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
there’s a new fast food drive through near me and if you buy a $13 burger with plastic they turn the little machine to you at your car window and expect you to enter a fucking tip.
I’m an overtipping bastard. I learned to tip from Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven. i love to tip.
I even tip at the weed store and the liquor store if they give me suggestions or any kind of service in addition to ringing me up.
YOU CAN SUCK MY DICK ASKING ME TO TIP IN THE GODDAMN DRIVE THROUGH!!!
I’m not eating there because the burgers are too expensive for how good they are ($5.50 for a plain kids burger come on) but even if I loved the food i’m not tipping for fast food.
To be clear, it’s never warranted. It’s just some cultures that have normalized the practice for certain services. Companies should always fully pay their employees. Full stop.
Not true. It depends on the job and the state. NY for example, has a tip allowance of $5 per hour. That means establishments can pay their servers $10 per hour and still meet minimum wage law, because the staff is expected to make at least $5 per hour in tips.
While I agree that employers should pay their staff well, it’s standard practice for servers in NY to be underpaid and rely on tips as part of their income.
All of that also being known as…normalization.
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.
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.
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.
No
From Germany, wholeheartedly, fuck off with your POS terminal tip prompts. I simply won’t.
When they flip that screen, I cringe. US tip culture sucks.
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.
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.
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.
If you aren’t making up the difference, you probably aren’t going to last long anyway.
The minimum wage for tip workers is often lower in most states then minimum wage for non-tipped workers.
New York is the only state that I know of that has a minimum wage equity law where tipped workers have to be paid the same minimum wage as anyone else after tips, and if they aren’t, the employer has to make up the difference.
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.
Interesting. I didn’t actually know that.
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.
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.
% based tips are bullshit and always have been. And moving the scale up to 18,20,22 is insane.
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.
they should honestly ban tips on credit card machines and mandate a “cashback” option instead allowing 1-10 dollars of cash back.
I worked in craft beer pre-pandemic. Man, beer release days were nice. Get a bunch of bozos all lined up for the minute we open, all want a whole case of the latest IPA for like $100, all of em blindly tapping the 20% tip option. Like, homie, I did nothing for that tip. I’m over here bartending, getting less from the people I’m actually serving beers to. Thanks I guess?
So now, especially that the economy is fucked, I’m very particular about what I tip on.
Yesterday I went to a juice place. Got 2 bottles of juice and a fruit bowl thing. I’m only tipping on the fruit bowl thing. I’ll tip 20% on it, but you simply grabbed the bottle of juice from a fridge. That’s not a service.
All in all it looks like an 8% tip, because their juice is $11 a bottle and the fruit bowl is like $20 after everything I added to it.
$4 tip. That’s 20% on your $20 bowl. I’m ignoring the other $22 on the bill. That wasn’t a service. I’m not tipping $9 for this interaction. A fruit bowl and two juices isn’t worth $51 dollars. It’s hard enough to justify the $4 tip when the juice is $11… The boss can’t pay you better with margins like that? Or is the fruit vendor raking it in? Fruit isn’t that expensive…
I don’t get it.
I don’t get it.
What’s not to get? You seem to understand it just fine. Rather than actually paying their workers a living wage, they can have customers subsidize their pay.
And then when they have a bad night and end up making $4/hour, tips included, you blame the customers for not tipping and not the employer who pays you literally $3/hour.
I tip if there was something to tip. Fast casual dining with me bussing, nope. Receiving a cup for coffee that I pump and setup, nope.
Its crazy how many businesses in the US are asking you to tip on checkout and make it appear that’s normal. WTF would I be tipping at Subway
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!
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 stopped tipping when i was double charged for the tip included.
i tried keeping track of each POS that included gratuity but i can only get burned so many times before i stop using that stove altogether.
- 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.
I’m mostly with you. To-go gets $1-$2.
Stop that.
- 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.
Nope.
- Pay the Uber driver based on whether they get out of the car and help you with bags. $1 or $2 per bag. I used to do that job. Driving the car is not that hard. Everything else needs a tip.
- To go orders get 5%. They are doing something for you. It’s not fast food.
- Sit down food should be 20% minimum. Adjust based on the service, or the worst employees are getting paid the same as the best.
- The other guy is right. You should tip based on the skill involved. Pouring a beer: $1. Making a mixed drink: $2 to $3.
- You are tipping your barber too much. Avoid the chain and go to the local place where the barber gets 100% of the money, they just rent the chair. Tip 20% like normal.
- Delivery apps are totally fine in areas with lots of delivery drivers.
Basically, tip based on effort. Or you will end up with people who do not put in effort. It’s true they don’t tip in Europe. But it’s much harder to get the attention of a waiter there. “Oh I’m sorry, am I interrupting your coordinated smoke break with all the other waiters? I just wanted to exchange money for food if that’s ok with you.”
