<story><title>&apos;Coerced into tipping&apos;? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF</title><url>https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Coerced-into-tipping-How-apps-are-changing-the-13164536.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jjeaff</author><text>I am frustrated with articles like this that keep pushing a higher and higher &amp;quot;acceptable&amp;quot; tip percentage.&lt;p&gt;20% is not normal. 20% is very high for very good service.&lt;p&gt;15 years ago, 15% was normal. Now the minimum on these pos pos&amp;#x27;s is 18.&lt;p&gt;I tip 15% and no more unless service was well above normal.&lt;p&gt;And I have no qualms about hitting 0 for anything that isn&amp;#x27;t sit down service, including Uber and Lyft.&lt;p&gt;We have to fight this tip creep or we will live in a world where every service employee is paid with 100% tips by those that feel guilty enough to pay it while all the cheapskates freeload.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fiblye</author><text>When I was a kid, 10% was fairly normal.&lt;p&gt;Last time I went to a restaurant in the US, I got scolded because I refused to tip when the waitress brought my food out cold and never once gave me a refill. I&amp;#x27;m apparently &amp;quot;supposed&amp;quot; to tip 25% these days.&lt;p&gt;When people do their job, I&amp;#x27;m okay with tipping. But I&amp;#x27;m not OK with tipping based on the price of the meal. A person who works at a $70&amp;#x2F;plate restaurant and keeps filling my glass of water up with ice before I can finish it, making it unbearably cold, really isn&amp;#x27;t doing anything better than an overworked waiter in a $7&amp;#x2F;plate dirty hole in the wall shack. The skills don&amp;#x27;t differ (and I&amp;#x27;m honestly often impressed with how skill-less waiters are at high-end American restaurants--they&amp;#x27;re worse than typical servers in any other country) and they&amp;#x27;re not the ones making the meals.&lt;p&gt;Just bring me a drink that&amp;#x27;s at least 90% drink and not 90% ice, bring my food out before it&amp;#x27;s cold, and get me a refill within a few minutes of running out and I have no trouble dropping $10 or $20--the price of the meal doesn&amp;#x27;t factor into that. Fail to do that, and you&amp;#x27;re getting nothing--I don&amp;#x27;t care how expensive the meal is that the chef prepared, but you had zero involvement so you&amp;#x27;re not entitled to that cash.&lt;p&gt;But I&amp;#x27;m glad I&amp;#x27;m not living in a place with a toxic restaurant culture, so it&amp;#x27;s not my problem anymore. :)</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;Coerced into tipping&apos;? How apps are changing the culture of tipping in SF</title><url>https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Coerced-into-tipping-How-apps-are-changing-the-13164536.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jjeaff</author><text>I am frustrated with articles like this that keep pushing a higher and higher &amp;quot;acceptable&amp;quot; tip percentage.&lt;p&gt;20% is not normal. 20% is very high for very good service.&lt;p&gt;15 years ago, 15% was normal. Now the minimum on these pos pos&amp;#x27;s is 18.&lt;p&gt;I tip 15% and no more unless service was well above normal.&lt;p&gt;And I have no qualms about hitting 0 for anything that isn&amp;#x27;t sit down service, including Uber and Lyft.&lt;p&gt;We have to fight this tip creep or we will live in a world where every service employee is paid with 100% tips by those that feel guilty enough to pay it while all the cheapskates freeload.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RickS</author><text>&amp;quot;tip creep&amp;quot; is a really great term for what&amp;#x27;s going on.&lt;p&gt;Services that don&amp;#x27;t have tips encoded in wage law (like restaurants [mostly]) are either passing along large scale pricing errors, or begging for arbitrary, subjective price increases beyond what&amp;#x27;s needed to run the business. Neither of those should be met with a smile.</text></comment>