Where DON'T you tip

Some jobs, tips are built into the pay scale. Like waiters. If I think they're being paid a low wage by management because tips are built in as part of their expected salary, I'll tip. I ain't going to tip somebody who's already making a good hourly wage and just stuck a tip jar on the counter to see what they could get. I feel guilty but not that guilty.

I don't know if you've ever been to NJ, but the gas station attendants job is a lot harder than you'd think. I was driving through the snow storm last year, the biggest one in the area ever. The man working there had been standing outside since it started. He was courteous, and cleaned the windows as if he was working in a nascar pit crew (no charge). Then factor in that he's probably making nothing to begin with.

Finance Guy wrote:

We recently made a connection in the Charlotte airport (CLT). I do not recall which terminal, but there was a tip jar in the restroom. My wife confirmed there was in the women's restroom as well. Given that airport restrooms are generally automated, there is very little for a restroom attendant to do aside from keeping it clean, which is admittedly no small task and certainly not a pleasant one. Still, I had to laugh when the attendant waved his hand in front of the automated paper towel dispenser, remove a section, and place it next to me on the wet sink. Sorry sir, but no tip for you. I prefer to use a clean towel or no towel at all.

i was there, too. he also had mints next to the sinks that you could take, and i think some small things of moisturizer as well, right next to the tip jar.

when he brought me my paper towel, i said "no, thanks" and got my own. what a schmo that guy was. i didn't tip.

Look it up: wikipedia under gratuity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_

(gratuity)

Funny reading all the trolls on here

I've started tipping my ATM and the redbox rental machines. I figured they're doing just as hard a job as everyone else who gets tipped, so why not?

The bartender does a lot more than open that twist off for you, pal. He assumes a legal responsibility giving you an alcoholic drink. You have one too many twist offs and drive home, guess who goes to jail when you crash into a telephone poll? In most cases, the tip is not just for opening the beer, it's for maintaining an atmosphere, keeping the place open, and offering you a clean, comfortable, fun place to have a drink. If you don't think doing that is enough to earn a buck, why are you drinking at a bar in the first place? Go to the deli, buy a 6er and take your cheap ass home to get drunk. In most cases, the tip is also being split with the guy who hauled that bottle of beer up from the basement and put it in the fridge, too.

I'll concede that tipping specifically as a percentage of price doesn't make a lot of sense. But then again, that percentage is simply a guideline. If the waiter/bartender keeps your soda full and gets the food out to you quickly and the way you ordered, tip accordingly. If you really feel comfortable paying $30 for a steak but not an extra $6 for service, well, again consider the fact that you can have the same quality meat at home for 1/3 of the price.

d3 wrote:

The bartender does a lot more than open that twist off for you, pal. He assumes a legal responsibility giving you an alcoholic drink. You have one too many twist offs and drive home, guess who goes to jail when you crash into a telephone poll? In most cases, the tip is not just for opening the beer, it's for maintaining an atmosphere, keeping the place open, and offering you a clean, comfortable, fun place to have a drink.

Why would any of that deserve a tip? That is all built into the price of your drink and possibly the cover you paid to get into the bar.

Why not hotels wrote:

The video for this was down and then somebody else said not in hotels because they don't know what is going on there. I don't get it - what is the reason for not tipping hotel maids? They have a dirty job with a low wage - why not tip them?

On that point, why not tip the gas station attendants in NJ?

"Dirty job with a low wage" does not justify a tip. Nobody every gave me a tip when I worked on a farm, washed dishes or filled sand bags in the Marine Corps. A tip is customary, in the US, in certain jobs such as waiters (they often don't make minimum wage) or say caddies (4-6 hours of highly personalized service and exhausting labor - basically a personal slave - is involved). I do realize that many people and travel guides consider hotel maid tips "customary" but it is an area where I take a stand because I just can't imagine tipping someone I never meet and how do I know some dirtbag doesn't steal it from the deserving maid?

Hotel maid work is not even close. If I had my own maid, I would give her tips for special work beyond the norm. But at hotels, 95% of the time I never meet or see who cleans my room, I don't even know what they cleaned and did not clean (hence my statement: "I don't even know what's going on"). Maids clean lots of rooms, sometimes disturb me and my family so they can stay on their schedule and the worst, don't clean my room until late in the day and I come back to a messed up room, and then have to be inconvenienced getting ready for dinner. The norm is that they make my bed, because I don't mess up my room if it's just me.

I have tipped maids where they have specifically gone out of their way to get me extra towels, freshen up the room at off hours, etc., however, I think solicitations for hotel maid tips which are very common these days, usually an envelope or some card on the desk. Generally if it fits my parameters for tipping overall which are:

-Service above and beyond

-Customary situations (waiters, bartenders, caddies)

-Want to get someone's attention, anticipating needing their help in the future (doorman, bartender again, valets I will see again)

-I also hate accumulating spare change in my pocket, so sometimes I tip to easily in take-out situations

"Why would any of that deserve a tip? That is all built into the price of your drink and possibly the cover you paid to get into the bar."

Actually it's not, the price of the drink is cost of beer, rent, bills, and profit for the owner. A bartender generally gets a wage of $2-5 an hour, if any wage at all. Arguing that the bartenders wages should be built into the price of your drinks is at least reasonable. Arguing that it already is built into the price of your drinks is completely asinine. If you want a bartender to not only open the beer you're drinking, but to open the bar you're drinking in, you better pay him for showing up. If you really think bartenders don't deserve to get paid, then why is it you go to bars and how would you rather see it go? To have any drink in a bar without tipping is asking the bartender to do his job for no pay. I could be wrong, but if your employer asked you to occasionally not get a paycheck because they thought it was unnecessary based on the job you were asked to do, you'd probably find a different job. Or at least question why you were asked to do the job in the first place if it wasn't worth paying you for, or maybe you would just say, "hey couldn't you have warned me that you weren't going to pay me before you asked me to do this?" Try that next time, walk into a bar and say "I'd like a bottle of bud please, and because it's a twist off bottle, I'm not going to tip you." See how that works out.

As for changing the system so that tips weren't how it went, it would probably hurt everyone except the bar owners. If bar and restaurant owners started having to pay a living wage to their wait and bar staff, the increase in drink prices would likely be more than the amount of a reasonable tip.

In Wisconsin bartenders make at least minimum wage (~7.50), unlike waitresses (~$2.50). If they don't want to make minimum wage, they should consider not being a bartender.

i tip my barber. i have a cool pompadour that takes them an additional 15 minutes or so to style compared to your typical razor fade/ ceasar crown.

i went into the barber shop for 3 months and got the same haircut and always tipped, but they didn't know my name or anything like that. i did notice though, that they started to take more time on my hair, and now after 4 years, they take pretty good care of me. they give me free t-shirts, after shave, discounts on stuff, and have bought some of my art for their shop. in this case, tipping an extra $3 really helped out a lot.

wouldn't mind getting tipped in my job though--all these dang high school kids and their parents are time burglars!

d3 wrote:

As for changing the system so that tips weren't how it went, it would probably hurt everyone except the bar owners. If bar and restaurant owners started having to pay a living wage to their wait and bar staff, the increase in drink prices would likely be more than the amount of a reasonable tip.

Huh? So they would be paid more? How does that make any sense? The only difference that I can see is a predictable income.

d3 wrote:

If bar and restaurant owners started having to pay a living wage to their wait and bar staff, the increase in drink prices would likely be more than the amount of a reasonable tip.

Why?

Food service is an incredibly competitive industry. If you raise your drink prices by 30% instead of just the 15% or so that would be required to add the tip into the price of the drink, the guy next door, the guy down the street, and the guy across the street will all be able to undercut you without losing any profit.

Maybe you know something about the restaurant industry that I don't know, but I'm not sure what your reasoning here is. Care to explain?

I laughed at the guy who said tipping in advance was bribery.

Some people believe the old wive's tale that TIPS is an acronym "To Insure Prompt Service" which actually implies bribery ... I even believed that until I was corrected in Europe of all places.

But, in fact, Tipping in advance (or TIA as Mrs. Wad and I use in code) is indeed a bribe, exactly like waiters/waitresses that hold out on good service until they see a tip is extortion.

I tip the valet coming and going; I tip my bartender when my beer arrives within 1 minute of ordering; I tip my waitress 15% for expected service, 25% for great service, and 0% when it's terrible. I tip the maid at hotels when they go above and beyond; I tip strippers when they've made an honest attempt to actually do a striptease and dance; I tip my barber because she always moves me up in line (probably because I tip well!).

I do NOT tip any f-ing baristas at Starbucks. I might tip a small local coffee place if I get good service; I do NOT tip my roofer, my builder, or my landscape guy - but I DO tip some of their workers when they go above and beyond. I never tip anywhere where it's self-service.

If tipping is inappropriate, but someone goes out of their way to make life better for me - I will get their name and send a note to their boss/company outlining the good service I was given.

A couple of months ago, I went into a new watering hole near my work and thought I had enough money for the standard tip (15%) - was sitting at the bar and ordering food. However, I didn't realize that I was short on cash and could only pay for the food/drink - no tip. So I told the waitress/bartender my dilemma - she just smiled graciously as I complimented her service and said "no worries." I went back there the next day, sat in her section again, and gave her 50% of the bill from the day before....she said no one had ever done that before...

Food service is a competitive industry in realistic terms, but hardly in economic terms. Simply undercutting a competitors prices doesn't guarantee you steal their business in the bar/restaurant industry. When people go out they plan on spending money, more than necessary. They're willing to pay for a good experience, so if on a Saturday night, the hip slammed bar with great reviews is charging $9 for a cocktail, some people say "f*** it, lets go to the dive across the street and get cheap buds," but a lot of people just pay it.

When the same amount of money goes through an extra set of hands, some of it's going to disappear. Requiring bar owners to start paying out $500,000 a year (in a small operation) to keep their employees paid is going to raise prices, guaranteed. People are going to understand that, and also understand that tips are being eradicated, so they'll be willing to pay it. But to think that the bars and restaurants are going to raise prices so marginally that they make just enough extra to pay their staff is foolish. The increased prices means increased taxes payed by the bar, it means increased money going through the bar owner's hands that he then has to part with when he signs the paychecks, it means another cost that prices and savings have to buffer against in the event of a bad year. All of which are great reasons for a bar to charge enough to pay their employees $30k but somehow only end up paying out $20k. This will undoubtedly hurt the employees, and as for the customers, odds are you'll be paying more than you would have with a tip, at best you pay the same amount as you would have with a tip and have surely incompetent waiters.

I suppose that what you are saying is true for small towns and sparsely populated areas. In such a place there might only be one or two establishments filling each niche, so if you're specifically looking to watch the game at a sports bar or to get a glass of 18 year Macallan at an upscale place, you're probably stuck with whatever bar offers what you want. So, you might be right. In such a case, an owner would have a bit more control over the price they can charge. However, it seems to me that this monopolist power would already be reflected in the prices that they are able to charge prior to the elimination of tipping, so I don't know how much they'd really be able to increase prices above and beyond the newly incurred cost. They've already presumably exploited the ability to raise prices that comes from lack of ability to substitute to the greatest extent possible.

In more urban areas where there will be more establishments in each niche and there will be closer substitutes available. One restaurant on Mulberry Street in Little Italy isn't going to be able to charge much more for a Peroni or a glass of Chianti than any other because there are dozens of other places serving the same stuff within a 2 minute walk. This is admittedly somewhat of an extreme example because of the density of similar restaurants in the specific area, but the same applies to some extent in pretty much any reasonably populated area.

Haha, I actually own a bar in Manhattan. As I was typing out my last response I thought, "well maybe this is true in the city, but I don't know how it would work in small towns." I guess the way I see it, in NYC there's always going to be someone undercutting you. Prices have to be competitive, but not bottom level all the time. There are plenty of bars that charge a dollar more or a dollar less for the same beer than the average. People are looking for a place they like, way more than a place they can save money. Especially in a place like Manhattan where the median income is $120,000 annually. I know a lot of other bar owners around the neighborhood, and quite honestly, if tips were eradicated, we'd gripe about it for a bit, and then find a way to profit off of it.

I could be wrong, getting rid of tips would shake a lot of things up, but people are willing to spend what they're willing to spend, making the money take an indirect route to the people who are serving you directly doesn't seem like it would be good for anyone but the middle man.

Happy ending wrote:

Hookers. They get paid enough and I'll be damned if the pimp shares a cut.

I give Hookers a tip. A flesh tip.

Dick Trickle wrote:

If you don't want to tip at a restaurant then don't go.

Who said it was a requirement?