[basil-rash]

Personally I love tipping. I’ll tip even for ridiculous things like buying a bag of coffee bean. Guy seemed nice and smiled and tried to answer a question I had - sure have an extra couple bucks. Not a big deal to me, but who knows maybe it is to him. Hell sometimes I’ll even tip an additional 20% on top of the built tip at places where they add ~20% to the bill before you get it, though I reserve this for exceptional cases.

On the flip side, I’ll just as happily tip near 0 at a restaurant when the situation calls for it. If we were somehow to abolish tipping, this would not be possible - prices would just increase uniformly.

[zonotope]

It would work like everything else. That "expensive" grocery store that continues to stock the high quality products that you love would still get your business even though they raise prices. In the meantime, the mediocre one would not, and they would be forced to lower prices accordingly.

I just want to know what the price of something is and make my own decisions about whether or not it's worth it. The social and mental gymnastics over tipping is just exhausting.

[basil-rash]

Except here the grocery store pricing is “name your price” and folks are free to pick the price that suits the level of service they desire/receive.

It’s a leaver we have, and it’s rather powerful if you know how to use it. Doing away with it because “the mental gymnastics” of calculating ~1/5th of a total is too much for some folks to handle is just ridiculous pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I’m happy to receive the best service available at the places I frequent because the staff knows I will compensate them generously. If folks are unwilling to do so, that’s fine: they can still get food/drinks. But they’ll always be further back in the priority queue than me, because I value the time of the wait staff.