I find it interesting that there’s been this vocal movement to “100%” eliminate tipping across the board. It’s worked very well for us for generations until now. I don’t think tipping is the problem.

The problems include services that inflate prices and want fees on top of tipping (DoorDash), customer-facing point-of-sale systems making it easier to prompt for tips (Square. Toast), and the general drive towards and acceptance of consumerism allowing for all these things to take place (plastic and mobile over cash). Not to mention inflated costs of living and stagnant wages.

Tipping in and of itself is fine. It’s a win-win-win for the consumer, the worker, and the business. But it’s insulting and a hinderance on the consumer in the context of all that’s going on in the world today. In this regard, I share in the frustration.

If you were to make a stand and choose not to tip at a restaurant, your immediate impact is going to be on the worker who relies on that tip to support themselves and their family. Collectively, this movement is going to hurt the lives of individuals and potentially impact the local economies.

I share the belief that businesses should pay their workers a fair wage. However, in the restaurant industry, the businesses who’ve tried this have largely failed. Paying a fast-casual dinning or fine dinning worker the same as a McDonald’s worker isn’t going to bode well for customers expecting a higher level of customer service. Of course, this opens the conversation to the minimum wage laws and what’s proper in this regard.

I agree somewhat that we should “strike” on restaurants and food delivery. But I say so in favor of us being more self reliant on ourselves rather than constantly being consumers of other’s goods and services. Eating out / ordering in should not be something that we’re doing so often that it’s impacting our personal finances. It should be done in moderation (at most) and afford us the opportunity to pay those doing the work for us a fair compensation for their efforts. Our money should going towards people, not companies - certainly not DD.

What I’d like to see a measure on is consumerism and compensation in the US compared to countries that don’t have tipping. I wonder if non-tipping countries eat out / order in less and if they have different regulations about fees. I’d also like to see a measure on the average wage and income compared to living costs. So, is someone working at Applebees (for example) in the US making relatively the same in the UK when accounting for their cost of living? How much do Americans spend on leisure, what do we define as leisure, compared to other countries? How do government support systems compare? What does the tax structure look like? I’m just not so sure it’s a fair 1:1 comparison if you want to do what other countries are doing (not to say I oppose those systems).

I like tipping. I refuse to be nickel and dimed. I have a bigger problem with streaming services constantly raising their prices and inflated DD and Ticketmaster fees than I do tipping. Canceling all my streaming services, my Prime account, my DD account (and eating out less) affords me a bit more money to be a good tipper. Paying in cash sometimes gets me a discount and allows me to have a more positive impact on wait staff.

I see the non-tangible appification of payment as a bigger problem - and I see rampant consumerism as the primary issue. And I believe the government knows this. They’re pushing towards a cashless society because they know how easy it is to thoughtlessly click a button to transfer money from one entity to another.