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Comment by arijun | Hacker News Reader

Everyone on here is complaining about the tips, but I don’t see a way to break tipping culture. Are we going to keep ratcheting up tip percentages forever or is there a solution?

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One way to do it is to pass a law for bidding asking for a tip on a debit or credit card charge. In other words, remove the tip line. If people want to tip, then they will have to tip in cash. Spinning around the screen is too easy and too manipulative.

I tip servers, bartenders, cab drivers, and my barber. If a machine prompts me for more money, I ignore it.

edit: and I tip the food delivery guy

Making a restaurant tip free isn't enough. They need to give staff a fixed percentage of the menu price and make it known.

Is that specific to restaurants, or should staff get a fixed percentage of revenue at every business?

If specific to restaurants, why?

The problem is that if everyone stops tipping, the only ones being affected are the restaurant staff - not the owners. So the message won't be delivered and might actually cause more harm than it should.

If everyone stopped tipping, the restaurant would have to shut down, because the staff would seek alternate employment.

Most of the people I know working as a waiter / bartender didn't really have better choices

Staff accepting to be paid in tips are exactly the ones who need to change their mind.

It's just that they prefer to get more risk and more money with tipping over a traditional employee job.

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