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Comment by ryannevius | Hacker News Reader

I'm a native Californian who has been abroad in Vietnam and Italy for the past year and a half (where tipping is very, very uncommon). Tipping was just second-nature before I left the states. However, when I visited over the summer, I couldn't believe how wrong tipping felt. Wrong to feel social pressure to tip. Wrong to feel an internal obligation to tip, due to the (often) low wages paid to restaurant employees. Wrong to feel "cheated" by the menu price (which is 15-25% below the actual cost of the meal).

I can only hope that tipping ceases to exist in the States someday. Not only for my own benefit; but for the benefit of most employees who rely on tips to get through their lives.

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I'm a Brit. As a young teen I travelled with my parents to the west. One night we had dinner in a restaurant where the service was slow, got things wrong, and where the food was just sub-par to awful. We left without tipping, only to have the manager literally follow my dad out of the restaurant, chase him down in the street, and try to guilt him in to hand over more money... exactly like you'd expect if he was some kind of thief not paying his bill. It was undignified and embarrassing, and the lady didn't seem put back at all when he told her we had had a horrible experience there. She wasn't just concerned about the service we had received either, as far as she was concerned a 20% tip was her right.

I understand the pay structure in the service industry in the US requires tipping for waiters and waitresses etc to make a living, but the whole thing seems sordid. Turning something that should be a gesture of genuine appreciation in to a meaningless ritual.

I've had the same experience happen to me. Bad service (which is quite a feat at a serve-yourself buffet), so no tip, then chased outside with the waitress shouting through the establishment "YOU NO PAY FOR SERVICE!"

I've never been back, of course, but it always reminds me of the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs.

I am Mr. Pink. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qV9wVGb38)

> as far as she was concerned a 20% tip was her right

Not everyone is like this. I have had a similar thing happen on one occasion[1]. I think that there must be some sort of correlation between people who thing that they are owed the tip no matter what level of service they give, and people that don't give a damn about the service that they provide.

[1] In the US (and Canada), it is 'customary' to tip larger for a large group of people. Many restaurants automatically add 18+% gratuity to the bill for groups of 8+ people. In this instance, the restaurant/bar did not do this, and the waitress gave us very poor service (e.g. disappeared for long periods of time). On the way out she complained that it's customary to tip 18% for large groups (in a sarcastic, "you're a bunch of assholes" tone). My wife (who has been a waitress) fired back that maybe she should talk to her manager about making it gratuity mandatory for large groups then.

I am from Denmark. 10 years ago tipping was only something you saw in movies. Today some places are trying it and they ask upfront "Do you want to leave a tip?". It seems so forced and wrong. It just makes the whole experience end in on weird note.

Needless to say, I dislike tipping and I feel it should be a part of the salary. The servers need to be able to just focus on their jobs.

Upfront as in before the service? I have a problem with automated gas pumps asking if I need a receipt before I finish the transaction just in case they use that as a cue to skim from my transaction. I would be very uncomfortable deciding whether to tip before the service is provided.

>I am from Denmark. 10 years ago tipping was only something you saw in movies. Today some places are trying it and they ask upfront "Do you want to leave a tip?". It seems so forced and wrong. It just makes the whole experience end in on weird note.

This is so weird. I'm European and last lived in Ireland for quite a few years. When I first got there tipping was basically not a done thing, at all, and then it started to creep in. When I left last year it had somehow become the standard in restaurants, etc.

It has crept into Europe from the US but without the conditions that made tipping necessary in the US and the customer service experience you get in Europe, despite the tipping culture having now been seemingly normalised, you do not get anything near the level of customer service experience you get in the US.

I'm a software engineer, people don't tip me for making good software, it's what is expected of me. When I was in college I worked in various retail positions. People did not tip me there because providing good customer service was expected of me. So why, when there is a decent minimum wage in place, are waiting staff somehow different?

It's incredibly frustrating.

> you do not get anything near the level of customer service experience you get in the US.

I don't know. I have experienced both. Being a waiter is a proud occupation. People takes a sort of long education to become it and they really seem proud of making the dining experience a good one for their customers. And I guess this is true everywhere - not just when you work under the expectation that you get more tips the better you serve.

I'm a native Ohioan and have (had?) lived in California for the past 4 years. Currently I'm abroad in South America, and I have to say I miss tipping. Why? Because when there isn't an incentive for the staff to give good service, I often get terrible service. It can take ages to get served, I'll often request something when food is first brought and don't receive it until I'm already done with my meal, etc. Part of this is certainly related to the laid back attitude of Latin America cultures, but if the service employees were incentivized to give better service they probably wouldn't stand around talking to each other for 15 minutes while my friends and I are waiting on another beer.

Now I do hate that in the States there are now tip jars at all sorts of establishments, but to me restaurants and bars I much prefer tipping culture.

I got the opposite after a trip to the States. I found it really false the way every waiter tries too hard to be your friend.

Arrived back in Barcelona (where small change is usually considered a tip). Had a grumpy waiter who didn't even write down our order for tapas, forgot one of them. But his personality was real. I didn't feel obliged to tip him.

I live in Japan right now where there is absolutely no tipping (not even "sometimes tipping" like in Europe) and the service is better than I've experienced anywhere else, including the US. And here it's not just limited to restaurants, even in shops you get service with amazing attention to detail (oh your bag looks heavy, here's a piece of foam to pad the handle...)

Indeed. Tipping or no-tipping is really not a black and white issue. Just because they do not receive tips does not mean they don't care. For all you know they could get fired for standing around - like you would be with a regular office job.

Since you are HN I assume you are in IT. How exactly do you get tipped for the work you do? And do you provide terrible support and buggy product if people do not pay you just for fun 20% above your usual billing rate? And what is your incentive for working at all if tipping is so uncommon in the IT industry?

Perhaps if people would tip IT professionals we'd have a lot less "Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again," "IT is incredibly incompetent" stereotypes. I would tip my IT people if they did an outstanding enough job to warrant it, but it's hard to find anyone that doesn't live up past the stereotype - a self-reenforcing loop of bad wages begets bad service begets bad wages.

No it wouldn't because your employer would counter the tipping culture by cutting your wages creating an equilibrium, only now you have to rely on other people providing the bulk of your salary instead of your employer.

I think that stereotype comes more from outsourcing IT helpdesk to third world countries to pay a tenth in wages. And surprise, you get what you pay for.

Tipping is expected no matter what in the US. There is no incentive to do better here either.

>Tipping is expected no matter what in the US. There is no incentive to do better here either.

It is expected, yes, but as a European with vast experience in customer service on both sides of the pond, even with expected tips the level of service in US restaurants/bars/etc. is far, far higher than what I'm accustomed to in Europe.

Now it can sometimes be overbearing but overall the experience is generally more welcoming, more friendly and more personal. When I'm eating in an up-scale place in Europe, the staff are generally very professional and quite quiet. Lower down the scale the staff are just "meh".

In the US, even if you go into a chain restaurant at rush hour I've found the staff to be totally engaging, eager to have a chat, find out what you like, recommend you things and then check up on you to see if everything is alright.

That's not to say that it's always great service in US and always mediocre in Europe, but there's definitely an overall different feel to the level of service offered regardless of a tip being expected.

Tipping can be an excuse to build a really nice win-win relationship. I have a few local restaurants I frequent where I tip the servers well, 20% rounded up to the nearest dollar to start. They know me by name. They know what I like to eat. They'll recommend food and drink and off-menu options based on what they've learned about me. I get free food and samples, conversation, and a general feeling of being a part of the community.

With tipping I view my server as my agent. They're their to help me and I'm going to pay them well for that help. Without tips, or in chain restaurants where the staff turns over frequently and that relationship is harder to establish, I miss the partnership and the experience.

That'd happen entirely based on your demeanor and their recognition of you becoming a "regular", even in a world without tips.

Also, the problem with your "i'm a good boy because I tip 20%" just got downgraded to "meh". Gone to a Chili's recently? They default you to 20%, and use this clumsy poorly-reactive slider to change it. And you feel like an asshole for doing so anyway.

You want to be seen as a good tipper now? Time to cough up another 10%.

What I want is to create a mutually beneficial business relationship with someone. Loyalty and my demeanor definitely help, but tips are the proof that I'm providing some value too (as charming as I am, the few extra bucks the server knows they'll get from me does matter).

Chili's is a chain restaurant. I've been there, but don't enjoy it enough to want to go regularly and so establishing a relationship there doesn't make a lot of sense for me. Although I do typically tip 20% when I eat there I'd prefer to not tip at all and would rather just order my food from the machine and have someone bring it to me. Chili's knows this and is positioned to cut their wait staff drastically if minimum wage was required for service staff or if they find that people are comfortable working with the machine directly.

This is really important to understand that people often miss. Tipping to me is way more than just some subjective criteria that I use to judge whether or not a server "deserves" a certain percentage. Maybe your service at that particular night was off. Sorry to hear that. Here is why you should still leave at least a decent tip. 1. Word will spread around the wait staff that you are a good tipper, even if the particular bad server you happened to receive that night didn't spread it -- other servers will take note: "Wow, even Josh got 15% from that guy" 2. Once Word spreads, that's when the preferential treatment starts. Stronger drinks, larger portions on your side items, extra samples. You always want to establish a relationship at your favorite restaurant. Get to know the managers. They love regulars, and then next time, even they will make sure your service is 100%. It really is a win-win.

"Stronger drinks, larger portions on your side items, extra samples."

I'd be interested to hear where exactly you'd want to draw the line to bribery.

Also, i'm pretty sure that the mechanisms of being a regular are working just as well in countries without a tipping tradition. (I live in a sometimes-tip country and I have experienced the best service in a neighboring no-tip country)

First of all, to equate what I said to bribery would mean you have to make the assumption that I am tipping higher _in expectation_ of receiving these things. I don't. Tipping higher provides economic incentive to the server to perform at a higher level for me and whatever guests I bring. And actually it is not bribery, restaurants are alloted to give certain guests freebies to either keep them coming back, or to enhance their experience -- whether it be giving you a free dessert, or other low cost/high yield item off the menu such as side items, or offering you a "unreleased" beverage sample or maybe going out of their way to make a particular item they no longer carry. But besides all of that, I tip higher out of my own virtue, because I worked as a server/bartender for 8 years, so I understand what they go through.

Another take might by... In the United States' tipping economy employees who can attract and retain customers can achieve higher per hour wages and can bring more money to the business they work for by offering incentives to the customers they recognize as "good" (customer who spend alot, both on the business by showing up regularly and on them through tips). Everyone can win. Alternatives are the traditonal command and control or employer/employee relationship where one entity gains all of the benefit and then chooses to dole out limited incentives to the other persons.

I have the same kind of relationship you describe with the people working at local businesses, and I live in a country where tipping is very much not the norm. We know each other by name, they know what I want, and back when I went for lunch at the same place every day they would have my burger ready for me when I got there without me ever asking.

Humans are social creatures, and they will create social relationships. No money needs to change hands for this to happen.

While that's great to hear, the culture in the US is just different. And, it is a part of the culture that you can't just stop overnight. I live in a town that lives off of tips (tourist oriented) and the people I know in the service industry make ~half their income from tips.

I don't understand how a restaurant employer-employee relationship differs from any other job. From your stand point, what's stopping other industries (for argument sake, airlines telling air hostess) to tell their employees to ask for tips for good service?

If restaurants paid a decent salary to their employees, and made them less dependable on tips, employees would feel safer, face less anxiety ("hey, I can make a good living without begging for money to clients!"), and would allow them to focus on their job.

Tips are not begging any more then putting a price on a menu is begging; just because a price is not fixed up front doesn't make it begging.

I think restaurants are different in that the interaction is more frequent and personal than most other industries. It also seems like a very fluid job market where servers can change employers with minimal cost to themselves.

I can list dozens of jobs that are "more frequent and personal" than waiters: cashiers, nurses, bus drivers, cleaners, etc. So again, I don't understand how a restaurant employer-employee relationship differs from any other job.

> It also seems like a very fluid job market where servers can change employers with minimal cost to themselves.

I've never heard servers talk about the fluidity of the job market, I don't know where this oberservation comes from. I'm trying to be objective here, but I don't understand how the rest of the world (Europe is a great example) can work without a tip system, and in the US this tipping system is indispensable.

As a university student I used to work at a pub, I did this for two years. I did it because I wanted to make some extra money. I think I was paid £5.20/hour (this was back in 2003-04). I never got tipped, and never felt I should have. I did the job to the best of my abilities (pouring pints, cleaning tables, and washing dishes) and tried to have fun with everyone. The pub ran like clockwork, half of all customers I would consider regulars, and service was superb (I might be biased). The same as any other regular pub. I couldn't have taken the job if I wasn't sure that I was going to get paid X/hour, I didn't want a "fluid job market", but I wanted a steady regular income for the job they hired me for.

My cashier, although I do recognize them and enjoy a short conversation with them occassionally, cannot offer me any real benefits. They ring me up, take my money and let me go. Nurses? I (and my insurance) pay a hell of a lot whenver I visit any sort of medical professional... so no tip (frankly, I wish I could visit a medical professional more frequently and get their insight and reward them for helping me and my family live longer and better). I don't take public transit (it's not available/convient for where I live) and what would they offer me over the fare? Cleaners... I don't use those either, but I can see how a relationship based business transaction may be useful there too.

I'm not saying "tipping" is the only way to run an economy, only that in my experience I've found that it can be a very useful way to get a very nice experience in a way that doesn't exploit anyone; me the customer, the server, or the business owner. I'm sure many people take advantage of this either as customers, servers, or business owners... which is shameful in my opinion... but, for me it's worked out ok enough to be something I prefer enough to now want to give it up.

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