In the past few years, I've noticed a seeming trend where the practice of tipping low wage employees for services has become more widespread among different types of businesses and also the recommended tip amount has increased.
I recently looked into this and discovered that this does represent a significant trend and it has its origins in the pandemic economy.
Here's one of many articles I found on the subject:
How "tipflation" and "tip creep" are sparking a backlash: "I don't feel obligated" to tip
A few bullet points:
-- At the height of the pandemic, altruistic consumers intentionally overtipped service employees as a philanthropic gesture to help them through the economic recession.
-- Businesses with auto pay type kiosks used the opportunity to program their machines to set higher "suggested tip" amounts, typically starting at 18% and often going as high as 40%.
-- Many businesses that were traditionally nontipping establishments, adopted automatic tip request practices during and after the pandemic, when inflation is at a decades long high, ostensibly to benefit their low wage employees, although it's no accident that additional tips naturally transfer a portion of the wage burden from business owners to their customers.
-- Many consumers are becoming very sensitive to this trend, and are beginning to rebel against the higher expected tip amounts combined with the increasing number of businesses that now request tips but didn't before the pandemic and are now apparently expecting tipping to continue indefinitely, long after the pandemic has passed.
-- Some consumers are genuinely angered about feeling guilt tripped into tipping when they're essentially self serving (such as at the self checkout lane in grocery stores), or bring subjected to poor service (such as at fast food restaurants and similar establishments where business are settling for the least skilled workers in the entire marketplace because they're paying thr lowest wages of almost any industry).
Personally, I'm reevaluating my former attitude about tipping. As a former restaurant worker myself, I've always tipped generously whenever I felt the wait staff deserved it. But, the circumstances have changed, and I'm no longer able to justify to myself being expected to pay significantly more than I ever have for goods and services that are already priced high due to recent inflation, as well as being expected to pay additional money for shoddy service or even no service at all.
This came to a head last week when I went with a friend to try out an upscale brewpub near us for the first time. The bartender was clearly incompetent at his job. He knew literally nothing about their craft brewed products but instead of admitting his ignorance he simply gave me false information that I suspect he made up on the fly. He was also uninterested in providing any service beyond pouring two glasses of beer from the tap, and he had a bad attitude about doing even that, informing me in a in a condescending manner that he wasn't going to bring drinks to our table and everything we wanted we'd need to come up to the bar and get it ourselves. For the record, there were only 3 customers in the entire place, including me and my friend, and the bartender was just standing there looking bored with nothing to do.
When I paid for the two 12 oz beers (a total of $15) the payment machine suggested I add an additional 20% or more as a tip. I entered $0 in the "custom amount" option.
For me to do that is extremely rare, and I've only ever done that when I was paying with cash and where the service was exceptionally bad. But, this particular time I decided I'd had enough of this and was going to rethink my tipping practices in this new reality.
So what do you all think? Is the tipping backlash justified? Or should we embrace the new reality and make automatic tips the preferred method of helping entry level workers make ends meet when employers won't increase their wages?
As always, there is NO POLITICS ALLOWED ON TALKBASS.
