Tip requests getting out of hand? Many consumers say yes.

Across the country, silent frustration is brewing over an age-old practice that many say is spiraling out of control: tipping.

Some fed-up consumers are posting rants on social media complaining about tip requests at the auto repair shop, while others say they’re tired of being asked to tip for a muffin or a simple cup of coffee at the bakery next door. What next, they ask, are we also going to tip our doctors and dentists?

As more companies adopt digital payment options, customers are automatically encouraged to leave rewards — many times over 30% — in places where they wouldn’t normally do so. And some say it has become even more disappointing as commodity prices soared due to inflation, which dropped to 6.5% year-on-year in December but is still painfully high.

“And they talk about the 18% tip already included in the bill. Girl, it’s water,” one person recently said on TikTok.

“Suddenly, these screens appear in every establishment that we come across. They appear both on the Internet and for online orders. And I’m afraid there’s no end to it,” said etiquette expert Thomas Farley, who considers the whole thing a bit of an “invasion.” .”

Social pressure of screen prompts

Unlike tip jars, which shoppers can easily ignore if they don’t have change, experts say digital requests can generate social pressure and are harder to get around. And your generosity, or lack of it, can be revealed to anyone who looks close enough at the screen, including the workers themselves.

Dylan Schenker is one of them. The 38-year-old earns about $400 a month in tips, a welcome addition to his $15 hourly rate as a barista at the on-site Philadelphia Cafe. Most of these tips come from consumers ordering coffee drinks or interacting with cafes for other purposes, such as fulfilling orders. The tip helps cover his monthly rent and eases his burden while he graduates and juggles his work.

Schenker says it’s hard to sympathize with consumers who can afford expensive coffee drinks but complain about tips. And he often feels demoralized when people leave nothing behind, especially if they’re regulars.

“Tipping is to ensure that the people who provide you with this service get what they are entitled to,” said Schenker, who has worked in the service industry for about 18 years. But he added that, first of all, the employer must ensure fair remuneration of employees.

“The responsibility should lie with the owners, but this will not change overnight,” he said. “And it’s the best we’ve got right now.”

Traditionally, consumers take pride in tipping well in places like restaurants, which typically pay their workers less than the minimum wage in the hope that they will make up the difference in tips. Restaurant workers’ wages vary widely from state to state, with hourly pay frozen at $2.13 an hour in some states. according to according to the Department of Labor.

But academics studying the topic say many consumers are now annoyed by automatic tip requests at coffee shops and other eateries, where tips are usually not expected, workers earn at least minimum wage, and service is usually limited.

After being offered a 20% tip on a website after ordering a takeaway pizza, one stunned customer took to social media to express his frustration. “20%? For what? What did you do?” asked a TikTok user in a video that has since gained over a million views.

“People don’t like unsolicited advice,” said Ismail Karabas, a marketing professor at Murray State University who studies tipping. “They don’t like being asked for something, especially at the wrong time.”

“It makes you feel bad”

Some requests may also come from strange places. Clarissa Moore, a 35-year-old supervisor for a utility company in Pennsylvania, says even her mortgage company has been asking for tips lately. She is generally happy to tip at restaurants, and sometimes at coffee shops and other fast food establishments when the service is good.

But Moore says she believes consumers shouldn’t be asked to tip just about everywhere they go, and it shouldn’t be something expected of them.

“It makes you feel bad. You feel like you have to do it because they are asking you to do it,” she said. “But then you have to think about the position people are put in. They pay for things they don’t really want to pay for, or tip when they really don’t want to – or they can.” don’t allow themselves tips – because they don’t want to feel bad.”

In Emily Post’s Etiquette, authors Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning advise consumers to tip on rideshares like Uber and Lyft and on food and drink, including alcohol. But they also write that it is up to everyone to choose how much to tip at a coffee shop or diner, and that consumers should not be embarrassed by choosing the smallest tip amount offered, nor need to explain themselves if they don’t tip.

Digital payment methods have been around for several years, although experts say the pandemic has accelerated the trend towards more tips. Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University, said consumers were more generous with tips in the early days of the pandemic to show support for restaurants and other businesses that have been hit hard by COVID-19. Many people genuinely wanted to help and sympathized with workers in positions that put them at greater risk of contracting the virus, Lynn said.

“This is a relatively new phenomenon,” Dipayan Biswas, professor of marketing and business at the University of South Florida, told CBS Philadelphia.

Professor Biswas has been studying tipping for ten years. Like Cornell’s Lynn, he says this new tipping trend started with the digital kiosk boom, then the pandemic “added flow to that fire,” plus inflation and more tipping businesses to make the job more profitable at your expense.

“I see it becoming more and more common,” Biswas said.

Large tips in restaurants

Tipping at full-service restaurants grew 25.3% in the third quarter of 2022, and tips at fast-food or counter-service restaurants rose 16.7% in Q3 2022, according to Square, one of the largest digital payment companies. compared to the same period in 2021. . The data provided by the company shows consistent growth over the same period since 2019.

As tip requests have become more common, some businesses advertise them in their job postings to attract more workers, though extra money isn’t always guaranteed.

Danny Meyer, CEO of upscale restaurant group Union Square, announced in 2020 that his restaurants will end a five-year no-tipping policy when they reopen after being closed for months at the start of the coronavirus.

The company, which owns the Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe, laid off more than 2,000 workers after New York City ordered the restaurants to close in 2020. Fears that the workers would not return without the lure of a tip were an important factor in the decision to reinstate the tip. Meyer said on LinkedIn at the time of the announcement of the decision.

In December, Starbucks introduced a new tipping option for credit and debit card transactions in its stores, as called for by a group that organizes the company’s hourly workers. Since then, a Starbucks spokesperson said that nearly half of credit and debit card transactions have included tips, which, along with tips received in cash and through the Starbucks app, are apportioned based on the number of hours the barista worked on the days the tips were paid. received.

“Tipping Recession”

Carabas, a Murray State professor, said some customers, such as those with a background in the service industry, want to tip fast food workers and are not annoyed by automatic requests. But for others, studies show they are less likely to return to a particular business if they are annoyed by requests, he said.

Analysts at a technology company Branch dot to a “critical recession” as continued inflation causes a change in consumer attitudes in the US. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of restaurant patrons giving tips has been steadily declining, from 77% in 2019 to 73% in 2022. vote from creditcards.com.

The last tab can also affect the reaction of customers. Karabas said that in a study he did with other scientists, they manipulated payment amounts and found that when the check was high, consumers no longer felt annoyed about tip requests. This suggests that the best time for a coffee shop to ask for a 20% tip, for example, might be on four or five coffee orders, rather than a small cup that costs $4.

Some consumers may continue to ignore tip requests regardless of the amount.

“If you work for a company, the job of that company is to pay you to work for them,” said Mike Janavi, a shoe and clothing designer based in New York. “They shouldn’t be juice consumers who are already spending money there to pay their employees.”

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