For those of us in North America, we’ve all been to a cafe and ordered a beverage to go, only to be met with that familiar “Choose tip amount” prompt…
Then comes the dilemma: do I tip?
My gut reaction is to tip 12% and save face — “I don’t want to look like a cheapskate”. However, I have never been to this cafe before. Do I really need To Insure Prompt Service after filling my travel mug with joe? Yet, in the back of my head, I know that their employer is paying them as little as possible, guilting patrons like me into filling the gap in their wages.
I’d indignantly prefer to use my tips on the cafe I frequent, the baristas I know, or the times I choose to and not because I was asked. Perhaps withholding it and “voting with my money” for the business owner to pay their staff fairly instead is the best choice.
But they’re underpaid.
As you can tell my monologue, I have yet to find an answer to constantly being asked to tip in situations where I would not have of my own accord.
Context makes a difference, for example as I understand it in the US people working in hospitality are not entitled to minimum wage because of the expectation that they will make up their wages with tips. In this context suggesting that you’re stealing labour by not tipping is completely fair.
In the UK all legal workers are entitled to Minimum Wage, but because of the decades long housing crisis most hospitality workers are not making a living wage. Often people struggle to get the hours. If folk are getting enough hours to make a living wage, then they’re probably not regularly getting the bare minimum of two consecutive days off that we need to recover from work.
In large corporate fast food restaurants like McDonalds and KFC, workers are banned from accepting tips. There are other contexts where maybe because the workers are considered low status tipping is not banned but it just doesn’t happen. Have you ever tried to tip in a Wetherspoons pub? It’s really hard, you put your hand in your pocket and dude’s already on the next customer; they’re just not expecting it.
I didn’t grow up with a tipping culture. The kinds of places where people do that were not the kinds of places we went to. They were posh. I didn’t grow up going to cafes, restaurants, taking cabs. So when I moved to the city and started eating out, I didn’t really think about tipping, especially as I was struggling to make the bill anyway.
Then I started working in a coin operated laundry. It was interesting because you had local working class people coming in and doing their own laundry, and rich tourists and gentrifiers coming in and asking for Service Washes. A lot of the local working class people were South Asian, and I noticed that these folks would tip me even if they’d done everything themselves, just as a kindness and a sign of solidarity “get yourself a drink” they’d say. Conversely, when the American tourists came in with a big bag of washing and an even bigger list of demands, I’d work hard for them expecting a big tip, and I’d get nothing. This happened again and again. A few times a working class person who normally did their own would be short on time and ask me for a service wash, and they would regularly tip me basically 100%.
After this I started tipping way more. What I learned is that tipping is not a reward for good service, but a gesture of solidarity. It says “I know things are tough, I appreciate what you do, here is a token of that.” When you tip someone, you see them, and you share a little of what you have. I love to tip people when they’re in a bad mood, because it makes it abundantly clear that you are tipping someone to make their day better, not to reward them for good service, because the service probably wasn’t that good!
My approach to tipping:
-Always tip cash, if not possible ask the worker discreetly if their boss gives them the digital tips. -Tip indiscriminately and regardless of service -Tip more if the workplace is particularly known for treating workers badly (e.g. Wetherspoons) -Try and tip in places like Chicken Shops where people aren’t used to being tipped.
*Hospitality workers often organise themselves in small radical grassroots industrial unions, where they have much more democratic control over their struggles compared to traditional trade unions.
International examples: International Workers of the World (IWW), International Workers Association (AIT-IWA) UK examples: IWGB (can’t remember what it stands for), United Voices of the World (UVW).