Many years ago I delivered pizza while in college. When it was time to move on my manager and I decided to have some fun. For the last three days I was there I delivered to every terrible customer we had, then had a little fun at their expense. Like the guy that routinely refused to tip a single penny and said 10 pennies make a dime. I handed him a dime and told him now he didn't have to wait for 9 more pizzas.
It was terrible, but fun at the same time. Every call back to the store was greeted with an "Oh that's terrible", "we've had a few other complaints about him" and "I promise he won't be here tomorrow".
I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe.
The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here).
This means that when someone in the UK might withhold a tip due to bad service we're just removing a bonus, whereas in the US we're effectively removing their pay for serving us. Not tipping is a much stronger action.
To respond to your 'prices' comment directly - the person delivering the pizza doesn't get to set the prices. They have to take the job that they can in a service industry that pays peanuts on the basis that people will earn tips. And the business doesn't have any incentive to do anything about it - they get to pay people less and therefore keep margins high and/or charge lower prices to compete.
> I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe.
It's not attitude, they do underpay certain people. But at the same time various US pizza places do include a service or delivery fee which still doesn't go to the driver. As a result you might pay a delivery fee which is isn't a delivery fee.
In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough the restaurant has to make up the difference / pay them minimum wage (though this rule to differ per state). So not paying still should result in minimum wage.
From what I understood in US it's rather arbitrary whom you pay extra and which persons you do not (e.g. even pay extra to get a haircut). Once you travel more you'll notice these rules are rather arbitrary (custom in one country, totally unexpected in another). For restaurants I often don't go back to the same place twice so I don't see the point of randomly paying more. As result I'm trying to stop doing that (it feels impolite, this despite me sometimes being unique in adding giving a tip). Paying by bankcard helps to avoid tipping.
Going back to pizza delivery, in my country (not US) the delivery fee is often included in the pizza. This is done by offering a pretty huge discount for picking up a pizza.
> In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough the restaurant has to make up the difference / pay them minimum wage (though this rule to differ per state). So not paying still should result in minimum wage.
In principle this is true; in practice it is rarely honored.
> From what I understood in US it's rather arbitrary whom you pay extra and which persons you do not (e.g. even pay extra to get a haircut). Once you travel more you'll notice these rules are rather arbitrary (custom in one country, totally unexpected in another). For restaurants I often don't go back to the same place twice so I don't see the point of randomly paying more. As result I'm trying to stop doing that (it feels impolite, this despite me sometimes being unique in adding giving a tip). Paying by bankcard helps to avoid tipping.
All customs are arbitrary to some extent, but the rule of thumb is that if you're getting a personal service from someone who's not a professional you should tip.
My barber has been cutting hair for two decades and a masseuse I go to has various certificates. I assume they're all professional yet still have to tip on top of the regular prices. I don't tip at the dry cleaner or after having clothes altered. Working as a barista in various cafes, tips were few and far between, vs pouring beers. Not much difference in the actual experience.
Good rule of thumb but I think it can still trip up non-Americans to some degree.
Best tipping I ever had was working at a fancy hotel - paid a decent service industry wage and would regular get tips of $10-20.
Well, the idea of "professional" is a bit slippery, I guess, but let's say the exempted categories are mostly tradesmen and white-collar professionals.
Yeah, I think that works. Honestly, one of the 'surprises' of American adulthood was finding out how many different categories of folks are expecting a tip. I would much rather have prices up front - whether it's someone doing a job or taxes (like a VAT) be included with prices so you actually know what to expect to pay.
> The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here).
As I understand it this was promoted by business owners themselves (which makes a certain kind of sense because it offloads the risk of a slow night onto their employees).
In many states now, all employees are paid at least minimum wage. In my state that is $10+/hour. But that depends on the state.
The federal government allows tip based workers to be paid only $2.13/hour by their employer but they must make at least $7.25/hour after tips. But in my state they have to be paid at least $10+/hour before tips.
WA? CA? I personally really like the fact that servers are getting paid so well here in WA, and I've been tipping a lot less as a result. When it goes up the $13, I might reconsider it altogether. Thank goodness, I dislike the entire process. I think that it makes people mean; when you are a server working for tips you have a thousand bosses, and far too many people are terrible with even a modicum of power.
I've been in Japan for the last 6 months and I have never witnessed any tipping. You make such an attempt and it comes off as strongly rude! Different cultures for sure
Yeah, why doesn't the pizza driver just independently change the prices Domino's charges for pizza?
It's not just "a bit impolite" to not tip service staff in an American context; it's a grave insult that most people would only do in response to service they thought was shockingly below adequacy -- and likely they wouldn't even patronize the business again after doing so.
I had a long argument with two Americans of the USA variety about tipping. The attitude they displayed about tipping was that it was "criminal" if a customer didn't tip. My argument was that, since I was NOT a party to the employment agreement between business and employee, I had no responsibility to make up any shortfall between minimum wage and what the business was paying the employee.
It was interesting that they felt very strongly that even though you, as a customer, were not part of the the business/employee employment agreement, you still had a moral obligation to ensure that the employees got their due. They could not understand that the employee was a representative of the business and that the charges for service (of whatever kind) to the customer were set by the business by their prices. Any other charges had to be up front (and not called gratuities).
The Americans of the USA variety do not seem to understand that a gratuity is a freely offered gift on the part of the person giving it and it is in no way a requirement to be given. Otherwise, it is not a gratuity.
It seems to me that the attitude towards tipping in the USA makes it one of the tenth world countries where the society has no concept of an employer paying an employee a fair wage for the work being done.
Now, I don't have a problem with tipping (at my discretion) for above and beyond the call of duty service. However, for normal service being provided by a business, it is not appropriate for that business and employees to have an expectation that I make up any shortfall in living wages agreed between business and employee.
Nobody cares what your philosophical objection to tipping is. Functionally, there is no difference between you and a tightwad. The custom in the United States is to tip and the entire system is built around this expectation. Whether this meets your Platonic ideal of what a "gratuity" ought to be is really just completely irrelevant.
I'll go further: if you are visiting a different country you should make an effort to adhere to their basic norms of behavior. If I go to Japan and I see a shoe rack at the entryway of a building I am not going to traipse around the building in my shoes, even though nobody would think this behavior was unusual at home.
Also, if I were going to carry out your policy, I would not plan on visiting the same restaurant twice.
The problem here, is that you cannot see that your economy is based on establishing social injustice in all areas. Tipping, as a requirement because businesses don't pay their employees fairly, is to be treated as a moral obligation on someone who is not part of that process instead of a symptom of the basic injustice of the employer/employee relationship.
The only tightwads here are the businesses (and the employees who agree with their policies) who will not pay their employees a fair wage. Again, it is not the responsibility of the customer to ensure that a business survives and thrives. My question to you is "Are you a business owner who does this and are now trying to justify your actions?"
So, you are in agreement with the customs of other countries that women should be treated as second class citizens. You are espousing the treatment of employees by their employers as second class citizens. Your comparison to shoe removal in Japan is not even in the league of the social injustice attitude of not paying employees a fair wage.
In my country, tipping is not the custom as we have minimum wages to adhere to and if a business doesn't do this, those in charge are prosecuted.
Finally, I have no intention of ever visiting the USA. The way its citizens are treated is appalling enough, how it treats its visitors is even worse.
No, I do not employ anyone. But I find this entire line of argument ridiculous. If someone wants to take a stand against tipping, they should make the sacrifice themselves by not eating out or going to restaurants that accept tips. What they should not do is go to an establishment where they know full well it's expected they'll tip and then refuse to do it. There's nothing honorable about a stand taken at someone else's expense. Stiffing your waiter does nothing to affect the systemic issue. It is, morally, the worst of all worlds, since you benefit from a system you describe as morally unjust and then refuse to participate in the expected palliative behavior.
The idea is that if you don't get good service, you don't have to pay the tip. People whose incomes consist mainly of tips can make absolutely crazy amounts of money if they're good at their jobs and work hard. It's not for everyone but it works for some people. I wouldn't want to rely on being tipped out because I really don't have the personality for it.
Yes they can. It is a mindset that says you will treat your clientele (they are not just customers) with the absolute highest service and consideration. Most people cannot get to this point.
I don't have the personality to do this - I am considered to be far too blunt and abrasive. Yet, even though I am this, I consider it extremely important to treat my clients in a manner that says that I will solve their problems and actually do this. None of this work ever involved tips, it was a part of the service that I thought necessary.
I think there's a difference between not-tipping and telling the employee you're not going to tip them, especially by some stupid "10 pennies make a dime!" saying, as if the employee wasn't smart enough to know that or save money.
I can't say I held a grudge, but I found it very funny in my pizza delivery days when somebody would tip a penny. Pulling the dime trick would have made me go out as a hero to my fellow drivers.
If no one paid a tip, people wouldn't want the job so the company would have to raise wages to compensate. This extra cost can be passed on in higher pizza prices.
If everyone poured a bucket of water on the driver's head, the company would eventually be obligated to give the drivers ponchos. So really I'm doing the driver a favor by pouring a bucket of water on his head.
But it isn't. The customer has no part in the wage negotiations between business and employee. All it shows is that they (business and employees) are not being honourable towards each other or to their customers.
A business should set it prices so that it fulfils it responsibilities (including to it staff). If the business cannot run at the prices so set then it fails. That is not the responsibility of the customer to make the business successful. It is the business' rite of passage to provide services or goods that customers want to buy,
If you get on a packed morning commuter train and start playing music on a boombox, you're not breaking any laws and nobody can stop you. Nevertheless, anybody with their head screwed on is going to think you are acting like a jackass.
Agreed. However, the jackasses in relation to employer/employee wage negotiations are not the customers but the two parties involved.
If I was to negotiate with some other party that whenever you came within 100 metres of my awesomeness that you would be required to pay me 4000 drachma, what would your response be? The acting of tipping is a personal acknowledgement that the person has placed your actions so far above the norm that they consider it appropriate to honour you in some way.
What you are wanting is to have other people say that your actions are so outstanding that, even though they are nothing actually extraordinary, you should get something extra because of your awesomeness.
If you are not getting paid for doing your job, why on earth are still working for the tightwad (your words) who has employed you?
You are conflating a private negotiation as though it is a public interaction. It's not.
I have worked for lots of different companies over many years. My own attitude is that if the employer is not worth working for, then you don't work for them. If they pay rubbish wages for serious work, you don't deal with them. If they are tardy paying you, then you finish up with them and move on.
If I need to work in a remote place to cover the bills I have, then I work in a remote place. If I have to change industries or learn a new job then I will and have done so. If you don't consider yourself worthy of fair wages then that's a problem you have to get over.
Too many people think they are constrained by their circumstances and instead of doing something, they wallow in self pity. I have met those who had nothing or had lost everything due to circumstance and they have been an inspiration because they made a choice to do something about it.
> The acting of tipping is a personal acknowledgement that the person has placed your actions so far above the norm that they consider it appropriate to honour you in some way.
That is not really what tipping means in the United States.
> I have worked for lots of different companies over many years. My own attitude is that if the employer is not worth working for, then you don't work for them. If they pay rubbish wages for serious work, you don't deal with them. If they are tardy paying you, then you finish up with them and move on.
Yeah, I don't think your experiences as a computer programmer are necessarily applicable to someone who works as a waiter at a greasy spoon or as a pizza delivery driver. I'm gonna guess you've never been in a position where you had to do low-wage work. It's not a negotiating kind of a situation; it's a "take it or leave it" kind of situation.
> Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research.
In US most states have to make up to ensure people are paid at least minimum wage. Even if that's not the case, it's the governments responsibility (in case employers don't) to ensure people get paid enough. This as individual employees don't have a strong negotiation ability.
A customer is not obliged at all to tip; not unless the definition didn't suddenly change from "a sum of money given to someone as a reward for a service.". It should be a reward, not an expectation or even an insult when you don't receive it.
Such rules are routinely violated. Perhaps tips "should" be a reward, but they aren't; they're an essential part of compensation, and you're not striking a blow against the system by denying your server their tip. You're just being a cheapskate.
Why should I be considered a cheapskate when I don't tip? I choose to buy goods and service from whomever I please. The prices are set and that is what the agreement is. The agreement is between me and the business. Wages are an agreement between the business and the employee. If the two want to agree to a specific wage regime that is their right. But it in no way, obligates any customer to supply any shortfall between wage and minimum wage.
Any services provided by the employee to the customer are as a business representative. They are a function of the agreement between the business and the employee. If the employee decides that he or she should, by their own estimation, provide a service that is well and truly beyond what they are doing as the business representative then they are doing so on their own behalf. If the customer then believes an appropriate reward is to be given for that exemplary service, then it is the customer's right to choose such an action.
It is not an obligation but a freely chosen reward.
Because everyone who lives in the United States understands that there is an expectation that if you go to a restaurant you will tip the server in all but the most egregious circumstances. You may as well ask why it's considered rude to eat with your hands while making loud noises when, after all, there's no rule you have violated by doing so.
Furthermore, I'm going to make the assumption that, since you're posting here, you're probably living a pretty comfortable life, and yet here you are making your point by picking the pockets of low-wage workers. What word do you think describes someone who does this better than "cheapskate"? If you are so troubled by this structure that you feel you must take a stand, stay home or visit a restaurant that doesn't accept tips.
I care full-time for my wife and I don't have the resources to eat out. That is a luxury for us. It takes much time to afford such treats. I have less income than many who cry poor, but live comfortably because we manage what we have so that we can. I have worked in very low paying jobs and that was my choice at the time. When it become infeasible to continue working in that area, I left and found other work that paid better.
The only ones picking the pockets of low-wage workers are those who are responsible for paying those workers - the businesses they work for (they are the cheapskate - not the customer). A customer is not responsible for the workers failure to negotiate a fair wage nor are they responsible for the failure of those workers to find better employment.
If you want it fixed then fix it where it needs to be fixed first - the negotiation of wages between business and employee. If you work for a robber baron then expected to treated like a serf or villain.
Well, no, both parties in that scenario are cheating the worker. You can't really walk into a restaurant, pay the lower prices that are possible because of tipping culture, deliberately skip the expected tip, and then wash your hands of any complicity in the scheme. It's like people who are themselves comfortable but talk about how all social programs should be eliminated so the poor see the inherent injustice of capitalism and rise up to overthrow it -- it sounds like a bold stance but ultimately volunteers someone else to make the sacrifice.
It was terrible, but fun at the same time. Every call back to the store was greeted with an "Oh that's terrible", "we've had a few other complaints about him" and "I promise he won't be here tomorrow".