[demosthanos]

In which case, the movie theater may have to switch their wage calculations to actually pay these people for the work they're doing. The up-front price for tickets might need to increase, but that's preferable to the weird layers of hidden fees in the current system.

Using tips as a substitute for paying a living wage needs to be eliminated everywhere, but I especially don't blame people for not realizing that a movie theater of all places is playing that game.

[lokar]

You say upfront pricing would be preferable but consumers show over and over they pick based on the advertised price. This is true in dining, flights, hotels etc.

[demosthanos]

I'm not saying upfront pricing would survive in a free-for-all laissez-faire economy, I'm saying that it ought to be required because it is better for consumers.

They pick based on the advertised price because hidden fees and culturally-mandated tips exploit weaknesses in our psychology, not because customers actually like to spend more than they'd planned on.

[Waterluvian]

In Ontario, Canada we did away with the lower tier minimum wage. Everyone, including servers, bartenders, etc, make at least $16.55/hr. Tips, if any, add on to that. It makes it so much easier to look at the price tag and know what something costs, and not to tip when it doesn’t feel like anything exceptional happened.

But my favourite thing: it gives weight back to tips. They mean something again.

[frumper]

California doesn't have a tip wage, tips still expected.

[fishtacos]

Great - tips there should be optional, but that's now not part of the discussion. California's progressive laws rarely reflect the rest of the country, especially Texas.

[frumper]

progressive 1970's policies

[fishtacos]

Both can co-exist. Also, let's not forget that California lives in its own bubble, not reflective of the rest of Americana.

[demosthanos]

I don't know why you're bringing California into this. I don't live there, and TFA takes place in Austin, TX.

[fishtacos]

Shoud've clarified - I couldn't reply to the 3rd reply due to HN's limitations, but it was related to the "California" reply without making mention of it. This has nothing to do with Canada.

HN has posting limitations.

[frumper]

That's a weird take. What about life in California do you think is so different?

[wharvle]

This seems more like an argument for mandating up-front pricing, than against up-front pricing. That way nobody can “defect” and gain business by obscuring prices.

[Aqueous]

An advertised price that is racing to the bottom by offloading more and more of the cost to tips from customers.

Meanwhile the employees blame the customers, the customers blame the corporation, and the corporation blames the employees.

The corporation is the only one that is laughing all the way to the bank.

[lotsofpulp]

I assume at least the top quintile of tipped personnel are also making out better than under a non tipped system.

[fishtacos]

This isn't about high-end bartending or wait staff in high-end restaurants. Most people in the service industry don't work there, and most places can't support that level of pay, so your point is moot in general application, but still accurate.

That's not what this conversation is about.

[euroderf]

> consumers show over and over they pick based on the advertised price. This is true in dining, flights, hotels etc.

This is precisely why junk fees must die.

[vivekd]

Well the debate aside it seems like the culture is moving away from tipping. Younger generations don't seem to do it. So it seems that legislatures are going to have to start accounting for this in their min wage requirements

[bratbag]

Customers being oblivious to dark patterns in charging, is why regulation is needed.

[beepbooptheory]

Sure, but until such things transpire we have an ethical obligation to tip and tip well, right? Like, if you admit there is a problem, it seems pretty bad to just focus on the root causes without addressing immediate needs.

If you are about to run someone over in your car, you dont just say "well, the speed limit shouldn't be this high anyway.."

[JohnFen]

> but until such things transpire we have an ethical obligation to tip and tip well, right?

I don't think so, no. I don't think there is any ethical obligation to tip at all, and there never has been.

I am under no ethical obligation to be abused by companies using their employees as human shields.

[TheCleric]

I agree you’re not under an ethical obligation to be abused, but to use a company’s services where all parties expect you to tip, and then you don’t that’s unethical as well. You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too.

[JohnFen]

People can expect whatever they want, but there is no actual obligation to tip. It's not a matter of wanting my cake and eating it too, it's a matter of rejecting the premise that what should be a way of expressing appreciation is being subverted by employers to underhandedly supplement wages.

If the tipping is actually mandatory, then build it into the price to begin with. That way, perhaps tipping can go back to being an actual expression of thanks.

[lotsofpulp]

The only unethical thing here is pretending you are owed money without telling the other party they owe you money.

[TheCleric]

I agree, but here’s your notification: if you go to a bar or restaurant and receive service you should tip.

If you don’t like this, don’t go.

[demosthanos]

It's not that simple. If I go to a restaurant and order at the counter tipping is typically considered to be entirely optional, in spite of the fact that the PoS system would like you to think it isn't.

Then there's the whole spectrum of space in between. What about order-at-counter but the food is brought to you when it's ready, but you then clean up after yourself? What about a buffet, where you pay at a counter, serve yourself, but someone comes and cleans up your plates?

An alternative heuristic that I've heard is that if you pay in advance than tipping is optional, while if you pay at the end it's required, but that doesn't cover Doordash.

There are clear cut cases where tipping is required, and a whole fuzzy mess in between. And that fuzzy mess gets fuzzier and messier each year as companies intentionally blur the line.

[lotsofpulp]

I receive service everywhere I go, from the people who clean floors and bathrooms to the people who make food to the people who stock shelves, and even do engineering drawings for me.

[beepbooptheory]

But isn't being a patron of one these companies precisely the thing that does put you in this kind of obligation?

Isn't the whole thing about human shields that we don't want to hurt the humans in question?

[JohnFen]

No, I reject the premise that there is an actual obligation to tip. The obligation is to pay the bill.

[beepbooptheory]

Ok! Sorry about that, and good luck with everything.

[demosthanos]

Sure, in situations where tipping is factored into the wage, if you use a service you should tip. I get around that by mostly avoiding such services.

But the situation here isn't a clear-cut case like a sit-down restaurant where tipping is expected. If I were handed a receipt like the one in the article for my family's tickets and food, it wouldn't occur to me for a second that the barkeep in the room next door was relying on me tipping on this popcorn purchase in order to make a decent wage on this kids movie night.

[beepbooptheory]

It is a clear cut situation though: at Alamo drafthouse you order just like a restaurant, and a server will even greet you and get drink orders before the movie begins. It is full table service throughout the movie, where you order by writing on slips of paper. You get a bill at the end for your meal.

But, in general, this shouldn't even be the point. You should always assume that leaving a tip for someone in a position to receive it is a worthwhile gesture that means a significant amount!

I don't even know how this is so contentious to people honestly. Why make such a point about not doing something nice and relatively small? Your gonna spend $15 bucks on an IPA anyway, why not just help someone out too? Are you worried the bartender is going to get paid too much?

[demosthanos]

This is a pretty privileged take. Not everyone who can afford to buy Subway for lunch can afford to pay 15% more for it.

Tipping has become contentious lately because it's been asserting itself as an opt-out part of every Square checkout flow, even in situations where we never used to tip like fast casual order-at-the-counter. In the era of Uber we're also frequently asked to pick a tip before we even receive the service, which feels more like extortion than "something nice". Tipping is becoming more and more contentious because tipping is changing, and the version you describe is quickly becoming the minority case.

[beepbooptheory]

Ok! Sorry to waste your time then, good luck with all that.

[droopyEyelids]

This is why I advocate getting the waiter's venmo/squarecash and tipping them electronically.

This attacks the custom of tipping directly: It prevents the management from being able to use tips in their scheme to pay workers less, and absolves the customer of the requirement to hurt the worker if they want to fight against tipping culture.

[JohnFen]

> I advocate getting the waiter's venmo/squarecash

I find the assumption that everyone uses such apps interesting. For my part, I just tip with cash. No need to bring a third party into any of this.

[CryptoBanker]

Except tips are generally pooled and shared with the busboys and the kitchen staff.

[modzu]

in canada wages have grown but tips have just grown too, so there is seemingly a stronger cultural connection and its not simply fiscal. even if everyone waiting tables was paid a 100k salary, they can't just "put away" the tip jars. im not sure how the insanity stops, maybe inflation will stop it

[res0nat0r]

> Using tips as a substitute for paying a living wage needs to be eliminated everywhere, but I especially don't blame people for not realizing that a movie theater of all places is playing that game.

Many bartenders and servers, especially in high end restaurants would actively be against this policy. Mostly because these folks can earn $300-500 a night, and moving to some low wage salary would never compete with this.

[zamadatix]

The argument isn't to take someone who earns $400 per night and leave them a $100 per night salary and no tips it's to take someone who earns a total of $400 per night and change that to be a $400 per night salary instead of a small salary with lots of tips. That is to say the debate isn't about how much is being paid but how it's being paid.

One of the real world problem that gets run into is, even for a large portion of people that want this, when one restaurant list $50 prices and expects $10 in tip and the other charges $60 and expects no tip people still go to the one listing $50 more often.

The same is true for stores listing prices including taxes. It simply won't be the most common method in the US unless it's a regulated requirement for every store to do. There is no way every store is just going to opt into it all at once when they know not opting into it will get them more customers than the ones that do. This doesn't mean people prefer needing to calculate tax every time they look at a price it just means it's not a naturally correcting set of incentives.

[red-iron-pine]

bollocks. most bartenders or servers would not be opposed.

top 10% of restaurants are making TONS of cash and the servers are raking it in, sure, but even working in Loudoun Co. VA -- the overall richest county in America, btw -- my salary was easily less than half of what I pulled as a network engineer.

the single mother of 2 working in Applebee's in shit-tier Indiana is struggling because of tips -- they need to go. restaurants in Europe, or Asia, or the Middle East didn't stop existing without tips.

[fishtacos]

>>the single mother of 2 working in Applebee's in shit-tier Indiana is struggling because of tips -- they need to go.

That's reality in large swaths of the US. One less work opportunity available now...

[fnordpiglet]

Paying tips to a bar tender or waiter isn’t some sort of social anomaly. It’s customary. Whether that custom is wrong or not can be debated, but while it’s customary, it’s reasonable for people to expect customers to follow the custom. Going to a restaurant and tipping $2 is the sort of stuff that gets your food spit in and is reserved only for the absolute worst service - it’s worse than tipping nothing. That’s the custom, wrong or not. Trying to change a societal custom by screwing over the worker is wrong, it’s just punishing the person who can least afford your social stand against how the business pays its workers.

[notahacker]

"Customary" works both ways. If it's "customary", then we should probably also accept that the custom doesn't involve tipping as much as the article author thinks bartenders deserve if people generally don't tip as much as the article author thinks bartenders deserve.

And a former state labor official of all people should be blaming the employers for not paying a proper wage (and proposing regulation to solve that) rather than the customers for not making uncustomarily large tips to make up for them.

(Also, in most of the world it isn't customary to tip bartenders)

[fnordpiglet]

Ok, but sit back and ask yourself (if you’re in the US, which is the context being discussed and what they do in another society isn’t particularly relevant), do you tip at restaurants and bars? Almost everyone would agree they do.

The situation here is it’s a restaurant and bar that shows movies.

I wouldn’t expect to tip on the ticket prices, but it is surprising to expect to not tip full service waiters and bartenders.

I will be willing to wager $2 that the same people at a bar would tip their bartender as is customary in the US. The context mixture of theatre with bar is likely the cause of the anomalous behavior. And the authors point is: if you don’t want to tip your bartender at the theatre, then expect there won’t be a bartender at your theatre as they will work at a bar, where you would tip them.

That seems pretty fair?

[notahacker]

> And the authors point is: if you don’t want to tip your bartender at the theatre, then expect there won’t be a bartender at your theatre as they will work at a bar, where you would tip them.

Or maybe, just maybe, the venue selling the drinks at substantial markup could pay them properly rather than trying to extend the custom of staff wages being dependent upon the charity of customers to a venue where customers generally don't feel like tipping. You'd think a government official in a labor department of all people would get the idea that employers paying living wages should be the rule rather than the exception.

Tipping customs often vary according to venue, range of products served and how they're served (sometimes in nuanced ways that are baffling to outsiders). Honestly, I have no idea whether it's considered customary to tip at that sort of bar at that sort of venue in that state, but a complaint about making less than a dollar per hour at a supposedly busy event is a data point against.

[fnordpiglet]

I would note in a labor market labor has the option to work for the employer who maximizes the employees benefit. As you note the author is in a labor department and they meticulously detail all the reasons no one would want to work for this theatre. They use this as an explanation for why companies are complaining they can’t hire - because they aren’t competitive and make a hostile work environment. Instead, employees are exercising their at will employment rights and going to employers that offer reasonable work environments.

Which I think you’re agreeing with their point. The employer could fix the situation but instead just barrel ahead oblivious to the reasons their people are quitting. It wasn’t the managers, it wasn’t even the customers even though the customers weren’t awesome. It was the owners.

[BoiledCabbage]

And who created the odd mix? The movie theater company.

So instead of losing all of their staff, they should simply pay to retain them and post a "no tipping" policy upon entry.

It really is easy, but too people on HN will contort themselves into knots to avoid having any company have any accountability at all in any decision making.

[fnordpiglet]

Well, that is actually the entire thesis of the original link.

[tomrod]

Does the same logic apply regarding which products are purchased or boycotted for a societal improvement?

As a consumer, I make specific choices. If I am marketed a price, that should be inclusive. The change starts with my choices, since managers clearly are against setting high enough wages.

[fnordpiglet]

You can certainly not tip your servers at bars and restaurants, no one forces you to. You can be a one person protest. But you won’t change anything other than how little the server takes home. The business won’t even observe your principled stand, and they’re the one whose behavior you have to change. The only observer will be the worker who just doesn’t get paid for their labor.

[collingreen]

This is a depressing way to blame all the victims here and have no hope of making anything better.

It's like hospital owners openly saying they know nurses won't strike even if they don't get treated fairly because their patients will die and the nurses, as caregivers, won't let that happen.

The apathy toward a system that not just supports that kind of thing but very actively encourages and rewards it is brutal to watch.

[fnordpiglet]

Some restaurants have started applying mandatory tips. I think the right way out is to reward such places with your business. It makes sense for everyone. The servers get paid proportional to the volume of business, which they can impact positively through excellent service and upselling/cross selling, without having to grovel for the money. The patrons aren’t put in the position of deciding the tip amount, and if they are unhappy about service they can take it up with management and/or not return.

[paulmd]

Sure. That’s called “paying a living wage”, it was always an option.

Just advertise the prices with the fees included.

That’s the rub, restaurant owners want to advertise one price and then actually charge a bunch more once they know people are committed. And that’s something that the US is really bad about in general - sales tax is handled similarly poorly.

[Ekaros]

If food is spit on, I hope it can be proven and then restaurant can be permanently closed. Both the owner losing for not paying enough and the workers losing job for not doing properly.

This is where state should enforce capitalism by killing those badly behaving businesses.

[lsaferite]

> workers losing job

Spitting in food or adulterating it in any manner is a criminal offence. Losing your job should be the least of your worries.

[jaredklewis]

> Going to a restaurant and tipping $2 is the sort of stuff that gets your food spit in and is reserved only for the absolute worst service

How does that work? For table service you usually tip at the end after you’ve already eaten your food.

[fnordpiglet]

Right - as long as you never return or go to a restaurant where you’re known by one of the staff as “that person.” Customers reputations often precede them more than they realize.

[miki123211]

> Going to a restaurant and tipping $2 is the sort of stuff that gets your food spit in and is reserved only for the absolute worst service

Huh, I wonder how this works in restaurants attended by lots of foreigners. I knew America had a "tipping culture" and that 10-20% was customary, but I didn't know how bad not tipping was until this comment. Many clueless tourists probably know even less than I did.

[fnordpiglet]

Yeah the folks I know in the hospitality industry don’t like serving people from Asia and Europe for this reason. Right or wrong they view it as not worth the time and effort as the tipping rates are often considerably lower than Americans.

Likewise I’ve noticed when I travel internationally Americans get a great deal of service and attention because unlike the local population because it’s likely they will tip.

[zamadatix]

I've always tipped the customary amount but using the logic "it screws over the worker so it's wrong" feels like a bad litmus test for whether trying to change a societal custom is actually right or wrong. By this logic there would be no right way to try to end things like the custom of folks pumping your gas by pumping it yourself instead (funnily enough, still several states this is actually illegal) because it would screw over the gas pump employee. That doesn't mean it's right to not tip at a food joint in the US, it just means there's more to something being right or wrong than whether a worker is the main one affected.

To me, I don't think there is any way to change the custom beyond regulation. The incentives just feel too misaligned. The crowd of customers leans towards going to the place with the lower list prices, intentional or not. The restaurants will never collectively decide on their own accord to go against that flow themselves. The servers are never going to collectively force the restaurants to make that decision. Each option requires "everyone just decide to forever on operate this new way which forces no-tipping alignment all together" and that's just never going to realistically happen. Customers aren't going to form a long lasting collective which convinces the servers to press the business nor are they going to form a long lasting collective to boycott businesses directly. Businesses aren't going to care about anything but never optionally baking in higher prices on the menu since it's giving customers away to competition. What each group actually wants as a majority is irrelevant for something as minor as this. The only way it happens is if the majority are for it being regulated as such, which can happen with representatives deciding how the collective of restaurants need to behave.

tl;dr: I tip because not tipping isn't going to result in change, not because the only way to enact change is to make sure a worker is in no way ever affected during the change.

[fnordpiglet]

Yeah, personally I think the tipping culture is wrong and I don’t like people to feel they have to grovel for my pittance. It feels gross to wield that power over people. If they give bad service they should simply be fired, rather than having to earn that on each and every exchange. Some restaurants have started including tips without optionality. This feels right - it scales with the business volume. By making the business more successful, cross selling upselling and creating loyal customers, the wait staff wins. Probably the way to change things is to seek these restaurants out and make their business model successful rather than screwing over folks who are just trying to get by.

[demosthanos]

The concrete example (with photo) that he gave of a bad tip was this:

> On Christmas Day a family bought over $100 worth of tickets and food two days after Christmas.

I don't know how this family received their food, but it almost certainly wasn't at the bar from the bartender. Maybe it was delivered to them inside the theater as another commenter suggests, but it's just as possible that they got the food at the counter.

Further, the photo doesn't give any indication of how much money was spent on tickets vs food, which would be entirely expected to impact the tip calculation. If they bought $95 in tickets and one kid got some popcorn, a $2 tip is downright generous!

[fnordpiglet]

Yes, fair enough. However taken at face value, their point is if you don’t tip full service workers like waiters and bar tenders when they’re working at the theatre, expect they will quit to work at the restaurant or bar where you will tip them. Maybe they’re fluffing their article for clicks, but assuming they’re not, this is a pretty reasonable take. If they are, and it was as you posit it might be, well, shame on them.

My point was if you imagine yourself ordering $100 in food at a full service restaurant with reasonable service, do you imagine yourself not tipping? I think most Americans can’t imagine that. It’s customary.

[demosthanos]

No, I agree with your last point. I think the system sucks, but it's not fair to hurt the victims even more.

That said, I still think this movie theater is particularly shady on the tipping spectrum. The article calls out a family's food purchase and a kids' movie night as examples of bad tipping and implicitly criticizes the non-tippers, but it seems likely to me that the people involved had no clue that there was someone in the building relying on their tips that day.

The theater is guilty for blurring the line between tipping- and non-tipping locations, the patrons are just reacting as expected to the lack of clarity.

[fnordpiglet]

Absolutely I agree with you. And ultimately the article was about why everyone quit working at the theatre. It is entirely the theatres fault, and one way they caused their own situation was by not making the custom clear to the customer. If for instance tickets and food etc are billed together, it is tricky to know that you’re supposed to tip for the food but not the tickets and everything gets blurred. One solution is to make sure waiters and bar tenders bill their services independently.

Overall, I think the business model they have doesn’t work for labor, and they suffer the consequences by being unable to hire. To their point, it’s not about workers being lazy, it’s about the business owner making a work environment that’s untenable but expecting people to be grateful for the opportunity. The tipping was only one issue, amongst a lot of others, but it’s also the one that would have cost the owners nothing to resolve by simply clearing the ambiguity.