[yebyen]

> you start with "you are free to engage in or abstain from [tips]" then say "you should tip." Which was is it? Completely optional or expected? You claim it's both.

I think this was clear, until you removed the context. I think you should tip, I expect to leave a tip. I expect service employees to get a tip. I would tend to avoid service establishments altogether, if I thought I could not afford to leave a tip.

But! I'm not going to report you to someone if I noticed you used a service and you don't tip! It will go into my mental calculus of who you are. Generosity begets generosity. You've explained your principled stance and I respect that belief that tipping depresses service wages overall.

I'm not sure I agree. I'm sure it's a fact, but I'm not sure it's a step forward to simply eschew tipping. I'm certainly not going to go as far as to say that it is your moral obligation to tip, or even to generally be charitable to people of "lower standing" (not only because I don't like the implication that people with certain job types must have a lower standing, but also because it is a principled stance that I understand on some level, and I can respect that.)

If your main issue is with tip jars and the fact that you find them distasteful though, then certainly I think it's going to be true that you would see fewer of them if the infrastructure is built to support tipping. I want a way to tip my driver, and I will be looking for the jar if the infrastructure is not in place to support it.

If it causes you some degree of anguish to disregard a physical tip jar, surely it will be easier to disregard a digital notification prompting you for feedback and/or tips. I would be off-put if I had to go through an awkward exchange asking whether the driver can accept a cash tip, whenever I feel like rewarding exceptional service. Because, to me, it just sounds like you don't want to look at the tip jar and you don't want to look at the tip button.

[kelnos]

So basically you're saying "tipping is optional, but if you don't, I'm going to think less of you as a person". Which is the same thing as saying "if you want to live in 'polite' society, tipping is required".

The problem is that when you see someone not tipping, you have no idea why. Perhaps that person received horrifyingly bad service. Perhaps that person is morally opposed to the practice. Or perhaps that person is just a cheapskate. You don't know, and putting that into your "mental calculus" is just you projecting your own feelings onto a situation for which you have very little factual information.

I'm not picking on you in particular; the majority of people in the US behave exactly the same way. And that's why tipping is mandatory, never optional.

[yebyen]

> "mental calculus" is just you projecting your own feelings onto a situation for which you have very little factual information

That's exactly what mental calculus is. When I'm in a normal state of mind, "was the service any good" and "does this person have the money to tip" are also part of the mental calculus applied when I notice you didn't tip.

> I'm going to think less of you as a person

Maybe so. Vanishingly so (that's why it's calculus) depending on the scope of our interaction. If you are a person on the street who I noticed didn't tip the hot dog vendor, I'm likely not even doing this mental calculus at all, unless you've done something else to attract my attention.

If you're my boss, and I casually observe you not tipping on a regular basis, sure it's going to affect my opinion of you.

(If you are the owner of the company where I work and I notice you suddenly have a habit of not tipping, I'm likely to take it as a signal that maybe business is not so good!)