Tipping is making Americans collectively — and unnecessarily — a little bit unhinged. It used to be easier to ignore the tip jar hiding among all the other clutter at the cash register. But nowadays, it seems every time you're cashing out at a coffee shop or a sandwich joint or even the grocery store, you're confronted with a prompt on a digital screen that makes ignorance an impossibility: Would you like to leave a tip?
"People are feeling social pressures to leave tips in circumstances that they wouldn't ordinarily expect to tip," Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University, told my colleague Emily Stewart. What started as a show of solidarity for service workers in the darkest economic days of the pandemic has now become a fraught point of contention between workers, businesses, and their customers.
If you've seen Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, you surely recall the opening diner scene, in which the titular band of bandits debate the merits of tipping. Steve Buscemi's Mr. Pink is needled by his fellow criminals because he refuses to tip their waitress. He is on an island in that scene. Whatever moral scruples his compatriots may (or may not) have, they take it as a given that you should tip your server.
But today, it seems, a lot of people may find themselves nodding in agreement with Mr. Pink when he says: "This tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job."
Personally, I do find myself tipping more these days and it is indeed because tipping has become a ubiquitous part of the checkout process. I tip partly because I know many of these workers should be paid more, but I'll admit to feeling a tinge of guilt too. Am I really going to turn down throwing in an extra 75 cents when I buy my cup of coffee?
But everyone should follow their own heart. You can always say no. And it seems many people are. Payroll data suggests some workers are making more money, but that is almost entirely because they are making higher base wages (likely the result of a hot labor market) rather than getting extra tips. If anything, tips seem to be down slightly.
Emily's real point is that tipping doesn't really need to be such a hot topic. But we should, of course, consider the person on the other end of this interaction. Baristas, Uber drivers and the like told her that tips can make "a huge difference" in their pay — even if they, too, feel the awkwardness now that customers are asked to tip every time they check out.
Read the rest of Emily's thoughtful column on tipping here.
