Tip jars

[Bobby Henderson]

I think all this tipping shit is getting out of hand.

It's one thing if I go to a restaurant and I know the server is getting paid only $2.13 per hour and possibly has to kick some of their tip money back to the kitchen crew regardless if they got tipped or not. But more and more types of businesses I wouldn't expect are asking for tips at the cash register. A certain level of fatigue and even anger starts setting in with so much of this crap. I really don't like these little automated touch screen kiosk devices. They always have these inflated tip amounts. I might have paid $20 for a haircut and their lowest tip amount is $7 and it goes up from there. $7 is a more than 33% tip. You have to go to extra effort to manually put in the tip amount you want to pay, like $5. A 25% tip ain't bad.

The March 2 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver centered its main story around tipping. I thought it covered a lot of good points, including some that have been mentioned in this thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89R9ZxKaIOw

Tipping is a somewhat uniquely American thing. It's not common in most other countries. Tipping doesn't seem to be going away any time soon either. That's because if businesses like restaurants raised their prices the equivalent of a tip (a 15%-25% bump) customers would say the prices were too high. So it's kind of our fault this tipping shit is sticking around.

[Tim Reed]

I worked a vacation once at an 8-plex. Several days in, one of the concession girls said, "We like you! Nothing ever happens when you're working." LOL. Turns out, being off the screen was somewhat par for the course there. I was making 35mm trailers during this time, and I thought I should make an intermission snipe saying, "Projectionist accepts gratuities." I could screw a tip jar to a bar stool and set it outside the booth door at the drive-in I worked. I never did it, but it's funny the subject is raised.

[Ryan Gallagher]

An empty film shipping can perhaps?

Speaking of, good treatment of the subject.

Apologies, I see Bobby shared the link too, I hadn't read both recent posts yet.

[Lyle Romer]

One thing I've grown to wonder about tipping is why it is expected to tip the "barista" at Starbucks for preparing a cup of coffee but not to tip the counter server at McDonald's for preparing a cup of coffee.

I understand the concept behind tipping at a sit down restaurant. The waiter or waitress becomes part of the dining experience. They are providing something more than you get if you order on a kiosk at the table and have somebody that just delivers the food.

The tip suggestions at all the tap to pay terminals have gotten ridiculous. What would be helpful as a customer is if the business stated whether their employees are paid as "tipped employees" or not. If they are relying on the tip I'll be more likely to leave a larger tip for just doing their job adequately whereas if they are paid a normal wage then I will know that my tip is more of a bonus and I will use it more as a reward for very good service.

[Harold Hallikainen]

https://gizmodo.com/doordash-paying-...ips-2000568196
DoorDash Paying Drivers $17M for Stolen Tips

The payment is part of a settlement with the New York Attorney General. By AJ Dellinger Published February 25, 2025 | Comments (59)
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DoorDash driver on a motorbike waits at a stoplight. © David Zalubowski (AP)
DoorDash drivers in New York are about to get an extra tip—and one that they’ve been owed for over half a decade. As part of a settlement announced by the state of New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James, DoorDash has agreed to pay $16.75 million to more than 60,000 Dashers who were supposed to receive that money in the form of tips but instead, the company used it to cover base pay and pocketed the rest.

New York’s lawsuit alleged that between May 2017 and September 2019, tens of thousands of Dashers were misled by DoorDash’s pay model. At the time, the company offered a guaranteed wage to drivers—the minimum amount that they could expect to make from a job. But instead of paying that guarantee and letting drivers keep their tips, DoorDash counted the tip toward their base pay and kept what was left.

Let’s say a driver is guaranteed $10 on a delivery. DoorDash would pay a minimum of $1 of that no matter what, but the rest would scale based on how the person who placed the order tipped. If they left a $5 tip, DoorDash counted that toward the guaranteed $10 wage and covered the remaining $4 on top of its $1 minimum. If the tip was $7, DoorDash just scaled down its own payment to $2. Under this model, the only way the driver ever saw more than $10 was if the customer tipped higher than the guaranteed payment—meaning if they tipped $11, that one extra dollar over the $10 guarantee would actually go to the driver instead of subsidizing DoorDash’s side of the payout.

That payment model would be skeevy even if DoorDash accurately explained how payments were distributed. But…it didn’t. Per the AG’s lawsuit, DoorDash showed a message to customers that said “Dashers will always receive 100 percent of the tip”—a statement that is technically true but does not clarify that “tip” is actually the delivery drivers’ wage. New York argued that disclosures explaining how tips worked were buried in online documents and “customers had no way of knowing that DoorDash was using tips to reduce its own costs.”

DoorDash did eventually change its payment model to ensure “earnings will increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order,” but New York’s case represents drivers finally getting those tips they earned during the period when the company was less transparent about who was actually pocketing that extra cash.

Dashers eligible for the settlement will be contacted by the settlement administrator so they can get their piece of the pie that was rightfully theirs in the first place. Better late than never.

[Randy Stankey]

When it comes to putting in a tip amount at any POS/credit card terminal, I always put $0.00. If I am at a sit-down restaurant, I write a nominal tip on the receipt. Usually, I just round up to the nearest $5.00. The rest of a tip, if I tip at all, will be in cash, directly to the person who waited on me.

I have a reason for doing it that way. We all know that, in a restaurant, the waiter has to tip out the bartender, the busser and the food prep people. That money is taken out of the tip amount written on the check. As far as I am concerned, any amount that I tip should go to the waiter first and the tip-outs second. Putting a nominal tip on the check lets me control where my money goes. The back of house people get theirs but the bulk of it goes into the waiter's pocket where I think it belongs.

Sometimes, I even ask the waiter what their tip-out percentage is then write the exact amount on the check. Then, I hand the waiter their tip in cash and tell them to put it directly into their pocket.

If and when I tip, I want my tip money going to the person who actually does the work, not some cheese dip who stands outside, behind the dumpster, smoking cigarettes all day long!

[Leo Enticknap]

The tip suggestions at all the tap to pay terminals have gotten ridiculous. What would be helpful as a customer is if the business stated whether their employees are paid as "tipped employees" or not.

Same reason why the iPads don't tell you if the staff can see at the moment of sale if you decided to leave a tip, and if so how much. If you know that the employees are not paid as tipped, you're not going to leave a tip. If you know that they are, that does not reflect well on the way the employer treats its customers.

If the "no tax on tips" proposal (to avoid being politically partisan, it should be pointed out that both candidates in the last Presidential election advocated this) becomes a reality, the unintended consequence will be that restaurant employees will likely want to be paid as tipped, and for this to be widely advertised. From their perspective, the larger the proportion of their pay that is exempt from federal income tax, the better.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I worked a vacation once at an 8-plex. Several days in, one of the concession girls said, "We like you! Nothing ever happens when you're working." LOL. Turns out, being off the screen was somewhat par for the course there. I was making 35mm trailers during this time, and I thought I should make an intermission snipe saying, "Projectionist accepts gratuities." I could screw a tip jar to a bar stool and set it outside the booth door at the drive-in I worked. I never did it, but it's funny the subject is raised.

My first civilian projectionist job was at an 8 screen for a certain chain. Their "manager/projectionst happened to be a nephew of a higher-up. I got the job (offered to me by said higher-up) because of the excessive down time and film and equipment damage.

After a while of me being there and getting things running without fail, the rare times the film break alarms went off (They had them in the two main booths, the box office and behind the candy counter) had the staff wondering if I'd died in the booth.

[Ryan Gallagher]

What would be helpful as a customer is if the business stated whether their employees are paid as "tipped employees" or not. If they are relying on the tip I'll be more likely to leave a larger tip for just doing their job adequately whereas if they are paid a normal wage then I will know that my tip is more of a bonus and I will use it more as a reward for very good service.

BINGO, THAT RIGHT THERE. Or pie in the sky, let's just pay people a decent livable wage, and let tips, where they still come into play, have no part of someone's base income. I know, crazy.

[Mike Blakesley]

There's a current debate over whether the government should tax tips or not. (Trump wants to eliminate said tax.) I read an article today that noted that if tips aren't taxed, then the servers don't pay as much into their Social Security account, so that affects their retirement income. I never thought about that before.

That said - I hate tips. I wish every restaurant would raise the wages by about $5 an hour or more, raise the price of each menu item by a dollar or two, and put "Service is included in menu prices; TIPS ARE NOT ACCEPTED" (actual numbers in practice may have to be adjusted but you get the idea). If a person gets bad service, there's always the old standby of complaining to the management. That probably would get more results than leaving a "penny" tip, after all.

[Bobby Henderson]

The tipping system is a double edged sword. Some servers and bartenders can actually do pretty well on what they make from tips. If they got paid a flat, non-tipped wage it might amount to a severe pay cut. Good employees would quit and find a different job.

I think service industry people should get paid at least some sort of livable wage. Here in Oklahoma the minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour (the federal minimum). That's ridiculous. The cost of living in Lawton is relatively low compared to some other places, but I defy anyone to try to survive here on $7.25 per hour here. The math doesn't work. It would be difficult for a single person to make ends meet here on $15 per hour.

Non-conventional living situations are growing more common. More people are having to share apartments with roommates. Kids are reaching adulthood yet are stuck living with parents well into their 20's. Retired age people are being forced to move in with their adult offspring. Our nation's current housing price bubble is worsening those situations.

I've heard the comments again and again about people getting paid shit-quality wages at businesses like fast food restaurants and why the shit wages are justified: "A job at McDonald's is not a career." They say the jobs are for high school kids learning how to work. My response is businesses like McDonald's are open Monday-Friday while school is in session. Who the hell do these people think are working behind the counter and in the kitchen during week day mornings and afternoons? The answer is grown-ass adults. Not kids.

By the way, all of us assholes with "real jobs" expect McDonald's to be open all the time, regardless whether it's kids or adults working the shifts. That's our entitlement mentality. Many of us don't miss the chance to treat those low wage workers like shit, as if they've committed some kind of crime for having to work there.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Agree. The funny thing that sets tipping up to be "a gamut of almost nothing to very comfortable earnings" is a quirk of the fact it is based on final cost, customer pacing, and the market of the establishment. A more "true" tipping system (nevermind how impractical it would be to calculate/implement) would be that the tip was based on the amount of time necessary to service the customer. Obviously if there is quick customer turnaround they would add up, but if it's a two hour sit down plated meal, you might only get a handful per shift.

Generally cost and time does tend to also align to an extent, but not so uniformly.

Low wage fast food jobs are typically cited as low wage because they are "unskilled" positions, anyone can be trained up, no prior knowledge/experience/aptitude necessary. But tipping there is less common. They give us their time and put in a full shift just as much as a more skilled technical job does so for the company. It's only not a career path because it doesn't pay like a career path, in other countries service industry very much IS a career. In a fair system there would be a minimum wage where the TIME vs local Cost of Living was the primary calculus, everything skilled, or additionally tipped for customer care, and above, moves up from there.

By having such sub-standard wages in the bottom class of service actually has ripple effects, everyone else should be making more too, but because their wage feels livable comparatively they are less likely to complain as long as there is a group they can point to that is doing worse than that.

[Bobby Henderson]

Making a living off tips in a bar or restaurant can be tough. The pay can be very uneven from one week to the next.

One of my best friends managed restaurants for a long time and just retired from that. I got acquainted or became friends with some of the people who worked for him as servers and bartenders. I'd hear a lot of surprising things from them, even some stories that made me mad for how the customers treated them.

Every restaurant is different in terms of its clientele, how they behave and regard "the help." One might assume everyone knows you're supposed to tip at least 15%. Not everyone does that.

It's not a rare thing for a customer to stiff the server on a tip. The situation is pot luck. One customer might be generous with the tip they leave. Then the server might bust her ass serving a big group of people who stay a long time and run up a big bar tab. She might be expecting to get a good tip, but winds up not getting tipped anything at all. That's the kind of shit that can totally ruin a server's night, especially if she's having to kick money out of her own pocket back to the bartender and kitchen crew for that ticket.

Then there's all the manner of emotional abuse a server can receive from customers. My restaurant manager friend would intervene as quickly as he could if a situation was starting to get out of hand. Some customers think they have license to say anything they want to a server, even things that are demeaning or threatening. My friend would do everything he could to try to make things right for the customer. But on those rare occasions where they wanted to cross a line he'd throw their asses out of the restaurant and tell them never to come back. Either way, a server has to learn to grow a thick skin otherwise they're not going to last in that job very long.

People who work fast food jobs typically don't get tips. They just get paid as near minimum wage as the local market will allow. Lots of other service jobs in food, retail, hospitality, etc are in the same boat. I always think of Steve Buscemi at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs when the topic of tipping comes up.

Out of my own selfish concern I worry about what it is going to cost us in the long term for how people in the middle to bottom income brackets are getting financially squeezed now. The numbers of marriages and births in the US is continuing to fall. I'm in my 50's. In around 20 or so years I'll be eligible for Social Security. Programs like that as well as so many other things we take for granted won't function if there aren't enough working age citizens.

[Mike Blakesley]

I think service industry people should get paid at least some sort of livable wage. Here in Oklahoma the minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour (the federal minimum). That's ridiculous. The cost of living in Lawton is relatively low compared to some other places, but I defy anyone to try to survive here on $7.25 per hour here. The math doesn't work. It would be difficult for a single person to make ends meet here on $15 per hour.

That's great, but how do you get people to agree to what a livable wage is? This is why the "federal minimum wage" is a dumb thing. It should be left to the states, or maybe even to counties. You can live in my town here for about a tenth of what it would cost to live in a city like Seattle or Chicago. A house that sells for $150k here would be worth a million bucks in Los Angeles. Even a movie ticket here costs half of what it does in a city, to say nothing of a restaurant meal.

[Ryan Gallagher]

That's great, but how do you get people to agree to what a livable wage is? This is why the "federal minimum wage" is a dumb thing. It should be left to the states, or maybe even to counties. You can live in my town here for about a tenth of what it would cost to live in a city like Seattle or Chicago. A house that sells for $150k here would be worth a million bucks in Los Angeles. Even a movie ticket here costs half of what it does in a city, to say nothing of a restaurant meal.

I would agree, but I think the idea of a federal minimum is exactly that, a minimum floor employers cannot go below. It is a protection, not a standard/metric. Ideally states and locals would do exactly what you say, and set their own (above the federal) based on local economy factors. But we can see how well that has played out. Best laid plans so to speak….