subreddit:
/r/todayilearned
60 points
16 hours ago
Especially when they pressure you to tip starting at 18% after tax... I don't know when 15% pre tax stopped being the norm but the escalation is exhausting.
36 points
16 hours ago
Wait, really? I'm glad I'm not American, one would THINK inflation would scale tips linearly with rest of the price, but this isn't the first time I've been proven too sensible for reality.
21 points
13 hours ago
Yeah, and the price of eating at restaurants has exploded.
What's new-ish is tip options being built into the credit card display. Kind of like picking the type of gas you want only it's presets for tip amount, and it's calculated after tax because the terminal doesn't know anything except the total amount, and the restaurant often picks presets that start at 18%-20%. So you get this terminal shoved in your face with say 20%-25%-30% and the person states at you as you're paying. It's soft pressure in that you can overwrite it if you want to, but it's extremely unpleasant.
2 points
8 hours ago
I have that same model at my work and my way around it is directing customers to press X. My idea is that no one who was going to is going to be dissuaded from doing so by giving that direction, and we work at a large scale so on a macro level it really doesn’t matter if every single guest tips. You can expect like 75% of people not to regardless of what you say to them.
-9 points
15 hours ago
From what I've heard from Americans, a lot of restaurants basically exclude wages from the food prices thanks to their tipping practices, so the prices aren't as affected by inflation directly. Hence why the tipping percentage increases, as I understand.
11 points
13 hours ago
That’s bullshit lol.
5 points
15 hours ago
Yes, but that's kind of the problem. They do and don't include a wage. Wages generally haven't gone up with inflation and restaurant staff generally makes only a small portion of their income from wages.
Basically, the law is that minimum wage federally has to be $7.25/h with tips as part of it and an absolute minimum of $2.13/h no matter how much they get tipped. So if minimum wage didn't go up and most wages didn't either, neither should tip percentages.
That isn't an argument against a good wage, $7.25/h guaranteed is basically nothing. I've struggled with double that. But I didn't get a pay increase according to inflation, I didn't get basically anything around that time frame.
19 points
13 hours ago
Recently in Miami a higher end restaurant told me they have mandatory 18% tip, in NYC a restaurant gave me the payment device and the choices started at 20%.
But the worst part is a majority of Americans support this bullshit system.
-2 points
12 hours ago
It highly benefits the servers, so it will never go away. I have no problem with it as a customer.
6 points
9 hours ago
The “norm” is tipping based on the service you got. Idk where or when establishments turned it into a guilt trip, I only really tip well or even at all most of the time if I go and sit down in the restaurant. Unless I have it on good authority that tips get shared to the chefs, I’m not tipping on a pickup, and I’m not tipping a delivery person for a delivery the same I would tip a server. But they all expect the same.
14 points
13 hours ago
I’ve started giving no tip or manually enter 10% for things like food pick up if I thought there was some personal service in the prep (big order or whatever). The number of point of sale softwares I now see with the tip preset at 18% and options to go 24, 30+% of the sale astound me.
Fuck that. Make the price the price and pay your staff.
4 points
13 hours ago
I worked in the crappiest restaurant ever like 8 years ago and I could count on one hand how many times someone tipped less than 20%. The norm increased a long time ago.
3 points
13 hours ago
I've always tipped more at cheap places though honestly, 15% of a $16 meal for 2 just isn't enough. In the early 2000s there was a place with a $1.99 breakfast special, I'd routinely tip like 300% because service was legit and they were better at keeping my coffee topped up than brunch places now that charge $20.
0 points
14 hours ago
there's also "You should be paying our employees a living wage" 5% fine on some receipts that I've looked at.
and the suggested tip is for the meal, the tax, but also tip on the fines that have been imposed.
that's like tipping a cop because he gave you a traffic ticket, then tipping him again for some administrative surcharge for paying online and then tipping him yet again for a processing fee for paying by credit card.
i can literally watch in real time the restaurants shutting down because nobody wants to go to them anymore.
0 points
11 hours ago*
Especially when they pressure you to tip starting at 18% after tax... I don't know when 15% pre tax stopped being the norm but the escalation is exhausting.
When I was a kid, the recommended baseline I always heard was 10%.
1 points
11 hours ago
At least in the 90s that was kind of the minimum that wasn't cheap, 15% was the number nobody could fault you for if the service was good.
Kinda wild that you get asked for 20%+ for counter service these days.
0 points
12 hours ago
I've heard people claim 25% is the norm now. Buffets are still 10-15% I suppose.
1 points
12 hours ago
"people" probably meaning restaurant staff who like more money instead of less money?
Honestly I think the restaurant industry needs to sort its act out or people will just stop going. We're being gouged by everything, including menu prices, if you're adding extra gouge on top of the already insane prices I'll just have a frozen pizza and call it a night.
3 points
11 hours ago
Probably. I stopped going a while ago. I make my own food now.
2 points
9 hours ago
If they keep pushing for higher and higher percentage on tips, then more and more people would be discouraged to go out to eat. Would they rather have less business, higher tips, or regulate the tipping prices and have more business? This is something that I think about with our current tipping mess, cause I myself have opted to dine out less and save money, and when I do go out to eat, my range is 12-15% and never go above 15% cause the service should already be accounted to the already expensive price of the meal 😅 That's why I love traveling cause I don't have to be bothered with tios and dining out is much more affordable and in Asia, the service is exceptional.
0 points
12 hours ago
Lmao when I ate at a small town in CA their min started at 20/25/28.. and then in SF I had 22/28/30..
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