If I get good service I like to tip well. More places are asking now. So many places are short staffed and the workers are stressed so its nice to be able to tip to the workers who contribute and show up and provide needed services. Many young people got lazy during Covid and do not want to work. Ive heard this from dozens of small businesses.

As soon as I see that touch screen at a cash register asking me if I want to tip just cause someone did their job, I can't hit that "skip" or "no" button fast enough. Fuck that noise.

Went to 5 Guys the other day where the prices have gone through the roof. I know the employees already are receiving a decent starting hourly wage but they ask you to tip.
Didn’t tip this time and the cashier looked at my receipt before handing it to me. Doubt I’ll go back.

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It is what it is.

Everybody pays their employees as little as they can and they expect the consumer to make up the difference.

It's literally written into our laws; you are legally entitled (required basically) to pay your restaurant staff shit because they "work for tips."

If you don't like it, move to Europe! It is super refreshing over there to not have to deal with this stuff. But yeah At a Restaurant I'll generally tip 20+ percent and I'm not looking for excuses to short people. It's the cost of doing business, and the difference between a 20 percent tip and a 17 percent tip isn't enough for me to get upset about it.

I'm also not getting mad at anybody for "demanding to be tipped for doing their jobs," that's not their call. They didn't create the prompt on the ipad when you are paying for your coffee at the desk, I'm sure they'd prefer just getting paid an extra couple dollars an hour to the current system of expanding shakedowns. This goes way higher up than your front desk clerk, man!

I always tip unless something is majorly wrong - always always always. I'm in a position to be able to help other folks, and I remember struggling to pay even basic bills and worrying about my rent. I hated that feeling, and if I can give someone a tiny leg up to do the same. Big fancy restaurants always expect you to tip - and frankly, those people don't really "need" it, but they provide a very specific service and it's just part of the deal.

People in food service especially always get screwed over, and just being nice has paid off OVER and OVER again. There's a certain japanese restaurant we frequent that the staff welcomes us like heroes when we come in, and they are always asking us to try new things, and I can't even count the number of free bottles of sake I've gotten. Pay it forward.

During Covid it was "a nice thing to do" to tip for take-out (or counter-service) since they weren't getting tips with no one dining-in.

Now, it's come to be expected. And it used to be that 20% was a generous tip, now people expect 25%.

Even stranger, is that some retail places are prompting for tips too. The game store that my son worked at had a register system that would prompt for a 15%, 20%, or 25% tip - and the store owner had no way to disable the prompt (even though he wanted to).

This is kinda my thought as well. I lobby my local politicians for decent living wages for all employees, but since it's not the waitress's fault she's currently getting paid $3/hour, I just suck it up. It's a scam but me fighting it just hurts those who are least responsible.

When it comes to take out food, I don't think tipping is necessary but is a nice gesture. If the staff is friendly and helpful, I like to pay it forward since I used to work those jobs and I appreciated when I was in their shoes and people put a buck or two into the cup.

Patronizing service establishments is a privilege, not a right. You're always free to cook your own meals, make your own coffee, wash your own clothes, pick up all your own items, and drink alone in your living room. And the places that have added the gratuity option to their POS screens are just that, an option. You're always free to put 0%. There's a big difference between "expected" and "requested". Don't let your own guilt confuse those two words.

Don’t insert joke or innuendo,
Don’t insert joke or innuendo,
Don’t insert joke or innuendo.

14 bucks is a decent starting wage? Would you work at Five Guys for 29K a year before taxes?

If was 17 years old living at my parents house, yes!

This is a fallacy (quite successfully) promoted by the fast food industry and other opponents of higher wages in general.

About 30 percent of fast-food workers are teenagers. Half of fast-food workers are over the age of 23.

There are TONS of people trying to support families with a fast food job.

Do you background check the employees and ask for ID before deciding to tip or not at restaurants? Uber? The pizza guy? This is the most boomery response ever.

You’re working 40 hours a week at 17?

They should get a better job.
Fast food line work should be an entry level job, not a career.

Hmmmm... I wonder if that ever occurred to them. Perhaps you should mention it to the next line cook who makes your food for you.

I have no problem tipping a waitress, waiter, bartender etc.

Why aren’t McDonald, Chik-filet, Burger King employers asking you to tip?

This is a fallacy promoted by the fast food industry.

Not everybody has access to higher education. Not everybody has the same avenues to a "better job" as you did.

These people are doing a job, just like you are doing a job. They are providing a service that MANY people here obviously require and need them to fulfil (just check out the bodies at a pinball show). They don't deserve to be mistreated or exploited any more than you do.

I worked at KFC when I was a teenager, for $5 an hour, which was .75 over minimum wage, which I appreciated. I was also living at home, and eating my weight in KFC a month. It was a fun gig. But it was still work. I was still helping people feed their families. I was still working on my feet 10-25 hours a week.

I was still entitled to dignity at work, even though I was doing a job that didn't require higher education or career training.

Actually a hell of a lot more than that. I wanted that car and got it

Pay in this country is all screwed up. Period. The bottom doesnt make enough, the top makes too much. Our dollar is worthless. The middle gets squeezed on all sides. Making matters worse is a ton of no good lazies that get paid while the hard workers get paid the same to carry the lazies. I dont blame or look down on any worker if they work hard. Fry cook, garbage man, ditch digger, whatever. If u do your job well and try ur hardest you have my respect and i will fight for your wages. But its so hard to find good people who give a crap. Today i had to carry because five others refused their job. I didnt get an atta boy, and they didnt get written up. Just another day. Welcome to the modern workplace.

A low wage is not mistreatment or exploitation. It's a trade. Labor for wage. Voluntary on both sides.
Don't like the wage, don't take the job.
Want a better wage, get a better job.

So you’ll tip a bartender for opening a beer and handing it to you over a counter, one you’re paying 3 times more for than you would at a store, but tipping someone that is preparing your food and handing it to you over a counter is out of the question? I don’t give a shit if you tip or not but what’s the difference?

Wow, those are the only two options?

Starbucks employees would disagree with you.

Or form a union and engage in collective bargaining.

If you didn't wait my table, bring me a pizza, or keep me drunk at a bar, you're not getting a tip.

Say no to point of sale tipping, it encourages those corporations to pay their employees less.

Don’t want to tip…stay home?

There are two restaurants in my town that increased their menu prices to pay their staff the average salary they would normally make with tips, then did away completely with tipping. The change has been amazing. Waitstaff are no longer confined to their tables, so everyone helps everyone. You can hire a staff of 5 to run the tables and rotate 15 minute breaks with ease. And as a customer you no longer need to wait for your sever, you can ask anyone for help with your order.

It's awesome. I love it. You can feel it in the atmosphere how free and happy it is. I'll never go back to a tipping establishment for as long as I can help it.

They might feel that way but the unemployment rate in the US is the lowest it's ever been, yet the workforce is smaller than it was just a few years ago, which is the actual problem.

The baby boomer generation -- the largest workforce generation in US history -- started retiring. This opened up a wave of new upper-level jobs and everyone qualified rose up, which happened through the chain of command, all the way down to the bottom where your fast food jobs and the like are located.

It just so happened it coincided with covid, which is a total coincidence. Covid isn't the reason for the shortfall. Everyone hiring minimum wage will have to wait it out for a while. This isn't going way for a few years.

ElectroMagnetic That $14 per hour is relative to where you live. If that was in Burlington Vermont where I live, people would be forced to spend 70% of their take home pay on rent, and use the other 30% on food, utilities, transportation, etc and no health insurance. Hopefully it's not as bad in your neck of the woods.

Yeah, it's just that easy! Why doesn't every desperate person with mouths to feed, bills to pay, and no access to education or employment resources just do that? You're just full of solutions today.

The contempt some people have for people worse off than they are never ceases to astound me.

I had to suffer a minor inconvenience once so everyone else’s life should suck even more ass!

"no...not like that!!"

I go to a great place for food and You order through an app on your phone,I usually like to leave a cash tip so the wait person gets all of it right away no funny business.I checked a receipt one day after I was at home and noticed they have a 20% Tip set as a default .When a sandwich is 35 bucks and a bowl of soup is 20 and I do the ordering on my phone maybe the business owner can kick down some of that to their employees.When my Family was in the Business we appreciated large parties for all they order,now I see automatic gratuity is added just for 6 people or more.I feel they should appreciate that Your table is giving them so much business and let You tip for service depending on the quality of service.

I have nothing but respect for anyone who works.
I just don't think that every job needs to be structured so that one worker can support an entire family.
There should be entry level jobs.
For instance teenage Levi working at KFC.
Or teenage me working for City Public Works at $0.10 over minimum wage.
Neither one supporting a family on that wage.

Got a bag of chips for my daughter from Starbucks the other day. Put in a credit card and it asked me for a tip! for selecting my own bag of chips?? lady wasnt that pleasant, I looked her right in the eyes, said "no tip" and pressed the "no" button and left.

Could you support just yourself on 29K a year before taxes? That’s assuming you’re not in school and are able to work full time and they place your working offers benefits, which you also have to pay for. You could double that take home pay and a lot of people would struggle to support themselves still let alone a family.

I tip, and I tip well, sometimes even at places where it's not even asked. Because I used to be where those folks are, and I want to live in a world where we all give a crap about someone outside of our own house. And as folks have mentioned, nobody is forcing you to eat out, you can cook at home and be a bitter, cheap person. We all leave this planet with the exact same bank balance we came in with.

Probably not. Which is why I'm saying that folks supporting themselves, or a family, should seek other employment.

Actually, it's bottom lines, share price, executive greed, and outdated minimum wage laws that encourages corporations to pay their employees less. POS tipping just gives the customer an option to help out people who may be making less than them, struggling in their lives, or simply doing a great job. Which is purely optional. If you don't want to, you don't have to. But to openly protest it, and call for an outright collective ban of it is truly some cold-blooded shit.

How many peers of yours at work are employees hired with their only experience being an “entry level” job and what’s the starting salary?

We'll have a student worker for the summer starting in a few weeks. We'll be paying a wage that is more than he's earning now as a part time food service worker, but less than what I would call a "career wage". It's a learning experience position. Most of my "peers" worked similar jobs along the way.

We have paid interns at work too. Being enrolled in college is a requirement, is that the same for you? Or are you hiring without an education requirement?

There have been too many instances where tipping at the POS has been factored into somebody's minimum wage by reducing their wage per hour of the tip amount to where the tip brings them to minimum wage, which ends up costing the company less money.

This is being used as a tactic. If you want to participate in aiding the corporation's "bottom line" then go for it. You're being bamboozled.

We're not that formal. This person is enrolled, but we have had others in the past that are not.

I feel pity for the plebeians serving me so I toss them extra money to soothe my guilt.

great! that's one kid who won't have to work service industry jobs for the rest of their lives. any chance you're willing to offer this opportunity to the other 4.9Bil other people in the world who are under the age of 39, or are we back to square one?

Telling a fast food worker to “just get a better job” seems like telling a manic depressive to “just cheer up.”

Dammit, just yesterday I promised myself I wouldn't get bamboozled by another corporation! Why does this keep happening to me??

That is a broad oversimplification and not quite the full story. Most people aren't "lazy"--a lot of them are quite willing to hustle, but don't want to be subjected to certain unpalatable working conditions, work for the low pay, and/or be underemployed (especially if they have a degree). The cost of living is getting pretty high these days, and it's really tough to survive just on minimum wage. The landscape has changed a bit in the last decade or two.

I tip at sit-down restaurants that have wait staff, and tip bartenders and barbers. There's probably a few other random situations where tipping has been traditionally expected/accepted, but I can't say I recall encountering anything else in a good while.

[edit]: Oh, forgot about delivery--but that's a service I never use.

[Edit 2]: And furnature movers if they don't damage anything

Everywhere else that suddenly started prompting for tips for every transaction (retail, take-out, and counter service), no.

Were You just ordering a Burger or did You want to solve the problems of the world.
I must be owed thousands in back tip pay because as a server I tried to be the best.
When I get a server who at least tries to do well I take good care of them.No effort and You can kick rocks.