Could Millennials Kill Tipping?
Recently there have been many online articles about how bad millennials are at tipping. 2/3 of millennials tip less than 20%, and 1/10 millennials don't tip at all.
Some people want to abolish the "tip credit" which allows restaurant owners to pay less than minimum wage. Certain cities like San Francisco already have. A waiter in San Francisco who earns $100 in tips during a shift must still be paid $15 per hour on top of that. This has got to be destroying jobs.
There have already been at least two threads about tipping, but I want to see if you all think we are headed towards a culture of not tipping at all, or things will remain the same for the most part.
In the UK most places include 10-12.5% of 'optional' service charge which is supposed to eliminate tipping. Waiters are paid decently for what they do and there's no awkward 'look at little this asshole gave' moments at the end of the meal. I think it's fair because you can have the service charge taken off if the service was truly terrible and you can give an extra bit of cash out of your own pocket if it was truly great.
In Italy tipping is a common custom but people usually go for 3 brackets of money, not always based on percentage:
€1-3 for a small bill
€5-10 for a bigger bill (between €100-150) and really good service
€10-20 for a very big bill and incredible service
Although in most cases some of these coincide with 10% of the bill, it isn't a strict rule e.g. even at the most incredible restaurant, if the bill is €400 I won't tip €40 because it just isn't expected/required. €20 in that case would be more than enough for Italian standards.
I think the base issue in the US is that waiters get paid WAY too little and have to live off tips. Tipping should be a bonus for going the extra mile with service, not what you live off.
Similar to what @G-I the pharma guy said, tipping is the U.S. has gotten out of hand. It should have been revised a long time ago; but slapping an article with the words "millennial" and what we killing draws more eyes balls.
Tipping use to be for going above and beyond. Now it's almost mandatory, and we're kind a guilted into it because jobs pay so little (usually as a server). How many times have you yourself or someone you know gone out to eat and received bad to medicore service but left a 20% tip out of guilt?
For example, my friends and I recently debated how much you should tip someone if you bulk ordered wine. Do you tip the person who drops off the wine? Answers ranged from yes, 20%, to yes, just $10, to no, because that's like tipping the guy who delivers your Amazon purchase. Bottom line is, it's the persons job to deliver the package, and they should be paid by the company who made the sale. If the delivery person feels they are worth more, maybe they should be in another field.
tipping has gotten out of hand when it's expected in a big way. although I'm not convinced a no-tip culture is right either. ever eaten across europe? the lack of hustle will make your blood boil. everything from resorts to local tapas joints, it's not the same experience. that being said, you can get bad service in America, I just have found that to be the exception rather than the rule.
the moment you kill all rewards for hard work versus just showing up is the moment capitalism dies. I'm not about it
True. Was in Paris with my parents at a patio restaurant close to Montparnasse. Our waiter was so slow and so unfriendly that at first we thought it's because some europeans have a bias against North Americans. Saw the waiter treat a nearby table of French speakers the exact same way and realized it wasn't a "us" problem, it was just the way the waiter treated everyone. When you think about it, it makes sense. why hustle when said hustle will have minimal effect on your pay?
If you're a regular customer, being a good tipper will get you treated like a boss!
But if a server ever complains that you're not tipping enough, just don't go there anymore.
This is a pretty complicated issue, and for a little background i was a bartender while i was in college, so please understand where my biases may lay. On one hand I feel for people who have to make their living fake smiling at people and serving them, in my experience I've seen far more examples of customers being unreasonable in their demands and when the waiter/tress walks away from the table bitch about the service they are being provided, aka piss poor tipping ensues. In finance we always talk about upsides vs downsides. To me as a server you're basically a bond, it's all about downside protection, there is clearly a ceiling you can expect given the dollar amount of the table, but any slipup and your yield gets shot to hell and you're left with your $2.85/hr or whatever your state has set your salary for tipped employees. You could literally turn water into wine and at best you'll get that coveted 25% tip, but any perceived slight or mix-up and you're catching a $5 on a $150 bill for a suck ass family of five, with three difference allergies to gluten, and dad complaining about too much ice in is diet coke. However in keeping with the finance theme, the incentive of a tip serves its purpose, it is in a server's best financial interest to be attentive, courteous, and congenial which should (at least on paper) make for a better restaurant going experience.
On the other hand I believe it should fall on the employer to pay a serviceable wage to an employee, while it's semantics, I don't think that I as the consumer should have to catch both the costs for food and back of the house employees, and then turn around and be expected to be shammed into helping the front of the house on top of all that (yes it all comes out in the wash but it's just annoying to me). Obviously a restaurant with thin margins is going to be sensitive to any changes in its overhead costs, (in this case paying minimum wage instead of a tipped wage) so that basically leaves an owner with two options, decrease headcount or increase prices of food. As a consumer I guess it's up to me to decide, am I ok with paying more for the food/setting/service (a fixed cost), in exchange for forgoing a tip at the end of a meal (variable cost), that presumably would have cost less all things being held equal, but with the expectation of a tip.
All this to say, I don't really know how this turns out. I'm more of a go with the flow kind of guy anyway and if it gets expensive to eat at a restaurant, or all of my servers turn to dogshit overnight ill just cook at home.
I think this is wrong. I know legislation on this just passed in DC and restaurants are being required to only make up the difference if tipped wages don't meet the new $15 minimum their setting.
Retail food places are one of the top employers now in this country, because of the shrinking manufacturing sector. With automation on the rise, even retail is shrinking as stores will soon be able to get rid of all workers by replacing them with robots and a few maintenance workers. I know JD.com, the Chinese retailer, has all but 4 employees for their expansive operations.
Grocery stores are popping up around the country, including Microsoft's new announcement to dedicate resources to finding workerless checkouts to compete against Amazon's walk-in and walk-out without stopping model of grocer, with the hot innovation being not paying any workers entirely.
But restaurants are different as people go to them for service. Who cares about some stupid ideology when the same workers getting this bump up to $15 are a. still going to be living paycheck to paycheck in a lot of cases and b. have little options but to rely on a professional waiting career.
We almost need a report tracking changes in global and national job supply as much as we need frequent reports on unemployment or other economic indicators or indicators on things like climate change.
I'll also add that most kids in my generation are very careless and ignorant about anything in life that didn't start in 1999 with the internet. They know all these stupid terms like CIS and gender roles, but couldn't tell you why the president only serves two terms for 8 total years, or the difference between jeans and a suit. Wouldn't be surprised to hear a lot suck at tipping.
It's also the places you go. As a millennial, I'm not eating at high class or expensive places (at least not without my parents) so the service is normally limited to taking my order and refilling my drink occasionally. To me 20% tip, is for good service, but if I'm going to a quick serve place like Blaze Pizza, they really aren't serving you, so I don't tip. Personally I think it should be commission based or give servers a livable salary and get rid of tips.
Millenials are going to kill just about everuthing that is good.
You tip for service. If waiters don’t like it, find another job.
And taking suggestions from Europe is the last thing we should ever do.
There seems to be a lack of overall empathy in our society. And one reason we tip is because we can empathize with the plight of the server... I don’t see it disappearing, but I do believe that, generationally, fewer people will tip as a habit, of many of them will not subscribe to the “standard” 15-20 percent.
The real question is... do you folks tip on the pretax total or after tax total? I always do after tax but I’ve heard of people doing pretax too.
Pretax
I always do pretax. Adding tax in doesn't technically constitute the price of the product.
Tipping is about good service. I’ve been to a number of places in Europe and the service blows. I’m sorry, but people are waiters and waitresses because you can make a ton of cash tips and do really well. If you aren’t making well about $10 an hour, go find another line of work.
I tip generally 20% unless service sucks and then I ratchet it down. Zero fucks given.
Listening to millenials or Europeans if bad business. One is an idiot and another is lazy.
"All people between the ages of 22 to 37 and/or every person who lives on the European continent is stupid" -TNA
Definitely an oversimplification but I do agree with the comment re: tipping 20% unless it's really bad service.
I've encountered the flip-side as well though ('old-ish' millennial here): a lot of people in the service industry in my age cohort expect 20% as the standard, and even if they suck they always think it's other people's fault. Anecdotally, there was this one girl I was friends with on FB (former classmate), and she consistently had a bad attitude in general (could tell by the stuff she posted/way she phrased things). She proceeded to then make several posts/comments about why customers suck and no one ever tipped her well, then it just so happened that one of her friends/coworkers she'd been working with saw the posts and called her out on the fact that it could have been due to her behavior (in what I thought was a nice way)... I liked the post and then she proceeded to 'un-friend' both the commenter and me for liking the post... Bottom line I guess is that people are entitled and don't understand that a tip is earned and not deserved.... I'll tip as high as 25-30% sometimes if someone even goes slightly out of their way to make the experience enjoyable....
Learn the difference between connotation and denotation.
I understand the debate of not wanting to have to pay for the food and the salary of workers. But god damn man if you have a good job and are making good money, how the hell could you not tip a kid trying to make some honest cash and after all, that was a bunch of us at one point in time.
I may be a bit naïve in my thinking here but I believe the argument for most of us isn't along the lines of "fuck that guy it's not my fault he makes less than min wage," it's more along the lines of the system itself may have some potential flaws, is there a way to fix it, or is it actually optimized as is.
anytime you add in the general public, it's impossible to be optimized. just basically about minimizing fuckery, and it depends on what pisses you off more: spending more money, or getting better service. I prefer better service, so I'm a firm believer in tipping. someone who mostly orders in may feel the other way, because they don't need service. to each his own
I agree, but I still don't agree on taking it out on the servers in any way. Many people in this forum before starting their careers were servers, give a kid grinding in college a good tip when you can. Shit will make his/her day.
I think we're looking at the trees and forgetting the forest.
As in, most millenials are BROKE. You can't tip well if you're barely scraping by.
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As for tipping in general, you pay it either way-- included in the menu price, or afterwards (aka tip). I'd rather have the discretion, hence, in favor of tipping here.
What I have an issue is how arbitrary tipping is in society. But that's another discussion.
Tip well and life tends to go better for you. Everyone in this WSO community is aspiring to be a BSD so act like it and tip well. The extra few dollars shouldn't make a difference in the long run, and I've learned that service pros will bend over backward for good tippers. Just my 2c...
This is absolutely true. I worked in service back in college and I remain to tip well. If you're going to an establishment more than once, it's always worth the extra couple of bucks.
I remember one instance where I was pretty saucy and tipped a bartender 50$ for like 10$ worth of alcohol at a busy spring break bar. After that first round he remembered my name, poured me ahead of the massive lines, and would give me free shots throughout the night.
I say this as someone who regularly tips 20% for decent service, 15% for low quality service, and 25-30% for good service.
Give me a break already. Each industry has its cultural mores, including compensation. The debate around tipping vs higher menu price is like asking why Biglaw partners get paid by the hour and their MD bretheren on the sell side get percentage fees on the deal - it’s just how it’s done. Don’t like it? Go do something you do like. Make your own peace with it or don’t but stop blubbering about it.
Don’t like dealing with the way servers are comped? Then go elsewhere. I’m sick of how much attention is devoted to making the case that this one arbitrary group of people need to have it better in life just because they’re the politically convenient underdog of the moment with a lyrical slogan (“the fight for 15!”)
Paramedics get paid 15 an hour - you don’t think the guy saving your life deserves more? Of course he does, but im not in the business of writing laws to make arbitrary value judgments on behalf of society about how I feel about someone’s services. If you took all the money we’d spend on a 15 minwage and invested it in low cost trade school grants, maybe we’d have more high-value plumbers and less low-value burger flippers bitching while creating deadweight loss.
Nobody is forcing anyone to take the lowest skilled jobs out there and make it their “career”. So maybe instead of indulging the fantasy that retail workers and burger flippers are a class of labor that must be cherished and protected into perpetuity and therefore comped well, we should try to invest in ways to offer them more socially productive alternatives.
If all goes according to plan, well have robots that do these jobs more perfectly than a human ever could within our lifetimes, just like what happened to many factory workers, and the guy that shoveled coal in the boiler room of a steamboat, and the guy that manually reaped rows of wheat - the list goes on. Stop fighting the reality that these jobs are marginalized for a reason, and start looking for real solutions that benefit the people who will be displaced economically in the near future.
I used to wait tables and the tip based compensation works way better for the industry than does an hourly wage.
Long story short, if all the servers at the restaurant that you're eating at are making a flat $15 an hour, you're not going to like the service you get. Similar for bartenders. Why the fuck would a bartender be in any hurry to serve you at a crowded bar if he's making $15 an hour regardless of how many people he serves or how quickly he does it?
Just went to lunch with the other interns and nobody tipped because it was crappy service also where I live (not in America hint: my name ) you have to pay 15% mandatory gratuities.
What are opinions on tipping at high-end establishments? Do people think the 20% rule still applies? If not, what do you tip?
Example: You and a date go to a nice steakhouse. Appetizers, two steaks, sides, dessert, 2 cocktails an a bottle of wine. You're there for 2 hours, the final bill ends up being $300. Your waiter did a solid job, and also served two other tables while you were there. Do you tip 20%? Does that server deserve $45-60 for their service, plus another $45-60 from each of the other two tables? That would effectively be ~$80/hr. Bus boy and bar staff are probably cut in so call it $60/hr. Thoughts?
Must be the latter portion of millennials.
I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.
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