Elder millennial here. I didn't even realize it used to be 10% but of course it was. It was probably 5% before that and once that was considered acceptable they just kept pushing for more. It should've never been considered acceptable in the first place to expect customers to pay a business owner's employees
Inflation is part of the problem, but not the way you're thinking. The issue is the server's wage that the employer pays probably hasn't changed even though prices of goods and rent have gone up. The issue isn't that inflation increased the price of your meal and therefore you should tip more. The percentage covers that. The issue is due to inflation, the server now needs a larger percentage of your meal as a tip so they can later afford to feed themselves. Tipping culture is fucked up. Business owners need to step up and pay their employees. I don't understand how it's gotten this bad and everyone just accepts it
the federal min wage in the US is $7.25 or $7.50 meaning mamy states go with that. the min wage for wait staff is $2 and some change. they make absolutely nothing without tips.
not exactly. Its an incomplete answer. Inflation has far outgrown any wage increases makes service industry jobs needing to make up the difference somewhere and obviously the boss isn't going to pay more so the expectation for higher tips has increased.
I tipped more during covid because I felt like they deserved a little something more for hazard l pay. But now it's ridiculous how many places have tipping on the prompts that didn't before and they frequently start at 18 or 20%.
Between food prices going up, and food quality going down, i just don't go out anymore unless i don't have another option. The convenience of not having to clean up is nice, but i really just can't justify how expensive it is for food that I'm just going to shrug at lol
Yeah I tip 20% pretty much all the time (maybe 18% for counter-service and 15% for takeout), and I will not be tipping more even if culture keeps pushing up. I feel for the workers, but we can’t all keep going along with this or bosses getting away with this bullshit is just gonna get worse and worse. I already live somewhere with a decent minimum wage and no tipped wage (they get the same minimum wage everyone else does, thankfully), so not sure why I’m even expected to pay 20% tbh. I do because I don’t want to be an asshole. But enough is enough. And before someone asks, yes, I’ve worked multiple service industry jobs.
I’ve already stopped going out except very rare occasions. Even then I’ll usually just do takeout and pick it up myself because I can’t afford this nonsense.
Yep, 10% was you did the job, thank you. If you did an excellent job, it would be 15% to say I appreciate your fine service, and sometimes 5% for well, I guess I was served.
It increased during COVID when the service industry took the biggest hit. This was their livelihood and people were being laid off left and right and we as a society rallied around small business.
The prices of so many things skyrocketed during covid and never went back down and I assume it's because once the powers that be realized they could get away with charging that much they just decided to keep doing it.
I've compromised. I know for the time being that servers truly are reliant on tips. I have limited eating out quite a bit because 20% of the bill additionally just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
That said, I absolutely do not tip for take-out that I pick up or anywhere that requests one when I am walking into the establishment and not staying.
Not the bagel shop, not the sandwich shop, not corporate coffee shops, not drive-thru's.
That's super neat but every restaurant bill I used to get fifteen years ago requested an average tip rate of 10%-15% and now it's 20%-25% so you're not about to gaslight me with that dumbass quote 🤣You're literally attempting to disprove actual life experiences with an archived "Chicago Reader's magazine" article this is so fucking Reddit
California doesn't hold an exception to minimum wage (IIRC here in LA county it's $20) for servers but the tipping culture here isn't any different. Even if you order food to-go from someone at a point-of-sale they still ask for tips.
Not to mention everyone prefers cash tips so they can commit tax fraud
If everywhere is operating under the rules of the same system then you’re not ‘paying the employees for the business owner’ - if you weren’t tipping do you think food prices would stay the same? No, of course they wouldn’t because the employee cost would be factored into the prices.
Your parents were just cheap and so are you. 20 percent has been standard since at least the 90's. There's a guy in this thread that's got 15-20% quotes going back to the 50s.
10 was the norm, 15 was the higher, now its 15 and 20% the higher… As I was a server at a time, I always give a good tip, No tip should be the norm though, it should be incorporated into the wage and a note should be on the bill, if you had any problems with your service tell us…and then the restaurant can deal with it… if you have a problem server then get rid of them….if you got a great server and the responses say so then give them a raise…This tipping thing needs to go away…But this has been the battle since the beginning right? And look we we have got ourselves…
I was born in ‘87. 10% was always the minimum for poor service, 20% was for excellent service. Now it’s 20% minimum and many places have the option to add a 22% auto gratuity if you either have a large group or are being dicks in any way.
Edit: in response to this moronic comment “Sorry, but tipping a % of the bill is horseshit. If you pay more and buy, say, the steak over the chicken, that means the server is entitled to more of your money for some reason. It should be a flat rate per person served.”
-Nah, just as I wouldn’t expect Joe down the street at Bob’s discount used car lot to make the same as Maxwell at the BMW dealership, quality of restaurant or food should be correlated with amount of pay. If the restaurant is bringing in a ton of money, that should be shared amongst every contributing employee. If the company is making more money off of more or higher quality dishes, then the service should too.
Interesting, I never really thought of it that way. At my job, bartenders make $16 an hour during non-food service times, as opposed to the $5.25 the servers and bartenders make during kitchen hours with shared tipping.
Many years ago, before you were born 😄, I worked at a data processing service where we ran payrolls for a couple big country clubs. Members would just sign their bar and restaurant checks without putting any amounts for tips and the system would just do 15% for restaurant checks and 5% for bar checks. That was considered plenty. I suppose some of the high roller members left cash too but it was probably pretty rare for ordinary people to do so.
A person is still providing their time and attention and that deserves something. If someone shows up to work, they deserve to be paid, and if tipping is their means of payment, then yes. If you aren’t going to pay someone for their service, don’t use their service.
That really isn’t true. They might make $7.25 an hour in states that haven’t increased their minimum wage yet and someone’s time alone is still worth more than that. Just don’t use someone’s service if you don’t fully intend on assuring they are paid for it ahead of time. You might not think they are entitled to your tip, but you aren’t entitled to their service, and accepting that service with no intention of paying for it is a form of theft.
I mean, I literally am if the business is open to the public and seats are available.
and accepting that service with no intention of paying for it is a form of theft.
This is an completely twisted interpretation of the events, I get you need to feel righteous about tipping, but stiffing someone (terrible as it may be) is not in fact theft.
The seats are open to the public and available to paying customers. Paying for the product, but using the service with no intention of paying for it absolutely is theft. Your mindset is appalling and I hope you can figure out why you think you are entitled to have people serve you without you being obligated to pay for that time and service.
If the service isn't optional, then it is baked into the price of the bill, which is the only thing a customer needs to pay to not be a thief. Servers get paid from their employer, and if their tips don't equal minimum wage, then they get comped to minimum wage, therefore no theft is happening.
Play word games all you want, but everybody knows that is not theft
When I was a kid it was 5% for adequate service. 10% for good service and maybe 15% if you were floored by how great the service was. Then it just imched up. I'm definitely partially to blame because I usually typed 20% because I knew a lot of servers.
Also tipping well at a bar means I could typically order from the back of a crowd with a hand gesture and walk past everyone and grab my drinks from the counter to the look of bewilderment from people who were trying to get the bartenders attention for ten minutes.
I'm almost 40, 10% tip was considered normal, 15% for exceptional. Could be higher if the table was especially difficult such as a large party that stayed for a really long time.
If it was a large bill but a short and easy visit then it was likely a flat amount overall.
Edit: I should add I'm in Canada and service staff here get at least minimum wage for hours worked and that's not lowered based on tips.
When I was a teenager in the mid-80's, 10% was an exceptional tip. I was out for breakfast one time with my BF's parents, and his parents picked up the check. I said I would leave the tip, and they lost their minds when I put $5 on the table because that was waaaayyy too big of a tip.
Then everyone else's dad was too because as a young adult I didn't meet anyone who didn't think tipping 10% was normal. It's OK to admit you don't know everything.
That explains it. I was thinking they were just a troll because I'm skeptical a 40 year old could be that oblivious about the history of tip inflation in the US.
Lmao you’re 40, and you worked in restaurants since 92? So you were 8 years old when you started working? Come on, at least try to make your story believable.
Millennial here. Growing up it was always a scale of 10% to 20% of the subtotal based on how much you enjoyed the service. (In my mind, it was sort of like a "1 to 10" rating of the server. Common advice was to double the sales tax, which was around 8%.)
My theory is that a big part of the "tip creep" came from people (including me) "rating" all their servers 10/10, the same way you give 5 stars to any satisfactory Uber driver or Amazon purchase. Then it grew from there because of simpler math (double the total, move the decimal place). I would then further simplify it further by rounding everything up.
So here's an example:
Receipt total: $14.60
Tip: 2 x $ 1.50ish = $3.00
Total is $15ish + $3 = $18
That's how a tip becomes 23%.
I also didn't know you were "supposed" to start with the subtotal, so it actually was higher than that for me.
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u/limamon Aug 28 '24 edited Aug 28 '24
How old are you? I remember the comment about being 10% but never been there so maybe my source was wrong
Edit: thanks for all the responses, gave me great insight.