The tipping situation has gotten out of control.
I’m totally fine with tipping for service at restaurants. I understand that the wait staff is dependent on tips to earn a fair wage. This is engrained in the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In fact, when I was doing my law practice, I took great satisfaction in suing restaurant owners who cheated their wait staff out of tips (mostly through illegal tip pooling, which is forcing tipped staff to share tips with non-tipped staff like the cooks). I whole heartedly agree that people who depend on tips to make a fair wage under the FLSA should be fairly tipped by their customers.
For me standard tipping rates for people who are tipped workers under the FLSA is 15% for poor service, 20% for standard service, and anything greater than that for noteworthy service (or for when I take little kids who leave the place a mess).
Even though I think it would be great if we didn’t have a tipping system for restaurants, I accept that that’s the way it is. I’m 100% onboard with tipping at restaurants.
But why are we tipping in retail transactions?!
I know the answer: It’s because we were generous during the pandemic. We wanted to pay extra to the stores we wanted to see survive. So we wanted to fill their tip cups to help out–to be extra generous in a difficult time. And we did.[1]
Since we couldn’t really go inside to fill the tip cups, businesses made it easier to tip during the check out process. More businesses began using checkout processes that gives you the option of selecting a percentage for tips.
We were okay with this at the time because we wanted to help.
When things started to shift back to normalcy, the businesses kept wanting the tips. Thus, the tip screen stayed. The expectation of tips remained even though the reason for the extra generosity had dissipated.
Should we be tipping in retail transactions?
Just recently, I went to a frozen yogurt place. Now, I like frozen yogurt, but I don’t particularly like frozen yogurt places. This is because I don’t know how much I’m going to pay. It depends on the weight of the cup. And If I’m taking my kids out, it’s even more of a mystery how much I’m going to pay because I have no idea how much their cups weigh. Say I only wanted to spend $20 on frozen yogurt. If my collective yogurts all weigh too much, there’s no way for me to put some back. So the whole time your dishing up your yogurt your stuck hoping that the price is something reasonable at the end. It’s an annoying model.
This particular time, it was just my wife and I sneaking out for a little treat. I got what I felt like was maybe $5 worth of frozen yogurt. So did my wife (she gets less than I do because we can always “share”). We put our cups on the scale. $19.85!
You read that right—$19.85. As in nineteen dollars and also an additional eighty-five cents.
I was shocked. Really. I may have let out an audible gasp.
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So, anyway, yes, the two yogurts were $19.85. I thought about whether this should be a time where I scrape some of the yogurt out and ask if I can put it back. But I refrained and decided to pay.
When I went to tap my card, there it was…the tip screen. They want a 25% tip?!? Seriously? They want me to add $4.97 on top of the $19.85 I’m already being charged? For just two small cups of not-that-amazing yogurt?!
And what am I even tipping for? A bunch of your machines were out of order. I filled my own cup. I scooped my own toppings. I accepted the mystery price model. I even loaded it all up on the scale. Then, I scanned my own card! Why, for everything that’s holy in this world, do you think that you earned a $5 tip? or any tip?
Well, this particular time, I didn’t leave a tip. It was already too late for him to spit in my food–we had already weighed it.
Unfortunately, tipping in these types of retail transactions seems ubiquitous now. Everywhere I go people want a 20% tip. I buy a dozen donuts, give me a 20% tip. I get a $20 haircut for my kids, give me a 20% tip. I pick up dry cleaning, there’s the screen for a 20% tip. Everyone wants me to be extra generous and give them a tip for being a patron of their business.
I read a news article that someone’s mortgage company asked for tip. I haven’t had that happen to me yet, but I would freak out. Like, I would consider trying to refinance or even selling my house to get away from that mortgage company.
I feel like I want to be a generous person. I’ll tip where we as a society have deemed tipping is part of the wage structure. If you’re an employee relying on tips for fair wages under the FLSA, I want to tip you generously. But if you’re not a tipped employee under the FLSA, I don’t want to tip you, period.
Pushing Back Against the Tipping Culture.
Providing at least decent service should not be a tippable activity. It’s a cost of doing good business. Your employer should be the one thanking you for ensuring that its customers have a good experience at the store. That’s what keeps customers wanting to come back. After all, I’m choosing to spend my hard-earned money at your mystery-priced yogurt store. I could’ve gone to Dairy Queen. I’ve never had a bad experience at Dairy Queen and they don’t ask for tips. (At least not yet).
So why shouldn’t this frozen yogurt place be grateful to me for choosing to spend my money with them instead of somewhere else?
Why don’t they give me a tip?
That’s where my idea for a Customer Appreciation Card was born: the idea is that if you are comfortable brazenly asking for unearned tips, I am comfortable brazenly asking for unearned discounts.
The Customer Appreciation Card
Anytime I’m checking out at a register, I can pull out my Customer Appreciation Card. Here’s what it looks like:
I hand the checkout person the card and ask if they give discounts for customer appreciation. The idea here is that I will either get a discount or it will at least make them feel the irony of asking for extra money during the checkout process. I don’t ever plan on making a scene or fighting about it, but it does feel good to push back at least a little bit on the tipping culture.
If you would like your own Customer Appreciation Card, sign up on the waiting list!
Join the waitlist:
[1] Lynn M. (2021). Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Dampen Americans’ Tipping for Food Services? Insights From Two Studies. Compensation and benefits review, 53(3), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886368721999135
