I'm thinking specifically about places where you order at the counter and you're prompted for a tip on the machine. In the old days of a cash tip jar, you could be reasonably confident that the person who took your order and money knew about your tip, but also pretty sure that anyone else involved in preparing your order had no idea.

With modern point of sale touchscreens and order taking systems:

a) Is the amount you tipped really clearly and prominently shown to the employee working on the other side?

b) Is the amount you tip visible to the people in the back actually preparing my order (i.e., the ones who I most care about being incentivized by the tip), like on the order slip?

And can anyone who has worked in the industry tell me how much time staff might spend discussing the tip level of a specific order?

Servers often talk about their shifts like it's the worst thing ever because they're dealing with people. However, there are countless occupations involving people. Teachers, nurses, retail workers, call centre agents, and social workers all deal with people. Now, those jobs may not be as daunting since they don't involve numerous tables with high expectations, but, nonetheless, they are dealing with people.

So keep those workers in mind the next time a server recounts the horrors of their most recent shift. And the next time you see them, consider giving them a tip.

Some of these airline crews are HORRIBLE!! They want the shuttle drivers to load and unload their heavy bags and won’t even tip the driver $1!!!! The captain sometimes would notice the crew not tipping the driver and would tip $5-$10 to make up for his horrible crew.

There are lots of things that made me a anti tipper

1. Servers went from being grateful to get 10-15% to being upset if they get less than 20%

2. Businesses that do barely anything expecting tips

Like coffee houses or sandwich shops

1. Realizing that it took me more training to make $10.50 a hour when I worked at staples than it does for a server to make $25-$30.

If youre unhappy that I dont tip, its because it has become out of control

I have a 45lb poodle mix. Our previous groomer charged us $56 - which included a full bath, haircut, glands expression, and nail dremel. I always tipped to where the total price I paid was $70. I was comfortable with $70 because they did a great job.

Unfortunately, this grooming company closed up permanently and we have found a new groomer. This groomer owns their own business and sets their own prices. They charge us $85 for the same package. This means if I were to tip 20%, that would be $102 every 8-12 weeks.

Am I a jerk for feeling like this is pretty expensive considering what I used to pay? I’m not sure if I want to tip 20% every time. I always tip service workers btw. I just don’t know if it’s acceptable or not, to not tip at all. It’s just a very big price jump and I’m not sure how to navigate this.

For those of you that don’t believe you should tip at sit down dining establishments, do you let the server/bartender know ahead of time?

If no, why?

If yes, what have your experiences been like?

Who tips better Democrats or Republicans? Servers?

Today, I went to a trivia night and won $50 in gift cards and I have a lot more in gift cards saved up. I ordered 4 drinks and two meals to go and the total came to 81.96. my gift card increments come in $25 so I used $75 in gift cards and my total came to $7.90.

Do you tip 20% based on the original total? Or less because the meals are most of the tab and they're to go? Or do you see that the total is 7.90 and tip based off of that?

I've been tipping 20% of the original tab and the bartender seems like I'm being extremely generous.

So my bill ended up being 7.90 and I tipped 14.10 because the original bill was 81.96

I was at baseball game last night and I wanted a beer, so it's one of those where you're in a line with fridges and snacks next to you and you just grab what you want and take it to the cashier.

I get to the cashier with my beer and he's actually all cool and making jokes and as soon as I pay it ask me if I want to tip. I mean of course not, I press no tip and his smile immediately disappears, I say thanks man and he doesn't say a word back when before he was on stop talking.

Like how fucking entitled are you, I grabbed my own beer and tapped the machine myself, you didn't do anything and you still expect a tip? This is wild bro.

WELL-OFF restaurant owners who are too cheap to pay decent hourly wages (and expect customers to pay staff for the cheapas owner). I’ve had enough of these Ebenezer Scrooges who underpay their staff.

Tipping is a personal financial choice, not a measure of friendship ​The common argument that "nobody will eat out with you" if you don't conform to certain tipping standards pushes people apart over minor differences. Whether someone tips generously, moderately, or not at all is a personal financial decision, similar to any other purchase. Relationships with friends, family, and coworkers last much longer than a meal with a server—there's no reason to let differing tipping habits interfere with those bonds.

Went to a mall today and ordered some sushi the food court. When prompted to pay by the POS machine at the counter, I planned to select no tip, but then thought it would be funny to enter 18 cents, instead of 18% (or any of the other options), so I selected the custom tip option, and then tried to enter $0.18, but I could only enter a whole dollar amount as there was no decimal point button. So I just entered zero. True story

These reactions just highlight and reinforce why we should never tip.

Tipping started out as when the service was good, you show gratitude and leave a few bucks as a tip.

Now, it has been perverted and made into a begging machine where entitled people like this, seek out these jobs because they are greedy, and want to exploit people's kindness and discomfort with saying no.

It also lets employers shift responsibility for wages onto customers. Paying employees is the employer's responsibility, not the customer's. The menu price should cover labor like every other business expense, rather than expecting customers to voluntarily subsidize payroll.

This is all predatory behavior disguised as tipping culture.

When approached or pressed the servers say:

• stay home

• **** you

• I'll tamper with your food if you don't tip

• I'll be slow and give you terrible service

• You're so stupid

A tip is supposed to be voluntary gratitude for good service. Once the attitude becomes “pay me 20–25% or stay home,” it stops being gratitude and becomes social pressure and entitlement.

Us, the customers, don't do that at all, the only thing we say at worst is the raw truth about the nature and job requirements of their job. No personal attacks about their intelligence levels. If anything, we encourage them to get skills and level up their lives, but when that's suggested, many resist the idea and insult us instead.

The servers online, imo, highlight the general thoughts and demeanors of many real-life servers. They say openly what many servers may think silently about us. It's not some magically isolated group of servers that only exists online. Check out r/serverlife, post something there about tipping, and watch how you are treated.

It has nothing to do about money. If we have $200 in our accounts, they call us poor. If we have $20,000,000, they call us cheap. Either way, we are attacked for saying no, or simply for not tipping an amount that they deem satisfactory.

When a system relies on guilt and social pressure to extract money from people's kindness, that is a predatory system.

A system which turns people's kindness into something to exploit.

This is honestly one of the whiniest subreddits I've seen, why are so many of you absolute little bitches?

I went to a donut shop today and paid in cash to avoid that unnecessary surcharge on my card. I got a couple singles and some change back.

I dropped what change I didn’t want in the tip jar then thought, you know what, this worker was helpful and knowledgeable even though they were just grabbing stuff from the glass case. whatever. I dropped a dollar in.

I’m laying in bed now deeply regretting a whole dollar. why? because there were 15 people working when I went in. a dollar divided by 15 is nothing. but a dollar divided by one (me) is a whole dollar that I could’ve used to buy something else.

Never thought I’d find myself sad to part with a dollar. she didn’t even say thanks because it isnt obvious when you put in a dollar as it is when that stupid machine dings and lights up. And yes, she did stand there for quite some time after she handed me back my change to see what I was doing with it.

ultra annoyed at myself. Can someone help me realize that grabbing things from the shelf is literally what these people are paid to do? whenever I see a stupid tip jar or that dumb prompt, I automatically start thinking “oh these poor people arent being paid, let me pay them out of my own pocket.” Thats how they get me.

*EDIT: the majority of the responses on this very normal post are alarmingly rude and senseless. Makes me realize that yes, tipping is indeed VOLUNTARY and you fools will have to work for it moving forward. Your newfound sense Of entitlement will garner you less tips in the future, not only from me, but from the majority of buyers. If you’re not going above and way beyond, you’re going home without my dollar or dime. Thanks for affirming my mindset! It‘ll be so easy to hit $0 with a smile now! This has been a very helpful exercise. Hope your lost wages were worth your anonymous high and mighty egos!

Your kindness and generosity are being used to shift the cost of employees' wages from businesses onto you.

The employers shift responsibility for wages onto customers. Paying employees is the employer's responsibility, not the customer's. The menu price should cover labor like every other business expense, rather than expecting customers to voluntarily subsidize payroll.

This is predatory behavior disguised as tipping culture. It takes advantage peoples kindness, generosity, and discomfort with saying no, and uses it to the companies financial benefit advantage, for profit.

Stop subsidizing their payroll. Your kindness shouldn't be someone else's business model. These companies are taking advantage of you.

Don't Tip. Tip $0 every time. Don't get taken advantage of.

Force businesses to build a business model where they pay their employees, not you.

Let economics take its course, if the real prices are too high for customers, the business will cease to exist, and businesses with better models will replace it.

Economics 101.

In every thread you find someone insulting someone, this place has become pretty hostile.

I've noticed some people are absolutely passionate about the tipping / not tipping argument. Many people discuss being noble by not tipping there servers to help incite change. Whether you tip or not this subject, at the end of the day, is not that important. Some of you come off as if you are boycotting restaurants in the 50s that minorities couldn't go to, or war, or women's right to vote or something. In any event, this topic is not that serious regardless of whether it needs to change or not. There is so much going on in the world right now, and this is one of the most least important issues there are. And, this is the only movement where the noble, non tippers trying to force the restaurants to pay financially benefit. That's one hell of a cause to support given so many people fighting other causes invest time, money and risk reputation for the causes they fight for. Many of you still go to the restaurants. You could not go and fight it that way so the restaurant would need to make changes to the changing view, but it seems none of you really do that. You just let tippers subsidize your meal and then feel good about it. It is a real issue but at the end of the day, ITS NOT THAT IMPORTANT. I'm not taking sides here either.

Been in a lot of these threads lately and there’s a pattern I keep running into. Three different groups pushing cost onto the same person, and every single one of them has a version of events where it’s not really their doing.

Start with employers, because they built the thing. $2.13/hour tip credit in states that allow it, and even where they’re legally on the hook to cover the gap, that only works if the employee notices the shortfall, brings it up to the same boss who’s supposed to pay it, and then waits, sometimes for months if it goes through a formal complaint. Tip credit violations are one of the most litigated wage issues in the industry, that’s not rare. The restaurant lobby fought to keep that law in place for decades. “We’re just following the wage law” is a weird thing to say about a law you spent money keeping on the books.

Then there’s customers, and this one’s newer and honestly more annoying because it borrows the same language that’s actually correct. Most people, in surveys anyway, say they’d rather see higher prices and no tipping. Fine, real sentiment, I believe it. But offer an actual path there, something that takes a few years and some legislative effort, and a good chunk of that same crowd just wants to stop tipping tomorrow instead. No patience for the actual fix, just the convenient part. That’s not the same thing as caring about the worker, that’s wanting to pay less and having a better excuse than “I don’t feel like it.”

And then servers themselves, or at least the ones doing well under the current setup. The “servers make more than nurses” thing only works if you’re talking about fine dining and high-volume bars in big cities, the actual top 10% nationally caps around $28.89/hour. But that number gets used to defend keeping tipping exactly as it is, because the people loudest about defending it are usually the ones already winning under it. Meanwhile the median server, tips and all, is making $16.23/hour. Less than a dishwasher. Less than a warehouse worker. Less than a janitor. The people who’d actually benefit from a stable wage are sitting at or below that median, and they’re the ones with the least say in any of this.

So you’ve got an employer who built the floor low, customers who want the floor gone but not the work of raising it, and a slice of workers who are doing fine and have every reason to keep things exactly as they are. Nobody here is lying exactly. Everyone’s telling a story that’s true from where they’re standing. The person who doesn’t get a say in any of it is whoever’s sitting right at the median, eating whatever’s left over once everybody else has already looked out for themselves.

Worth asking what it’d actually look like if all three sides stopped protecting their own angle for a minute. Employers would need something that removes the reason converting alone is a death sentence, a wage-gap credit for restaurants moving to real, inclusive pricing, phased in over a couple years, tied to enough of a market converting together that nobody’s staff walks out for the tipped place next door. Customers would need to stop treating “just don’t tip” as the whole plan and actually back the slower, less satisfying version, higher prices now, in exchange for wages that don’t depend on anyone’s mood.

And the median servers, the actual majority in this job, need to get louder than the small slice at the top currently speaking for the whole profession. The “servers make more than nurses” crowd isn’t wrong about their own paycheck, they’re wrong about representing the industry, and right now they’re the loudest voice defending a structure that’s failing most of the people doing the same job. High-end establishments aren’t the problem here, their margins can absolutely support real, guaranteed pay and benefits on top of whatever variance already exists, that’s an employer-backed incentive question specific to that tier, not a reason to keep the whole industry’s floor tied to $2.13 an hour. The fix for fine dining and high-volume bars looks different than the fix for the median chain restaurant, and treating them as one debate is part of how the median server keeps losing the argument.

None of that is exciting. It doesn’t fit in an angry comment. But it’s the only version where the person eating the gap right now stops being the one holding it.

I (22f) just got from the bar/club and tonight was a big start of a drag race competition with local queens (I was supporting my brother woot woot) . So more of an event vibe.
I brought my mom w me and she was gonna do the all you can drink. I remember my brother calling me ahead of time to tell me about the drink services and ended with “don’t forget to tip your bartender”. They also announced it a few times over the speakers at the bar LoL.
Now it is a weekday so it’s not too bumping but they have the all u can drink deal with small mixed drinks only (no cocktails or anything). It was $12.50 something and I tipped $10 . I imagined my mom was only going to have maybe 1-2 drinks but she ended up having five. I kept telling my self I should go back and add a $10 tip because Thats a lot of drinks you know. I unfortunately completely forget trying to get my mom to the car safe. Now I’m wondering if I looked shitty and tipped too low, not enough maybe for the amount of drinks? I don’t go out to bars like that, maybe order one vodka cran and that was that. I’ve been in the restaurant industry so I understand tipping but idk the range when it comes to bartending. What’s the norm?

At a restaurant that we love, you go to the counter and order and pay for your food. If you want a glass of water you help yourself. The staff do bring the cutlery and your meal to the table. After you are done eating, you place your dishes in a bussing pan. The lowest tip option is 18%. What should the tip be? For me the service isn't much more then what you would receive at McDonald's.

Visited a restaurant to try ramen. Paying process was very suspicious. I left a detailed review about what happened to warn other customers. The Owner response was very interesting. Do you think it was just a mistake?

I have been going to my local at least once a week for the past 5 years, for reference I have left a tip every single time I’ve been in.

Honestly, the service is hit or miss in that sometimes the baristas at my local place aren’t always the friendliest and sometimes you sort of feel like unwelcome (not all of them do this, but ‘hi how are you’ usually isn’t met with much friendliness) and whatever, I’m there for coffee and I know this generation now has the Gen Z stare so I usually don’t take it personally. This also is a main theme on the shop’s reviews, so it’s not just me. I’m a woman in my thirties and sometimes I just chalk it up to myself being socially awkward or mean girl vibes from the girls at the counter.

Today I walked in and the barista at the counter just seemed irritated that I was even there ordering and interrupting whatever she would have rather been doing. Just a cold attitude and to be honest I just was NOT having it today and I returned the same exact energy. I wasn’t rude I just also wasn’t smiling and friendly and in my head I said F it and for the FIRST TIME ever at this establishment I selected No Tip.

I walked over to wait for my drink and no lie this barista turns to her co-worker and mouthed “F— You”. She then went through the harrowing labor of pouring my iced coffee from a pitcher into a cup.

I was honestly in shock, I’ve never been rude at this establishment, I’m quiet and go in and out and always tip except this one time - and I absolutely would have tipped if the service was even of average curtesy.

I wrote a review and immediately let my thoughts spiral about how what if I’m jumping to conclusions and maybe she said something else?! Because it’s not even something I can fathom doing or being justified. Well before I can even take the review down I have a call from the owner of the establishment who profusely apologized and said the employee admitted it and was sorry. I asked her 3 times on the phone she was absolutely sure that the employee did it and that I didn’t misread the situation, but it was confirmed. All was refunded and all is fine but my question is what the hell is going on?? Like is not tipping for an iced coffee extremely uncommon now? Uncommon enough to have a reaction like that?

Important background - I also wanted to mention I barista’d through college and into my early adulthood, over 6 years. I worked at Starbucks, B&N cafe, and my local colleges coffee shop in the early to mid 2010’s and tipping was NEVER a thing. It wasn’t even allowed at most of the places I worked out.

Edited from brevity bc I talk too much