An op-ed in the Washington Post today complains about all those touchscreen apps asking how much of a tip you want to leave:
Tipping is now out of control. Gratuity prompts have become so widespread and indiscriminate that a new study from the Pew Research Center shows it is causing mass confusion and frustration.
....The easy-to-tap buttons for 10, 15, 20 percent — in Los Angeles, often 30 percent! — have put tipping on autopilot. It may spare us the awkward math, but it also erases the pause for appreciation. The presence of a watchful employee has turned the act of tipping, even for subpar or no service, into a reflex rather than a reflection. We often tip simply to end the transaction, and businesses bank on that.
I've heard this complaint before and I don't get it. I don't consider these screens to be a demand for a tip, just a routine thing at places that run partly on tips. If my transaction isn't the kind of thing I'd normally tip for, I just press "No Tip" and finish up. Is that really so hard?
But maybe I'm just heartless. How about the rest of you? Do you find these screens sort of intimidating, as if you're expected to tip in every conceivable situation these days?
For sit down places where you pay before you eat I press the button to leave no tip then leave an appropriate tip in cash as I leave. Tips should reflect good service and food.
What do you mean, food? Tipping has nothing to do with the food. It's a direct payment to people based on height.
That's they have the 15/18/20 percent math on the receipt or the screen: for short, average and tall service employees, respectively.
It doesn't change my behavior, as I'm comfortable tipping when I want and how much I want. But I do think that lots of people, for various reasons, do pay attention to social cues about what's "normal" and that putting 15%, 20%, and 25% as tipping options is likely to succeed in accomplishing just what they hope: leading more people to believe that tipping is "normal" and that tipping 15% is being kind of stingy.
This is reinforced by the Covid period, I think, when so many service sector people lost their jobs and restaurants and coffee shops went out of business, and most people I knew tipped a lot more on average to support local businesses.
The reason people are irritated by them is "because of the implication"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE
The normal sit-down restaurant transaction is
- I buy food
- I pay, with tip for genuine service (taking the order, delivering the food)
This new model is
- I buy food
- frequently no service is involved but a tip is "requested"
- what happens if I don't tip? Well, who knows, but the person I am paying, and everyone else in the chain till I pick up my food, knows this...
Not a threat. But... Because of the implication...
I owned a busy counter service bakery & restaurant for 9 years, with 55 employees. All tips were pooled and split between FoH and BoH. When we switched from a paper receipt/fill in the tip amount to a screen option, my employee tips nearly doubled. That went a VERY long way in helping us to attract and retain employees. FWIW. Especially when many could go and get cash jobs trimming weed and pull down $25-$30/hour.
I don't doubt this is correct, but it's a sign of an unwell society that de facto pay increases can't be justified out of institutional regulation, like minimum wage increases, and instead have to be justified out of what is basically charity and trickery.
I went to a place recently where the tip options were 20%, 30% and 40%!
Meh. People who COMPLAIN about tipping and touchscreens for tipping are generally people who are lousy tippers who think tipping is a performance review but still congratulate themselves anytime they leave more than 15%.