Tipping is out of control!

[LovesTimone]

Curbside luggage check guy to me at airport: "I'll make sure to take good care of your bags".
Me (oblivious): "Great, thanks!"
Curbside luggage check guy (more pointedly): "I'll take VERY GOOD CARE OF YOUR BAGS".
Me (catching on): "Ah, OK" (gets out wallet to tip).

This is seriously funny and true... - and a little story to go along with this... We were meeting friends at the airport for our annual trip to Vegas, they arrived earlier at the airport earlier than we did, and checked their bags curbside... but for some reason they checked the bags separately, I think she had to get something out, of the of her checked bag, and he came into the terminal to look for us... She checked and tipped.... Once we arrived and checked our bags inside at the Delta desk... and off we went... When we arrived in Vegas, his bags did not make it... So kidding around I said you did tip when you dropped off at curbside... He was like... no I am not tipping for what they are suppose to do... I was like well that's why you didn't get your bag.... she said I tipped and my bag made it... they delivered the bag to the hotel early the next morning, the bag looked as if something had stepped on it, then chewed it up... to the point he had to buy a new checked bag to get back home.... so they left a day before us, and she said that he made sure to tip, and both checked piece's made it back... We kidded him about that for a while... I really don't know if it made a difference, but why take the chance...

 

[mjkacmom]

We way over tip at the neighborhood New Mexican food place where we have breakfast once a week. I mean, great breakfast for about $20 vs. the places we eat dinner sometimes and the 20% tip alone is $20. Same amount of service, really.

I may rethink the auto tip at counter service places. I mean they cook the food, but they do get paid a regular wage.

The one I'm never sure about is food delivery, like Grubhub. There's a delivery fee, and I assume the delivery person gets a part of that, plus a wage? Should I then tip 10, 15, 20%? I never know what it should be.

I tip food delivery 15% of the order. Ds20 and many of his friends have done food delivery, the delivery fee never goes to them. One place in town doesn’t even pay a salary, they just work for tips.

 

[luvsJack]

I tip food delivery 15% of the order. Ds20 and many of his friends have done food delivery, the delivery fee never goes to them. One place in town doesn’t even pay a salary, they just work for tips.

DD just signed up to do deliveries. They are paid for each delivery plus tips. They can't possibly pay them the whole delivery fee though because then the company wouldn't be making any money.

She used to work for Dominos and ODS delivered for Pizza Hunt many years ago. Both charge a delivery fee, neither pays any of it to the driver. Also their pay is like non existent when they are delivering. Its a weird system. If they are in the store, they make $8 an hour. When they go out on delivery it goes down to like $2 an hour. When dd finally quit, it was costing her to go to work.

 

[mousefanmichelle]

But it’s customary to tip the porters (and airport curbside check in).

we did tip but they wanted more I guess.

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

Tipping is a pet peeve of mine, especially when places say they will only take cash tips. I will actively avoid places that expect tips in cash. In my state servers get paid less than minimum wage so I do tip. But other places that get paid a living wage and still expect a tip drive me nuts. Charge a fair price and pay your people a fair wage and cut the tipping crap. If they do a bad job I will just take my business elsewhere next time.

 

[powellrj]

I was going to order delivery today from Taco Bell. Don’t judge me. By the time they added the delivery fee, the service charge and the suggested tip, it was more than the food. Taco Bell is 4 blocks away. I decided to wait for someone to come home and pick something up. I could buy my lunch and theirs and it would still be cheaper.

 

[cedricandsophie]

I tip the AAA guy a minimum of $10. I have never had one that wasn’t courteous and goes out of their wAy to provide real assistance.

 

[Sleepy425]

AAA came out and was so nice to me, changed my battery and got me back into work very quickly. It was HOT that day, and I felt so bad for the poor guy. I didn’t have any cash, so I ran across the street and bought him lunch instead, with a nice cold drink to go along with it. He was very appreciative.

 

[LSUmiss]

if that's your reasoning then you need to see what state/city laws apply in individual areas you are visiting. where i'm at servers are being paid $11.50 and will get $12.00 1/1/19, in another part of my state an individual city (with lots of tourists) has a minimum of $15.64 (ALL workers-including tipped), san francisco pays $15 an hour to tipped as well (unless they worker for a company that contracts w/the city&county in which case it's in the works to increase their minimum to $17 an hour). in all these cases there's no formula to count the tips as a means to offset the minimum wage/tips are ON TOP of minimum wage.

An issue in my area is restaurants are closing b/c they can’t find workers. So sometimes if they raise their base pay it’s to keep workers. If they stop earning tips, then they might be in the same boat with not being able to get workers.

 

[barkley]

An issue in my area is restaurants are closing b/c they can’t find workers. So sometimes if they raise their base pay it’s to keep workers. If they stop earning tips, then they might be in the same boat with not being able to get workers.

the restaurants in our state don't pay the higher wage b/c they want to, it's b/c it's the law in this state-minimum wage of $11.50 is across the board for all workers including servers (some minors in specific jobs are exempt, a couple of cities mandate higher). i honestly can't feel much sympathy to a restaurant if it's having a hard time keeping it's staff b/c of a good economy/low unemployment rate among minimum wage earners. if a restaurant wants to pay a higher wage to be more attractive to employees then i would prefer they cost it out and adjust their pricing accordingly vs. the whole tip mechanism.

 

[sam_gordon]

An issue in my area is restaurants are closing b/c they can’t find workers. So sometimes if they raise their base pay it’s to keep workers. If they stop earning tips, then they might be in the same boat with not being able to get workers.

I don't think anyone has advocated that tips/tipping be done away with. It's the EXPECTATION of tips that needs to stop. Someone (in any profession) goes "above and beyond" their normal duties to help you? Sure, go ahead and tip. But someone just doing the job minimum shouldn't be expecting a tip.

When these threads come up, someone will argue that without tips, there's no incentive for the waitstaff to do a good job. I keep asking if their incentive for doing a good job is getting tips, and funny, no one admits that. Whether it's wanting to keep a job, wanting to improve/get promoted, or simply wanting to KEEP a job, millions of workers try to do a good job every day and they don't expect tips. So why do waitstaff need the tips as incentive?

 

[LSUmiss]

I don't think anyone has advocated that tips/tipping be done away with. It's the EXPECTATION of tips that needs to stop. Someone (in any profession) goes "above and beyond" their normal duties to help you? Sure, go ahead and tip. But someone just doing the job minimum shouldn't be expecting a tip.

When these threads come up, someone will argue that without tips, there's no incentive for the waitstaff to do a good job. I keep asking if their incentive for doing a good job is getting tips, and funny, no one admits that. Whether it's wanting to keep a job, wanting to improve/get promoted, or simply wanting to KEEP a job, millions of workers try to do a good job every day and they don't expect tips. So why do waitstaff need the tips as incentive?

It would incentivize me if tips were an extra bonus in my profession. It’s not that I wouldn’t do my job without them, but if that were an added bonus sure I’d most likely work even harder. My DH gets sales bonuses when they exceed typical sales in his co. I’m sure they all work harder to push sales that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise if that bonus wasn’t there. Money motivates. What I don’t get about these threads is tipping is still optional for the most part so if you don’t want to tip or want to tip minimally then go ahead. Don’t expect the culture to change just so you can feel better about your decision. I tip based on the level of service. If the service is poor I tip accordingly. Perhaps I would feel differently if I worked in an industry that didn’t have tips & I made $15/hr. But,
I am fortunate enough to make well above that so it just doesn’t bother me. Even if they make that much an hr, restaurant shifts are not usually that long & they don’t usually work 40 hours a week.

 

[Skellingtonj]

DD just signed up to do deliveries. They are paid for each delivery plus tips. They can't possibly pay them the whole delivery fee though because then the company wouldn't be making any money.

She used to work for Dominos and ODS delivered for Pizza Hunt many years ago. Both charge a delivery fee, neither pays any of it to the driver. Also their pay is like non existent when they are delivering. Its a weird system. If they are in the store, they make $8 an hour. When they go out on delivery it goes down to like $2 an hour. When dd finally quit, it was costing her to go to work.

Wow I was wondering how that worked.

 

[sam_gordon]

It would incentivize me if tips were an extra bonus in my profession. It’s not that I wouldn’t do my job without them, but if that were an added bonus sure I’d most likely work even harder. My DH gets sales bonuses when they exceed typical sales in his co. I’m sure they all work harder to push sales that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise if that bonus wasn’t there. Money motivates. What I don’t get about these threads is tipping is still optional for the most part so if you don’t want to tip or want to tip minimally then go ahead. Don’t expect the culture to change just so you can feel better about your decision. I tip based on the level of service. If the service is poor I tip accordingly. Perhaps I would feel differently if I worked in an industry that didn’t have tips & I made $15/hr. But,
I am fortunate enough to make well above that so it just doesn’t bother me. Even if they make that much an hr, restaurant shifts are not usually that long & they don’t usually work 40 hours a week.

Read what you said... if tips were an EXTRA bonus. The problem is that's not what they are. They're EXPECTED. So much that there are threats and stories that if you are a poor tipper wait staff will spit in your food or otherwise sabotage your meal.

 

[kdonnel]

Tipping is a pet peeve of mine, especially when places say they will only take cash tips. I will actively avoid places that expect tips in cash. In my state servers get paid less than minimum wage so I do tip. But other places that get paid a living wage and still expect a tip drive me nuts. Charge a fair price and pay your people a fair wage and cut the tipping crap. If they do a bad job I will just take my business elsewhere next time.

Tipping shouldn’t be a function of what the person is paid but a function of how well they did their service job.

If you tip based on whether they get paid a living wage you should really look into what is a living wage.

San Francisco has a $15 minimum wage, what many consider a living wage.

The average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment is $3294 a month.

That means you need to make $19 an hour just to pay rent. No taxes paid, no food, no power, nothing else. In San Francisco a true living wage would be about $70 an hour. That way only 50% of your monthly take home goes to rent. Still way above recommended levels. So maybe more like $90 an hour for San Francisco.

If you want to tip based on a living wage you should probably be tipping in the tens of thousands of percent range.

 

[mjkacmom]

I don't think anyone has advocated that tips/tipping be done away with. It's the EXPECTATION of tips that needs to stop. Someone (in any profession) goes "above and beyond" their normal duties to help you? Sure, go ahead and tip. But someone just doing the job minimum shouldn't be expecting a tip.

When these threads come up, someone will argue that without tips, there's no incentive for the waitstaff to do a good job. I keep asking if their incentive for doing a good job is getting tips, and funny, no one admits that. Whether it's wanting to keep a job, wanting to improve/get promoted, or simply wanting to KEEP a job, millions of workers try to do a good job every day and they don't expect tips. So why do waitstaff need the tips as incentive?

Waitstaffs here need incentives because server minimum wages are $2.13 an hour, which gets taken by taxes. My daughter’s weekly paycheck was very close to zero.

 

[sam_gordon]

Waitstaffs here need incentives because server minimum wages are $2.13 an hour, which gets taken by taxes. My daughter’s weekly paycheck was very close to zero.

You know how you eliminate expected tipping? Pay a real wage, at least minimum. Then tipping does become an incentive instead of an expectation.

 

[LSUmiss]

Read what you said... if tips were an EXTRA bonus. The problem is that's not what they are. They're EXPECTED. So much that there are threats and stories that if you are a poor tipper wait staff will spit in your food or otherwise sabotage your meal.

If it were a reliable “extra” like my DHs sales’ bonuses, they would become an expectation. There would be an uproar at his co if they suddenly cut them out. And how would a server spit on your food for not tipping when you get the food before you decide what to tip them? I don’t get why it matters...tip or don’t tip, but why does it matter that what other ppl choose to do? Who cares what some person you’ll probably never see again thinks about how well you tipped?

 

[mickman1962]

I put a piece of paper in the tip jar that says "Go to college or get educated in another profession"

Tip jars for no real service, restaurant industry for a LOOOONG time so tip very well there. Getting me a cup of coffee, sorry, no tip

 

[mjkacmom]

You know how you eliminate expected tipping? Pay a real wage, at least minimum. Then tipping does become an incentive instead of an expectation.

I doubt that will ever happen.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/a...of-american-restaurants-no-tipping-experiment