Thoughts on tip percentages rising

I definitely remember similar experience to the OP’s, 10 - 15% tips as norm.

I have no issue with traditional wait/table service standards increasing to 20 or 30 or whatever percent. But I will factor this in my decisions to eat out. And in fact have been doing much, much less of it recently. Excepting vacations, my wife and I visited one nice restaurant last year. Each time we considered going out, we talked ourselves into avoiding the cost and hassle and just cooked at home. The ROI from a nice restaurant meal simply isn’t sufficient any more, given the increased costs.

My real problem with modern tipping is how everyone I encounter seems to expect one. Tip jars are starting to appear in fast food restaurants where I’m expected to serve myself and bus my own table. I’m also seeing an increase in pads or screens which “helpfully” add a tip before my food is prepared. I refuse to eat at restaurants like this, due to the implied threat. What’s next? Do I need to tip the Amazon driver? Or the oil change guys? My doctor? It’s getting out of hand imo, so I’m starting to push back and refuse to patronize businesses with real or digital tip jars in evidence.

We eat at a lot of restaurants, and I’ve never felt that a server was expecting a tip. How do they convey this expectation? (maybe I’m just oblivious)

My wife and I ate at a farm to table restaurant a few months ago. When the bill came it included a pre-filled in 22% gratuity and a 5% employee health benefit surcharge. I asked the waitress what happens if someone doesn’t want to pay the surcharge, she said it comes out of her pay. I checked the online reviews of the place when I got home, the surcharge was mentioned a few times but no real complaints about it.

I don’t mind tipping generously, but I do think this practice should be made clear on the menu. It’s not standard and would not be within the customer’s expectations.

When places start forcing me to pay over 20%, then I stop going to them. Honestly even setting 18% as a minimum sets my teeth on edge - that’s not a tip; that’s them lying about the price of food. I’m not opposed to workers getting paid, but blackmailing me into doing it ain’t right and I don’t feel the need to play that game.

My problem with the “employers aren’t keeping servers’ pay up with inflation, so we have to keep raising the tip percentage…” is that it incentivizes the employers to pay their servers/employees less and less, since we the dining public seem willing to make up the difference. At that rate, the employee’s wage will end up $0/hour and the tip rate will be 50% (or more) of the bill.

Of course at that point, it would make sense (as a diner) to declare myself an employee, accept the $0 wage, pay the bill total, and tip myself 50%.

I have no use for the “standard” tip amount and tend to tip based on specific services.

FWIW I live in Oregon where servers/waiters/waitresses must earn at least minimum wage, regardless of any tips they might recieve.

For a restaurant bill under $30 I tip a minimum of $5. This works out to a tip amount somewhere between 16% and 100% of the bill.

For anything over $30 I take the first number of the total, double that, and add that as a tip. So a family meal that cost $60 would get a $12 tip (6•2=12). This makes the math easy and almost always means a tip somewhere between 17% and 20% of the bill. This rule applies to pizza and Chinese delivery as well.

If I recieve subpar service or, especially, if the server was rude, then no tip. Thankfully this is rare. If the waiter went above and beyond ("I’m sorry sir, the kitchen has informed me that the beef wellington you requested is no longer available. My deepest apologies. However, we do have a wonderful prime rib, which pairs well with our garlic roasted potatoes and sautéed greens. We also have a very nice 2017 Chateau Canon that would compliment the prime rib nicely. Shall I bring you a menu or would the prime rib suffice?) then we tip extra.

I’ve only used Uber a few times but usually tipped a whole dollar amount that was close to half the ride cost. So a $10 fare would get a $5 tip, a $15 fare would get a tip of $7, etc.

I tip my barber $20 for a $35 haircut because she’s worth it. She rents space in a salon and the salon takes a cut of each “sale” she makes so I’m happy to tip on the high side knowing that I’m actually paying her, not MasterCuts.

I’ve never used doordash, grubhub, or similar services but would likely tip on the overly generous side for those services as well.

When we stay in motels we tip the housekeeper $20/day.

However, the state governments control the local wages, including that for wait staff. And in some states, that minimum is notoriously low. Others (think Waffle House) rely almost entirely on tips. That really has a lot to do with it. Those wages haven’t been rising in proportion with other jobs.

FWIW, I support forcing all to pay at least the minimum wage and doing away with tipping for service that doesn’t go above and beyond. It works in the U.K.

It has certainly limited the amount I eat or order out. I used to order Chinese food from time to time for about $30. Now it costs $45 at least if not more when everything is factored in.

I would greatly prefer if tipping were to go away. Pay people what they need to live. Charge me what you need to pay them.

I certainly remember 10% being the standard that I and most others paid in the '80s. And these days, and in the last five or ten years ISTM that restaurant prices have risen fairly sharply.

While I am a strong proponent of tipping fairly, tipping almost a quarter the cost of a meal just strikes me as ridiculous. These days I usually tip around 15 - 18 %. If I am truly expected to tip a higher percentage then that I would actually be deterred from dining out.

Agree with the unfairness of tipping.

I live in New Zealand which has a similar tipping culture to the UK - minimum wage laws and therefore no obligation to tip except for good service.

It strikes me that the point made by some here: a small $20 meal for a single diner should attract a minimum tip - is sensible and fair. But, to concoct an exaggerated example, suppose the single diner returns the next day for the same meal, but adds a $200 bottle of wine. Little additional effort needed to bring it to the table (let’s assume the waiter isn’t a sommelier) and same time taken to finish the meal. Suddenly a $5 tip goes from a generous 25% to a measly 2% or so, but if it were thought of as an ‘hourly rate supplement’, is that still fair?

Now, next table over, there’s the same $220 bill, but this time spread over a demanding party of four, who take the same time as the single diner. Clearly, a tougher job for the waiter, so a $5 tip now looks too low. But wouldn’t 4x$5 (effectively ‘quadruple-overtime’) be excessive?

I don’t profess to know the answers - and when I was last in the US (2019), I accepted 18% or so in most cases, which was the ‘mid-range’ suggestion.

My point being: tipping seems fraught with problems. Minimum wage laws cause all sorts of other issues, but in hospitality at least, I’m in favour of them.

That stands out as very generous. How long does a housekeeper typically spend on a motel room, I would think no longer than 30 minutes? Add on wages and your tipping rate equates to around $50 per hour.

Are you assuming that most people don’t tip at all, or what’s your reasoning here? Not that I’m arguing against generosity, just questioning why you think unusual generosity is appropriate in this specific case.

You’re Canadian, IIRC? Sadly, it hasn’t been 10% in the US since longer than the 1980s. Maybe mid-1970’s?

Yes, which is why it should be built into the pricing structure of restaurants. Unfortunately, unless every restaurant switches over at the same time, it’ll never work.

Yes I am. And that is interesting (and not surprising since we do have differences between the two of us).

Interesting point. In fact this morning I was listening to a radio interview (probably on CBC Montreal) about this topic and apparently there are a couple of restaurants in Montreal and Ottawa that are doing this. It will be very interesting to see how they’ll do as the only ones in oceans of normal tip conventions.

There is a tip jar at the UPS store now.

I would have quietly fumed, but paid and put that place on my list of places to never visit again. I also would have told everyone I knew and named names on social media.

We used to go out for dinner and drinks every week. Saturday breakfast out was our habit. When the world ended, we tipped the same as if we were having a sit down meal during the take out times because we wanted to support the local businesses and workers.

Now that the same meal we enjoyed has gone from 50 to 75 bucks and the 20% tip we give is no longer considered to be generous…we don’t eat out much anymore.

And we don’t tip at the UPS store.

Wait staff who have to maintain the standards of “fine dining” certainly deserve proportionately more, but in general I agree with your principle. This is especially true if the bill total has been inflated by expensive wine or liquor, the “expensive” part being due to a combination of government gouging on the base price plus the excessive costs of a liquor license, both of which are artificial and have absolutely no connection with the level of service offered or expected.

The last time I was at a top-tier sushi restaurant the total bill for two was nearly $600, some of which included several rounds of premium saki. I don’t remember exactly what I tipped, TBH, but it was probably 15%, or maybe if unduly brain-addled by saki it could have been 20%. The service was impeccable but I still think that something between $90 and $120 would be a decent enough tip even for the finest dining experience for two people.

Yeah, around $5/day is about right for me, but sometimes it ends up just being whatever cash I have in my wallet. I generally don’t ask for any housekeeping during my stay, unless it’s more than three days.

There’s probably one in the UPS truck, too. Sigh…

I tend to tip on the generous side simply as a matter of course. I was a housekeeper briefly in my teenage years and it is a hard, dirty, thankless job. Giving a few extra bucks to someone who is making my vacation noticeably more enjoyable seems like the right thing to do.

If we use an hourly wage equivalent to calculate tips then wait staff would recieve a pittance. In my experience patronizing restaurants (and to be fair I’ve never been a waiter) a waiter might spend a grand total of 5 minutes serving my table: taking the order, delivering the meal, and usually one or two follow-up visits to make sure all is copacetic. 5 minutes may be a generous assessment. Getting a $20 tip for those 5 minutes seems exponentially more liberal than a $20 tip for the 20 or 30 minutes a housekeeper spends cleaning my hotel room.

I consider 15% reasonable for adequate service but it would take something more special to get a bigger tip. The fact higher percentages appear on a machine means little to me. But I tip regularly, even generously since I often tip more on smaller amounts.