The Tipping Tipping Point: Navigating the Exhausting Protocols of American Gratuity Culture
Tipping culture is about as American as apple pie. How do we reckon with its impact in an increasingly service-oriented economy?
Tipping culture is about as American as gun violence, I mean, apple pie. When I was twenty, studying abroad in the United Kingdom, I remember asking a friend from Newcastle how much is standard to tip a barber. He was confused. “Nothing, of course,” he said. “Unless you’re bald and they grow it back.” I got skittish and left ten percent (no hair added).
It’s six years later, I’m back stateside, and tipping has reached its tipping point. As restaurants and small businesses continue struggling to crawl back from the height of pandemic lockdowns, something is shifting in the way we tip. In an April 19 piece for the New York Times, Christina Morales detailed the concept of “tipping fatigue,” or the feeling of exhaustion and creeping resentment at having to leave gratuity for services we previously wouldn’t have necessarily deemed tip-worthy.
You’ve surely noticed it yourself lately. Upon checkout at bakeries, Fro-yo stands, organic candle shops, you name it, cashiers are grinning brightly and swiveling a touchscreen around for us to insert our credit cards and select one of the following options: 15%, 20%, 25%, or NO TIP. Translation: be nice, be a mensch, embody Mother Teresa, or enjoy a loogie in your latte, jackass!
A muddling of what now qualifies as service and a reorientation toward the service industry in general seem to be the culprits, and people are divided on the phenomenon. Morales’s piece received its fair share of online criticism for pandering to the woes of the elite. Dissenters argued that “it’s still a goddamn plague out there, tipping s [sic] literally the least you can do” and asked “what is fatiguing. tap the biggest number and check out. the max at these places is gonna be like $2, grow up.”
These are understandable reactions. For middle to upper class patrons of these shops, providing a 20% tip is no burden, whereas the dollars could add up to their DoorDasher or barista being able to afford their own food or rent for the month. And as COVID-19 cases continue to surge and monkeypox begins to step into the limelight, it feels particularly ungracious and unethical to hold back a tip when these laborers may be risking their lives to provide white collar workers with sustenance or services—dinner for the night or their laundry for the week.
At the same time, what these arguments miss is that the core of the tipping fatigue sentiment is very much alive for members of the working and lower classes as well, if not more so, and it has a long history. Alejandra (@AleAleuizb on Twitter) explains, “As someone who works in service (and always tips) i think the fatigue comes from fellow working class folks who are tired of having to give up the little money they have to make up for rich employers not paying a livable wage.”
As inflation rises and budgets have to be constantly reevaluated thanks to everything from rent hikes to skyrocketing gas prices, now is about as inopportune a time as ever for an influx of occasions and mediums through which tipping is now not only available but socially encouraged to emerge. Throw in millennial and Gen Z’s preference for tipping more—and shaming those who don’t—and the tensions of economic polarization stretch their limbs even further. Apart from the growing trend of businesses subtly/not-so-subtly suggesting to add gratuity likely leading to more tipping fatigue, what’s most worrisome is that it may prove detrimental to the service workers most in need of the extra income.
For these reasons and more, our American gratuity system—and the culture that sustains it—doesn’t just need to slow down. It needs to end.
Tipping was not always the norm in America. In his article “The Payment of Gratuities by Customers in the United States: An Historical Analysis,” University of Saskatchewan professor Marc S Mentzer describes the ways in which the modern American tipping system was born from European hoteling customs. Until the turn of the twentieth century, tipping in the United States was a social faux pas and generally considered rude, unbecoming, or even a form of bribery. At this time the cost of an American hotel room generally included meals as well, so by tipping a hotelier, a patron was essentially bribing them to prepare better accommodations or serve larger portions. Basically, it was the shadier ye olde version of “super size me!”
When American hotels began to adopt the European style of separating the prices of rooms and meals, the perception of tipping transformed. Rather than bribes, the added dough translated to a form of appreciation (similar to how we know it now) and was meant to supplement workers’ wages. The Prohibition era further cemented this trend by forcing hotels to convert old bars into “lunch rooms” where tips were handed out to servers. It also drove hotel managers to offer lower wages for their employees due to loss of income from alcohol sales—hence, the onus for waiters’ incomes had begun to rest on customers’ shoulders, a practice that continues to this day.
Within the last few decades, tipping has changed even further. Millennials in particular may have generated the first ripples of the modern tipping fatigue wave in response to the ways in which the 2008 Recession altered young people's relation to capital amid a troubling future of economic uncertainty. This uncertainty met the ambiguity of tipping culture head-on, as new service-focused technological enterprises began popping up on the App Store homepage like money-hungry gophers. Companies like Uber—catching wind of this changing outlook on tipping—did away with the whole shebang, advocating instead for equitable incomes for all their drivers (i.e. they wouldn’t have to rely on the fluctuating kindness of the strangers in their backseats). They removed the ambivalence of hidden car service fees that the taxi industry long maintained, so customers knew how much they were about to spend before even getting in the car.
However, competition from Lyft eventually drove Uber to add a tipping option in 2017 as a way of recruiting more and better drivers (and, potentially, to distract from a tumultuous year of public scandals). The ambiguity of to tip or not to tip was back, and while some argue that social etiquette should dictate that tipping Uber drivers is absolutely expected, others—in fact, 67% of riders—were not so convinced. Amid the wave of tech giants whittling their way into the service industry, the lines that had once so clearly governed the unofficial laws of tipping were blurring, even while the gig economy—the workers of which relied heavily on gratuity—was booming.
Then March 2020 happened. As the pandemic raged and forced those of us with consciences inside, there seemed to be a shift in the collective perception of service workers. InstaCart deliverers, ride-share drivers, waiters, and hair stylists were now—along with healthcare professionals—on the “front line” of the pandemic, a term evocative of the valiance (or misfortune, depending on your outlook) of those soldiers who storm the battlefield first. They were essential workers, and with that newfound concerted impression of their necessity came new forms of demonstrating our appreciation: some people stood on their rooftops and clapped (cringe) and others shelled out their coins.
And today? Well, the pandemic is in the past, of course! As the nation has re-opened, it seems we’ve ripped the word “essential” from our association with these individuals just as fast as some people ripped their masks off mid-flight a few weeks ago. The sentiment is bleeding over into how we tip as well. According to data from the financial services and digital payment company Square, while the median tip percentage for quick-service restaurants rose from 19.73% in February 2020 to 22.22% in April 2020, it has since declined to 18.57%. People felt compelled to show their appreciation for staffers handling their food when the lockdown was at its most intense. But as the restrictions have worn off, so has the social obligation to put our money where our mouths are.
In our oh-so-civilized society, there’s an adage along the lines of “if you can’t afford to tip your waiters at least fifteen percent when going out to eat, you can’t afford to go out to eat.” If you can’t get a mani-pedi or haircut or tattoo without that added fee, the same rules apply. If you can’t tip all the OnlyFans accounts you subscribe to, then—well, maybe that’s another problem you have to deal with altogether.
With the ostensive proliferation of iPad screens asking how much you’d like to tip at local shops, cafés, and other commercial enterprises, as well as an increase in reports of workers asking customers directly how much they’d like to tip (in circumstances that previously waded in no-tip-needed waters), the question of when to tip, where to tip, and how much to tip is growing grayer and grayer.
The staples, of course, remain. Leaving a tip of 15%–25% when dining in at a restaurant or ordering a cocktail at a bar is proper etiquette, even if service is subpar. In other words, don’t do what this TikToker did and leave zero tip for a waiter with the idea being to “let them do their job.” Without receiving any tips, waiters and other members of the tip-reliant class legally can make as little as $2.13 an hour, the federal minimum, in sixteen states. If you need further evidence of why not to be a tip-hoarder, that amounts to a salary of less than $4,500 a year for a full-time employee, enough for maybe two months’ rent of a standard New York studio apartment.
In other circumstances, however, tipping etiquette is less clear. With the advent of Square and other mobile payment systems banking on the concept of surprise “guilt tipping” customers into situations in which tipping is unexpectedly suggested, social pressure is the tool used to wedge open wallets. Is it easier to just tap one of the percentage options and skip the agonizing process of deciding whether or not a service is worth tipping while the server watches you perform your mental gymnastics? Square would like you to believe so.
But there’s an unseemly pattern attached to the locations and types of businesses in which this option is often presented. Between hip coffee shops and bougie retail chains, the businesses that can afford Square’s offerings are likely establishments catering to whiter, higher-income clientele. Whether it’s by brewing a cinnamon dolce macchiato or warming up the perfect artisanal doughnut, the employees performing the work are surely performing their work to the best of their abilities. But does that context necessitate the inclusion of an additional form of compensation, especially when these individuals are already being paid wages that don’t account for gratuity?
These questions and this technology that seeks to actively homogenize the circumstances in which tips are encouraged operate in tandem to remold the very notion of service, and this is where the culture of tippery gets slippery. As more companies adopt platforms like Square that offer customers the suggestion to tip upon checkout, who’s to say which arenas will be indoctrinated into Big Tip next? What about fast food chain workers? Or grocery store baggers? These individuals provide services just the same, whether it be by making us a meal or beverage or packaging our goods, and yet there are no social codes that prescribe that we tip them.
I say this not in a way meant to diminish the work these laborers perform or suggest they are undeserving of additional gratuity. On the contrary, I only mean to point out that the norms that determine where and when we tip demonstrate that not only is the current culture of tipping arbitrary, but it is also classist. More than half of fast-food workers are enrolled in some form of public benefits—that’s double the rate of Americans in the workforce as a whole. Whether it be through tips or increased salaries, additional income would surely help support the livelihoods of the workers most susceptible to poverty, bankruptcy, and even homelessness.
However, introducing more tipping norms should not be the solution. It’s easy to say that those who can afford to add a gratuity for a service well done should. After all, what’s an extra dollar added on to an order of curly fries to someone who takes home a six-figure salary? But at the same time, shouldn’t goods and services be priced transparently for all consumers, regardless of class or income? At its simplest, things should cost what they cost.
And for those of us who don’t take home hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but would also like to occasionally treat ourselves to a Starbucks holiday drink or potted succulent, it’s asinine to live in a culture in which we might feel guilty for being unable to provide a proper tip atop an already overpriced good. Square’s shame-industrial complex may prove irksome for the more well-off, but its smug ubiquity is downright cruel for those at the end of the wealth gap struggling to scrape by. Its chokehold needs to let up, and our attitudes toward tipping need to change right alongside its demise.
So how can we tip tipping culture back in the right direction? As with most things, the most obvious solution is also the most difficult. Large-scale reconstruction of the entire tipping system requires legislation that purports to raise and standardize minimum wages for service workers, such as the Raise the Wage Act of 2021. Only by setting a minimum wage that accurately adjusts for inflation ($15/hour is only the start) can we redistribute the responsibility of employees’ incomes back to the employer, thereby driving equity and relieving tipping fatigue and anxiety.
Even while some waiters and other service workers report that they prefer an economy that rewards their work through customers’ gratuity, this system ultimately has the potential to rob them of their rightfully earned compensation. The current tipping system places an unnecessary locus of power on the customer, who at the end of the purchase gets to decide how much to tip. This practice can lead to servers being forced to withstand abuse from customers and women and people of color often earning less gratuity than their white, male counterparts. While social norms and customs that affirm the “minimum of 15%” adage are powerful, they are not bound by law. Codifying a structure of stable wages for employees of commercial enterprises that currently rely on tips would amend that loophole.
In the meantime, tipping culture unfortunately isn’t going away anytime soon in America. It’s entrenched in the fabric of our nation, firmly inscribed within the mighty pillars of vainglorious individualism and meritocracy that comprise our backward attitudes toward capital. For now, all we can do is continue to support our local businesses and service workers with whatever gratuity we deem appropriate (and can afford) while advocating for legislation that raises the minimum wage and accelerates fair and equitable compensation for the working class.
But if our attitudes toward tipping could have changed so drastically just over a century ago, who’s to say another major switch couldn’t come to fruition in our lifetimes? After all, the spread of tipping fatigue might not invoke further widening of the wealth gap, as some fret. It may just tip us closer to widespread equality.