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by at-w
1237 days ago
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Are you okay with retail store workers asking you for a tip for pointing you to the right aisle? What about your doctor asking for a tip after a checkup? What about a relative that asks you for money every time they see you, and decides to "suggest" amounts? What about simple panhandling? In all of those cases, you clearly have the ability to simply say no. At the same time, any socially aware person is likely to resent being pressured for money. Your argument would make sense if tipping was something done for exceptional service. It makes less sense when it is essentially universal and implicitly risks worse service in the future at best. Even at restaurants, tipping disproportionately rewards the people who have arguably the least difficult job and does so in an empirically discriminatory way that has almost no relationship to service quality whatsoever (https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/71781). |
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To "tip" my hand completely, I think my original comment was born out of a frustration that so many social problems will be complained about by a HN-type crowd as some vague social ill that cannot be solved by 'taking our (tipping) business elsewhere.' Sometimes it seems like these complaints only suggest that nothing can be done except 'make noise' about tipping or else it might become something our family members will do. As the author of the featured article points out, facing down the fact that many wait staff need tips to make a real living on top of minimum wage is definitely a big problem, but to me, it's a more concrete problem than 'I'm mad I have to tip because I bought chapstick.' There is a time and place for venting about the screwy society we live in but I hope we continue to talk about changing tipping culture and paying people properly.