this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
253 points (97.4% liked)

Asklemmy

43945 readers
670 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hey Folks!

I've been living abroad for over half my life in a country where tipping is not the norm. At most you would round up. 19โ‚ฌ bill? Here's a 20, keep this change.

Going to the US soon to visit family and the whole idea of tipping makes me nervous. It seems there's a lot of discussion about getting rid of tipping, but I don't know how much has changed in this regard.

The system seems ridiculously unfair, and that extra expense in a country where everything is already so expensive really makes a difference.

So will AITA if I don't tip? Is it really my personal responsibility to make sure my server is paid enough?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

I only tip if someone had to do something to get me that food/experience. Picking up food to take home? No tip. The restaurant makes you get your own food from the counter and do your own refills? No tip. The checkout screen might have a tip, but I'm putting 0.

It's not really your personal responsibility, it's the restaurant owners responsibility. If people aren't getting enough tips in a restaurant where tips are the big draw, and that causes wait staff to quit, the restaurant owner should be paying his people to subsidize that.

15-20% also is not a hard rule. There's a lot of places where I live that try to pass off costlier food in shitty atmosphere (think 30 dollar entrees, but the server sees you twice and it's a "theme" restaurant). If I think someone did well and engaged with us as customers and were pretty good about making suggestions on the menu or being extra attentive to drink refills, then guaranteed they're getting within that 15-20%. Anything less than that, then I as the customer who only gets to make that judgement call off of the limited interaction we have, and you'll get 7-10% or 5 bucks, whichever is bigger.