Paying extra for service has inspired rebellions, swivelling iPads, and irritation from Trotsky and Larry David. Post-pandemic, the practice has entered a new stage.
I really like (mostly East) Asian culture where tips are considered condescending, and employees will be visibly upset if you try to give more than the bill states. And of course all taxes are already included in the list price on the menu. Dining in Asia is so much more pleasant than in the US, and unfortunately this cancerous habit has also infested most parts of Europe.
I feel like there’s a small group of people in the US that over emphasize the negative aspects of tips and never consider that the overarching culture in the US makes people making money as a tipped employee one of the few retail employees that get paid enough to thrive.
That’s exactly the point, employees shouldn’t be thriving off of an almost mandatory donation, but should be fairly compensated in the first place.
They should be, but if tipping were abolished in the US they’d just become underpaid like every other blue collar worker.
Until they’d all find something else and employers would have to up the salaries or do the shit jobs themselves. You can’t treat the root cause without addressing the symptoms first.
The most recognizable, these days, is the iPad pirouette, evoking an upturned palm. Gerard Knight led the design team at Square, one of the major tablet-payment providers, when it first rolled out its tipping feature. “Turning around the interface to say ‘Give me money’ can be kind of an obnoxious gesture,” he told me. Originally, the designers used a Trojan horse, of sorts. “The idea was you turned it around anyway, to capture a signature”—most credit cards at the time required one—“and in that process you prompt that customer for a tip.”
