Please note: this is not a thread about whether tipping should be mandatory, either by law or restaurant policy. Please take those arguments over to the pit. For the sake of argument, let us assume that, having been given acceptable service, you wish to leave a tip that is neither stingy or generous.
When I was a child, and my parents taught me about tipping, I learned that the tip was 15%. You could leave more if you got great service, or less if you got poor service, but for adequate service, the standard amount was 15%.
Since then, I have noticed that the “standard” amount seems to be creeping upward. I have heard many people say that 18% is now the standard, and many people claim to always tip 20% or above.
I’m only in my 20s, and the shift from 15% to 18% has taken a decent portion of those years, and is still not complete by any means, so it’s hard to get a good perspective on whether things are really changing. But I have also heard that, in the past, 12% was a standard tip. If true, then that implies that the standard tip percentage has been slowly increasing for some time.
Have you noticed this upward shift in the percentage of tips? To what do you attribute it?
I remember 8 and then 10% Granted, 8% was never (in my remembered lifetime) considered a generous tip and was merely a Midwest thing (you tipped more on the Coast!).
Well, I’m also in my 20s, twenty-nine to be exact. 15% is the only standard rate for tipping I’ve ever heard. Some people tip more but I think there always have been people who do.
When you poll people to ask how much they tip, you’re far more likely to hear from people who over tip than under (since people naturally admit things perceived as “good” more readily than those seen as “bad”), so that makes polls skewed towards seeming like tipping more is a new standard.
The widening wage gap probably is what caused it. Except at really expensive places, the difference between a 15% tip and a 40% tip is not going to make me blink, but that difference may well make the server’s day and give her a much needed break… I remember how crushing poverty was.
I’ve also found the trend to be going higher. In a group, you don’t want to be seen as stingy, so you tip the higher percentage. On a date, you tip more to impress.
People say “15 to 20%” like a range, so many feel comfortable staying in the middle, hence the 18%.
Percentagewise, the tipping amount has been slowly increasing but in terms of absolute income, waiters earnings are growing slower that average. This is mainly because the cost of food has been steadily going down in absolute terms.
I was wondering if this might be part of it. Tip percentage has to go up if the cost of eating out increases at a slower rate than the cost of other things.
But that still doesn’t explain what makes people slowly agree to tip more. It seems like servers’ income shouldn’t respond well to market forces like that. In any other job, if the employees aren’t paid enough, they’ll quit, and the resulting demand for labor will push wages up. But servers are paid almost entirely by the customers. How does the public get the message that tips need to increase?
Most people I know follow the 15% plus whatever it takes to get a nice, round number. For instance, if my total bill was $11.52 I would tip 1.15 plus .57 to get 15%. Then $11.52+$1.72=$13.24 so I put $14 on my credit card and the waitperson gets $14-$11.52=$2.48, which is considerably higher than the 15% standard, but doesn’t really significantly change what I paid for the meal.
As I generally eat out alone (and fairly cheaply at that) my standard minimum tip is $2. If I pay $10 or less that’s a 20%+ tip. After that, I round up to the next whole dollar amount, so a $15 bill would get a $3 tip, which once again happens to be 20%. Also, I do my best to tip cash, even if I pay with a credit or debit card, as that way the money goes to the server immediately and isn’t as easily tracked by the IRS.
I always leave 20%, from having all my friends “come up” in the restaurant business. Those people work their asses off, and tips are how they earn their money. My friends tip like crazy, but I’ve learned from them that 20% is “nice; better than standard.” I’m fine with that, and I’ve gotten my parents (extremely old-fashioned and conservative) to tip the same, at least when I’m around them. I’d rather make some server’s night than be perceived as a cheap bastard. If you don’t like it, cook at home.
I was born in 1982 and ws taught to tip at 15% for as long as I can remember. I did restraunt work for the first time in 2004, and that’s the first time I heard that the standard had gone up to 18%; in particular, this restraunt charged 18% automatically for parties of 6 or more. (That was also the first time I learned how the restraunt chains and the IRS conspire to screw waiters.) But my parents, who’ve never done restraunt work, still think that 15% is normal, and they won’t listen to anyone else who says otherwise.
Well, personally I expect that waiters’ total income will continue to fall in real terms. However, the same is true for most unskilled labor. Generally the pool of unskilled workers exceeds the demands, so wages rise only when minimum wage rises. Janitors didn’t benefit much from the roaring economy of the 90’s either.