I'm old enough to remember a time that giving extra money to someone for handing you a cup of coffee would be thought absurd. Sit down eatery? No problem, there's prior art before I was born, disagree though I might. But this recent bullshit of "tip, because my employer doesn't pay me enough", whether its Starbucks, McDonalds, or your fave local coffee shop: yeah, fuck that. McDonalds doesn't need my subsidy.
No, but the person to makes and hands over your coffee does.
> I'm old enough to remember a time that giving extra money to someone for handing you a cup of coffee would be thought absurd.
Then you're probably also old enough to remember when wage increases tracked with productivity increases, or when minimum wage kept up with inflation and the cost of living.
The place where I first noticed the "tip your cashier" thing happening was the Panera at my university. Why in the hell would I tip someone who's job is literally to take my order, and maybe hand me a pastry? These people aren't making minimum wage either, I had some friends there and the job paid significantly more.
Buying a muffin at a coffee shop and not paying a premium on top of the asking price is not sadistic. It's a normal commercial transaction. Based on your logic, why don't we tip fast-food workers, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, etc...
No, that isn’t for the tip, that is literally the job they are paid to do by their employer. Choosing to tip should only be if they have gone above and beyond what you would expect. I’m from the UK and find the US tipping culture bizzare and stressful - I had truly terrible service in a restaurant in New York once and they literally chased me to the door when they realised I hadn’t tipped and threatened to call the police if I didn’t tip him at least 10%.
They were bullying you by threatening to call the police. The cops would have been annoyed to show up for that, and nothing about what you did is illegal.
- I was 12 the first time we visited the US. My dad was at first confused, since the hotel porter was hanging around, then he was embarrassed, as he didn't have any small cash.
- In New Orleans on a business trip, I kept forgetting to tip the barmaid. Other people at the bar were throwing her dollar bills on my behalf.
- Most recently, chip cards were fairly new — although I've had one for 14 years. I don't want to tip by card, it complicates my expenses, but navigating the dark-pattern UI on the payment machines was often confusing. Several waiters assumed I was stuck with the "new" chip card.
I'm not well-versed in the history of coffee shops, but it seems to me that it is not a well-established norm -- as compared to bars and restaurants, for example. But I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken about this.
>If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any week, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate
For example, do you make a point of tipping the cashier at McDonalds? I'd bet that if you tried to and a manager saw you they would refuse it because the company doesn't want others to feel compelled to tip because they want to retain their image of a low-cost restaurant. Coffee shops selling $5 cups of coffee don't have that concern because people who frequent those places probably are a lot less price sensitive than those who eat at fast food restaurants.
15% used to be the norm across the board and adjusted from there based on the level of service. Now 20% is expected regardless of the level of service. In restaurants where a 20% gratuity is included in the bill I've noticed a significant drop-off in the level of service, even to the point where I would tip less than 20% if given the option, and I say that as someone who worked as a waiter at one point.
I'm highlighting this part because it's one of the main contributing factors to dining out less and less, for me, and that includes coffee shops. I always tip well when going out; ergo, I don't go out as often.
Going off of the "I'm not very unique" rule of thumb, businesses are losing some amount of money because of tipping culture.
Only in the most trivial sense that people know that, between sales tax and tipping, they're going to be paying a price that's 25-30% more than what's printed on the menu. And most people have some degree of price elasticity.
But I honestly can't imagine it matters much whether those adders are folded into the price up-front or you just know that you're going to be paying more than the printed price when you get the bill.
In the first place, I tip well partly because of information asymmetry: I don't know how well the staff are paid from one place to the next. This means that one place may pay their staff pretty well, and I'm still adding 20% to the cost of my ticket, and another place may pay their staff pretty poorly. This is placing the two businesses on an uneven competitive footing, and encouraging more businesses to pay their staff as poorly as they can get away with. This may be business-as-usual in the current American business culture, but the end result is that I'm subsidizing bad business practices.
I'm also subsidizing poor tippers. I know there are people out there who, for whatever reason they justify to themselves, don't tip, and I know that there are some businesses that don't pay a living wage (probably most, today), so I try to cover an extra portion of that cost.
It's also removing much of the incentive for food service businesses to seek out untapped efficiencies. I'm pretty sure labor costs are the largest expense category for any food service business, yet they continue to pile on more staff because people like me are helping them get away with it. I can order a Starbucks from an app on my phone, right? So why is there someone at a cash register who punches my order in to a machine when they've already got the software that would let me do it myself?
If tipping were banished and these businesses had to pay all of their staff a fair wage, it's likely that my total bill would go down.
At what point do we begin to consider that choice stiffing the waiters you would've tipped if you did go out?
P.S. I also avoid going to coffee shops where tipping is expected.
And quite frankly, it's disgusting that the person who spends may 30 seconds providing service gets X% of the bill when 99% of the work is done in the kitchen by guys who don't get paid anything extra.
Yikes,wait till you find out how much the ACH and CC networks get for providing a fully automated service.
A guy bringing me a plate someone else cooked has not earned 20% of the bill.
Do you also tip at McDonalds?