People are a little bit stingier in barber chairs and Ubers than they were just a few years ago.
The shares of adults who say they always tip their hair stylists, servers at sit-down restaurants and food delivery people have each fallen 8 percentage points since 2021, according to a Bankrate survey released Wednesday. That rate slipped 7 percentage points for taxi and ride-hail drivers over the same period.
Three years ago, the economy was reopening from the pandemic and inflation was higher than it is now, but so was concern for front-line workers.
At the time, three-quarters of consumers reported always tipping restaurant servers, but today just two-thirds do. Despite modest upticks since last year, barely more than half of people now count themselves reliable tippers of hairdressers (55%) and food delivery drivers (51%), while only 41% say the same when it comes to ordering a ride.
The survey reflects Americans’ growing ease bypassing ubiquitous tipping prompts, from coffeeshops to airport terminals in the post-Covid economy, especially as sticker prices have risen. While consumer spending has held remarkably steady, many households are feeling the squeeze from persistent inflation and tightening their belts accordingly. Some of that newfound caution may be factoring into when, where and how much people tip.
I’m a generous tipper at sit down restaurants, but draw the line at places where I’m grabbing a prepackaged sandwich and drink and being asked to tip the employee to literally ring up the items at the cash register. I wonder if the expansion of this practice is turning people off of tipping even when it’s warranted, hence these statistics
deleted by creator
Yeah. The blurbs examples are places you really need to tip. They are providing a direct service to you. But pretty much every digital pay interface is asking for tips now. And a lot of them aren’t even offering 15%. They start at 18% and go up. It is really souring me on going out at all.
Pretty much every sit-down restaurant now has tips calculated on the bill, and 15% is never one of the calculations. It’s typically 18%, 20%, and 22%, but I’ve seen them start higher.
Is this due to the same machines? Since it can differ, I assume it’s the owner who chooses to make it higher.
It depends on what payment thing they use. Most places use a third-party payment POS and stick with default settings.
The blurbs examples are places you really need to tip. They are providing a direct service to you.
Do you really not realize how ridiculous this sounds?
Yes. But there is no other alternative in America. If you stiff servers, they get hurt. If enough people do it, they quit and your favorite places die. You can encourage places that don’t allow tipping and pay a living wage but those are so rare as to be pointless.
Only assholes refuse to tip for service in America.
Gotta love corpo news.
have made some people stingier
They’re no longer appreciating service industry workers
Shut the fuck up and pay them a living wage you animals. Don’t try and continue pitting individuals against each other. “Blame the consumer for everything” is so played out at this point.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this written about so -
The reason these tipping prompts are so egregiously inescapable now is that those point of sales systems are handed out by Clover and the like when the business starts using them for POS and inventory and credit card processing.
For each CC transaction, the business pays something like 2-3% of the transaction and so the CC processor becomes incentivized to make that transaction amount higher. That’s how we got here. You’re being guilted into tipping a shitty tech company.
Carry cash. Pay cash whenever possible. That’s how you avoid that screen.
Is clover getting money for cc transactions? I thought it was the cc companies charging that fee.
Point of sale companies like Clover charge a fee and the credit card company gets a cut of that. The rest is for the point of sale’s services.
Credit Card companies (ie MasterCard or Visa) typically have a flat per transaction fee that is very small (like fractional cent small). The processors are the ones that take the percentage cut (PoS and your bank). It’s been a bit since the last time I looked into it, so things could be a bit different, but I would be surprised if it was.
Clover or whoever also gets money for letting whoever use their system. They get an upfront fee then a percent of sales.
These used to be separate things, but now most of the older POS systems have been bought by the processors or, with the “newer” systems, were in the business of processing from the get go. It’s all very incestuous.
No
STOP TIPPING. The whole world doesn’t tip, it’s a strange and stupid US thing. Just stop tipping please!
Also, while you’re stopping dumb shit like tipping, may as well switch to the metric system as part of the integration!
https://media.tenor.com/D8tqN5Dc45cAAAAM/puffer-fish-join-us.gif
to embed your gif in your comment. Important is the exclamation mark at the start, which is what distinguishes it from a regular hyperlink.TIL! Good bot.
Thanks, not much of a bot though :p
Haha ooops sorry! :) good human!
Germany does tip sometimes. But mostly we round up to the next thing that feels right. For me it is usually between 1-5€, but I never tip a percentage or use the tip option on a payment terminal. Sometimes I just don’t tip. It is never a problem. It is a bonus not a necessity here.
This should be the next “movement” the internet gets behind. Everyone stops tipping, and watch people freak out.
And then, after a bit of confusion, tipping will end and waiters will get paid the right amount – no tipping needed
From Germany, wholeheartedly, fuck off with your POS terminal tip prompts. I simply won’t.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Anyone else notice the “essential workers” never got that minimum wage increase?
I get republicans not supporting it, but the moderate Dems not fighting for them is going to hurt in November…
Voters know Republicans obstruct progress, but they need to see that Dems are at least willing to have the fight.
Where I live they got it. While it isn’t law, the local fast food is all starting at $16/hour or more.
…
I mean, wages can go down, and will go down when there’s a larger labor pool.
Which is why we should have taken advantage of the small labor pool during COVID to raise minimum wage.
We had a chance to raise it while workers have leverage, but republicans will always oppose it and moderate Dems didn’t push for it, so nothing happened.
That’s wildly considered the biggest negative of moderate Dems, they don’t act when we have the leverage to get things done. They tell us to be happy with temporary things we can lose tomorrow, like how they refused to modify Roe v Wade while we had the numbers to codify it, now it’s gone.
They don’t actually want to fight for us. They’re controlled opposition to make sure when we do have the opportunity/leverage to fix shit, we waste that time “looking into” if we should really fix it. Then when the opportunity passes, they say they tried.
But they didn’t.
When they flip that screen, I cringe. US tip culture sucks.
This is the worst I’ve personally encountered
Shit like this is a good way to prevent me from returning. I don’t want to feel bad about giving someone money I didn’t need to and if I’m pushing the lowest recommended amount it feels sad.
Returning? I wouldn’t even be completing that order.
I think a lot of these “cab companies” use the tips to pay the drivers now and take more for themselves.
Other > zero
And there is a service fee!
I went to get blood lab work done today. When I went to pay the kiosk asked for a tip.
It happened to me at the urologist. They were taking the piss!
This has to be the USA right?
Yup
I imagine it’s just built in to the POS software they use, which is probably generic. Doesn’t really make that better, but
I don’t know about hairdressers and drivers, but many servers are legally paid less than minimum wage because they are expected to make up the difference in tips.
So this is essentially people being fucked over by not being paid enough fucking over other people who aren’t being paid enough. And if you object to them not being paid enough, the solution isn’t to not tip them, it’s to not go to the restaurant.
They are supposed to be paid the difference if tips plus base pay don’t add up to minimum wage. But I’m guessing a lot of places don’t do it.
removed by mod
California has, for a while now, required that tipped workers be paid the same minimum wage as anyone else, period. Tips are extras on top of minimum wage.
No, that’s a Federal requirement, too. It only requires them to be brought up to the $7.25/hour Federal minimum wage so it’s pretty useless, but it exists.
removed by mod
In Oregon tipped employees are required to be paid the state minimum wage. Tips are considered extra on top of that. Seems to be an exception though unfortunately.
If you aren’t making up the difference, you probably aren’t going to last long anyway.
% based tips are bullshit and always have been. And moving the scale up to 18,20,22 is insane.
Especially because a 15% tip is almost twice as good as it was 10 years ago due to rising food costs
Yes! The raise is already built in.
I’ll tip my waiter/waitress. I refuse to tip a PoS device. I have no shame selecting the “No tip” button on those things.
If everyone stopped tipping at the same time, say labor day, then businesses would need to properly pay their staff again. As soon as tipping became expected the whole system was fucked.
For me there’s 3 tiers
Takeout/drive thru food of every kind? No tip. If it’s labeled fast food and I have to drive to you to get it, you can pry that shit from my cold dead heart.
Family owned non-chain restaurants. That’s a tip. These people out here trying their best against a McDonald’s franchisee. Easily worth a few extra.
Delivery is where I tip, they put extra wear on a car and had to put up with the American public on roads between here and the store. That’s worth the extra $5-10 Dollars. Especially if it’s raining/almost midnight.
Pretty much the same, delivery I tip based on how much stuff, how difficult, or bad weather is getting it to me. NOT on the item cost. It’s not any harder for the delivery person to deliver sushi than it is a breakfast sandwich.
- Uber’s get $1 - $3 depending on driver/distance
- To-go orders get NOTHING.
- Sit down food gets 15-20%, depending on server
- Drinks at a bar get $1-$2 each drink.
- Barber probably gets the biggest tip at $10-$15, but base price is going up so maybe adjusting down next time.
And I do not do delivery apps.
As a service person, this sounds great. You actually tip your barber more than I do.
The only thing I think you didn’t account for is fancier bars with elaborate cocktails, which tbf most people do not frequent. I’d do 15-20% for those, simply because it’s more involved service and more involved drinks.
I always tip my hair cutting person 100%. I wanted a hair cut, the hair cut cost $x, that person literally does the entire thing often with their own equipment that they paid for. The place will charge me $x because that’s what the haircut is worth to me but I know the person that actually physically cut my hair with their skills and labor won’t get $x and I think that’s bullshit.
In many other kinds of transactions someone can go “oh well the business deserves a cut of the profits because they provided the ingredients, or they stocked the inventory, or yadda yadda yadda”. But the hair cut is the one place where with my own eyes I witness the full body of labor occur and see who does it. That person deserves the value that their labor produced, not some owner sitting off in their beach house doing plenty I’m sure but one thing I’m damn sure they aren’t doing is cutting my fucking hair.
The more work i have to do the less I tip.
- To-go orders get NOTHING.
My comment is entirely scoped to to-go orders; I agree with everything else you say (though I haven’t used a ride share in forever).
I always tip for to-go orders in my hometown. Now my favorite places call out my name as I enter and treat me great. I’ve seen them replace the pizza stacked with my order with a fresh pizza right out of the oven, for example, or they’ve given me an extra pizza or side.
When I’m on the road, I still tip $1 for to-go orders because I know the workers are still getting a shit wage.
Granted, I’m in a financial position where I can afford to do this. But I’d love if we could get rid of the whole tipped-minimum-wage thing and just raise minimum wages across the board/enact UBI to make tipping only for exemplary service.
It’s a genuinely nice thing you’re trying to do, so on the one hand, I don’t want to discourage it, but on the other hand, every tip workers get is an incentive to not raise wages. Hell, if they make enough in tips, they’ll start actively lowering wages for new hires. Someone I know always likes to tip, but I just see management thanking them for covering their labor costs for them.
I’m mostly with you. To-go gets $1-$2.
Stop that.
Pizza Hut prompted me for a (minimum) 18% tip on a take out order. I could see tipping for takeout if it’s a large, complicated order, but this was not. 18% is for standard table service.
