Moving posts about tipping for services performed from venting to preserve the conversation
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I think this is the 4th cafe place I am never returning to simply because of tipping. Everywhere are employees asking for tips on serving me coffee 
it just an uncomfortable experience because they look you in the eye and then when you click no tip you can tell they get salty lol. I really don’t like to be guilt into tipping.
The 4th cafe place I visited to had a 30% tipping prompt and that just stupid. I would tip my servers and drivers but why on pickup and ordering to go man. Fuck this shit, I just wanna enjoy my coffee man.
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Aint no way they expect a tip for a coffee 
You are from the us right?
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Yup in the US.
And some cafe places have the audacity to automatically add tips upon your order. They really testing me right now 
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Every time I am in the US, I deliberately never tip a single cent.
When a system tries to guilt-force me into doing something, I refuse to do it and do deliberately the opposite. Guilt is poison.
It is not my problem that these service workers are underpaid.
It is their job to negotiate for higher salaries with the restaraunt owners or learn a different craft and change jobs.
These restaurant owners are keeping wages low on purpose because they are slavers and because they know that most customers give in to the guilt-tripping.
I also don’t think the job of a “waiter” should exist at all.
The real work is done by the cook. Not by the person carrying a plate for 3 meters.
I can totally go into the restaurant kitchen by myself and bring my food to my table by myself. Just like it is done in any cafeteria or self serving restaurant.
Some of those US waiters get really pissed because of this, which just confirms how twisted and inverted their world view is. They think customers should give them money because of some outdated traditions and for some unnessary services that the customers never agreed to and in most cases don’t even need in the first place.
When I am at the restaurant, I am there to eat the cook’s food.
Not to small talk with the waiter.
A waiter’s smile or the act of carrying my food for 3 meters from the kitchen to the table is of zero value to me. And since it is not part of any contractual agreement these waiters should not feel entitled of receiving any “tips” in the first place.
These waiters are outsourcing their inability of negotiating for a higher salary or for learning a different profession onto their customers. And when the customers refuse to give them any tips, these waiters become angry and project all their own flaws onto the “evil customers”.
I also never work a single minute longer than what I am paid for.
In the US this is labeled as “Quiet Quitting”, lol, which is simply another tricky way of guilt-tripping employees into providing free extra work and using fear of losing their jobs. This works in the US because there is no social security system.
Here in Germany no one in the right mind works a single minute longer than what is written down in the contract. Of course if you are friends with your boss and like your company that is a different thing, but on average folks from the US would consider almost all Germans as “quiet quitters”, lol.
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You have to give a mandatory tip?
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Social Security was signed into law in 1935.
" Q1: When did Social Security start? A: The Social Security Act was signed by FDR on 8/14/35. Taxes were collected for the first time in January 1937 and the first one-time, lump-sum payments were made that same month. Regular ongoing monthly benefits started in January 1940."
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The worst part about tipping (I hate the custom, but as an American there’s no getting around it) is determining the rate in novel situations that keep popping up. Top jars in coffee shops and fast food settings. 20% is my default restaurant tip, but coffee is a lot less work, but it’s hard to tip less than a dollar (this is not about math or equity, it’s a kind of etiquette that makes a mockery of math and equity.)
But the frustrating part about tipping is it makes the wait staff hate people like me: good tippers who do not drink alcohol, which is where the bill, and hence their expected tip, begins to rack up. So even if I tip 20-25%, they don’t want to see me at dinner. I’m a hero at breakfast, but I’m a nobody at dinner. That’s what tipping does.
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I agree with etiquette and guilt tripping. For people who have never had to tip in their lives and have no frame of reference, you show up there, they tell you that the “tip is to reward good service” but you’re supposed to tip everyone regardless, I don’t notice super service or anything, all pretty basic. But maybe even worst is prices that don’t include sales taxes. They showing me a price that’s different then what I have to pay.
There is also the imperial system for quantities. 1 feet, 2 thumbs and half an elbow. Don’t lie to me, that’s not what you really use to design iPhones and rockets. From New-Zealand, Japan, North Korea, Iran even the Talibans use the metric system all the way to South America.
I have no clue how big or small things are, the price is not the real price I’ll have to pay and there are variable on how much I gotta pay the waiter to walk my food from the kitchen to my table. What’s great service, they shine my shoes while I eat ?
Whatever happened to showing how much money you have to give and then get the stuff you asked for with no bartering and surprises.
For all the silly things they protest about, why not protest about decent wages for waiters.
But every lifestyle has its price. Lots of stuff are better over there.
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There is also a status signaling element to tipping. For all the talk about wages and poor service, the real reason to tip is certify one’s membership in polite society ( if that even still exists). This is not front and center in your mind, but it’s so ingrained that low/No tipping is a low status move. Left and right agree on that, even if many (maybe most) people thinks it’s a ridiculous custom. It’s only made tolerable by the fact that we lack a VAT tax and ordinary life here can be quite cheap—excluding healthcare and education, that is.
I will say that smartphones make tipping a little easier. After failing to formulate an equation on the fly for novel tipping situations, I usually just Google it.
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Eh from what I heard elsewhere at least, the tip is there so that they can justify a lower base wage.
There’s some other BS saying something about how much tips amounted for (I think it was about income) and some other BS to justify again paying that lower base wage. To the point that it has to be “mandatory” else they don’t really earn enough of a livable wage
At the end of the day it’s so that employers can pay lesser to employees and Transfer costs to customers.
But yea this is from a convo I vaguely remember (hence the really vague descriptions) between others so don’t count on the accuracy or things, since I don’t come from a place with mandatory tips.
And make sure your tips 100% goes to the person, there were even cases of apps taking out the tips for themselves instead of the delivery person.
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No, they just straight up suggest the 30% prompt, these owners and servers are hilarious. Want tips for mediocre service.
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In Romania it’s not mandatory, but yeah, it’s expected…
Unfortunately lol.
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This is a foreign concept to me as a European.
Sounds like one more layer to guilt trip people into tipping.
Also, making your status dependent on an external factor is not healthy anyways.
Another guilt trip…
“You are not tipping” = “you are evil and want these poor waiters to starve.”
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I had some discussions about it with my Romanian Relatives, and I’m a “greedy mf”
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Lol
Understandable…
(And Relatable)
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For the most part, I calculate it as an unhidden tax. VAT taxes hide where the money goes. As for the apps, I tend to tip in cash because that seems right to me.
Since we are exploring tipping (while venting), there is another aspect to tipping that’s both positive and negative — off the book’s treatment. While the US status hierarchy is always getting worse, tipping subverts this to some degree. Almost anyone can become the best customer, gain preferential treatment or just create a special event with cash. It’s unfair and wrong by some lights, but it adds dynamism into the social structure and can be a great boon to service industry workers. This is particularly the case with hotel concierge staff, who seem to have found an evolutionary niche exploiting these outsize opportunities.
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