (Please serve us smaller, more affordable meals!)
That’s very likely, I agree with that.
Having seen some examples online I am pretty certain that in most areas prices in my high cost of living country are not more expensive. And that is with 14% VAT and no tips.
Having lived in an expensive European country and in several different US states, that wasn’t my experience.
Even when factoring in things like tipping and taxes being included in the prices, I would say In aggregate US restaurants are simply more expensive.
No.
Portion sizes are probably bigger but definitely not cheaper.
LOL where?
My experience is that European restaurants are cheaper and better. Especially in 2026 with the Trump inflation hellscape. Everything from McDonalds to local high end restaurants.
Certain commodities are even more shocking. You’ll get the best loaf of bread that you ever had. in France, Spain, or Italy for two euro. In most American cities, unless there happens to be a functional local bakery, you’re looking at a seven dollar defrosted loaf of bread at a supermarket that tastes like cardboard.
To formalize what other comments are saying, the current state is a Nash (dis-)equilibrium: no consumer can gain more by changing their own strategy if we hold all other consumer's strategies fixed.
Basically if you individually don't tip you're just hurting someone who's underpaid by the tipping culture system. I agree if _everyone_ stopped tipping simultaneously the system would become untenable and have to change, but it would be pretty painful for the workers involved in the interim.
Perhaps the only individual in the game who does have a positive incentive is the business owner, where going tip-free can gain a good rep among customers and get more business if viewed as ethical and stably priced. I've seen this grow a bit more common in California restaurants but it's certainly still rare. Most business owners would rather just participate in the dis-equilibrium and coast off the shadow subsidy.
Can someone even be underpaid by tipping culture? To my knowledge every tipped position has a federal fallback on the minimum wage, and untipped positions receive tips as bonuses on top of their hourly/salary wage.
Like, a waiter may start at $2.25/hr, and if they work for say 20 hours that week and get $150 in tips, for an effective wage of $9.75/hr, they’re above fed min wage. However if they only get $50 in tips? Now they’re at $4.75/hr, and their employer is federally required to supply the remaining $50, on top of whatever the state may require.
It would be interesting to hear from someone in the service industry (it was 40 years ago for me) since I believe that in practice employers get away with underpaying their employees all the time—even though legally obliged to compensate them.
I've drastically reduced my tips. I'm done with this system in the USA where they are allowed to advertise price X, but you're expected to pay X+Y, where Y might be a fee or a % of X.
And the way the system is trying to sneak it in everywhere more and more makes me revolt even more.
Last time I was in a restaurant and I tried to pay with the QR code thing it suggested I paid 20% tip on top of the total + tax. Tip is supposed to go on the part before tax. Sneaking it in makes it so that the people working there think they get paid better, without the employers paying their fair share.
It should be on the employer to ensure that (s)he is properly remunerated for the work (s)he does, not the customer who has no insight in that contract.
Last time I visited Miami Beach, I found out they have a forced 20% gratuity at restaurants. And still ask for a tip on top that. My friends and I were likely tipping >40% for subpar service and overpriced drinks for a few days until someone noticed it on their receipt.
No way. I routinely tip 20%, rounded up. If the place has a mandatory tip, I add max(0, 20-[service change]) to make up the difference between that and 20%. If it's 10%, I'll add 10% more. If it's 20%, I'll add 0. If it's 25%, I'll leave a bed Yelp review and never go back.
If there's a mandatory tip, that's a fee, not a tip.
I’m visiting Austin tx and was in a restaurant last night. On the menu it said party of 4 means automatic 20% tip added plus a 4% “administrative fee”. So 24% tip automatically added to the bill. Fortunately only had two people with me. They got zero from me.
Because then you’re just being a dick. It would have to happen some other way, like regulation, or enough establishments explicitly banning tips and then demonstrating increased profit as a result.
Won’t ever succeed one person at a time.
Tip is for service. I rarely tip at a place that is counter service only. If I have to bus my own table, I'm not paying for that privilege
The comments are talking about two different things. There's traditional tipping, like at restaurants, barber, etc, where you supposedly tip for good service, and there's the newish POS (point of sale) tipping screens that are showing up everywhere and are a dark pattern for extracting extra money for doing nothing.
Oh wait, round up for charity?
(Just kidding—but, yeah, the stores want me to be charitable rather than them.)
A slightly more sensible minimum wage of $18/hr in Ontario has made it comfortable for me to avoid the most ridiculous tipping like fast food workers at Starbucks or when I pick up my own pizza. But I’m still happy to tip servers, cleaners, mohels, hairdressers, or anyone who could make me look ridiculous, really.
Short answer: More people rely on tips for their living than people who are bothered by it. Even the ones who are bothered by it, are not bothered enough to do anything about it.
It’s hard to stop because it means denying a dollar or two to a human in front of you who wants it and tried to earn it during your transaction. It’s not immoral, just less than ideal, so it’s endured.
The only reasonable stand is to advocate for living wages but we’ll never do that in numbers strong enough for it to happen. Tipping has gotten out of hand but so has the cost of living.
You don't tip because you are stingy as long as the minimum wage has not increased to the point where these people could live of it. (Hint: they currently can't.)
They dont care about bombing schools, and babies in hospitals - what makes you think they care about others receiving poor work conditions.
We live in the real world so individual principles don't make as much of a difference to your community as leaving a decent tip.
Covid workers really made many Americans feel guilty about tipping more and it never reset.
> If you don't tip you both help society improve and you save money
How would it help society?
Studies show that people with these attributes consistently receive more tips than others: young, female, white, and beautiful. On average, that is; you may be completely fair when you tip. So societies would be less $X-ist if tipping vanished.
I'm American. I think the net effect for me is that I eat out less often since tipping frustrates me. I also leave five star reviews solely for places that don't ask for a tip at the counter when I do eat out.
Asking as a non-American: have any businesses (restaurants, bars, ...) ever tried operating with a no-tip-necessary policy? To see whether customers reward this business model?
Looking at the comments, can a business operate with transparent, "this is what you will pay at the end" prices shown (which include everything like taxes)? Is this even allowed?
Personally I’d prefer to just have the gratuity automatically added to the bill because it gets rid of the awkwardness of compulsory charity.
But refusing to tip just hurts people at the bottom of the ladder and doesn’t do anything about the billionaires stealing from all of us.
We may be reaching a tipping point.
You do not ethically have the option of not tipping in an American restaurant. If it's table service and they don't specifically say not to tip, you either tip or don't dine there. Tipping is part of the compensation structure for the front of the house. Refusing to tip is ethically comparable to wage theft.
Then just skip the BS and make a 15% tip be a mandatory minimum. Its so strange that you can be seen as an asshole by not spending money optionally, despite it being a societal virtue to be smart with your money and not spend more than you need in any other context.
Why is this on HN?
Tip, don't tip, do what you like. Not everything needs to be regulated by social standards. Feel like tipping? Do it. Don't? Then don't. Pretty simple.
It's a tradition, it's how the system works, why would you change that.
That said, I feel like sometimes this is pushed with those tablets with tipping options that present 20% 30% and 35%. Especially in situations where you self serve by going up to the clerk, as a non american it feels like I'm being scammed by a tourist trap, I might press 30% out of feeling that it's customary, but then an American might know the actual rules and either tip 15%, or not tip at all since it isn't customary to tip for self service.
We should bring back the tradition of child marriage and cutting off hands for stealing a loaf of bread
...wtf kind of argument is "this how it been so it is how it will be"
This forum has no room to argue it's a different kind of place.
Now that software is a dead end career cause AI HN is the same old blue collar Main Street dogma and tribal gibberish of any old typical bulletin board
Right, so first of all calm down.
Second of all, this is a convention issue, like tabs vs spaces, it could be one way, it could be the other way, in that sense I don't see how arguing that it could be the other way is helpful.
Either restaurant bills can be higher, or they can be a tad lower and tip is soft mandatory. It doesn't make much difference which way it is, the end result is the same. There's problems if you come from other conventions, in the same way that your device might burn if it comes from EU and you don't have a transformer.
it doesn't look good
Mainly because it makes you look like a tremendous douchebag and does immediate harm to real employees for an intangible cause that looks like grandstanding. I say this as a person who hates tipping but mechanically leaves 20%.
I have no problem tipping for service. Tipping when I pay in advance and get no service beyond being handed my food — what exactly am I tipping for? I don’t think people are opposed to tipping in general, it’s just been applied to everything.
One time I was forced to pay a tip for self checkout at the Austin airport. I was in a rush for my flight, it prompted, and I could not find any way to opt out.
You are tipping because of an arrangement in America whereby you share the costs of table service with management. That arrangement was originally designed to solve a principal-agent problem, but it hardly matters whether that problem exists today.
Tipping in a drive thru or countertop is a different conversation from a sit down restaurant as far as I'm concerned.
> I say this as a person who hates tipping but mechanically leaves 20%
Thereby perpetuating cheap skate owners can continue to get away with labor exploitation and wage theft
You know the olds that put this social way in our heads are dead or too old to force our hand anymore
No need to continue to kowtow like an abused spouse; grandpas hand can barely lift a glass of water
It's a collective action problem, a massive scale prisoner's dilemma where if everyone cooperated we could be in a better world but that just sweetens the social rewards for those who turn traitor and keep paying the tip. And if we collectively do not hit the "tipping point" and force employers to pay better then the employees just suffer. And in the mean time I enjoy a meal that is cheaper than the market can bear because the whole system is propped up by this system of cost misdirection that I have sidestepped. So I am getting an unfairly cheap meal.
No one is worried about Grandpa's opinion here.
Disagree; dancing like a chimp for some coin jangling in grandpas pocket is where this sense of obligation to earn money started for us as kids
Sensory memory reinforces our agency more than philosophy; we're replaying visual memory just like we were shown
All these startups need to jump yeh high raises hand to arbitrary height to get funding because of gramps old rules
Better keep line go up for old rich will financially engineer this economy right off a fiscal cliff! (Google simpsons fiscal cliff for context)
And more specifically to the "no one is worried..." you should get out more cause I encounter "we owe it to our elders to carry on their ways for all they did for us" type conclusions a whole lot
We could collectively action around less stupid jobs like knowledge work. We're well outside the post WW2 rebuild that fostered "endless growth" mentality in elders
84% in the US live <100 miles from their childhood home collectively acting just fine
I think a majority are capably collectively acting where they are; not sure where you see a deficiency there
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"It's going to ask you a question"
Because the economy is so busted that the least we can do is treat our servers a little better than their employers do.
I just hate corner stores and take out places expecting tips. I flat out refuse to do that. Please tip only for real service and sit down restaurants, thank you.
> I've read lots of articles about how Americans hate their tipping culture.
You misunderstand.
There is tipping in restaurants, and then tipping in other places where it's much more traditional to not tip.
While some people don't like restaurant tipping, it's generally the other type of tipping the ruffles feathers. But in those cases, you don't have to tip.
> But tipping is optional
Again, you don't understand. No, tipping is not always optional. It's known and part of the bill in certain circumstances and this is known ahead of time.
> If you don't tip you both help society improve
I don't know, having been to European and American restaurants, I find the American restaurants to be far better at service. Couple that with free refills and other amenities (like again... actually good service), I wouldn't see it as better.
If the waiter interrupts you when you don't need anything, it's bad service. If the waiter is not there when you need something, it's bad service. American restaurants tend to err too much in one direction and European restaurants in the other. It's up to you to choose which way you prefer.
I personally prefer going to restaurants when I'm in Europe and using delivery in the US.
Good servers should have ways to anticipate our needs and be proactive.
I've got a real pet peeve about something. I order my drinks and meal and the server starts dropping stuff on the table, and when the main course comes, they set it down and then ask, "is there anything else you need?" and due to whatever mental issues I have, I am fundamentally unable to tell them, on-the-spot, "yes" because I do not know what is missing. As soon as they turn their back and walk away, my mind refocuses on the food and I notice that yes, I do need something else. But they have gone away.
Even worse: if I'm a regular and I know how their food is served, I may anticipate stuff, like "can you put a second cup of butter with that?" or "could you add more tortillas?" and they always go "yeah" and then they don't do it. Because there is some unspoken restaurant rule that says they are supposed to serve the dish as-is, and then the customer expresses his needs, and there is a back-and-forth like that. It feels like an absolutely ridiculous charade to me.
Many dishes are deliberately served with not enough bread, or not enough sauce or dressing, in order to induce the diner to speak up and say "yes please bring more" (implying "ooh I like this food and I want to keep eating the rest of it") which is, again, a ridiculous charade, but seems to be a universal written rule for table-service restaurants in the USA.
And guess how this plays out when a table-service restaurant packages up food for delivery instead? That's right: they can never include enough dip, enough dressing, or enough bread/tortillas to complement your entrée, because they are still adhering to the "back-and-forth with the server" rule, but there is no server, only a taxi for your burrito, so your taxi driver eats all the gratuity, and you eat half the meal before running out of dipping sauce.
I will give bonus credit to a particular Ethiopian eatery here which just closed down, but if you ate in their dining room you'd ask over and over for more injera, but their delivery orders were miraculously packaged with extra injera to consume with the entire meal. Bless their hearts.
I don't mean to be rude, but have you ever considered that most people simply don't ask for extras like that?
When asked "is there anything else you need?", the most common replies by far are going to be along the lines of the next drink order or where the restroom is.
If anything, most people never finish all the sauce or bread. The restaurant is not trying to gauge what you want, but what makes the most sense based on how everyone else consumes it. Why be wasteful?
Most people? Most people? Are you somehow a better fortune-teller who knows what transpires at "most people"'s tables?
I cannot even comprehend "next drink order or restroom". Waitress just set down my main course, hot and ready to eat, and I don't know where the bathroom is? Didn't I wash my hands on arrival, or just after ordering: here's the menu back and please direct me to the restroom? The waitress is literally asking if she can bring me something so that I can begin eating. That means: condiments, utensils, send this plate back it's wrong. If my drink's empty, she proactively points it out and offers a refill. She wants to know if she is gonna return to this table, or if she's done and she can serve others now.
This is an objective experience. I can promise you that I'm not being unreasonable about sauce or bread. It's not a matter of drowning food or trying to use more sparingly. There is always objectively less than half as much sauce, as food to put it on. I have literally argued with waitresses about how much sour cream to bring out for potato skins and they seem simply forbidden to anticipate that. They will come out with 1.5oz instead of 1 and point out how much bigger the container is... when I need 3oz or more just to finish the plate.
Or in a Mexican restaurant: fajitas or some other DIY dish, comes with tortillas alongside it. The customary method is to scoop the fajitas into a tortilla and make your own tacos as you go. But there are 5 servings on the plate and only 2 tortillas. The math ain't mathin' and there is literally no way to fit in a skillet full of fajitas in 2 of any size tortillas.
That Ethiopian restaurant knew exactly what they were doing. They gave enough injera to eat a little bit of the meal. The injera is your utensil, and you cannot eat Ethiopian food without it. Imagine if you gradually ate your fork during a meal and your fork disappeared 1/3rd of the way through it. You would probably ask for 2 more forks. That is injera in action.
How do you know that "most people" would never finish 2 tortillas? Do they just like, stop at 1 tortilla and 1 scoop of fajitas, and then tell the waitress to just trash the rest of their meal? I cannot comprehend this assertion. Often, running out of tortillas just prompts me to start eating with a fork. It's not wrong, but it's not customary Mexican dining: you put 'em in the tortillas because that's what tortillas are for, and tortillas are overflowing endlessly from every metate on the planet.
They know how to spam you with food, because the free tortilla chips know no bounds, and they'll refill your soda without asking first, but somehow it takes an Act of Congress to put down adequate, complementary servings of tortillas. It's fucking obvious.
No. When I finish half of my potato skins and the sour cream runs out, then I ask for more, because the full plate of potato skins is what I paid for off the fucking menu. I want to finish my meal in a normal way, please. I fucking ordered enough food to eat and I didn't order 3x as much so that they can throw it in the fucking garbage when I leave. I will do the tortilla dance and keep asking for tortillas until I finish the fucking fajitas plate because I paid them to eat in the customary fashion, and they know exactly how it works.
Restaurants do care about this charade, because if the diner sits at the table asking for more bread, they'll probably ask for more cocktails or dessert, and they'll consider raising the tip. More time spent dining, and asking for more, is profitable for them. It is profitable to over-serve large portions for the main course, because it looks generous, feels satisfying, and it doesn't cost much more to do so.
And again, this absolutely craps out when they wrap it for delivery, it gets to your door, you run out of sauce and/or bread, and you indeed trash 2/3rds of the fucking $60 meal because it's not worth eating incomplete food.
And yes, I do mean to be fucking rude, when I get second-guessed like that.
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I'm unfamiliar with US tipping culture.
What would be examples of those "other places"?
What would be examples of the tip being part of the bill?
For me, if it IS on the bill it's a service fee and not a tip. If it's not on the bill, it's technically optional by definition regardless of social norms that'd make it practically mandatory.
Restaurants will usually add an automatic 15-20% gratuity (automatic tip) for large parties, usually 8 or more.
Tips in America are not gratuities. Tips in America are wages. If you do not understand or accept that tips are wages, then you will not cooperate with tipping culture here.
Our federal administration recently decreed no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. This is a judicious move; although it unfortunately enshrines tipping even more firmly, it gives relief to the rank-and-file worker.
Generally, employees raking in cash tips always faced a tax-time dilemma: record and report all my tips from my job, and be taxed on them? Or just let it all slide under the table. Surely, nearly everyone does it. So, "no tax on tips" simply encourages you to report them without being docked for it.
Tipping culture is business-friendly. It gives business the opportunity to hire more workers for more hours, and simply offload the wages onto the customers. End-stage capitalism's finest hour.
As I mentioned earlier, tips in advance for services like food delivery? Those are bribes, not tips. They're also wages, but they're also bribes. It's fairly disgusting. I hate tipping. But I hate stiffing workers, and I personally enjoy a reputation as someone who cares about tipping people for services provided.
That being said, I encounter rampant “tip cheating” in my everyday life. In my state, there are businesses authorized to solicit tips, and the rest are not authorized to do so. However, a common sight on the countertop is a clear glass jar with cutesy decorations on it. They are not allowed to write “TIPS” on this jar, so you will see many creative turns of phrase. But, they are illicitly soliciting tips from you in the silence.
Ethical employees of ethical companies generally are discouraged from allowing customers to slip cash into their pockets. They do not want to get this kind of custom started when they are not authorized to accept gratuities. But it seems perfectly normalized to silently and passively solicit gifts from fake tip jars. The ubiquitous “take/leave a penny” tray is exactly the same low-grade tip cheating in convenience stores. So beware of this practice. If it is incorporated into their P.O.S. flow, I would expect it’s legitimate.
Tax free wages smell very much like deeply ingrained and publicly acceptable corruption. But it's America so it must be okay.
Found the USA-hater! No, it is not "corruption" when the IRS specifies non-taxable income. It is not "corruption" when workers are incentivized to report cash income! OMG it is the opposite!
It is obviously deeply ingrained corruption that cash tipping, and under-reporting, has been a national pastime for decades. In fact, as the "cash discount" policies increase nationwide, there will be more corruption at the till, with entire sales going unreported. However, since many Americans in 2026 are accustomed to cashless payments, cash tipping was on its way out, and it's really hard to falsify or under-report credit-card-based gratuities!
Now that the IRS specifies non-taxable gratuities, the workers have ample incentive to simply track and report it in the open, especially the cash, because they're not docked. That... increases transparency and consumer honesty. When workers are more accurate/honest in their tax returns, the IRS garners better metrics on wages and gratuities nationwide. Everyone wins.
If I seem to be repeating myself, I am. I have no idea how this is "more corrupt" than the status quo ante. Who is corrupt in this scenario? The IRS for passing up revenue??? Please make it make sense, America-hater.
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Please don’t sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we’re trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Because it’s only marginally more expensive
If you're rich enough to consider an extra 20% on a meal "marginal" then good for you. I am too, at this point in my life.
But we need to recognize that as a privilege. For most people (including me, ten years ago) that's absolutely not marginal. Most people are having to budget and count their money carefully even at amounts you are privileged do dismiss as having no relevance.
Having the privilege of wealth is fine, up to a point. Being so wrapped up in it that you don't recognize it as a privilege is not fine.
Thats totally unrelated
I’m saying people are willing to accept marginal worseness the same way the frog in a pot of water accepts an increase of 1 degree
Where I come from tipping means rounding up to the next round sensible number. That is marginally more expensive.
15% to 20% as customary in the US is anything but "marginally more expensive".
I think many Americans feel a moral obligation to tip when asked, and when presented with the opportunity it suddenly becomes a decision between spending a few bucks or wondering if you won't be welcome to come back next time.
It can be insulting to be considered "cheap" and that's the label you might gain if you stop tipping.
We've heard from waitstaff and restaurants for decades that this is part of their income.
I think the only way this changes is through regulation or a seismic shift in this mentality causing people to stop tipping, resulting in waitstaff retention issues, resulting in restaurant owners paying better.
I wish the "morality gun" would point back at those who ask to be tipped, the same way a beggar who asks if you have some spare some change is castigated (in most places)
You are more than considered "cheap" if you don't tip in a table service restaurant; people will get openly angry at you, and they'll be right.
You aren't in the right for being "openly angry" at a customer who doesn't voluntarily pay an optional tip. Either raise the prices and pay your servers more, or shut the fuck up about it (the angry people, I mean).
It's not in any practical sense optional. Refusing to tip is stiffing service staff on their compensation. That's the arrangement, at least in table service restaurants. If you're not comfortable with that, don't patronize those businesses.
In any sense optional? What about the literal sense? If you're not comfortable with _that_ arrangement, stop making it optional.
The only people stiffing service staff on their compensation is their employer shrugging their shoulders and not pricing the server's labour correctly. Your compensation agreement is between you and your employer, I'm here to pay for goods/services in exchange for the amount of money that we agreed on.
It's just not really my problem, and getting openly angry at me means you're the asshole, sorry.
You can tell yourself that as much as you want, but there is a decent chance staff will confront you about this on the way out the door, and nobody in the restaurant watching that happen is going to think staff are the assholes.
Tips are part of the compensation structure for front of the house staff. You are ethically obligated to tip.
Confront? Obliged? Gratuity?
Yeah, the staff would be assholes by any measure. Publicly confronting a paying customer, demanding a tip. I've personally never ever witnessed such a scene. Have you?
I attended church for years without tithing at all. I didn't feel able to. I definitely did not get cornered or lectured or confronted by the priest for my deadbeat spirituality. My own conscience eventually prevailed, as surely a non-tipper's conscience would.
Actually, the receptionist called me once and brought it up in a non-judgemental way, and I was the one who lectured her, saying I was volunteering and contributing an abundance of my time and talent such that I was making up for the $0 tithing. And she noted that down in my record, and the notes were still there when I got her job years later. It was kind of amusing to me, remembered as the guy who mansplained stewardship to the parish office. But I also brought it up directly in private with my pastor, who was unwilling to... command me to begin tithing.
Waitstaff is literally paid to be kind and courteous to customers. Even if they personally obviously hate my guts they are still polite and non-confrontational. There are plenty of non-verbal ways for you to give bad service and express hostility to diners in the food-service industry, that do not involve confronting or insulting them.
The theory is that gratuities reward great service and so a gratuity paid should be commensurate with that outstanding service. I don't know if this is true anymore, because I only adjust upwards in exceptional circumstances, and it's not often that waitstaff goes "above and beyond" in obvious efforts to earn higher tips. Not even in those breastaurants like Hooters.
It is customary for a diner to leave $0 or $0.01 in retaliation for blatantly bad/rude service. It would also be customary to never return, if you're that offended. Surely, if the party did return, the staff would be entitled to treat them rather poorly. They could conceivably refuse service to a non-tipper. But why though? And why in the world "confront" a customer? That will surely earn 1 star on Yelp and Maps.
If a particular server earns $0 tips, rather than confronting customers, they should probably pause to consider what went wrong at that table. The management should take notice if this happens on the regular. Far from confronting customers, $0 tips should generally considered a signal of bad service or dissatisfaction, don't you think? If someone already felt they were mistreated, how does a confrontation address that issue?
If you believe that "surely a non-tipper's conscience" will eventually prevail, you don't understand people.
The conscience of many will eventually prevail, but that of many more will not.
(I don't have an opinion on "tipping culture".)
Try to have some self esteem. If you don't feel like you can stand up for yourself feel free to give them a 100% tip or whatever, maybe they'll cheer for you as you leave. Perhaps other people watching will join in.
Again, your compensation is between you and your employer. If I don't tip, perhaps your employer should be paying you more. Raise the prices to account for this.
Not tipping your waiter is a dick move. A bad tip for bad service is one thing. No tip is just antisocial. You're not "sticking it to the man" by being a jerk.
I'm not trying to "stick it to the man" or imply the server is bad at their job. I'm paying the agreed upon price. If servers need to be paid more to do their job they can demand more in wages, and the prices can raise to account for that.
I think if you're going to handle American restaurants this way, you're going to need all the self esteem you can scrape up!
I can't afford to go to restaurants. I pay too much in my tips to my landlord.
Not paying your employees and evading taxes isn't a dick move? As someone from the rest of the world that seems like the core definition of being societally anti.
If I lived in that utopia (/s), I'd go around with a labelmaker to print out the prices of menu items when 15% (is that enough, or still cheap) is included, and stick them next to the prices on the menu.
Heck, someone should vibe code a mobile browser extension to do that for online menues...