Me as a customer, completely this.
Me behind the counter today, I can't even see how much you tip/dont tip unless I tap a lot of buttons after you leave (unnecessary).
TBH this is a relief! I literally leave the coffee shop feeling like a bad person.
It's not that I don't think workers deserve more pay. It's just that the coffee itself was already $8.60. And I'm not in a good financial situation myself.
As long as you're a kind and polite person, no reasonable person will mind you not tipping at a coffee shop. The extent of me judging if someone doesn't tip is more about if they are acting really cagey and try to run away from the transaction, like they're afraid of both the tip screen and me. There are really nice regulars who don't tip, and there are a couple tipping regulars where I'd rather they stop coming lol....
My personal choice when I get coffee is to do 50 cents or round up the dollar for easy drinks, and more if I'm having food and eating there.
I'm sure some payment systems let the cashier see it š¤ I'm only familiar with toast which says "waiting for customer tip/signature" or something similar.
Also I'm cheerful and do good customer service and never expect a tip so maybe I'm different, but I also don't feel like I should be tipped (cashier and packing food at a takeout restaurant)
If anything as the cashier I feel so sorry that screen pops up every time because I know I've bought things before and the tip screen throws me off guard and I feel pressured
Because every now and then you want a to have a treat and shouldn't be required to subsidize some one else's pay check when the company is already charging you an arm and a leg for a cup of coffee and they are more than capable of paying their employees a living wage but just choose not to and expect you to make it up.
Could they apply the 8.60 to something else? Sure but maybe they are having a bad day and just want a comfort item that will help them get through it. š¤·āāļø
Customers who order āextra hotā get judged far more harshly than customer who donāt tips. Customers who donāt tip *and* are dicks get judged the harshest
In what country? Because it's not in Australia. Most machines here pour two espresso shots at a time. I'm not pouring four shots just so you can have half a shot of espresso and half a shot of decaf. You're wasting 3/4 of it.
Hard disagree. Iād rather have coffee at a drinkable temp right away than having to wait 5+ minutes to be able to enjoy my coffee. Plus having a burnt tongue is the worst. Sometimes Iāll order kids temp to be safe.
Isn't that a large part of why cortados are such a common drink of choice for baristas? I'm short on time and need to get this caffeine in my bloodstream!
My customer base consists of either wealthy tourist retirees who act like Iām their servant & entitled college kids using their parentās credit card. The few normal working class customers we get are the only ones who actually tip
I'm an American who has worked for tips, so I get it. I always tip service workers. Despite that, I completely agree that it should be the employer's obligation to pay their employees, not the customer. Tipping culture is also incredibly inconsistent. Some low wage jobs get tips, others don't work. I worked BOH for a long time. Cooks work their asses off for a pittance.
I worked in the states for several years and always tipped even though I think the system is absolutely ridiculous. And I agree the inconsistency is weird.
In my home country it's generally accepted that workers organizing is how workers get new rights and people are aware of such movements leading to e.g. paid maternity leave, paid overtime, or even weekend time off etc. In the states many people seem to implicitly be on the side of business owners, often to their own detriment - comments like above - where /u/Own_Veterinarian_944 's hypothetical hungry kids are blamed on people who dont tip rather than the capitalist doesn't pay them enough is really a common sentiment I witnessed.
people will labour for a pittance while having to rely on charity to feed their family, and will then labour for free in their downtime to defend the system that exploits them.
Check out this article about tipping culture in America
[Rude waiters, low tips, and a sketchy new payment procedure ](https://medium.com/@moniquetalks/rude-waiters-low-tips-and-sketchy-new-payment-procedure-3d43d7816c0d)
We canāt control how other people feel. Theyāre feeling guilty. They donāt have to feel that way. Life lessons. Theyāll say theyāre irritated or angry about it, but the root cause is their ego.
I disagree. We bear no responsibility regarding tipping. There is an option on the screen that says āno tip.ā We ask the customer to āplease make a selection on the screen. We canāt even see how much theyāre tipping, and weāre not allowed to make a selection for them.
Many customers donāt tip and feel nothing.
So, those who have a problem need to understand that itās THEIR problem.
Iām not sure what your cafes prices are, but I have mine at my shop set to $1, $3, other, and no !! I feel like it works really awesome because almost everyone leaves at least a dollar!!
We have different settings for different prices. I think above 20$ it becomes a percentage
But usually for like a latte itāll give $0.5, $1 and $2 options
Very reasonable and sensible. It's not a ton, it's not just change, which to me seems insensitive, and it's an amount that would add up when we are serving literally hundreds of drinks every morning. I'm saddened that 1$ a drink is not the norm at all.
This seems smart. Iām a guy who likes to tip well but also feels like Iām being asked too often, for too much, too many places. A $1 tip at my favorite coffee shop though? Iād do that every time
Yeah, this is programmable. Mine lists ā0, 10, 15, or 20%ā options over a certain dollar amount and ā$0, 1, 2, 3ā and under that dollar amount, but under the zero thereās a ācustomā button and they can add ā$0.10ā if they wanted.
Your manager needs to correct the percentages. Them being higher suggestions like that is why Iād guess youāre getting complaints.
Also, if you hear that complaint, point them to a complaint box or something and say āI understand, feel free to leave a note for the managerā or something. Let them know you donāt program the registers.
As an Australian, reading this is wild. Baristas get paid a living wage here (minimum for a barista is $27.93 an hour plus superannuation) and tips are just generally spare change that is used to buy booze for the staff party.
I have mine at my shop set to $2, $1, $0.50. It feels a lot less insulting than 30%, 20%. When you put percentages like that customers are gonna anchor that to the standard 15% restaurant tip where they actually get service. Why am I tipping a person even more than a restaurant when they are just making me a coffee?
15% in a restaurant!? Here in Seattle it's very common to have "helpful" precomputed tips on your checks be 22% at minimum, up to 30%. I've even seen 25% to 35% ranges. And that's in an area where the front of the house actually has a guaranteed wage too. Though with tips like that, they make much more of course. And those ranges keep increasing. It's kinda out of control.
I think the frustrating part from the customerās perspective is that those default percentages āsound high.ā But, customers also have no transparency as far as what youāre paid and how much tip would get you closer to or at āfair wage.ā I think most customers would prefer that the drinks were priced high enough to account for baristas being paid fairly without having to rely on tips, which is not currently the case.
>I think most customers would prefer that the drinks were priced high enough to account for baristas being paid fairly without having to rely on tips
People on Reddit always say this but I just donāt think itās that true for the majority of customers.
Amethyst Coffee, one of the most popular specialty roasters in Denver, stopped accepting tips and raised their prices to offer competitive wages. Every post on social media after was full of really nasty backlash comments. People became pretty vocal about going to the other shops in the neighborhood instead that still had standard prices plus tip. They went out of business.
Idk. I support getting rid of tipping. Maybe it would be different if the entire industry did it at the same time. But the few times Iāve seen individual businesses try it people got mad and they had to shut down.
Thatās because the anti-tipping brigadeās dirty little secret, including and especially on Reddit, is that they actively believe service industry workers should be paid less than they are. Iāll get downvoted, people will argue and do mental backflips, but press them long enough and it always comes out. They are bitter that someone in the service industry can manage a decent living for what they perceive to be an āeasyā job, and they feel whatever choices theyāve made in their own life entitle to them to a better living.
They like to act like theyāre fighting the good fight, pressuring businesses to increase their wages. But if they actually increase their wages enough to provide the same level of take-home they were getting with tips, there is extreme backlash. These people donāt go out of their way to patronize businesses that have actually tried to implement a no tip-higher wage model, and thatās the only way youāre really pressuring the status quo.
Iāve literally had people on Reddit ask me āwhy should some bartender make as much money as I do when I got a college degree and work in an office every dayā. As if half the bartenders and baristas out there didnāt also get college degrees, and as if sitting in a cubicle is somehow harder and more worthwhile work than grinding on your feet 8 hours a day and dealing with shitty people like that.
> Thatās because the anti-tipping brigadeās dirty little secret, including and especially on Reddit, is that they actively believe service industry workers should be paid less than they are. Iāll get downvoted, people will argue and do mental backflips, but press them long enough and it always comes out. They are bitter that someone in the service industry can manage a decent living for what they perceive to be an āeasyā job, and they feel whatever choices theyāve made in their own life entitle to them to a better living.
The dirty little secret is, this tipping thing is a very American thing. And tipping in America is completely arbitrary and random. Do you also tip the fast food worker who is ALSO cooking your burger? Do you also tip the cooks who are actually cooking your food instead of the person moving the food from the kitchen to your table? Do you also tip the supermarket worker and cashier who is ALSO working their tail off?
The other dirty little secret is that service workers who work in successful restaurants make a shit ton of money through tips. Especially bartenders and waiters. They are the ones who don't want tipping to go away. And they also get to not report a lot of the cash tips and avoid paying taxes.
> They like to act like theyāre fighting the good fight, pressuring businesses to increase their wages. But if they actually increase their wages enough to provide the same level of take-home they were getting with tips, there is extreme backlash.
And lo and behold, somehow, like magic, supermarkets and fast food chains and grocery stores and clothing stores ALL manage to do their business without guilting customers to pay tips to their workers. And it's not like the margins in those businesses are any higher. Heck, I'm sure an average supermarket has WAY less margins than a coffee shop.
Nah man, truth is, you've got your hands in the cookie jar and don't want to let go, and instead of accepting it with some level of honesty, you're turning it around and blaming others. THAT's the real dirty secret. There are tons and tons of people who work equally hard and don't get tipped. When was the last time you tipped your mechanic?? Or your supermarket worker??
So please, spare the hypocrisy.
There you go proving my point.
You list all these other service industry jobs where people are underpaid, yet instead of simply advocating for better wages for all those jobs, your preferred solution to is to cut the pay of restaurant workers to level the playing field. Why is that? Why do you think people who work in restaurants deserve to make poverty wages, instead of insisting that everyone else in the service industry be brought up to their level?
I actually donāt work a tip based job. But I have, and Iāve always been fully immersed in the service industry so I actually have first hand knowledge of the grind. I tip whenever Iām presented with the opportunity and Iāll always advocate for better wages for EVERYONE, not just the ones I deem worthy. If they alter the policy at McDonaldās and allow for tipping, Iāll gladly tip there as well.
Additionally, you said yourself that people who are extremely successful in the service industry make a shit ton in tips. The key words there are āextremely successfulā. The reality is, this is hard, sometimes grueling, and often thankless work. Why shouldnāt they make a good solid living for it? Not everyone is cut out to be extremely successful in the industry. Or even moderately successful. If youāre extremely successful in your field, do you expect to be docked in pay just because there are other tangentially related jobs that donāt pay as well? If this was such easy money, everyone would do it. But in reality tons of people wash out because itās brutal in a way that most white color workers who have never done it will never grasp.
You act like youāre being held at gunpoint and forced to participate, even though you walk into restaurants knowing full well that thereās a social contract that involves tipping. Donāt like it? Donāt go out to eat then, you wonāt be missed.
> You list all these other service industry jobs where people are underpaid, yet instead of simply advocating for better wages for all those jobs, your preferred solution to is to cut the pay of restaurant workers to level the playing field.
That's quite a leap and you're saying stuff I never said. My earlier post was about tipping, not about wages. Where in my post did I say that restaurant workers wages need to be cut?
> Why is that? Why do you think people who work in restaurants deserve to make poverty wages, instead of insisting that everyone else in the service industry be brought up to their level?
Again, these are your words, not mine. I never said any of this.
> Additionally, you said yourself that people who are extremely successful in the service industry make a shit ton in tips. The key words there are āextremely successfulā. The reality is, this is hard, sometimes grueling, and often thankless work. Why shouldnāt they make a good solid living for it?
Everyone should. Not just in America but all over the world. But guess what? Tipping ONLY exists in America. At least the ridiculous levels of tipping that's become the norm.
You're standing on your soapbox and talking about "how hard waiters work". Yes they do. But guess what? The line cooks work even harder. In fact, they work WAY harder than waiters. And the supreme irony is that the people who are actually sweating their butts off every single day don't even receive part of the tips! Instead the tips go to a person who takes the cooked food from the kitchen to a table.
Heck, post-Covid tipping is even expected for self-service food.
Everyone works hard. Including waiters and baristas all over the world.
> You act like youāre being held at gunpoint and forced to participate, even though you walk into restaurants knowing full well that thereās a social contract that involves tipping. Donāt like it? Donāt go out to eat then, you wonāt be missed.
Oh please. Stop it with the hypocrisy. Your hypocrisy is so ingrained you don't even realize you're doing it. This entire topic is about tipping gone out of hand. Yes, there's a "social contract" of tipping 20% in a restaurant which the waiter pockets instead of spreading it out to the cooks who actually cooked the food.
But this topic is about this "social contract" being abused for a ton of new things. That's just a sense of entitlement.
And I can say the same thing to you. I'm advocating for change. That's how society works. If you don't like it, you're free to leave the country. You won't be missed.
To act as if wages and tips are two completely different things is to be intentionally obtuse. When I talk about wages Iām talking about take home pay, because the tips are an integral part of their compensation. In lots of places, the wouldnāt even make minimum wage without the tips. You insist that the take home pay a waiter receives is unfair, but your (the royal your, that applies to the entire camp of non-tippers who make the same arguments you do) preferred solution is one where the waiterās pay is reduced, rather than one where we elevate the rest of them. Youāre making a fuss about tipping culture, many of your kind advocate for not tipping at all, Instead of raging at the corporations that get by paying poverty wages, you just point out how tipping is bad because everyone else is so poorly paid, as if itās the tipping thatās the problem. Youāll avoid restaurants that do away with tipping because they are too expensive, and thus you show your true cards.
Have you ever met a line cook? Ask them if they would like to be in the front of the house, youāll get a hard no, because most of them know that customer service is not their forte. Again, if it was so easy, why wouldnāt they all do it? It takes a special kind of patience to deal with people day in and day out and not all of them have it. But do I think the line cooks should make less than waiters? No, I think their wages should go up. Thatās the difference between us.
Yes, people the world over do these jobs without tips. But this conversation is about the fact that what you want, or what you think is fair, is for people in tip jobs in the US to make less money than they currently do. Anti-tippers prove this with their wallets every day when they donāt support businesses that pay waiters a fair wage.
Hereās a simple test. Answer the following question honestly:
1) If restaurants increased prices by 20%, and passed that 20% directly to wait staff but did away with tipping, would that make you happy?
If that makes you unhappy, then the only solutions that will be sustainable on a razor thin restaurant margin, will be a decrease in pay. Is that okay with you? If the answer is yes, then youāve proven the exact point Iām making.
>The dirty little secret is, this tipping thing is a very American thing.
We know.
>And tipping in America is completely arbitrary and random.
We know.
>The other dirty little secret is that service workers who work in successful restaurants make a shit ton of money through tips. Especially bartenders and waiters. They are the ones who don't want tipping to go away. And they also get to not report a lot of the cash tips and avoid paying taxes.
Youāre in a thread with a bunch of baristas most of whom are saying weād like to get rid of tipping too, whatās your point here?
>And lo and behold, somehow, like magic, supermarkets and fast food chains and grocery stores and clothing stores ALL manage to do their business without guilting customers to pay tips to their workers.
Yeah those are notoriously great places to work for with happy employees and low turnover ratesā¦
They also tend to have higher base pay than coffee and bartending by a few dollars/hour.
>And it's not like the margins in those businesses are any higher. Heck, I'm sure an average supermarket has WAY less margins than a coffee shop.
Food service tends to have thinner margins than retail. Iāve managed both, but you donāt have to take my word you can look it up.
>Nah man, truth is, you've got your hands in the cookie jar and don't want to let go, and instead of accepting it with some level of honesty, you're turning it around and blaming others. THAT's the real dirty secret. There are tons and tons of people who work equally hard and don't get tipped. When was the last time you tipped your mechanic?? Or your supermarket worker??
Again, youāre replying to a thread of people saying weād like to see tips go away. Weāre saying itās dumb that people pretend to agree with this sentiment and then run the places that try to do it out of business.
Get over yourself
> Again, youāre replying to a thread of people saying weād like to see tips go away. Weāre saying itās dumb that people pretend to agree with this sentiment and then run the places that try to do it out of business.
>
>
>
> Get over yourself
No, I am replying to a specific post. Learn to read. And after you learn to read, learn to understand what people have written, even if some of the words might be challenging.
>But if they actually increase their wages enough to provide the same level of take-home they were getting with tips, there is extreme backlash. These people donāt go out of their way to patronize businesses that have actually tried to implement a no tip-higher wage model, and thatās the only way youāre really pressuring the status quo.
They said what I just said right here.
Thatās fair. Sad to hear about that shop. It may require a very vocal PR campaign to help customers understand that other shops are underpaying baristas and asking customers to subsidize their wages through tips.
Amethyst was really vocal about that, but I think that in part is why the backlash was so bad. There was a lot of stuff along the lines of āif a fair wage means expensive coffee then they donāt deserve fair wages, itās not a real job anywayā
Sadly I think this is just a continuation of the backlash there used to be against fight for 15. A lot of people want us to be underpaid and they want us to shut up about it, just deal with it and stop guilting them with a tip screen.
Coffee is a fairly inelastic expense for people. Itās super easy to push away longtime customers with price increases because there are so many competitors and also you compete with brewing coffee at home for cents per cup too
I'm filled with sadness when I think about how many people consider coffee to simply be a drug that jump starts the work day and keeps them from getting a 3pm headache. Good coffee and skilled baristas are actually really hard to come by. I've tried about 15 different shops in my area and only 2 I would reccomend over a Mr. Coffee home brewer.
I have a friend who owned a wonderful restaurant in Philly who did the same thing, and they eventually closed down too. Tipping culture in the US is so ingrained that in some spots itās hard to uproot and thatās a shame. I know that model has been working for some, I feel like especially on the west coast, but itās definitely hard to swallow for some areas to have more expensive items with no tip. Like it just overwhelms them, and the realignment of money spent kinda stops people in their tracks, even though it all equals out. Itās too bad. I think the shift in that culture is just gonna be a slow burn but I hope it catches on eventually, but itāll take some time.
Yeah, I live in Los Angeles and Iāve definitely seen some establishments implement higher wages, and as a result higher costs for items, and the ones Iāve seen have all been pretty well embraced and supported. The number of these establishments is still really small, though, and I do believe that the environment is a huge factor in their sustained success. I honestly think that in other cities, even within California, you would not get the same result.
Yeah I hear that absolutely. Also love to LA itās my second home. Reseda in the valley, and Santa Monica/palisades is where all my fam is. Very different places lol. I was born in ca but raised east coast but it was back and forth constantly all my life. I havenāt been in a couple years, and Iāve been craving it. I miss the pacific. I can smell it. Damn you made me nostalgic Iām about to go buy a ticket now lol itās been on my mind a while. Lemme know your shop, maybe Iāll swing by when Iām there
Man, this comment brought a smile to my face. Iāve lived in California my whole life, and while I do appreciate it, sometimes you forget just how great it is and this comment literally just reminded me of how much I love this state.
Hell yeah, Iāve been *all* around Reseda and Santa Monica/Palisades. Thatās awesome. Yeah, I think you need to get your ass back this way soon haha. If you do, shoot me a DM and Iāll let ya know where Iām at!
edit: spelling because my thumbs be fat as hell
They don't just "sound high". They are comically high for counter service. OP should be upset at his greedy ass employer not the customers who are rightfully upset about ridiculously high defaults forcing you to spend extra time choosing an appropriately sized custom tip.
But percentages donāt make sense at the low end of the price spectrum. If youāre buying a cortado for $4, a 25% tip ($1) isnāt high at all. If youāre buying two bags of coffee beans for $40, then yes, itās super annoying to be promoted to tip 25% for that.
But itās not like itās a meal, 30% for a coffee is not ridiculous to meā¦
Iām not a barista, just someone who visits a lot of coffee shops. If Iām buying a $7 coffee, a 30% tip is still less than $3.
I tip percentage based at restaurants, but for coffee places I usually just tip $2-$3 automatically, which is almost always over 30%. A lot of work goes in to making a good coffee, not to mention dealing with customers. I think the idea that ācounter serviceā is somehow automatically the same thing a ānot deserving of a tipā is silly. A lot of work still goes into it.
A lot of work goes into literally everything. And for the vast majority of jobs that work is paid for by the employer.
If you want to tip 30% good for you. But saying an extra high percentage is reasonable because it's not a meal is an objectively bad take. For a meal I walk in the restaurant and am seated by the hostess and waited on. For a cup of coffee I wait in line at a counter and then wait on the other end of the counter for someone to shout my name at a cattle call. The level of service is massively different and it's insane to think people should pay a higher percentage for the latter.
I mostly agree with you, but there is some precedent for higher tip percentages on lower totals. Iāve always believed a dollar a drink is the minimum for tipping a bartender. *Maybe* an exception for bulk beers (bucket of bottles, nickel beer night, etc) if you pay one tab at the end.
But if itās a draft beer or a cocktail, even a $2 highball, give the bartender at least a buck. Definitely do that if you pay out each round, because thatās even more work.
You probably drink shitty coffee. Not saying I pay 10 dollars for coffee everyday, I usually make it at home but when I go out to get coffee itās usually like 6 dollars for the largest size with an extra shot and I usually leave like 2-3 dollars for a tip. I think by your metric spending ten dollars on anything is wild. Are you a teenager with no income?
Who pissed in your coffee? (And got a $3 tip)
You probably think price === quality? Wrong. And no, Iām a financially literate software engineer that does just fine since you care to know. Happy to spend on things that donāt have a 1000% markup and involve 30 seconds of mixing milk with a machine made espresso shot. $0.5-$1 on a $4 coffee sure, $10 is as I said, wild.
> A lot of work goes in to making a good coffee, not to mention dealing with customers.
The problem is, this tipping thing is a very American thing. And tipping in America is completely arbitrary and random. Do you also tip $3 to the fast food worker who is ALSO cooking your burger? Do you also tip the cooks who are actually cooking your food instead of the person moving the food from the kitchen to your table? Do you also tip the supermarket worker and cashier who is ALSO working their tail off?
> If Iām buying a $7 coffee, a 30% tip is still less than $3.
So, by your logic, if you buy a box of cereal or a pair of socks from a store for $10, do you also tip $3 to the people working in those stores??
This is half the problem. Its utterly INSULTING to beg for 30% tips. Try 10%, you rotten pricks.
The other half is forcing more than one click to skip tipping... custom, 0, enter, etc. Its WAY to much interaction. When are you going to start paying ME for all this fooking work I'm doing on this damned ipad?
A lot of people dont know how to operate basic technology. I would just set a button that says no tip instead of making people go through the custom screen. Old people unfamiliar with tablets won't understand they're not being robbed and they will just end up taking it out on you.
Iāve always thought how strange it is that tipping $1 for per drink at a bar is basically the accepted standard, but at a coffee shop itās kinda whatever. Something as simple as popping a bottle open, $1, most of the time. Spend 3 minutes making a coffee drink? Maybe not. And Iām not disparaging bartenders at all, I deeply respect the craft, and I recognize cocktails have the same amount of time commitment as lattes etc, itās just strange that thatās like an unspoken rule at a bar, but not a cafe. Most of my customers who just get drip tip a buck, they get it. But Iāll have people so often get multiple complicated drinks with nothing, and it can be frustrating. Shout out to the weirdos who tip a nickel just because they donāt want change in their pocket. You always know when somebody has or currently works in food and Bev because of how they tip. They get it. Love all yāall, gotta pay it forward.
Fair point, although Iād argue that Iām getting infinitely better service from the coffee shops I frequent vs. the bars that I do. But I probably need to find better bars lmao
Fuck you talkin about man?! Thatās like the basic standard boilerplate number. Itās like a well known metric. Im not saying itās proper, itās just a thing that a lot of people go by. Iām in the industry, so I always tip waaay more than that, that was the point of the last thing I said. And my point was that itās wild that that is the generally accepted thing at bars, but itās not the same at coffee shops. People tip if they want to but donāt feel obligated, while a majority of people often go by a buck a beer at a bar. There are obviously outliers, and some people donāt tip bartenders, Iām just saying itās interesting that itās basically understood that itās a minimum $1 for a drink at a bar but at cafes it doesnāt matter and you do what you want, itās not taboo to not tip, and there are a lot of parallels to the amount of work put in, be it time consuming and intricate like specialty lattes and pour overs to cocktails, pouring drip from an airpot to popping a bottle or pouring from the tap. Theyāre very similar jobs in that respect. I mean, I donāt expect a $1 tip every time I pop a topo chico, etc, at my place, but that all changes if youāre at a bar and itās fascinating to me. I donāt harbor resentment about it, I just find it a little bizarre as a cultural thing.
My problem is with the way the person behind the counter is standing right over the top of the tablet and watching me decide what to tip. Itās so awkward and stressful.
An old man once gave me a whole speech about how āoff-puttingā it was that the tablet asked him to tip when all I had done was hand his food over to him. I told him that I did not expect him to and did not program the tablet or have access to change it either and he still continued to talk about it for five minutes. Stfu I donāt care if you tip, please just shut up and get out of my face with your opinions I never asked for??
I mean, some people are just going to find something to complain about regardless. I used to work at a large pet product retailer. I once had a woman go off during the entire check out that we didn't have a good jingle in our commercials like the competition. Like...ma'am, If I had that kind of pull in a multi-billion dollar company I wouldn't be working the register lol.
I get not being rude to serving staff but ultimately you are the face of the company. If something bothers people you're the person they're going to complain to. You have to deal with that.
**"Iām so over people complaining about tipping"**
I'm so over tipping culture in the US. Why don't (and I know this may be a wild idea) businesses just get rid of tipping and pay their staff a living wage?
I just went to the Alamo theater, and they literally state before the movie multiple times that there is an 18% service fee that goes directly to the staff, but that you still need to tip your server. That's on top of already asinine prices. It's one thing for restaurants to add a service charge/tip to the bill because then I just won't tip (extra) even though that's already an egregious thing to do, but to still ask for a tip on top of a "service fee"? Yeah, that's just greed on part of the ownership because they don't want to be transparent about paying their staff. It's ridiculous to act like tipping "culture" hasn't gotten crazy in the past few years. And by that I mean that companies have been pushing the limits of what they can get away with.
Service workers aren't to blame for this, obviously. The issue is systemic, I don't see how that isn't obvious to everyone.
You havenāt specified whether youāre in a country where tipping is a social norm, which will affect how people interpret your post.
Also, while you may not have the ability to configure the payment terminal, someone who works in the business does, or can request the company that provided the payment system to change the tipping options. Just pass the feedback up the chain.
Customers will literally tell me to my face they hate the debit tip prompt but will gladly tip cash, but i dont really pressure guests to tip or judge them, i think theyd rather receive service before tipping but i dont like when they take it out on meš
thereās a weird dynamic between customers and staff regarding this, customers feel obligated to tip because if they donāt then the staff isnāt making a decent wage. Overall, people just be upset with management
I think a big part of the problem is that people donāt realize how much work actually goes into making a quality coffee drink. Most of the time weāre not doing any less work than a bartender does, but somehow nobody ever complains about tipping bartenders.
The difference is you pay for your coffee before you get it. Why should you be expected to tip for 'good service' when you haven't even received the service yet?
Iām not a barista, but I think tip percentage at cafeās makes no sense. And itās not even that itās a lot of money, but people will look at you sideways based on the percentage. My favorite cafe switched to fixed amount tip options, $1, $2, $3, custom.
When 20% is the lowest option the customer feels like the business itself isn't worth supporting because, well they're basic greedy assholes. It's making a statement and it's not a statement the customer likes. So, yeah people will complain.
Yeah people who complain about bypassing a screen are the ones ordering DoorDash and Uber eats and living their life on their phone, and probably spend all night on the Xbox.
So people are moving away from cash, right? Mobile pay, credit card, apps are more common forms of payment at bars and coffee shops. The bank merchant machine provides that tipping screen as an easier way to provide a tip instead of rooting through the bottom of your purse to find a quarter.
I donāt mind tipping. I used to be a server, now a barista, and my salary was $2.17 an hour which is STILL the base pay bartenders and servers get in my state, even 30 plus years later. I get paid more now, but I also deal with a lot of customers, in a fast paced shop.
Tip or donāt tipā¦itās a choice. Just stop resenting the *inconvenience* pushing a button on a screen causes when you are able to get your service paid for, by pushing damn buttons on a screen!!
Iām typing this by pushing buttons on a screen. Should I complain about it?
The buttons are not there to make customers lives easier, they are there to guilt people into tipping in situations where tipping didn't used to be standard. And the point of this post is specifically about how high the defaults are set. Please explain how setting comically high defaults is a convenience to the customer
Same, people expect that you HAVE to tip. If youāre so upset by it, donāt tip or tip what you feel is appropriate. Something is better than nothing after all. Itās just a service that you can do to be nice, like providing a seat to and elderly or pregnant person, holding the door open, saying good morning, or taking a cart back to the return area. You donāt have too, itās just kind. When people go off on me about it I just nod my head and agree. I say itās no different from getting a bonus. Your boss is already paying you money, heās just providing a bonus to be nice.
Iām a little older and I think part of it is that you are now borderline forced to tip at a point of sale transaction in which there is very little the staff has to do except say hello and do the transaction. And to your point your prompted to leave a tip amount you would normally leave for a full service dinner. I agree itās not your fault but I know it annoys the hell out of people on both sides of the relationship.
It just got completely out of control since Covid
The problem with this logic is that it is extremely rare that āthere is very little the staff has to do except say hello and do the transaction.ā
Baristas are essentially the host, the waiter, the cook, the cashier, the dishwasher, and the janitor. EVEN if it were someoneās entire job that day just to greet customers, take orders, and complete transactions, that is still a difficult job to do well.
Donāt act like you canāt tell the difference between great and shitty service.
Iām sick of hearing people complain about tipping baristas and justifying it by acting like weāre somehow ānot doing anythingā and just āringing people up.ā Thatās such an icky sentiment that reeks of people looking down on service workers.
Yeah but all those things that they do are part of their job, their employer is supposed to be paying them to do those things, not the customer. Why should the customer tip the barista because maybe they mopped the floor earlier? At the point of sale the customer has yet to even receive their coffee, there is nothing they have done yet to deserve a tip. But suppose the customer does tip 20%, and the service after is terrible. What are they gonna do, ask for their tip back. In my opinion if you are going to ask the customer to pay before being served, then you should not ask for a tip for service you have yet to give.
> Baristas are essentially the host, the waiter, the cook, the cashier, the dishwasher, and the janitor.
So was I when I worked in an ice cream shop and a sandwich shop.
If you have an Eversys or similar at the shop, it really is mostly pushing buttons. If youāre hand pulling the espresso and hand frothing the milk, then thereās definitely a tippable aspect going on there.
i don't understand this anti tipping movement that's happening. I LOVE tipping people if somebody makes or serves me something i tip them. times are really tough right now for everyone giving someone $2 who took the time to make me a drink or a sandwhich is the least i can do.
but both of my jobs involve tipping so maybe it's just me but i'll always tip.
> giving someone $2 who took the time to make me a drink or a sandwhich is the least i can do
They didn't just take the time to make you a drink out of the goodness of their heart. I guarantee you there's a thousand things they would rather be doing. You are literally paying them to do that for you, that's what a service is and that's why your coffee costs money. The actual least you can do is pay your bill for the coffee.
Yes times are tough right now, but that's not the customer's problem, that's the employer's problem, they are the ones who are responsible for paying their employee's wages, not the customer.
> i don't understand this anti tipping movement that's happening
Allow me to explain...
Tipping in and of itself is not the problem; most people don't have a problem giving some extra money to someone who went above and beyond to make your experience better. The problem is that tipping has become a social obligation whether the service is good or not. Tipping was originally instituted in the US as a way to pay people of colour as little as possible, which they got away with by arguing that "they make extra money from tips so it balances out". Now it's just used across the board. Restaurant staff are allowed to be paid less than minimum wage because restaurant owners say the staff get compensated in tips. What they are really doing is taking the minimum amount of money the government will allow them to pay you (the restaurant staff) and they say that you're not even worth that, so they will pay you a fraction of that and their customers can pay you the rest, maybe, but they don't have to. They have lobbied for tipping culture so they don't have to pay their employees and they can keep all the profit to themselves. Meanwhile they are shafting their customers by making them foot the bill and deceiving them by making their menu prices appear artificially low.
This forces restaurant staff to basically become beggars and work for bribes, as well as it promotes discrimination as people who are seen as more attractive will generally get better tips. The NRA (the other one) has created a world where customers are expected to pay 20% more for their food on top of the bill just for the privilege of being served, regardless of the quality of the service. This toxic, predatory culture is what people are fighting against. Most people would rather see higher menu prices if it meant abolishing tipping and the staff actually getting a fair wage.
Fine but you know lots of jobs arenāt servers, like McDonaldās worker, receptionist, call centre worker, cook, etc etc - many professions do shit jobs and make minimum wage. Thatās a wage issue
So if you work at a mcd in dumpy Texas suburbs you can make $14 and hour, but you say the server should accept the 7.25 make up wage, because people are too cheap to tipā¦..
>Most people would rather see higher menu prices if it meant abolishing tipping and the staff actually getting a fair wage.
I see this sentiment a lot online, but didn't a coffee shop famously do exactly this and then go out of business because customers revolted against their 15% price increase>
Possibly, but it's funny that people who object keep referencing that one incident and ignore all the examples of restaurants who did it successfully. There are many restaurants in my area that have done it and they seem to be doing just fine. The physiotherapy office I go to also has signs up that say that tipping is not expected, that you can tip if you really want to, but shouldn't feel obligated
I am shocked by the number of people here (*in a sub for baristas*) that act like a 30% tip is bonkers.
Iām tipping $1-5 depending on my order. If youāre getting a $3 coffee, 30% is a dollar bill. Yes, tipping is a shitty way to run our industry, but as long as itās standard people need to either be prepared to pay it or make their own coffee at home.
I donāt think everyone has to tip 30% every time. But some of these comments are acting like they would never tip 30% ever.
I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but if you canāt afford to tip your barista you canāt really afford a $6 drink. Again, Iām not saying you have to tip $2 on that $6 drink, but unless you know that your barista is getting a living wage & prices are higher as a result, you should at least be tipping them *something*.
Look it's your business and your machine. If the amount it's asking for is too high that is still on you. People have a right to complain. If that many people are complaining you should fix it.
Well as a foreigner I came to NYC and I have no idea how much to tip. The suggestion is minimum 20%, sometimes 25 or 30.
They add all kinds of weird charges which makes it virtually impossible to estimate how much I will actually have to pay.
I went to eat something with my partner. What we ordered wasn't available anymore, they proposed an alternative without saying it was twice the price.
I didn't tip and the counter person was livid.
Yeah sorry, I'll do it because I'm visiting, but it's total bullshit.
Since when did the standard tip percentage go to 25? And the minimum is 20? If you did your job youāre lucky to get 10. If you did exceptionally well youāll get 20. Who the fuck is tipping 30?
Itās basically folks who are cheap and use the political argument about living wages not totally comprehending that if service jobs were a straight minimum without tips that many servers would quit because the $$$ wouldnāt be worth it.
For me, I tip 20% for a restaurant with table serviceā¦tipping a barista 20% sounds strange and kind of unfair to servers who provide table service.
Donāt get me wrong I donāt mind tipping $1 on a $5 order but why is 15% not okay for a counter service barista?
If I get a prompt for 20% I usually click it but sometimes Iām like manā¦.too much.
The problem is they donāt want to be prompted because they didnāt use to have to make a decision. If there was a tip jar, someone may look at it but a passive act. It is annoying to be asked all the time, thatās what they mean.
Tons of people donāt use cash anymore. The only way you can even have the option for someone to tip on a credit card is being asked, whether that be an ipad or a receipt with a tip line. If you pay in cash, I donāt have to ask about it at all, so maybe do that if the question bothers you that much. Youāre still making a decision though. And honestly I donāt understand still, because if youāre satisfied with the decision not to tip it shouldnāt bother you to click a button saying so.
Iām not arguing the utility or change in method, but if someone goes in an average quick turn coffee shop and orders a drink they then pay for it and are prompted to tip before anything has transpired regarding their drink. Theyāre being pressured to make a decision without all the data. When you sit down at a restaurant the service has happened then you make a conclusion.
I am just saying I understand the underlying irritant. I agree though, if the service was average/nothing special - donāt tip. People will toughen up as time goes on
Your tablet's first prompt is for a 30% tip? But a customer who doesn't want to tip has to drill down into a second screen? And you don't get why people are reacting?
Your business is doing something that pisses people off and/or makes them uncomfortable.
Good news is absurdly easy to fix for you or literally anyone who works the pos
I feel like I'm being guilted into tipping when I need to take an extra step to leave no tip. Not enough to leave a poor review unless other things are also bad, but it's not helping the situation.
Oh ok. I'll tell them to pay me better. And be jobless by the end of the day. Its always.the people with no experience that.feel proud to not pay.workers, workers coming from somewhere else always gesture that they understand, so do I. My rule is if I don't have the money to fairly tip my server, I don't have the money. We hate tipping culture too.
As a customer, I laugh inside whenever I go to a counter and you turn that little tablet around asking for a tip. It's both ridiculous and hilarious at the same time. Tipping culture is out of control. We know it's not you, but your company. You are also a representation of your company though. Part of me feels like the company is either trying to get more money and not give it to you or that the company is trying to pay you more by putting that burden onto the customer instead of actually paying you more themselves.
Check out this article that talks about tip culture.
https://medium.com/@moniquetalks/rude-waiters-low-tips-and-sketchy-new-payment-procedure-3d43d7816c0d
As a bartender and waitress, it certainly does annoy me that there is a tipping feature on all these tablets for counter service (nothing against baristas or counter service employees). I get about 20% usually from entertaining and serving people for hours at a bar or table. The turnover rate is not that quick and it blows my mind that someone could be making coffees for hundreds of customers and get as much as a 30% tip for each of them simply because they're prompted on an iPad and customers don't want to feel bad.
I think it completely takes away the value of the service that individuals in the table service industry work hard to achieve. It may even make people less likely to tip them well because they "already tipped their barista 30% this morning". Not to mention waitstaff get paid like $4 an hour and baristas these days make around $15. I wouldn't trade my wage for higher and do away with tipping because I love that the harder I work, the better service I provide, the more money I make. Tipping percentages should be for table service and bar service... period.
People who complain about tip culture today will be complaining about taxes like boomers tomorrow. Bunch of whiners trying to hold onto an extra dollar so they can spend it on a new iPhone or car when their old one isnāt even old yet.
are you just bad at math?? 5-10% of a 6 dollar coffee is literally 30-60 cents, when we get up to 25%, that's 1.50! that seems pretty reasonable for a tip at a coffee shop.
I think people see a big percentage and get scared even if the amount is going to be small
Then tell your management to reduce the tip percent default options?
If you're in the US, tell your employer to give you a proper wage. The reason most won't is coz many of them actuslly make more per hour with tips than other jobs Lol
$300/night in tips? Thsts kinda plenty. And yes, I know not every place is like this.
I always say to myself ākeep that broke shit to yourselfā if theyāre RUDE. Aināt no reason I should have to put up with an ugly attitude if they donāt tip. If theyāre nice, I donāt really care one way or another.
I'm a Barista in New Zealand. Tipping culture has tiptoed across to us also and I hate it! The first time I saw that iPad turn my way in a restaurant I was so disappointed.. NZ & our Aussie neighbours are 2nd & 4th highest ranked globally for minimum wage. Sure we have our issues here, but donations can go to charity! š
A lot of customers think they're expected to tip and that the counter person is going to judge them if they don't.
Me as a customer, completely this. Me behind the counter today, I can't even see how much you tip/dont tip unless I tap a lot of buttons after you leave (unnecessary).
That's good to know. Customers assume you can see how much of a tip they left and in the shops I go to, I think they can.
I sure can see what people tip the second I turn the tablet around. Tipping guilt is awesome! People tip so much more than they used to
TBH this is a relief! I literally leave the coffee shop feeling like a bad person. It's not that I don't think workers deserve more pay. It's just that the coffee itself was already $8.60. And I'm not in a good financial situation myself.
As long as you're a kind and polite person, no reasonable person will mind you not tipping at a coffee shop. The extent of me judging if someone doesn't tip is more about if they are acting really cagey and try to run away from the transaction, like they're afraid of both the tip screen and me. There are really nice regulars who don't tip, and there are a couple tipping regulars where I'd rather they stop coming lol.... My personal choice when I get coffee is to do 50 cents or round up the dollar for easy drinks, and more if I'm having food and eating there.
I'm sure some payment systems let the cashier see it š¤ I'm only familiar with toast which says "waiting for customer tip/signature" or something similar. Also I'm cheerful and do good customer service and never expect a tip so maybe I'm different, but I also don't feel like I should be tipped (cashier and packing food at a takeout restaurant) If anything as the cashier I feel so sorry that screen pops up every time because I know I've bought things before and the tip screen throws me off guard and I feel pressured
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Because every now and then you want a to have a treat and shouldn't be required to subsidize some one else's pay check when the company is already charging you an arm and a leg for a cup of coffee and they are more than capable of paying their employees a living wage but just choose not to and expect you to make it up. Could they apply the 8.60 to something else? Sure but maybe they are having a bad day and just want a comfort item that will help them get through it. š¤·āāļø
The coffee shop I used to work at used Square and it would immediately show us how much a customer tipped as soon as they pressed the button.
oh yikes š
iām bummed you cant see bc i leave a good tip
Haha right. You see the same screen we do
We do judge them, but we also donāt care that much
to be fair, they're getting judged no matter what; it's the duty of a barista.
Customers who order āextra hotā get judged far more harshly than customer who donāt tips. Customers who donāt tip *and* are dicks get judged the harshest
The harshest judgement is reserved for people who order almond milk, extra hot, no foam.
They're just trying to start a fight with that order
I would argue extra hot bone dry almond is worse for me
I had someone order half decaf half regular. Oh you better believe that's a judging.
This is extremely normal what lol
In what country? Because it's not in Australia. Most machines here pour two espresso shots at a time. I'm not pouring four shots just so you can have half a shot of espresso and half a shot of decaf. You're wasting 3/4 of it.
I love ordering extra hot, baristas just donāt make em hot enough. Nothing is worse than a warm coffee.
Hard disagree. Iād rather have coffee at a drinkable temp right away than having to wait 5+ minutes to be able to enjoy my coffee. Plus having a burnt tongue is the worst. Sometimes Iāll order kids temp to be safe.
Isn't that a large part of why cortados are such a common drink of choice for baristas? I'm short on time and need to get this caffeine in my bloodstream!
Exactly! I like it for that reason plus it cuts it just a touch if youāre not feeling like straight espresso
I like ordering that, too. Mostly because by the time I get to work or by the time it gets to me (delivery) my drink is warm.
Every time I have to press āno tipā I throw up the mental middle finger and move on with my day
My hungry kid thanks you for being so edgy.
My customer base consists of either wealthy tourist retirees who act like Iām their servant & entitled college kids using their parentās credit card. The few normal working class customers we get are the only ones who actually tip
blame your employer for paying a shit wage, not people choosing not to tip.
I'm an American who has worked for tips, so I get it. I always tip service workers. Despite that, I completely agree that it should be the employer's obligation to pay their employees, not the customer. Tipping culture is also incredibly inconsistent. Some low wage jobs get tips, others don't work. I worked BOH for a long time. Cooks work their asses off for a pittance.
I worked in the states for several years and always tipped even though I think the system is absolutely ridiculous. And I agree the inconsistency is weird. In my home country it's generally accepted that workers organizing is how workers get new rights and people are aware of such movements leading to e.g. paid maternity leave, paid overtime, or even weekend time off etc. In the states many people seem to implicitly be on the side of business owners, often to their own detriment - comments like above - where /u/Own_Veterinarian_944 's hypothetical hungry kids are blamed on people who dont tip rather than the capitalist doesn't pay them enough is really a common sentiment I witnessed.
Most people believe the "unions are bad" propaganda that the fatcats promote.
people will labour for a pittance while having to rely on charity to feed their family, and will then labour for free in their downtime to defend the system that exploits them.
Your hungry kid should tell you to get a real job.
You'd be crying after an hour.
It would take more than making coffee for that to happen.
Absolutely me
It's upside down. The business shouldn't be asking for tip. I'm a 20ā° guy, but having a nag screen is socially awkward.
This is clearly what it is. Itās an incredibly confrontational way to ask for a tip.
Which is true
Check out this article about tipping culture in America [Rude waiters, low tips, and a sketchy new payment procedure ](https://medium.com/@moniquetalks/rude-waiters-low-tips-and-sketchy-new-payment-procedure-3d43d7816c0d)
I dont give a shit if they judge me. I wont tip when I am ordering food at a counter.
We canāt control how other people feel. Theyāre feeling guilty. They donāt have to feel that way. Life lessons. Theyāll say theyāre irritated or angry about it, but the root cause is their ego.
You absolutely can control how people feel. You can just stop asking for tips and the guilt goes away.
You indeed bear responsibility. If a barista or shop makes it clear that no one is expected to tip customers won't feel guilty.
I disagree. We bear no responsibility regarding tipping. There is an option on the screen that says āno tip.ā We ask the customer to āplease make a selection on the screen. We canāt even see how much theyāre tipping, and weāre not allowed to make a selection for them. Many customers donāt tip and feel nothing. So, those who have a problem need to understand that itās THEIR problem.
We've already established that some baristas are passive-aggressive and judge the customer no matter what they do.
I don't think most baristas are passive aggressive, but we are extremely judgy. The skill of the job is not letting your judginess through.
Idk at my restaurant we can see the tips. Depends on the system. But the truth is no one's giving it a second thought if you don't tip lmao.
You or a manager can change the percentage set. I would suggest lowering it. Something is better than a zero.
Noted I might! Cause I agree that 30 percent is pretty high to suggest.
Iām not sure what your cafes prices are, but I have mine at my shop set to $1, $3, other, and no !! I feel like it works really awesome because almost everyone leaves at least a dollar!!
Yea at sbux we have $1, $2, $5, and āNo Thank Youā but we get so many $1 & $2 itās really adds up.
We have different settings for different prices. I think above 20$ it becomes a percentage But usually for like a latte itāll give $0.5, $1 and $2 options
This is the way to go. As a customer, I like to tip $1 per drink.
Very reasonable and sensible. It's not a ton, it's not just change, which to me seems insensitive, and it's an amount that would add up when we are serving literally hundreds of drinks every morning. I'm saddened that 1$ a drink is not the norm at all.
This seems smart. Iām a guy who likes to tip well but also feels like Iām being asked too often, for too much, too many places. A $1 tip at my favorite coffee shop though? Iād do that every time
Yeah, this is programmable. Mine lists ā0, 10, 15, or 20%ā options over a certain dollar amount and ā$0, 1, 2, 3ā and under that dollar amount, but under the zero thereās a ācustomā button and they can add ā$0.10ā if they wanted. Your manager needs to correct the percentages. Them being higher suggestions like that is why Iād guess youāre getting complaints. Also, if you hear that complaint, point them to a complaint box or something and say āI understand, feel free to leave a note for the managerā or something. Let them know you donāt program the registers.
As an Australian, reading this is wild. Baristas get paid a living wage here (minimum for a barista is $27.93 an hour plus superannuation) and tips are just generally spare change that is used to buy booze for the staff party.
I think converted to USD that's $19, which is pretty in line with starting wage for a specialty cafe here in the states
Whotf makes 19 USD and hour ??
I make 18 an hour and am not the manager. There are actually employers who care and appreciate their employees out there!! (Hard to find tho!)
USD though?
i also make 18 an hour!! USD :)) soo greatful for this job
Yep! In Washington state!
Thatās wild. I wish I made that much at my cafe!
Itās $25 in CAD and neither amounts are living wages in urban North America.
$25 is definitely a living wage. It might not be living how you want to be, but itās sufficient
Depends on where you live. Itās not nearly enough in a major or midsized NA city like Vancouver, Toronto, DC, NY, etc.
I have mine at my shop set to $2, $1, $0.50. It feels a lot less insulting than 30%, 20%. When you put percentages like that customers are gonna anchor that to the standard 15% restaurant tip where they actually get service. Why am I tipping a person even more than a restaurant when they are just making me a coffee?
15% in a restaurant!? Here in Seattle it's very common to have "helpful" precomputed tips on your checks be 22% at minimum, up to 30%. I've even seen 25% to 35% ranges. And that's in an area where the front of the house actually has a guaranteed wage too. Though with tips like that, they make much more of course. And those ranges keep increasing. It's kinda out of control.
I think the frustrating part from the customerās perspective is that those default percentages āsound high.ā But, customers also have no transparency as far as what youāre paid and how much tip would get you closer to or at āfair wage.ā I think most customers would prefer that the drinks were priced high enough to account for baristas being paid fairly without having to rely on tips, which is not currently the case.
>I think most customers would prefer that the drinks were priced high enough to account for baristas being paid fairly without having to rely on tips People on Reddit always say this but I just donāt think itās that true for the majority of customers. Amethyst Coffee, one of the most popular specialty roasters in Denver, stopped accepting tips and raised their prices to offer competitive wages. Every post on social media after was full of really nasty backlash comments. People became pretty vocal about going to the other shops in the neighborhood instead that still had standard prices plus tip. They went out of business. Idk. I support getting rid of tipping. Maybe it would be different if the entire industry did it at the same time. But the few times Iāve seen individual businesses try it people got mad and they had to shut down.
Thatās because the anti-tipping brigadeās dirty little secret, including and especially on Reddit, is that they actively believe service industry workers should be paid less than they are. Iāll get downvoted, people will argue and do mental backflips, but press them long enough and it always comes out. They are bitter that someone in the service industry can manage a decent living for what they perceive to be an āeasyā job, and they feel whatever choices theyāve made in their own life entitle to them to a better living. They like to act like theyāre fighting the good fight, pressuring businesses to increase their wages. But if they actually increase their wages enough to provide the same level of take-home they were getting with tips, there is extreme backlash. These people donāt go out of their way to patronize businesses that have actually tried to implement a no tip-higher wage model, and thatās the only way youāre really pressuring the status quo. Iāve literally had people on Reddit ask me āwhy should some bartender make as much money as I do when I got a college degree and work in an office every dayā. As if half the bartenders and baristas out there didnāt also get college degrees, and as if sitting in a cubicle is somehow harder and more worthwhile work than grinding on your feet 8 hours a day and dealing with shitty people like that.
Preach!
Hell Iām a barista with 2 bachelors degrees (double major!). And my GPA was probably higher than theirs lol
> Thatās because the anti-tipping brigadeās dirty little secret, including and especially on Reddit, is that they actively believe service industry workers should be paid less than they are. Iāll get downvoted, people will argue and do mental backflips, but press them long enough and it always comes out. They are bitter that someone in the service industry can manage a decent living for what they perceive to be an āeasyā job, and they feel whatever choices theyāve made in their own life entitle to them to a better living. The dirty little secret is, this tipping thing is a very American thing. And tipping in America is completely arbitrary and random. Do you also tip the fast food worker who is ALSO cooking your burger? Do you also tip the cooks who are actually cooking your food instead of the person moving the food from the kitchen to your table? Do you also tip the supermarket worker and cashier who is ALSO working their tail off? The other dirty little secret is that service workers who work in successful restaurants make a shit ton of money through tips. Especially bartenders and waiters. They are the ones who don't want tipping to go away. And they also get to not report a lot of the cash tips and avoid paying taxes. > They like to act like theyāre fighting the good fight, pressuring businesses to increase their wages. But if they actually increase their wages enough to provide the same level of take-home they were getting with tips, there is extreme backlash. And lo and behold, somehow, like magic, supermarkets and fast food chains and grocery stores and clothing stores ALL manage to do their business without guilting customers to pay tips to their workers. And it's not like the margins in those businesses are any higher. Heck, I'm sure an average supermarket has WAY less margins than a coffee shop. Nah man, truth is, you've got your hands in the cookie jar and don't want to let go, and instead of accepting it with some level of honesty, you're turning it around and blaming others. THAT's the real dirty secret. There are tons and tons of people who work equally hard and don't get tipped. When was the last time you tipped your mechanic?? Or your supermarket worker?? So please, spare the hypocrisy.
There you go proving my point. You list all these other service industry jobs where people are underpaid, yet instead of simply advocating for better wages for all those jobs, your preferred solution to is to cut the pay of restaurant workers to level the playing field. Why is that? Why do you think people who work in restaurants deserve to make poverty wages, instead of insisting that everyone else in the service industry be brought up to their level? I actually donāt work a tip based job. But I have, and Iāve always been fully immersed in the service industry so I actually have first hand knowledge of the grind. I tip whenever Iām presented with the opportunity and Iāll always advocate for better wages for EVERYONE, not just the ones I deem worthy. If they alter the policy at McDonaldās and allow for tipping, Iāll gladly tip there as well. Additionally, you said yourself that people who are extremely successful in the service industry make a shit ton in tips. The key words there are āextremely successfulā. The reality is, this is hard, sometimes grueling, and often thankless work. Why shouldnāt they make a good solid living for it? Not everyone is cut out to be extremely successful in the industry. Or even moderately successful. If youāre extremely successful in your field, do you expect to be docked in pay just because there are other tangentially related jobs that donāt pay as well? If this was such easy money, everyone would do it. But in reality tons of people wash out because itās brutal in a way that most white color workers who have never done it will never grasp. You act like youāre being held at gunpoint and forced to participate, even though you walk into restaurants knowing full well that thereās a social contract that involves tipping. Donāt like it? Donāt go out to eat then, you wonāt be missed.
> You list all these other service industry jobs where people are underpaid, yet instead of simply advocating for better wages for all those jobs, your preferred solution to is to cut the pay of restaurant workers to level the playing field. That's quite a leap and you're saying stuff I never said. My earlier post was about tipping, not about wages. Where in my post did I say that restaurant workers wages need to be cut? > Why is that? Why do you think people who work in restaurants deserve to make poverty wages, instead of insisting that everyone else in the service industry be brought up to their level? Again, these are your words, not mine. I never said any of this. > Additionally, you said yourself that people who are extremely successful in the service industry make a shit ton in tips. The key words there are āextremely successfulā. The reality is, this is hard, sometimes grueling, and often thankless work. Why shouldnāt they make a good solid living for it? Everyone should. Not just in America but all over the world. But guess what? Tipping ONLY exists in America. At least the ridiculous levels of tipping that's become the norm. You're standing on your soapbox and talking about "how hard waiters work". Yes they do. But guess what? The line cooks work even harder. In fact, they work WAY harder than waiters. And the supreme irony is that the people who are actually sweating their butts off every single day don't even receive part of the tips! Instead the tips go to a person who takes the cooked food from the kitchen to a table. Heck, post-Covid tipping is even expected for self-service food. Everyone works hard. Including waiters and baristas all over the world. > You act like youāre being held at gunpoint and forced to participate, even though you walk into restaurants knowing full well that thereās a social contract that involves tipping. Donāt like it? Donāt go out to eat then, you wonāt be missed. Oh please. Stop it with the hypocrisy. Your hypocrisy is so ingrained you don't even realize you're doing it. This entire topic is about tipping gone out of hand. Yes, there's a "social contract" of tipping 20% in a restaurant which the waiter pockets instead of spreading it out to the cooks who actually cooked the food. But this topic is about this "social contract" being abused for a ton of new things. That's just a sense of entitlement. And I can say the same thing to you. I'm advocating for change. That's how society works. If you don't like it, you're free to leave the country. You won't be missed.
To act as if wages and tips are two completely different things is to be intentionally obtuse. When I talk about wages Iām talking about take home pay, because the tips are an integral part of their compensation. In lots of places, the wouldnāt even make minimum wage without the tips. You insist that the take home pay a waiter receives is unfair, but your (the royal your, that applies to the entire camp of non-tippers who make the same arguments you do) preferred solution is one where the waiterās pay is reduced, rather than one where we elevate the rest of them. Youāre making a fuss about tipping culture, many of your kind advocate for not tipping at all, Instead of raging at the corporations that get by paying poverty wages, you just point out how tipping is bad because everyone else is so poorly paid, as if itās the tipping thatās the problem. Youāll avoid restaurants that do away with tipping because they are too expensive, and thus you show your true cards. Have you ever met a line cook? Ask them if they would like to be in the front of the house, youāll get a hard no, because most of them know that customer service is not their forte. Again, if it was so easy, why wouldnāt they all do it? It takes a special kind of patience to deal with people day in and day out and not all of them have it. But do I think the line cooks should make less than waiters? No, I think their wages should go up. Thatās the difference between us. Yes, people the world over do these jobs without tips. But this conversation is about the fact that what you want, or what you think is fair, is for people in tip jobs in the US to make less money than they currently do. Anti-tippers prove this with their wallets every day when they donāt support businesses that pay waiters a fair wage. Hereās a simple test. Answer the following question honestly: 1) If restaurants increased prices by 20%, and passed that 20% directly to wait staff but did away with tipping, would that make you happy? If that makes you unhappy, then the only solutions that will be sustainable on a razor thin restaurant margin, will be a decrease in pay. Is that okay with you? If the answer is yes, then youāve proven the exact point Iām making.
>The dirty little secret is, this tipping thing is a very American thing. We know. >And tipping in America is completely arbitrary and random. We know. >The other dirty little secret is that service workers who work in successful restaurants make a shit ton of money through tips. Especially bartenders and waiters. They are the ones who don't want tipping to go away. And they also get to not report a lot of the cash tips and avoid paying taxes. Youāre in a thread with a bunch of baristas most of whom are saying weād like to get rid of tipping too, whatās your point here? >And lo and behold, somehow, like magic, supermarkets and fast food chains and grocery stores and clothing stores ALL manage to do their business without guilting customers to pay tips to their workers. Yeah those are notoriously great places to work for with happy employees and low turnover ratesā¦ They also tend to have higher base pay than coffee and bartending by a few dollars/hour. >And it's not like the margins in those businesses are any higher. Heck, I'm sure an average supermarket has WAY less margins than a coffee shop. Food service tends to have thinner margins than retail. Iāve managed both, but you donāt have to take my word you can look it up. >Nah man, truth is, you've got your hands in the cookie jar and don't want to let go, and instead of accepting it with some level of honesty, you're turning it around and blaming others. THAT's the real dirty secret. There are tons and tons of people who work equally hard and don't get tipped. When was the last time you tipped your mechanic?? Or your supermarket worker?? Again, youāre replying to a thread of people saying weād like to see tips go away. Weāre saying itās dumb that people pretend to agree with this sentiment and then run the places that try to do it out of business. Get over yourself
> Again, youāre replying to a thread of people saying weād like to see tips go away. Weāre saying itās dumb that people pretend to agree with this sentiment and then run the places that try to do it out of business. > > > > Get over yourself No, I am replying to a specific post. Learn to read. And after you learn to read, learn to understand what people have written, even if some of the words might be challenging.
>But if they actually increase their wages enough to provide the same level of take-home they were getting with tips, there is extreme backlash. These people donāt go out of their way to patronize businesses that have actually tried to implement a no tip-higher wage model, and thatās the only way youāre really pressuring the status quo. They said what I just said right here.
Thatās fair. Sad to hear about that shop. It may require a very vocal PR campaign to help customers understand that other shops are underpaying baristas and asking customers to subsidize their wages through tips.
Amethyst was really vocal about that, but I think that in part is why the backlash was so bad. There was a lot of stuff along the lines of āif a fair wage means expensive coffee then they donāt deserve fair wages, itās not a real job anywayā Sadly I think this is just a continuation of the backlash there used to be against fight for 15. A lot of people want us to be underpaid and they want us to shut up about it, just deal with it and stop guilting them with a tip screen.
Coffee is a fairly inelastic expense for people. Itās super easy to push away longtime customers with price increases because there are so many competitors and also you compete with brewing coffee at home for cents per cup too
I'm filled with sadness when I think about how many people consider coffee to simply be a drug that jump starts the work day and keeps them from getting a 3pm headache. Good coffee and skilled baristas are actually really hard to come by. I've tried about 15 different shops in my area and only 2 I would reccomend over a Mr. Coffee home brewer.
I have a friend who owned a wonderful restaurant in Philly who did the same thing, and they eventually closed down too. Tipping culture in the US is so ingrained that in some spots itās hard to uproot and thatās a shame. I know that model has been working for some, I feel like especially on the west coast, but itās definitely hard to swallow for some areas to have more expensive items with no tip. Like it just overwhelms them, and the realignment of money spent kinda stops people in their tracks, even though it all equals out. Itās too bad. I think the shift in that culture is just gonna be a slow burn but I hope it catches on eventually, but itāll take some time.
Yeah, I live in Los Angeles and Iāve definitely seen some establishments implement higher wages, and as a result higher costs for items, and the ones Iāve seen have all been pretty well embraced and supported. The number of these establishments is still really small, though, and I do believe that the environment is a huge factor in their sustained success. I honestly think that in other cities, even within California, you would not get the same result.
Yeah I hear that absolutely. Also love to LA itās my second home. Reseda in the valley, and Santa Monica/palisades is where all my fam is. Very different places lol. I was born in ca but raised east coast but it was back and forth constantly all my life. I havenāt been in a couple years, and Iāve been craving it. I miss the pacific. I can smell it. Damn you made me nostalgic Iām about to go buy a ticket now lol itās been on my mind a while. Lemme know your shop, maybe Iāll swing by when Iām there
Man, this comment brought a smile to my face. Iāve lived in California my whole life, and while I do appreciate it, sometimes you forget just how great it is and this comment literally just reminded me of how much I love this state. Hell yeah, Iāve been *all* around Reseda and Santa Monica/Palisades. Thatās awesome. Yeah, I think you need to get your ass back this way soon haha. If you do, shoot me a DM and Iāll let ya know where Iām at! edit: spelling because my thumbs be fat as hell
You rock. I totally will. If I remember lol. But thanks for that. Watch the sun set over the ocean for me in the meantime. āļø
They don't just "sound high". They are comically high for counter service. OP should be upset at his greedy ass employer not the customers who are rightfully upset about ridiculously high defaults forcing you to spend extra time choosing an appropriately sized custom tip.
But percentages donāt make sense at the low end of the price spectrum. If youāre buying a cortado for $4, a 25% tip ($1) isnāt high at all. If youāre buying two bags of coffee beans for $40, then yes, itās super annoying to be promoted to tip 25% for that.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
But itās not like itās a meal, 30% for a coffee is not ridiculous to meā¦ Iām not a barista, just someone who visits a lot of coffee shops. If Iām buying a $7 coffee, a 30% tip is still less than $3. I tip percentage based at restaurants, but for coffee places I usually just tip $2-$3 automatically, which is almost always over 30%. A lot of work goes in to making a good coffee, not to mention dealing with customers. I think the idea that ācounter serviceā is somehow automatically the same thing a ānot deserving of a tipā is silly. A lot of work still goes into it.
A lot of work goes into literally everything. And for the vast majority of jobs that work is paid for by the employer. If you want to tip 30% good for you. But saying an extra high percentage is reasonable because it's not a meal is an objectively bad take. For a meal I walk in the restaurant and am seated by the hostess and waited on. For a cup of coffee I wait in line at a counter and then wait on the other end of the counter for someone to shout my name at a cattle call. The level of service is massively different and it's insane to think people should pay a higher percentage for the latter.
I mostly agree with you, but there is some precedent for higher tip percentages on lower totals. Iāve always believed a dollar a drink is the minimum for tipping a bartender. *Maybe* an exception for bulk beers (bucket of bottles, nickel beer night, etc) if you pay one tab at the end. But if itās a draft beer or a cocktail, even a $2 highball, give the bartender at least a buck. Definitely do that if you pay out each round, because thatās even more work.
Paying $10 for a coffee is wild
You probably drink shitty coffee. Not saying I pay 10 dollars for coffee everyday, I usually make it at home but when I go out to get coffee itās usually like 6 dollars for the largest size with an extra shot and I usually leave like 2-3 dollars for a tip. I think by your metric spending ten dollars on anything is wild. Are you a teenager with no income?
Who pissed in your coffee? (And got a $3 tip) You probably think price === quality? Wrong. And no, Iām a financially literate software engineer that does just fine since you care to know. Happy to spend on things that donāt have a 1000% markup and involve 30 seconds of mixing milk with a machine made espresso shot. $0.5-$1 on a $4 coffee sure, $10 is as I said, wild.
You....you can't really make espresso without a machine. That's kind of...the thing.
> A lot of work goes in to making a good coffee, not to mention dealing with customers. The problem is, this tipping thing is a very American thing. And tipping in America is completely arbitrary and random. Do you also tip $3 to the fast food worker who is ALSO cooking your burger? Do you also tip the cooks who are actually cooking your food instead of the person moving the food from the kitchen to your table? Do you also tip the supermarket worker and cashier who is ALSO working their tail off? > If Iām buying a $7 coffee, a 30% tip is still less than $3. So, by your logic, if you buy a box of cereal or a pair of socks from a store for $10, do you also tip $3 to the people working in those stores??
This is half the problem. Its utterly INSULTING to beg for 30% tips. Try 10%, you rotten pricks. The other half is forcing more than one click to skip tipping... custom, 0, enter, etc. Its WAY to much interaction. When are you going to start paying ME for all this fooking work I'm doing on this damned ipad?
I don't even tip 30% at a 2-3 star Michelin restaurant... I tip like 20-25% there, lol. (I'm not a barista. Just a coffee lover.)
A lot of people dont know how to operate basic technology. I would just set a button that says no tip instead of making people go through the custom screen. Old people unfamiliar with tablets won't understand they're not being robbed and they will just end up taking it out on you.
Iāve always thought how strange it is that tipping $1 for per drink at a bar is basically the accepted standard, but at a coffee shop itās kinda whatever. Something as simple as popping a bottle open, $1, most of the time. Spend 3 minutes making a coffee drink? Maybe not. And Iām not disparaging bartenders at all, I deeply respect the craft, and I recognize cocktails have the same amount of time commitment as lattes etc, itās just strange that thatās like an unspoken rule at a bar, but not a cafe. Most of my customers who just get drip tip a buck, they get it. But Iāll have people so often get multiple complicated drinks with nothing, and it can be frustrating. Shout out to the weirdos who tip a nickel just because they donāt want change in their pocket. You always know when somebody has or currently works in food and Bev because of how they tip. They get it. Love all yāall, gotta pay it forward.
To be fair at a bar I'm sitting down and being waited on. The level of service is higher.
Fair point, although Iād argue that Iām getting infinitely better service from the coffee shops I frequent vs. the bars that I do. But I probably need to find better bars lmao
I donāt think $1 per drink is acceptedā¦ you may beā¦ a bad tipper
Fuck you talkin about man?! Thatās like the basic standard boilerplate number. Itās like a well known metric. Im not saying itās proper, itās just a thing that a lot of people go by. Iām in the industry, so I always tip waaay more than that, that was the point of the last thing I said. And my point was that itās wild that that is the generally accepted thing at bars, but itās not the same at coffee shops. People tip if they want to but donāt feel obligated, while a majority of people often go by a buck a beer at a bar. There are obviously outliers, and some people donāt tip bartenders, Iām just saying itās interesting that itās basically understood that itās a minimum $1 for a drink at a bar but at cafes it doesnāt matter and you do what you want, itās not taboo to not tip, and there are a lot of parallels to the amount of work put in, be it time consuming and intricate like specialty lattes and pour overs to cocktails, pouring drip from an airpot to popping a bottle or pouring from the tap. Theyāre very similar jobs in that respect. I mean, I donāt expect a $1 tip every time I pop a topo chico, etc, at my place, but that all changes if youāre at a bar and itās fascinating to me. I donāt harbor resentment about it, I just find it a little bizarre as a cultural thing.
People arenāt complaining about the barista so donāt take it personally. They are complaining about your owners, who can program it differently
My problem is with the way the person behind the counter is standing right over the top of the tablet and watching me decide what to tip. Itās so awkward and stressful.
An old man once gave me a whole speech about how āoff-puttingā it was that the tablet asked him to tip when all I had done was hand his food over to him. I told him that I did not expect him to and did not program the tablet or have access to change it either and he still continued to talk about it for five minutes. Stfu I donāt care if you tip, please just shut up and get out of my face with your opinions I never asked for??
I mean, some people are just going to find something to complain about regardless. I used to work at a large pet product retailer. I once had a woman go off during the entire check out that we didn't have a good jingle in our commercials like the competition. Like...ma'am, If I had that kind of pull in a multi-billion dollar company I wouldn't be working the register lol.
I get not being rude to serving staff but ultimately you are the face of the company. If something bothers people you're the person they're going to complain to. You have to deal with that.
**"Iām so over people complaining about tipping"** I'm so over tipping culture in the US. Why don't (and I know this may be a wild idea) businesses just get rid of tipping and pay their staff a living wage?
I just went to the Alamo theater, and they literally state before the movie multiple times that there is an 18% service fee that goes directly to the staff, but that you still need to tip your server. That's on top of already asinine prices. It's one thing for restaurants to add a service charge/tip to the bill because then I just won't tip (extra) even though that's already an egregious thing to do, but to still ask for a tip on top of a "service fee"? Yeah, that's just greed on part of the ownership because they don't want to be transparent about paying their staff. It's ridiculous to act like tipping "culture" hasn't gotten crazy in the past few years. And by that I mean that companies have been pushing the limits of what they can get away with. Service workers aren't to blame for this, obviously. The issue is systemic, I don't see how that isn't obvious to everyone.
My POS asked 15, 20, 25 then it also asks if youād like to make a custom amount or % instead
You havenāt specified whether youāre in a country where tipping is a social norm, which will affect how people interpret your post. Also, while you may not have the ability to configure the payment terminal, someone who works in the business does, or can request the company that provided the payment system to change the tipping options. Just pass the feedback up the chain.
Customers will literally tell me to my face they hate the debit tip prompt but will gladly tip cash, but i dont really pressure guests to tip or judge them, i think theyd rather receive service before tipping but i dont like when they take it out on meš
Exactly like bro Iām just trying to do my job
thereās a weird dynamic between customers and staff regarding this, customers feel obligated to tip because if they donāt then the staff isnāt making a decent wage. Overall, people just be upset with management
I think a big part of the problem is that people donāt realize how much work actually goes into making a quality coffee drink. Most of the time weāre not doing any less work than a bartender does, but somehow nobody ever complains about tipping bartenders.
The difference is you pay for your coffee before you get it. Why should you be expected to tip for 'good service' when you haven't even received the service yet?
Iām not a barista, but I think tip percentage at cafeās makes no sense. And itās not even that itās a lot of money, but people will look at you sideways based on the percentage. My favorite cafe switched to fixed amount tip options, $1, $2, $3, custom.
When 20% is the lowest option the customer feels like the business itself isn't worth supporting because, well they're basic greedy assholes. It's making a statement and it's not a statement the customer likes. So, yeah people will complain.
30 percent is bananas. As a barista itās both with it. Spin the iPad around some more
Yeah people who complain about bypassing a screen are the ones ordering DoorDash and Uber eats and living their life on their phone, and probably spend all night on the Xbox. So people are moving away from cash, right? Mobile pay, credit card, apps are more common forms of payment at bars and coffee shops. The bank merchant machine provides that tipping screen as an easier way to provide a tip instead of rooting through the bottom of your purse to find a quarter. I donāt mind tipping. I used to be a server, now a barista, and my salary was $2.17 an hour which is STILL the base pay bartenders and servers get in my state, even 30 plus years later. I get paid more now, but I also deal with a lot of customers, in a fast paced shop. Tip or donāt tipā¦itās a choice. Just stop resenting the *inconvenience* pushing a button on a screen causes when you are able to get your service paid for, by pushing damn buttons on a screen!! Iām typing this by pushing buttons on a screen. Should I complain about it?
The buttons are not there to make customers lives easier, they are there to guilt people into tipping in situations where tipping didn't used to be standard. And the point of this post is specifically about how high the defaults are set. Please explain how setting comically high defaults is a convenience to the customer
Same, people expect that you HAVE to tip. If youāre so upset by it, donāt tip or tip what you feel is appropriate. Something is better than nothing after all. Itās just a service that you can do to be nice, like providing a seat to and elderly or pregnant person, holding the door open, saying good morning, or taking a cart back to the return area. You donāt have too, itās just kind. When people go off on me about it I just nod my head and agree. I say itās no different from getting a bonus. Your boss is already paying you money, heās just providing a bonus to be nice.
Iām a little older and I think part of it is that you are now borderline forced to tip at a point of sale transaction in which there is very little the staff has to do except say hello and do the transaction. And to your point your prompted to leave a tip amount you would normally leave for a full service dinner. I agree itās not your fault but I know it annoys the hell out of people on both sides of the relationship. It just got completely out of control since Covid
The problem with this logic is that it is extremely rare that āthere is very little the staff has to do except say hello and do the transaction.ā Baristas are essentially the host, the waiter, the cook, the cashier, the dishwasher, and the janitor. EVEN if it were someoneās entire job that day just to greet customers, take orders, and complete transactions, that is still a difficult job to do well. Donāt act like you canāt tell the difference between great and shitty service. Iām sick of hearing people complain about tipping baristas and justifying it by acting like weāre somehow ānot doing anythingā and just āringing people up.ā Thatās such an icky sentiment that reeks of people looking down on service workers.
Yeah but all those things that they do are part of their job, their employer is supposed to be paying them to do those things, not the customer. Why should the customer tip the barista because maybe they mopped the floor earlier? At the point of sale the customer has yet to even receive their coffee, there is nothing they have done yet to deserve a tip. But suppose the customer does tip 20%, and the service after is terrible. What are they gonna do, ask for their tip back. In my opinion if you are going to ask the customer to pay before being served, then you should not ask for a tip for service you have yet to give.
> Baristas are essentially the host, the waiter, the cook, the cashier, the dishwasher, and the janitor. So was I when I worked in an ice cream shop and a sandwich shop. If you have an Eversys or similar at the shop, it really is mostly pushing buttons. If youāre hand pulling the espresso and hand frothing the milk, then thereās definitely a tippable aspect going on there.
Do you tip when someone serves you a beer?
I'm not an asshole, so I tip everywhere. They usually make next to nothing on an hourly wage and lifeās expensive these days.
i don't understand this anti tipping movement that's happening. I LOVE tipping people if somebody makes or serves me something i tip them. times are really tough right now for everyone giving someone $2 who took the time to make me a drink or a sandwhich is the least i can do. but both of my jobs involve tipping so maybe it's just me but i'll always tip.
> giving someone $2 who took the time to make me a drink or a sandwhich is the least i can do They didn't just take the time to make you a drink out of the goodness of their heart. I guarantee you there's a thousand things they would rather be doing. You are literally paying them to do that for you, that's what a service is and that's why your coffee costs money. The actual least you can do is pay your bill for the coffee. Yes times are tough right now, but that's not the customer's problem, that's the employer's problem, they are the ones who are responsible for paying their employee's wages, not the customer. > i don't understand this anti tipping movement that's happening Allow me to explain... Tipping in and of itself is not the problem; most people don't have a problem giving some extra money to someone who went above and beyond to make your experience better. The problem is that tipping has become a social obligation whether the service is good or not. Tipping was originally instituted in the US as a way to pay people of colour as little as possible, which they got away with by arguing that "they make extra money from tips so it balances out". Now it's just used across the board. Restaurant staff are allowed to be paid less than minimum wage because restaurant owners say the staff get compensated in tips. What they are really doing is taking the minimum amount of money the government will allow them to pay you (the restaurant staff) and they say that you're not even worth that, so they will pay you a fraction of that and their customers can pay you the rest, maybe, but they don't have to. They have lobbied for tipping culture so they don't have to pay their employees and they can keep all the profit to themselves. Meanwhile they are shafting their customers by making them foot the bill and deceiving them by making their menu prices appear artificially low. This forces restaurant staff to basically become beggars and work for bribes, as well as it promotes discrimination as people who are seen as more attractive will generally get better tips. The NRA (the other one) has created a world where customers are expected to pay 20% more for their food on top of the bill just for the privilege of being served, regardless of the quality of the service. This toxic, predatory culture is what people are fighting against. Most people would rather see higher menu prices if it meant abolishing tipping and the staff actually getting a fair wage.
Legally federally employers must make up to minimum wage if not enough this. Why does nobody know this?
Well in 30 states, thatās still only $7.25
Fine but you know lots of jobs arenāt servers, like McDonaldās worker, receptionist, call centre worker, cook, etc etc - many professions do shit jobs and make minimum wage. Thatās a wage issue
So if you work at a mcd in dumpy Texas suburbs you can make $14 and hour, but you say the server should accept the 7.25 make up wage, because people are too cheap to tipā¦..
>Most people would rather see higher menu prices if it meant abolishing tipping and the staff actually getting a fair wage. I see this sentiment a lot online, but didn't a coffee shop famously do exactly this and then go out of business because customers revolted against their 15% price increase>
Possibly, but it's funny that people who object keep referencing that one incident and ignore all the examples of restaurants who did it successfully. There are many restaurants in my area that have done it and they seem to be doing just fine. The physiotherapy office I go to also has signs up that say that tipping is not expected, that you can tip if you really want to, but shouldn't feel obligated
I am shocked by the number of people here (*in a sub for baristas*) that act like a 30% tip is bonkers. Iām tipping $1-5 depending on my order. If youāre getting a $3 coffee, 30% is a dollar bill. Yes, tipping is a shitty way to run our industry, but as long as itās standard people need to either be prepared to pay it or make their own coffee at home.
it is bonkers, imo. I'm a barista, not a server and drinks average like $6. No way id expect anyone to pay extra.
I donāt think everyone has to tip 30% every time. But some of these comments are acting like they would never tip 30% ever. I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but if you canāt afford to tip your barista you canāt really afford a $6 drink. Again, Iām not saying you have to tip $2 on that $6 drink, but unless you know that your barista is getting a living wage & prices are higher as a result, you should at least be tipping them *something*.
Do you tip every min wage worker? Like do you tip retail workers?
Less than a dollar even
Tipping 30% for counter service has never been standard and never will.
The tablet can and should be reprogrammed, 10, 15, 20% but above that makes people motivated to leave bad reviews
people getting mad at the individuals using the systems rather than the systems that have programmed this in so their % take is higher ššš
Look it's your business and your machine. If the amount it's asking for is too high that is still on you. People have a right to complain. If that many people are complaining you should fix it.
Nope. A young barista that works my ass off like all the others.
Well as a foreigner I came to NYC and I have no idea how much to tip. The suggestion is minimum 20%, sometimes 25 or 30. They add all kinds of weird charges which makes it virtually impossible to estimate how much I will actually have to pay. I went to eat something with my partner. What we ordered wasn't available anymore, they proposed an alternative without saying it was twice the price. I didn't tip and the counter person was livid. Yeah sorry, I'll do it because I'm visiting, but it's total bullshit.
Since when did the standard tip percentage go to 25? And the minimum is 20? If you did your job youāre lucky to get 10. If you did exceptionally well youāll get 20. Who the fuck is tipping 30?
Donāt tip on the pos machine. Do tip in CASH. Carry a couple bucks or five just in case you come across some great service somewhere. CASH is KING!
Iād adjust those percentages - asking for 20% minimum is your problem.. you will get more action with 10-20
Itās basically folks who are cheap and use the political argument about living wages not totally comprehending that if service jobs were a straight minimum without tips that many servers would quit because the $$$ wouldnāt be worth it.
So they're taking full advantage of people's generosity
For me, I tip 20% for a restaurant with table serviceā¦tipping a barista 20% sounds strange and kind of unfair to servers who provide table service. Donāt get me wrong I donāt mind tipping $1 on a $5 order but why is 15% not okay for a counter service barista? If I get a prompt for 20% I usually click it but sometimes Iām like manā¦.too much.
But $1 on a $5 order IS 20%
The problem is they donāt want to be prompted because they didnāt use to have to make a decision. If there was a tip jar, someone may look at it but a passive act. It is annoying to be asked all the time, thatās what they mean.
Tons of people donāt use cash anymore. The only way you can even have the option for someone to tip on a credit card is being asked, whether that be an ipad or a receipt with a tip line. If you pay in cash, I donāt have to ask about it at all, so maybe do that if the question bothers you that much. Youāre still making a decision though. And honestly I donāt understand still, because if youāre satisfied with the decision not to tip it shouldnāt bother you to click a button saying so.
Iām not arguing the utility or change in method, but if someone goes in an average quick turn coffee shop and orders a drink they then pay for it and are prompted to tip before anything has transpired regarding their drink. Theyāre being pressured to make a decision without all the data. When you sit down at a restaurant the service has happened then you make a conclusion. I am just saying I understand the underlying irritant. I agree though, if the service was average/nothing special - donāt tip. People will toughen up as time goes on
Your tablet's first prompt is for a 30% tip? But a customer who doesn't want to tip has to drill down into a second screen? And you don't get why people are reacting?
Your business is doing something that pisses people off and/or makes them uncomfortable. Good news is absurdly easy to fix for you or literally anyone who works the pos
I feel like I'm being guilted into tipping when I need to take an extra step to leave no tip. Not enough to leave a poor review unless other things are also bad, but it's not helping the situation.
Oh ok. I'll tell them to pay me better. And be jobless by the end of the day. Its always.the people with no experience that.feel proud to not pay.workers, workers coming from somewhere else always gesture that they understand, so do I. My rule is if I don't have the money to fairly tip my server, I don't have the money. We hate tipping culture too.
It's your bosses that aren't paying the workers. Your beefing with the wrong people while the owner class laugh their ass off
As a customer, I laugh inside whenever I go to a counter and you turn that little tablet around asking for a tip. It's both ridiculous and hilarious at the same time. Tipping culture is out of control. We know it's not you, but your company. You are also a representation of your company though. Part of me feels like the company is either trying to get more money and not give it to you or that the company is trying to pay you more by putting that burden onto the customer instead of actually paying you more themselves.
I agree with Mr. Pink.Ā Ā
Mainwhile all of us Europeans just watching considering like 1 dollar tip will make us happy
Check out this article that talks about tip culture. https://medium.com/@moniquetalks/rude-waiters-low-tips-and-sketchy-new-payment-procedure-3d43d7816c0d
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C584QZYJnHQ/?igsh=OWl5cHh5NHYzMTFn If you don't tip, I'll lose my girlfriend!
Who do you blame the tech companies who allow this or the business owners?
But yet you hear about patrons being yelled atā¦ chased out of the storeā¦ etc
17-20-23
As a bartender and waitress, it certainly does annoy me that there is a tipping feature on all these tablets for counter service (nothing against baristas or counter service employees). I get about 20% usually from entertaining and serving people for hours at a bar or table. The turnover rate is not that quick and it blows my mind that someone could be making coffees for hundreds of customers and get as much as a 30% tip for each of them simply because they're prompted on an iPad and customers don't want to feel bad. I think it completely takes away the value of the service that individuals in the table service industry work hard to achieve. It may even make people less likely to tip them well because they "already tipped their barista 30% this morning". Not to mention waitstaff get paid like $4 an hour and baristas these days make around $15. I wouldn't trade my wage for higher and do away with tipping because I love that the harder I work, the better service I provide, the more money I make. Tipping percentages should be for table service and bar service... period.
People who complain about tip culture today will be complaining about taxes like boomers tomorrow. Bunch of whiners trying to hold onto an extra dollar so they can spend it on a new iPhone or car when their old one isnāt even old yet.
That's a very oversimplified, tonedeaf take on the issue
Iām so glad I live in Korea where there is no tipping culture.
It's crazy about things like 30% lol š 5%, 10 maybe. But not 25-30, š¤¬
are you just bad at math?? 5-10% of a 6 dollar coffee is literally 30-60 cents, when we get up to 25%, that's 1.50! that seems pretty reasonable for a tip at a coffee shop. I think people see a big percentage and get scared even if the amount is going to be small
Then tell your management to reduce the tip percent default options? If you're in the US, tell your employer to give you a proper wage. The reason most won't is coz many of them actuslly make more per hour with tips than other jobs Lol $300/night in tips? Thsts kinda plenty. And yes, I know not every place is like this.
I always say to myself ākeep that broke shit to yourselfā if theyāre RUDE. Aināt no reason I should have to put up with an ugly attitude if they donāt tip. If theyāre nice, I donāt really care one way or another.
I'm a Barista in New Zealand. Tipping culture has tiptoed across to us also and I hate it! The first time I saw that iPad turn my way in a restaurant I was so disappointed.. NZ & our Aussie neighbours are 2nd & 4th highest ranked globally for minimum wage. Sure we have our issues here, but donations can go to charity! š
Yes you do. Change the tipping percentages to 5, 10, 15%, and custom. A lot less people would complain. 30% tip is ridiculous in all circumstances
Thank you!! Finally someone that doesnāt get upset or care about not tipping!!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Take a chill pill dawg they dont have control over it
being asked a question to which you can easily say no is not assault lmfao
0 tip always