No Tipping is one of the main reasons I liked Uber; no cash, no pressure, you just get out of the car and walk away with everyone happy. I would rather pay more for each fare and have Uber aggressively prohibit tipping. I suspect many people feel the same way and if Uber doesn't get it under control, it could be the biggest challenge they face.
As a non-American this is how I feel about tipping in general.
It's so much easier to just pay people a decent wage, include it in the cost of things and then not have the pressure of tipping.
That, and tipping is akin to having paid servants. i.e. "if you do a good job, and if I feel like it, I might give you some of my wad of cash. Or not, sucker.".
(Of course, I do tip because the servers rely on it, I just don't like it)
Exactly. As a non-American tipping seems like such a crappy concept to me.
Why should service providers be subject to arbitrary decisions of random customers?
A service has a price. Either it is provided adequately and you are happy with it in which case you pay the full damn price for it and move on with your life.
Or there's a specific problem in which case you can complain specifically and ask for a discount or refund/partial refund.
From a business perspective tipping can also be seen as an admission of failure and weakness. In the sense that the business is admitting that the quality of the service is so variable that it calls for a variable judgement of its value. Like maybe you get a crappy waiter and you don't tip, maybe you get an excellent one and now you must leave a good tip.
It is also "lazy" because it dumps the responsibility to the consumer. "Just judge how well we do and tip accordingly".
Instead as a consumer I want to have certainty and confidence that a given service provided by a business has a predictable and consistent level of quality.
And also as a consumer I want the employees to not be subject to my arbitrary personal judgement on a day to day basis. If there's a particular problem I may complain, otherwise just move on with your life.
It's frustrating because everyone has different concepts of what a "good" tip is as well. I tip well now but it's mostly because I'm overcompensating for years of under tipping after getting advice from high school friends or cheap adults. However it's often just not clear enough what to give.
the percentage method is bad in my opinion. the most expensive cuisine typically hire more affluent staff and pay them more to begin with.
Personally I go with a $5 minimum, more if I am a bother or there for over an hour. Though, this makes me look like a jerk when people drag me to fancy restaurants, and a saint at coffee/fast food places.
Ultimately it doesn't matter how you tip unless you frequent the restaurant. Your service will be a result of the people who looked you and came in before.
So white, wealthy looking people will generally get better service by virtue of being white and wealthy looking. Doesn't matter if they skimp on the tip.
As a non American, for jobs where the service makes a significant difference, a service charge or tips seems reasonable.
I live in London. I generally pay the service charge. Once out of every hundred times I eat out, I ask them to remove the service charge as I spent ten minutes trying to get someone's attention to order, rather than talk to my dining companions.
Service doesn't make a huge different for transport though. It's either on time, clean, and takes proper route or not.
pro tip: in london the service charge rarely goes to staff. service charge is not the same thing as a tip, which should usually be cash if you wish it to go to the waiter.
I don't know that to be generally true based on both my experience in the industry and those people I know still in it.
There were certainly places I worked where any credit card tips were declared for tax whilst cash tips weren't. This is one reason why staff preferred cash. Similarly in some places cash was distributed by shift whereas cards were distributed monthly based on hours worked.
As a final point, the idea of tipping the person directly is not consistent with anywhere i've ever worked. Even when distributing at the end of a shift, everyone would have put tips in the jar to be shared between staff.
> This is one reason why staff preferred cash. Similarly in some places cash was distributed by shift whereas cards were distributed monthly based on hours worked.
Let's call a spade a spade. It's for tax evasion purposes. That's the reason that the IRS assumes that you make 15% tips on everything if you're a server. (Otherwise people would never report it and to caught the large amount would never be recovered)
You can do that but it's a faff. I often think I should but don't get around to it. You are not legally obliged to pay the service charge in the UK at any rate.
London here; You can ask, but on several occasions I've had them indicate they're not allowed to answer the question.
Absolutely bullshit behaviour from an employer and in which case I'll insist it's removed and give the waiter/waitress cash.
> for jobs where the service makes a significant difference, a service charge or tips seems reasonable.
I'm skeptical of even that. There are lots of jobs with a large range of quality in industries with no tipping, and the market ends up working fine as a way for the best to rise to the top. You wouldn't tip your lawyer or a freelance developer.
When you think about it a bit more it doesn't actually seem reasonable.
What shop do you know of where they'll let you choose food, take a bite and then pay what you feel it's worth? Hmm, this donut's a bit stale, I'm not prepared to pay anything for it thanks Mr.Tesco.
Sometimes I buy fruit and it goes bad too fast. That's life. Sometimes you get a shitty waiter, that's life, but now you get to unilaterally decide you'll get that service for free? Because there's a significant minority of people who will always find fault just so that they don't have to pay.
> Hmm, this donut's a bit stale, I'm not prepared to pay anything for it thanks Mr.Tesco.
You go to the customer service desk, say "This doughnut is stale" show your receipt along with the partly eaten doughnut, then get a full refund or exchange as you prefer.
If you're doing it daily the rules will change. :)
When you eat out and get shit food, there is a bone or something in your food, you usually can just tell them and they'll do something so you don't pay the full amount, it's common courtesy.
Your examples are not very good. Most grocery stores will let you take back bad produce within a reasonable amount of time.
I've gotten burned a few times when buying bags of things like potatoes and onions and not seeing a bad one in the middle that had started to infect the others. Never had a problem returning. Aldi even gives money back plus a new item
Tipping also seems to lead into a more in-your-face service. A waiter might find tips go up if he/she draws attention to her work, starts conversations and offers all kinds of extras. In the end you can't argue that the service wasn't outstanding, but life would have been better for everyone involved if he/she just put the food on the table.
It is not. The greed of the consumer prevents raising prices. Not advertising the true price is the new scheme.
Tipping hides the true cost of services by forcing the customer's guilt on the ability of the employee to make a worthwhile wage.
No tipping restaurants have to have higher prices and the hyper-price-conscious consumer will defer to the cheaper ones. You could make a quality argument, but on equal terms the no tipping restaurant will lose. It is because it has not hidden its true cost of goods and services like the tipping resultants.
Yes, it can be but sales tax is confusing in the US due to city tax, local tax (MTA in NYC, for example), county tax, state tax, etc. They are always changing too, amounts and types of items taxed. Your Big Mac costs 100s of different prices across the country. So its often easier and cheaper to just advertise the pre-tax amount (especially in national ads) and program the register to handle tax.
But you are right, it is also preferred to hide some of the costs. But, sometimes you get a place that includes taxes on the price. Very refreshing.
As an American living in China, I feel the same way. I also use Didi almost every day. It's so easy to pay too (using WeChat, AliPay, etc.), and there's no expectation of tipping. Kind of like a "black box" view of the payment process. It's even better than using regular taxis from the standpoint of giving feedback too. If I took a regular taxi without using Didi, there's almost no way of leaving feedback, other than calling the taxi company, which wouldn't do much. At least with the app, I might get a coupon to use on a future ride.
>It's so much easier to just pay people a decent wage, include it in the cost of things and then not have the pressure of tipping.
Yea but customers don't get to decide how much employees are paid.
What would really happen is that people who normally get tips would just lose income. Their pay will probably go up, but not enough to cover it. Waitresses make much more than regular unskilled labors.
Customers lose because we end up paying more, but it's at least going to a real person working for a living.
> What would really happen is that people who normally get tips would just lose income. Their pay will probably go up, but not enough to cover it. Waitresses make much more than regular unskilled labors.
This is very true. My sister and I waited tables in college and each averaged $20-$25/hour in just tips. Adding on the ~$5 wage, we each made enough to graduate with no debt (we both went to a state university). We did not work at very high end restaurants (we each worked at the same two at the same time).
If our employers decided to go no-tip, we would have very quickly quit and found new positions, because there's no way our employers would have paid waitstaff $20+/hr. No-tip would be a pay decrease for most of the waitstaff I've known.
With 100% of the amount over the minimum ("the bill") going to the staff, not the ownership.
There's sharp disagreement among the patrons on whether to keep servers in rags or riches. Some of this comes down whether the particular customer sees the restaurant as 'good for a plate food' versus 'a part of the neightborhhod'. We allow people the option of choosing which they see it as.
In the EU, tipping is half legal -- technically it should be declared income and pay all income+social taxes ++ VAT(!) as the tip is not a direct salary but a service (and hence subject of VAT)
This is not true in every EU member state. For example, in the UK, tips paid in cash to wait staff are subject to income tax, but are NOT subject to either National Insurance (the UK's term for what you call 'social taxes') nor to VAT.
nope, I have been developer for decades... just get to know stuff like that. Also tipping is usually cash (if it goes through a POS terminal, likely VAT would be paid -- the extra money is likely handed in cash by the employer, bypassing the law)
What do you mean that it's "much easier to just pay people a decent wage"? Do you mean that it's much easier to convince companies to pay their employees more than they have to, or that it's much easier to pass higher minimum wage laws?
Neither of these seem easier than "convince the public to toss in a few extra dollars when they use a lowly paid service".
I see "make sure that all working people are paid fairly" as a very difficult problem, and tipping as a moderately effective hack that's easier to implement than the cleaner fix of higher minimum wage of basic income.
Keep in mind that in both US and Canada there's a different (and lower) minimum wage for 'tipped workers'.
US Federal law states minimum wage is only $2.13/hr for someone that makes $30/month in tips (instead of normal minimum $7.25) [1]. If they don't make $30 in tips the employer must make up the difference.
At 30 hours/week (and 4.3 weeks/month), $30/month works out to $0.23/hr, so the effective minimum wage is still only $2.36/hr.
Some states are quite a bit higher (eg Hawaii is $7/hr), and in some (eg, Alaska, California) the minimum wage is the same regardless of tips.
You are grossly misrepresenting the situation and what your own link says. If wages + tips don't equal the normal minimum wage of $7.25, the employer is required to make up the difference.
Other countries have solved the problem. Also there's a lot of other instances where US impossible to crack problem is solved... Not meaning to bash, but it seems evident. Other cultures just aren't so much into cut-throat competition, it's just not that fun.
Do you have a source for that? I've generally heard that it has roots in Americans returning from Europe having acquired the practice[1].
>Lynn suggests that wealthy Americans traveling abroad to Europe witnessed tipping and brought the aristocratic custom back with them to “show off,” or prove their elevated education and class.
Reading up on it more, I guess its more accurate to say it was implemented post-slavery. It seems like it was a combination of what my source says and what yours says.
> Restaurants and rail operators, notably Pullman, embraced tipping primarily, Jayaraman says, because it enabled them to save money by hiring newly freed slaves to work for tips alone. Plenty of Americans frowned upon the practice, and a union-led movement begat bans on tipping in several states. The fervor spread to Europe, too, before fizzling in the United States—by 1926, the state tipping bans had been repealed.
Same here. That's the main advantage of the service--that you don't have to horse around with cash and tipping or fumbling around with a credit card in the back seat while the driver waits. If they ever added the expectation of tipping, I would drop them like a bad habit. The fares are super reasonable and I would be more than happy to pay even a little more if it meant not getting guilt tripped over a tip. Tipping in America is total bonkers and I support any effort to replace every instance of it with 1. me paying the actual advertised price for something and 2. companies paying service workers a fair wage.
There's in app-tipping in lyft. The driver doesn't know whether you've tipped them or not when they rate their experience with you. Moreover, it's relatively difficult for the driver to disentangle who tipped them what from their daily report at the end of the day[0]. So you really can pay based on what your judgement of their service level is.
[0] I did once got into a very friendly chat with the "owner of the world's second tallest yacht" (checked it on wikipedia; totally legit) and was memorable enough that I was curious if he tipped. He didn't.
It's completely logical. If you value a silent car ride, or more significantly, if you value not being asked for money by someone who has you trapped in the back seat of their car and whom you are trusting to get you to your destination, then you would pay more up front for a ride free of hustle for a tip.
Is the back seat the de facto protocol? I always sat in the front. It somehow feels more friendly and personal. But in a taxi, I'll usually sit in the back.
Lyft started out with sitting in the front as the standard protocol (which is no longer the case), but AFAIK UberX has always been back-seat & taxi-like.
I moved coasts and city sizes, riding uberX a lot in both. East coast big city was strictly back seat. Continued the practice west coast smaller town and had a couple drivers mention it was unusual when I asked.
After I switched to Lyft in the wake of the Susan Fowler thing, I discovered that they give you the option to tip. It made me realize that the pain point of tipping is actually feeling pressured to tip the moment the service ends. With the Lyft app I can tip (or not) later on, and I almost always do. It's not tipping that I don't like; in fact I really like tipping. With their strict no-tipping policy, it turns out that Uber missed the mark here, at least for me.
With optional after-the-fact tipping, I'd still be concerned whether or not the fact you tipped is tracked. When you tip, is the driver individually informed? The next time you get the same driver, are they in a position to remember that you were a bad tipper on the last trip? Even if the driver isn't made aware of your individual tipping history, surely the company as a whole is tracking this information and building a (negative) profile for you. Do they charge you more on subsequent rides to compensate for your perceived poor history?
This is the problem with tipping - there is ALWAYS room for abuse. I don't understand why you'd be at ease for not being "put on the spot" to tip, when the driver or company still knows afterwards. The facts haven't changed; they still know whether you tip, and any "consequences" for not tipping will still be in play. You're playing a mind game with yourself if you think that adding a few hours of buffer between service and tip is any different than tipping on the spot.
This is why, all employees - regardless of the company and its industry - should not be tipped. Pay your staff a proper wage, and fire people who do not provide good service. The very concept of tipping is ridiculous. It serves no other reason than to satisfy employers' lowballing of wage, while inducing anxiety to their customers.
Some answers (specifically, addressing the situation with Lyft):
> When you tip, is the driver individually informed?
No, not directly. Yes, indirectly. You get a ride summary at the end of the day. Backtracking who tipped what takes effort. Even so, sometimes people tip when they open their app back up (or through the email) which can present a lag... I've gotten "x tip from day y" additions to my ride summary days or even weeks later.
Bottom line: If you have 15-20 rides a day you're not going to check unless it was memorable. Over the course of a year and half I checked maybe five times. Once, when I drove the guy who owned the world's second tallest yacht. Another time, when I drove a group of stanford students from north beach back to campus. One of the passengers threw up in the car four times (but I was super prepared with emesis bags), so I saved the guy who ordered the lyft the $150 cleanup fee. He tipped me $20.
Honestly, a perceptive driver will be able to tell if you tip within the first few moments of your entering the car. There are socioeconomic trends. I once picked up a valet at a fancy restaurant in San Diego. We chatted about who tips and who doesn't. Soccer moms in their minivans tip. Tesla and Porche drivers almost never tip. Are you picking up someone working in the service industry? They're almost guaranteed tippers. Is someone a lyft/uber driver? Almost guaranteed to tip too.
> The next time you get the same driver, are they in a position to remember that you were a bad tipper on the last trip?
Yes, but it's unrealistic. Over the course of a year and a half approximately 10,000 distinct people rode in my car. Only about 10-15% of my rides had a tip. Do you think I knew exactly which 10% were tippers?
> Even if the driver isn't made aware of your individual tipping history, surely the company as a whole is tracking this information and building a (negative) profile for you. Do they charge you more on subsequent rides to compensate for your perceived poor history?
or it could be a means to communally help each other. not applicable in the case of lyft, but for cash tips, it has the added benefit for being stealthily tax free (except for waitstaff). Each dollar that goes horizontally between the "lower class" gets to work one step harder within the "lower class" to go before being sucked away by the wealthy.
> Each dollar that goes horizontally between the "lower class" gets to work one step harder within the "lower class" to go before being sucked away by the wealthy
This is an interesting point, and reminds me in a way of the Bristol Pound (and other "community currencies") which are essentially the same as regular Pounds Sterling, but are only accepted by locally-owned businesses within a local geographical area (more specifically: anyone can accept them, but only locals can ever exchange them back to Pounds Sterling, at a pegged 1:1 rate). Local branches of mutli-national corporations, and public (listed) companies, cannot participate.
Local residents can open an account in Bristol Pounds, and pay their local taxes in them. Some locals can be paid their salary in them.
The stated goal (and this has apparently worked quite well) is a localised economic stimulus, by encouraging residents to spend at local small businesses, and those businesses in turn to seek local suppliers, etc. This sees the money doing a few more rounds locally before being sucked away to a multinational.
Your comment is underrated. When rich people are not tipping, and only poor people who are in a position to understand what living off of tips means does such, something is wrong. The process of tipping is practically equivalent to playing the lottery - a huge majority of people who buy lottery tickets are poor or part of the lowest segment of the middle class.
Frankly, I just don't understand tipping. I still tip better than most people (20-30%) because I can afford it and know that their employer is fucking them over big time. Were I a millionaire, I'd probably stop tipping altogether as a sign of protest. It's strange how we justify either side of the coin.
You're on to something here. Consequently, it seems to be in the best interest of the affluent class to maintain the status quo, as it supports and furthers the divide.
Though I disagree with the basic premise of your argument--I've never once gotten the same driver, and doubt that Lyft is building a tipping profile of me for the purpose of sharing it with them--I totally, completely agree that tipping should be replaced by living wages for service workers. But that's just not the world in which we currently live. Until such time as it is, I'm more than happy to spend a little extra since the marginal utility of my $5 Lyft tip is, presumably, way higher for the driver than it is for me.
I'd assume Lyft has the information as to who you tipped and how much. However, my understanding is that the driver does not know which individual tipped them (and rates the passenger lacking this information). The driver's tips are summed up in a daily report making it difficult to know who tipped and how much
That's exactly how it should be designed in my opinion. If the driver is doing a good job, his total tips will go up. No point in haggling with individual customers.
Agreed. Used Uber for what? 2 years now? Just tried Lyft after all the crap about Uber and I liked it. I normally do tip the Uber driver for a long ride (I live in NorCal an my house is a pain to get to). Moving on to Lyft. I like the fact I can tip in the app.
Hmm, I'm normally against tipping, but now I'm wondering if this might be a solution to the problems with 5-star rating systems.
I've often thought that it would be better to have a simple thumb up/down for quality control and then a separate above-and-beyond option for recognising exceptional service, but that requires friction on the latter option to make it work properly. Initially I was thinking just requiring a minimum comment length would work, but having to tip e.g. $1 might be a good alternative to that.
I often thought that the system should be "thumbs down"/"neutral"/"thumbs up" and if you give a thumbs up it prompts to tip, if you give a "thumbs down" it doesn't let you clear out unless you give at least one reason.
On the other hand even with the uneven distribution of ratings, now median driver is of lower quality, you can really tell the difference between a 5.0 (really 4.95+ driver) and 4.8 driver; and a 4.8 driver and a 4.5-4.6 driver. I was a perfect 5.0 (100 consecutive perfect ratings) only twice during my career as a driver, but damn it felt good. Usually I hovered around 4.92-4.97, which can look like a 5.0 to the passenger.
There is an interesting feedback effect that a lot of drivers don't understand. If a passenger sees that your rating is lower, then they will be more in tuned to the defects in the experience you deliver; If they see that your rating is higher, they will overlook some of the problems. Moreover, if you see that your rating is low, you're more likely to have a generally negative disposition and project an attitude that is going to make it harder to get back up there. Psychological management is a key part of the driver experience. I once counseled a young driver who was distraught that he was a 4.6 average driver, leading to a generally negative attitude to his passengers (and probably some good passengers saw his score and cancelled on him too) and I told him that he needed to either break out of a negative cycle or quit driving.
That's honestly why I continue to use Uber despite all the negative press. They continue to hold the line against the excessive tipping culture in America and I want to support them for refusing to give in to pressure to add a tipping option to the app.
Any driver who aggressively solicits for tips automatically gets a low rating and a note from me.
"hold the line against the excessive tipping culture " you mean screwing over some poor minimum wage worker and the IRS (which when it comes down to it is you)
+1. I use Uber over Lyft right now because I prefer a UX as close to "type destination, arrive, done" as possible, which Lyft's whole tipping deal needlessly impairs.
If Uber is going to implicitly make tipping a requirement to not feel like a jerk (as with Lyft), but without copying Lyft's ability to tip from the app, suddenly Lyft looks a lot less unattractive by comparison. Now that I know this is starting to become a concern at all, I would switch to Lyft immediately if they just added a setting for a default auto-tip that would be factored into fare estimates.
I really don't understand this aggressive, cutthroat effort to compete on price at the expense of their drivers; I can't be in the minority in considering price a secondary concern to the overall UX, so long as it isn't unreasonably inflated like taxi fares. Is it possible that the underlying model of ridesharing isn't actually particularly more efficient than the taxi industry, and that Uber/Lyft rates will naturally converge with taxi rates over time as they gradually stop subsidising rides and/or underpaying drivers?
> I prefer a UX as close to "type destination, arrive, done" as possible, which Lyft's whole tipping deal needlessly impairs.
I wonder if you used Lyft a long time ago, because I don't even notice the tip screen until next day sometimes. When I leave the car, my phone is in my pocket, or I'm already doing something else on it, so I do not see the tip screen until I happen to open the app next time. Dismissing the tip screen is a single tap with or without leaving a tip, so it's never been a usability concern for me.
That sounds like how Lyft was when I last used it, but doesn't contradict what I meant.
I'd rather take care of the tip right away (or as soon as I have a chance) than have to remember to do it well after the fact, but in either case I'd much prefer to not have to remember it at all and just be done with the whole thing the second I step out the car. (There's also the rating thing with both Uber and Lyft, but at least that's faster and I wouldn't really feel bad if I were to forget about it.)
That, and as I sort of implied earlier the honesty/inclusiveness of the fare estimates is a concern, in that whereas a $10 estimate in Uber means exactly what it says with Lyft I have to remember to do some additional math on top of that.
(These probably sound like the epitome of "first world problems"; I'm not saying that Lyft isn't good, or even that it's dramatically worse than Uber for me — just that their competitive landscape is such that even minor usability issues like these are currently costing them my business.)
Huh. I use Flywheel, and it has tipping with a default tip. You can change it during or at the end of the ride if you want, but if you do nothing, it sticks with whatever you picked as the default. I'm surprised Lyft doesn't do that.
I'm always a little miffed at "default" tipping (e.g. Doordash). I feel that if I don't tip, my driver may be less than courteous. I have no idea if they know they're being tipped or not.
I like Lyft's model where the driver doesn't know how much you tipped, but knows how much in tips he gets at the end of the day in aggregate... it reinforces positive service while removing any friction to tip or not.
With Flywheel, you set the default, and have the option to override at the end of each ride. That seems like a good arrangement to me, as it matches how I think of it, and keeps me from accidentally forgetting.
I deleted my Uber account over all the bad press and a few bad rides last couple months. There's definitely a trend for the drivers to be either really really bad at driving, or super aggressive with tips.
Do drivers really expect people using a cashless system to... carry cash? I actually had one driver accepts tips using stripe.
Taxi drivers in my city are notorious for, at least in my experience, attempting to swipe your credit card with Stripe on their personal cell phones. Not just for the tip, but for the entire fare. They openly commit fraud against their company by trying to steal the fare for themselves without reporting it to their company.
I've refused to pay for, and reported to their company, 4 separate drivers in the past 2 years for this practice. I have to assume that the companies somehow don't care that their drivers are going rogue, or else this wouldn't be happening so frequently. Where is the threat of dismissal, or even better, prosecution? Same thing goes for unlicensed taxi drivers moonlighting with a friend's car - taxi drivers here are required to hang their licensed ID on the side window, and the frequency with which you find someone driving "off the books" is downright reprehensible.
The worst part is, I feel my personal safety is at risk every time I report these criminals. They are likely to know it was me, and they know where I live. It's irresponsible, potentially dangerous, and unacceptable to permit them to operate in this way.
Our taxi companies are hook, line, and sinker in the pockets of our government. We have a history of corruption here, and taxi companies are definitely part of the equation.
At least in SF, I'm pretty sure the standard deal is that the drivers pay for the cab regardless of what they get in fares. Cabs were a cash business for a hundred years, after all.
I think the deal with credit card machines in the cabs is that the cab companies see it as a revenue source. I know cab drivers grumble about the cost of using them. It makes sense to me that Stripe is cheaper for the cab drivers.
That's the standard arrangement in most cities in North America, not just SF. I don't think a driver processing a credit card with Square/Stripe is shady or fraudulent either. It might be against a given city's regulations, technically. But then those would be pretty messed up regulations.
>They are likely to know it was me, and they know where I live.
Never give your actual address. Pick a house number a few down. Especially if getting picked up to go to the airport. Some rogue/criminal taxi/uber/lyft drivers will ask questions about your trip to determine if your home will be vacant and for how long to pass the info onto someone else who will come by to burglarize your house.
Depends on the arrangement they have with the taxi company. If they're supposed to share a percentage of each fare with the company, then it may not be fraud in the strict legal sense, but they're certainly violating the contract they have with the taxi company.
I use Stripe for payment processing, and I'm pretty sure vendors don't get access to customer's credit card numbers. They might be able to attempt another transaction — which would be fraudulent — but you would get an email confirmation and could easily flag any such attempts. I agree that it is wrong of them to avoid regulatory or contractual obligations to use company payment processing, but they don't get your credit card number.
Why does it really matter if they use Stripe or the machine in the car, besides that it's technically against the law? If you're worried about fraud, okay, it's possible but pretty unlikely and generally if you notice anything you can dispute it with your credit card company. 7% adds up, since it's an extra 4% on top of the usual 3% fee when using services like Stripe, which is understandably hurting a taxi driver doubly since they already pay for their car lease per day regardless of the number of fares. Also take into consideration that while there are a lot of immigrant taxi drivers, many are also citizens and it's not simply immigrants that are going to do what you consider shady. If you're worried about fraud, put some notification of activity on your phone or email when a transaction runs and if you see something weird, report it. Don't be afraid of the boogeyman that doesn't even really exist.
Meh. It may be illegal, but it's one of those technical violations where the motivation really matters.
A cab driver using a much cheaper service vs. the rent-seeking credit card processing they are mandated by law to use? That's a morally correct action. The immoral action (imo) is to continue to feed into the fraud that you yourself identified earlier in the thread.
I have very little problem with a cab driver doing this, just as I have very little problem with you reporting it for the reasons you mention.
And having a rather interesting early start to my career - I assure you "native" citizens get away with this kind of crap all the time.
Where is "here" for you? As the other commenter said, at least in the bay area, drivers rent the cars for a day or a week then keep everything on top of what they pay to rent, Using Stripe wouldnt "screw" the taxi company I dont think.
You're stating that they're not guilty until caught in the act.
What percentage of the population do you think scrutinizes every credit card statement line-by-line? Many people would not notice an unauthorized charge on their card. It's merely a matter of scale: some people will notice a single unauthorized charge for $5, while others won't even notice $500. Credit card fraud is rampant, and any company that willingly allows its employees to get away with it should be shut down. My experience shows that my city's taxi companies consider credit card fraud as something that doesn't even register on their radar. Drivers that operate in this manner should be criminally charged. It's not just fraud to the taxi company - it is a criminal act of theft for the customers.
Innocent until proven guilty is a cornerstone of the US judiciary system. So yes, they aren't guilty until caught (proven) because their innocence is assumed otherwise.
Not for employment law in most cases (uk/US derived law) you can be fired collectively i.e. if 1 person in a group is skimming but you cant find which one you can fire every one
They still can do that. The only difference is that they would then sell the numbers to be used online, instead of running as fraudulent card-present transactions.
At least in Canada, portable card readers are the norm. Specifically to counter fraud, you no longer expect to hand your plastic over to an employee who brings it behind the bar. They come to you with a wireless machine, and you insert your own card. It blows my mind how the U.S. is 10-15 years behind the rest of us; the technology behind "debit cards" in the U.S. compared to that of Canada and Europe is almost laughable. The refusal to perform a one-time upgrade to new tech, while continuing to absorb the costs of rampant fraud is completely senseless.
>Not just for the tip, but for the entire fare. They openly commit fraud against their company by trying to steal the fare for themselves without reporting it to their company.
You think the company doesn't have access to the meter records for fares if keeping a percentage is part of the deal? If the driver keeps 100% of the cash, why pay 7% for a credit card?
I know in Chicago most of the drivers who rent their cab by the hour/day/week prefer to use square because the fees are lower and they get paid in a week or less, not the couple months the cab company takes to pay them, if they ever do.
Are you a taxi driver? You are being so apologetic towards a group of criminals, I have to assume you are one of them. Since when it is acceptable to ignore your employer's rules, to earn an extra 7%? Normal companies in any other industry would be be firing you on the spot, and probably seeing you in court, for this kind of bullshit. Truly moronic.
So it's okay to refuse to pay for a service that's already been rendered to you because they don't follow the law to the T and charge your card in a different way. Get off your moral high horse, pay for the cab fare, report the driver after, and report it to your credit card company. Unless you're a cop, you really aren't in a position to enforce a law and you're also breaking the law if you walk out of a cab without paying.
So it's okay to refuse to pay for a service that's already been rendered to you because they don't follow the law to the T and charge your card in a different way.
That seems entirely reasonable. If I were paying the bill in a restaurant and a member of staff insisted I paid using some personal transfer service, I'd probably refuse too unless I was able to confirm that it was legitimate.
you're also breaking the law if you walk out of a cab without paying.
Difficult to argue that's the case if no opportunity was offered to pay legitimately.
>> you're also breaking the law if you walk out of a cab without paying
How funny, that as I leave such a taxi, not one of these drivers have risen their voice about my refusal to pay. One of them tried to retract by pulling out the official keypad, and by then I was already exiting the car as he shrugged his indignation. They are the ones in the legal wrong, and they know it.
I wonder if this varies by region? I ride with uber quite a bit here in Los Angeles, and I have never once been asked for a tip. I wonder what makes it different?
Here in Salt Lake I have never been asked for a tip.
In general though, I've found Uber experiences to vary significantly by region. In Salt Lake, I usually sit in the front seat, drivers are chatty, and the whole thing feels like "someone giving you a ride". In NYC, by contrast, I mostly sit in the back (a lot of the time the driver will block off the front passenger seat), drivers don't tend to talk, and the whole thing feels like a cab ride.
In fact, I would guess that many Uber drivers in NYC are/were taxi drivers.
NYC requires Uber drivers to be licensed as "TLC" drivers (taxi and limousine commission) - so yeah, they are exclusively professional drivers who would usually normally be working for a car service.
I've never had a driver ask for a tip in the bay area. If one were to, I'd give a 1-star rating and write in "asked for tip" as the reason. If that's unacceptable behavior I'll stop using the service rather than join the under-the-table tipping game.
Maybe I just look too grumpy, but I use Uber fairly regularly on longer rides, and sometimes on shorter ones, and I've not once been asked for a tip in SF.
Sorry but your 10% number is just impossible to believe in San Francisco. I've ridden Uber multiple times weekly for years and managed a couple sales people who also used Uber under our business account (in aggregate several hundred rides) and I've never once heard of such a thing until just now reading this article.
Gender may play a role here. I (male), too, have never been solicited. My girlfriend uses uber much less frequently, but has had it happen a few times.
In Chicago it may not quite be 10%, but it's close. Both confirmed by my own experiences and a random office poll. General consensus is "it's getting bad fast".
I've stopped taking Uber for this reason for those "marginal" trips where I might be tempted for the convenience vs. public transit. I see tip begging no different than being asked for change on subway, and if I have to potentially deal with it either way I'll just take the cheaper option.
I've been using Uber (mostly UberX, after it was launched) in SF since mid-2012, and have easily taken at least 1000 rides. The closest I've ever had to a tip solicitation was one single ride when there was a (tasteful) tip jar on the front seat center console.
Only dozens of rides here but in half a dozen cities around the US and not one asked for a tip. I've seen the polite-ish tip jar once. I don't typically carry cash but if I did I would have thought about it.
I do feel the same way! But Uber's relentless fare-cutting has made it such a bad deal for drivers that I feel the awkwardness has come right back, since I'd pretty much have to tip in order to not feel like I'm taking advantage of the driver.
You're not taking advantage of the driver. Uber is. It's the same thing with restaurants - you're letting yourself be guilted into subsidizing a corporation's business strategy, with the justification that it's either you that gets screwed, or their employees.
That's why I always pay 15% tip at restaurants regardless of the service. I disagree with tipping (an after-the-fact unilateral contract), but we know that restaurants don't pay fair wages.
EDIT: Following some comments here, I feel I need to add that I'm in Canada where 15% is considered "normal".
There is universal agreement about tipping at restaurants. Tips of 15% (or 20%?) are definitely customary, expected, priced-in. People who don't leave tips after experiencing decent service are definitely not paying their fair share.
Uber traditionally operates on the service-included model. That was very well established before some drivers agitated for a change. Since then, Uber has adopted an inconsistent policy [https://help.uber.com/h/f7385bf5-1748-4fd0-a57f-3d9b62facc45]. In this condition, I don't believe users have any moral obligation to tip. Drivers should also have very wide expectations about whether or how much tip they will receive.
If drivers are unhappy with their Uber comp, they can drive for Lyft or on their own account or whatever. There is no need for riders to condescend to intervene in these labor disputes by bestowing tips, and in fact doing so may encourage the kind of abuse that inevitably follows the establishment of customary tipping (minimum wage exemptions and pressure for laborers to evade taxes).
> There is universal agreement about tipping at restaurants. Tips of 15% (or 20%?) are definitely customary, expected, priced-in. People who don't leave tips after experiencing decent service are definitely not paying their fair share.
Is this a joke? Not only is it not universal, it's not even customary. The agreement you have with the restaurant is this: you sit down, are served, eat food, and pay. Baseline service is free, that's what you're paying the restaurant for. If the person waiting on me has a problem with me not tipping, they're welcome to take their wage issue up with their employer. I can only say this as someone who supports fair wages for service industries though. I believe a lower minimum wage for restaurant/bar services is a problem. But absolutely under no circumstance will I provide a compulsory tip. It's not my job to pay the employees.
There is a secondary agreement you have with the waiting staff: if you go above and beyond your job description to provide excellent service, you may be rewarded as recognition. Even then, many countries believe that excellence to be part of the job, so tips are not accepted.
Tip if you're provided with above standard service, don't if you're not. What's hard about that?
This is thoroughly false. It is so customary in the US that it has been baked into the minimum wage laws: in general, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, but for waitstaff and some other "tipped" jobs, the minimum wage is less than a third of that, at $2.13. The whole system is completely appalling, but that doesn't change the fact that in a lot of places the waitstaff is effectively subcontracted out and paid for by the patrons rather than by the nominal employer.
Surprised this comment is 15 hours old and never got the "But they're legally required to! Complain to the Department of Labor and sue them!" response.
While I'm sure most restaurants stay legal, there's a non-zero number of restaurants with owners that don't make up the missing pay and let workers end up making less than minimum wage, but the workers don't complain because they're truly desperate for work, or their local government won't do anything about it.
Now I'm remembering the Amy's Baking Company episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where one of the owners, Samy, admitted that he takes all the tips his wait staff make, despite being illegal (Source: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.htm)
I'm sure you're right, because that's the general attitude they operate with in that industry, but I was a server for six years and most of my friends still are, and it's totally unheard of for a server to end the night below minimum wage. I've never known a server to come away with less than kitchen staff and the norm was much higher. A really bad night at a cheap buffet was 60 in five hours. If it was slower than that servers and kitchen staff would just be sent home.
They did at my crappy small chain (in a Southern state without as many worker protections). It was automatically done in their payroll software based on declared tips/hours (where most servers didn't declare cash tips and were thus more likely to make the non-server minimum wage).
Surely it is if $2.13/hour leaves enough left over to hire a lawyer, or the employee is confident that the payout will be greater than a decade of lost opportunities as "someone who sues their employer".
Maybe federally, but in Oregon, where I live, restaurant workers make at least state minimum wage ($9.75), and in Portland, the wage is going up to $15.
I feel a good first start would be to get rid of the tipped-job-exception from the Federal minimum wage law and set it a fixed minimum regardless of job classification.
> in general, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, but for waitstaff and some other "tipped" jobs, the minimum wage is less than a third of that, at $2.13.
In the United States, pay for tipped employees is regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which among other things requires that they always be paid a minimum wage.
If anyone is claiming that a particular restaurant violates the law by paying lower than minimum wage to their servers, then that's the problem right there, not anything to do with tipping or tipping culture. If anyone is not being paid minimum wages they are owed, the US Department of Labor will be happy to intervene:
A lot of waiters don't report because they can't afford to lose their job over the odd slow week where they're stiffed $20 and then get blacklisted at other restaurants. And no, that's not a lot of money to lose out on, but it adds up.
And yes, it's illegal to fire someone over reporting, but it happens all the time. And it takes time for a lawsuit to go through, so you've gotta find work somewhere else in the meantime. And now you have to also take time to sue your old company. When you're barely afloat, it's not worth rocking the boat because you might drown.
That's reality for a lot of people. You can't just say, "this is the law so it's not happening."
That's a good description of how some parts of the world work. It might even be a good description for how the US should work. It is not even remotely a good description of how the US does work.
Perhaps it's different where you live, but you may want to consider how not tipping will be perceived by those around you. Giving others the impression that you're selfish and lack empathy has very real costs, even though they may not be as immediately obvious as the cost of paying the tip.
Do you know anyone who actually works in food service? I do, and they'd be pissed if everyone skimped with a 15% tip. It's 20% for adequate service, 25% for excellent.
Yeah I do, and of course they claim everyone should give them more money. Since I frequently heard that the new standard is 20% I've reduced my tips to 10%, pretax. If a bill helpfully prints calculations and the lowest option is greater than 15% I will leave less than 10%.
Taxi drivers get $1 no matter the fare. The gall of that industry to even ask...
And even the slightest infraction of protocol and I leave 0.
I used to overtip all the time. I got absolutely nothing of value for doing it, so forget it.
I agree that 20% is the new normal. 10-15 years ago, it was 15% for adequate, 20% for excellent (that's my memory of major US cities on both coasts). Tip inflation is real.
Depends. 20-30% if you are dining solo and not drinking in a place which is normally couples and with some wine, seems fair, since what actually matters to the waiter is total tips at the end of the night. My check is probably $40 vs $120.
It seems customary enough in the US that in the movie Reservoir Dogs hardened criminals berated one of their own because he "didn't believe in tipping" the waitress. This brilliant scene is on Youtube, in case anyone needs Steve Buscemi's take on iLoch's comment as a relief from this subthread.
It's not universal, you'll hear a lot of arguments about it, everyone has different ideas. When I was growing up I was taught 10% was standard for restaurants. I don't know if its because my parents were cheap (probably not) or that poor people have a different idea about what's reasonable. Then when I got older I heard 15%. Now that I'm working a very well paid job people say 20% is "standard." Now in the last year I have been hearing rumbling that 20% is stingy and outdated.
I am started to feel very extorted by this so I've reduced my tips in response and reduced my frequency of going to establishments that guilt me into leaving tips.
(Usually if the food is over priced I don't bother with percentages.)
This. I feel compelled in restaurants to provide a 15%+ unless I got bad service. With kids (and fewer restaurant visits) it's easier to justify a substantive tip - the table is usually a mess at the end and we do request more attention from the wait staff.
I'm not patting myself on the back... I'm saying that I don't want to participate in the tipping system, but we know that waiters are not paid fairly. I see the 15% as the salary that is not, but should be, included in the menu.
The fact that you thought I was getting an ego boost from tipping is the reason tipping exist, giving people an illusion of power/status.
The implication is that 20% the widely accepted minimum "good tip" rate, and consistently tipping 15% is consistently being cheap. Especially when you're a tech worker FFS.
Let's break out of our echo chamber a bit. In the US, tipping isn't "paying more than required," it's basic manners. You can argue until you're blue in the face about how businesses are to blame, but the vast majority of society, who have no big beef with tipping culture, will find you cheap rather than discerning.
If 20% is the expected then they can price that into the food rather than this stupid charade where we don't know the price but are expected to know the price. 15% is perfectly fine.
Those are tip numbers reported by Square. Original reply was to comment about tipping at restaurants, not POS tips. I found 16.1% surprisingly high for Square tips, actually. But even then, 15% is below average.
Agreed; 15% here in Canada is considered normal/polite/nice, but I also believe our wages for service workers are higher. The USA "$2.13/hour for tipped worker" feels like both business AND government forcing you to pay employee wages...
Some people have been claiming that 20% is normal for the US. But many people believe 15%. There are even some people who claim that 25% should be the norm.
You can definitely get away with 15% at places where you don't regularly eat. I do 20% at regular places where the waiter will remember me for sure and I don't want them to get the idea that I don't like them.
Did you know that in most states wait staff can be paid as low as $3 per hour, under the assumption that tips will bring them up above minimum wage? The law literally assumes that customers will tip them. It's not just a nice custom, it is fully expected in the transaction.
This is called paying them, and occurs even in the absense of tips. Tips give people the second option of not subsidizing the corporation; were tips removed, everyone would be forced to subsidize equally. This is to the business' disadvantage only because some people are willing to pay more when it is in the form of a tip then the corporation could ask the rest of their market to pay.
You think of Uber as the employer, and yourself as a mere customer, but it is just as apt to think of yourself as the employer and the driver as your employee. If we do so, the money Uber gives the driver, as well as any tips you provide, become the employee's wage. From here we see you are paying them an unlivable wage, and should be scolded the same as any employer doing the same.
Tipping is actually to nobody's advantage. It's inconvenient for the customer, sets incentives for the waiter that aren't always in line with what's best for the restaurant as a whole and introduce unpredictability for the wait staff.
You don't get to set the minimum wage, and perhaps have difficulty determining the precise wage without tips, but tips allow you to choose the maximum wage. If you knew $5 of what you paid Uber would go towards the driver for a 20 minute ride, that they had to spend a dollar of that on gasoline, and perhaps that they would need an extra 10 minutes to get home, you could estimate they earned $8 an hour. If you deemed this too small, you could tip them $2 to bring it up to $12 an hour.
Naturally, without everyone doing the same, they would not notice the effect. However this does not constitute justification for not doing your part.
Uber should pay it, yes, but they aren't. Further, not paying it is unlikely to make them go under - in fact the reverse. Charging more, or giving more to the drivers, will take away from their profits. Conversely, not paying their drivers enough will at worst cost them drivers moving to Lyft. Until this is a problem, they won't change.
The only parties that take advantage of the driver are Uber and yourself; if Uber is unwilling to take up the mantle of proper pay then the responsibility falls on you. The question becomes: does the driver have a right to be payed properly? Or, in other words, if the driver is willing to work for a lower pay, do you have a responsibility to pay them more? Some would argue that it's a free market, and that if they don't like the pay, they should find a different job. If you believe in a minimum wage however, you should make sure that all those under your service recieve a reasonable wage.
I stopped using Uber and switched to lyft exactly because Uber doesn't allow in app tipping. The problem is you aren't paying more for each fare to avoid tipping Uber is just using it's duoploy pricing power to put the squeeze on drivers.
I try to upvote rather than +1, but chiming in to point out how wrong the parent comment is assuming they shouldn't tip.
Of course, scrolling down the thread just shows that waaay too many HNers live in their own bubble pretending to be Mr. Pink with their mightier-than-thousplaining that justifies their miserliness.
No matter how disruptive moving livery to cashless may have been, the truth remains: Uber's current business model is classic leveraging of unorganized labor in order to take advantage of a race to the bottom among drivers. Of course, this wouldn't be sustainable for a second absent Valley VC's willingness to subsidize this mirage until customers are hooked, regulators are left feckless, and then like clockwork, rates are raised with none for the drivers.
It'd be unethical, absent this sort of business being an accepted part of the marketplace. It's called hospitality, and it is driven by tipping. There's absolutely nothing new or justifiable about the type of thinking on this thread. Pool/Line are down to $2.50 for 15-20 minute rides. If you enjoy bragging about avoiding the social contract inherent in tipping economies, you are no different than Susan Fowler's HR encounters: looking the other way as Kalanick rips off those whose livelihood he actively suppresses.
> how wrong the parent comment is assuming they shouldn't tip
Wait, so you are saying I should start a charity compensating those poor souls who are getting tortured by Kalanick out of my own pocket? The contract for _this_ service is literally "no tip expected or required". We're not in Roman slavery times, if the drivers can't sustain working for Uber, maybe they can find something else to do in this currently great economy of ours - most of those who I talked to are new to Ubering anyway. They are not like, say, teachers who get career training to do specialized and meaningful work, the drivers utilize the most common skill to take advantage of a commercial opportunity. If this commercial opportunity is not viable in their situation, how is that my fault?
Tell that to Europe, or Japan. Tipping a Tokyo taxi driver would be an extreme insult. Or I should say trying to tip, they arent going to let you leave the cab without exact change to the Yen.
Tipping is in no way necessary to ensure good service -- a fair wage is.
Your fare for Pool/Line have low correlation to the driver's revenue. Especially if you shared the ride with another fare.
The driver gets paid for distance from the first pickup to the last dropoff. If an extra fare hops in and out along the way, that's almost zero extra revenue for the driver. Thus, if you're taking a popular route, the app can charge you very little and still turn a profit.
If uber implements tipping, it might be exploitable by the drivers e.g you don't tip me ill give you low rating kind of thing.
There is an issue where drivers supposedly make little money, but thats up for the company to solve.
Personally I use uber quite a lot in London, and I am asking most uber drivers on how they find the job etc. The vast majority of them reply that they can work whenever they want and its flexible so they like it. On the money side of things they claim that if you work properly and don't rent a car, you could be making around £2-3k a month, which is above the minimum salary in the UK and London.
So I think uber drivers are mostly unhappy that they are under self-employment instead of fully employed by Uber etc. Although I can't see a company that would give you the flexibility to work as much as you want and when you want and having to pay for your holidays etc. Its more of an issue of the Gov fixing up some self-employment rights rather than uber itself (my opinion).
I'm surprised when I hear this, that tipping is so abhorrent that instead of using a service that, while maybe not perfect, is better and doesn't have significant problems within the company (e.g. sexual harassment) and the with treatment of their drivers, amongst other things, the person chooses to stick with Uber. Can someone explain this to me? What's wrong with the Lyft system where tipping is optionally given at the end of the trip, within the app. This seems that it removes the two majors issues with not tipping within Uber: 1) it's optional, and even if it isn't you can simply leave the car and deal with it later, saving you time; and, 2) you're not worried about your rating within the app depending on if you gave a tip or big enough tip.
Edit: I'm asking seriously, why is not tipping a justification for keeping Uber? Tipping sucks, sure, but it's part of a lot of service jobs in the states that you just accept.
> Tipping sucks, sure, but it's part of a lot of service jobs in the states that you just accept.
I don't think most people "just" accept it. I think they accept it, with extreme reservations, often with a sense of anxiety around social pressure & guilt. So I think you underestimate how much sway a service that doesn't expect/require tips might have over one that does.
Having said, that, for me, it's a combination of things. I actually don't object to Lyft's tipping culture (and like you point out, tipping is implemented as close to perfectly as possible on their platform). I use Lyft when it seems to make sense (and tip, often ~20% for shorter rides), but often I find myself seeing a 6 minute estimated wait from Lyft while Uber is saying 2 minutes. I tend to walk a lot when I can, so most of the time I use Uber/Lyft when I'm running late or don't have the time to walk, so 2 vs. 6 actually matters. Or I request a Lyft, get matched with a driver, and see an estimate for a 3 minute arrival, which stays saying "3 minutes" for 10 minutes before I cancel and go back to Uber, and a car arrives to pick me up 2 minutes later. Or there was the time where Android Pay just stopped working in the Lyft app for two weeks.
I'm really unhappy with Uber's behavior as a company (and use it less where practical), but they just offer a better product, regardless of their stance on tipping.
As a driver for Lyft who is running a startup, every penny counts to make expensive Bay Area rent. Granted, most people don't tip unless it is an airport run. I would like you to put yourself in my shoes or even someone who has children to feed and between jobs. I don't drive for Uber for a reason. Lyft legitimately cares about their drivers' well being. To you a dollar or two does not matter, but for me a good day in tips means an extra hour of time to work on my startup.
But isn't that covered in the "willing to pay more for the service" bucket? I find tipping awkward to the point of being willing to pay more for alternatives that bundle an otherwise expected tip into the service's initial pricing.
As a driver, sometimes you need to go the extra mile (no pun intended). There are times I need to help passengers carry things, go through drive throughs, catch trains using offensive driving, stopping for drunk people to puke and even serving as a makeshift therapist. The option is there, obviously I don't expect a tip for a 5 minute ride.
This is exactly why I enjoy Lyft's option for tipping. Tipping is awkward if I have to fumble for cash and stuff it in the driver's hands. It's not awkward if I can just press a button and charge it to my credit card.
Sorry to single you out specifically, but I've seen people put themselves in dire situations for the sake of "doing a startup," and it always makes me cringe.
If you're struggling to make rent, maybe you should consider doing something like Upwork or Gigster then? Or even a full time job?
Either your startup is succeeding: you've raised enough venture capital to support yourself, or you're making enough revenue to be ramen profitable (I didn't quite interpret your post that way, though).
Or you are wasting time and energy on something that just isn't going anywhere where you should be making it a fun side project alongside a full time job instead of a VERY risky 10:1 all-in bet.
Most people besides the local SF Peter Pan Syndrome millennial dreamer crowd here would consider it to be very irresponsible to gamble away your time and savings on a stagnant business like that.
There's also plenty of great places to start a business that aren't the Bay Area and actually have reasonable costs of living, friendlier regulations, and less taxes (shout out to Pittsburgh!). I'd stay off the hive mind hamster wheel here that you HAVE to be in the most expensive place to live on the planet, or else you're living in Siberia (to borrow the literal smug wording of a Google employee friend justifying their renting at age 35 situation).
I was going to type 10% of this, but you nailed it perfectly. "I'm doing a startup" is often a trap that allows you to justify not properly supporting yourself.
Get a job, do it well, and make your startup work in the extra hours. If you can't find the time, you're not meant to be starting anything up.
By getting a job, it will interfere with what I need to do. I make my own hours, which is very important. I do 40 hrs driving and 40 hrs on my company every week. Right now I am at the tail end of the stretch and I am already starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (funding).
"Honey Badger does not give a sh*t, if it's hungry, it's hungry"
But that's the thing, though: unlike many Uber/Lyft drivers, you have chosen to put yourself into this situation. The onus is on you to figure out how to support yourself while you have no income working on your startup, not on the random people who ride in your car while you're driving for Lyft.
True, I chose to put myself in this situation. My point is that tipping should be an option, but not mandatory. What the Uber drivers are doing in the article is highly unethical. The irony of it is I am building a financial planning platform for low-mid income individuals and families. I have spent years in the financial industry making good money, now I am turning into my own guinea pig. The last few months have been a healthy wake up call for me on how most people live in this country. Wall Street and Silicon Valley are sooooooo out of touch with reality. That one or two dollars means almost nothing to you, but for most people it adds up and makes a difference.
Well, I wouldn't consider yourself funded until the term sheet is signed and the money has been wired.
You'll get a lot of "warm" courtship interest from investors who actually are just scoping out the field, so to speak, and you'll run into ones who have cold feet and back out at the last minute (I even had an outstanding term sheet get withdrawn once).
Just be careful. Investors are often very two-faced.
Thank you for the advice! I did come here with savings and got nailed with unexpected expenses. What I am working on WILL happen, it is just a matter of time. My entire life, when I have been told that I cannot do something, I have proved them wrong. The reason I pay the high rent is because this is where the resources are, this where the capital is and I like it here. I am still building my prototype and want to make sure that is done before asking for money. Also, driving has been excellent networking.
I exclusively use Lyft because they allow tipping. If someone gives me a good, comfortable ride, I want to be able to easily throw a couple of bucks their way. If I'm taking a car service, then I can afford a few extra dollars. Plus, with it being built into the app, there's no need for them to hustle you about it.
I believe we're still a decade or more from true driverless vehicles / cabs. There are so so so many situations which require specialized decision making to get out of that we really need general AI to truly have cars drive themselves. I'm sure we'll get some sort of hybrid model sooner where the cars are driverless 95% of the time, but someone at a remote center can take over and pilot it around construction / through a power outage / on icy roads / in emergency situations / while getting pulled over by police / when there is a rally in the streets / on detours with workers waving you on / in freeway shutdown-type situations etc etc.
Uber is betting the farm on being able to solve this in the next couple of years or however much financial runway they have left. Good luck, but I don't see how.
But why wouldn't the callcenter approach work? That's where I see many other industries going. Cut the workers, use a callcenter instead through telepresence. Even if it's only 95% selfdriving, that's massive savings compared to having a driver in there 100% of the time.
This could be great for freight trucking where they spend majority of time on freeways, which should be easy win for self-driving, and then do the last leg with a virtual, or physical pick-up driver. Likewise for shipping.
However the most (at least if feels like it for me) stated reason to prefer Uber is "it's cheaper". A few also expressed the opinion that they do not care about company's culture and policies as long as they provide cheap rides.
Is it? I prefer Uber/Lyft because it's convenient (both in arranging the ride and payment) and auditable (account records) and accountable (driver and rider ratings). Being cheaper is a benefit, sure, but I'd still use it nearly as much if it cost the same as a taxi, which I rarely (if ever) used in SF before Uber, because their service level is so bad that I preferred to drive myself or suffer the discomfort, dirtiness, and trip length of Muni.
Yup, I'm merely one data point, but my POV is hardly unique.
>No Tipping is one of the main reasons I liked Uber; no cash, no pressure
It is a tragedy of recent generations that people cannot even handle a simple decision of to "tip or not to tip" by themselves without going to some amount of "pressure".
We are indeed, a generation of sheep, who cannot be expected to make a simple decision all by themselves.
I'm more dismayed that the thought of giving another human being a little extra money to thank them for good service is so painful to people that they try to avoid it at all costs.
Uber's model feels like it's trying to make the human driver into a robot. Until we have actual robot drivers, I prefer a system that has the tipping built in, e.g. Lyft.
> the thought of giving another human being a little extra money to thank them for good service
More like the thought of being expected to fork over extra cash for a standard transaction above what I already expected to pay up front.
The problem is that the idea behind tipping has been abused.
The onus needs to be on the business owner.
I'm not saying they shouldn't get a living wage before tips, they should. In fact, if we got rid of the minimum wage exceptions for servers, we would immediately revert tipping to what it was intended to be, incentive for good service.
What's dismaying is how many people in this thread don't even want to have to think about how the person driving them is a human being, often just trying to make ends meet.
> What's dismaying is how many people in this thread don't even want to have to think about how the person driving them is a human being, often just trying to make ends meet.
The problem is, this argument could be applied to all minimum wage workers.
Should I tip the cashier at McDonald's or Wal-mart? They're not making a living wage and are probably struggling to make ends meet. How about the guy that pumps my gas (I live in Oregon where it is generally illegal to pump your own gas)?
And that's what really gets me about our tipping culture in the USA. We're so inconsistent about who we think we should tip. It's completely arbitrary.
I'm only a little surprised that nobody has suggested this, but: If the driver does something shady, just get out of the car. Immediately. Don't even give them the opportunity to apologize for it.
I've had drivers call ahead to ask where I'm going. I just hang up on them, cancel the ride, then order another ride. While I'm in the car with a new driver, I report the incident using the in-app system and, on many occasions, they even grant me a credit!
Similarly, I've had on at least two occasions where the drivers did obviously stupid, unsafe things within the first 30 seconds of a ride. I ask them to pull over, and I just quietly get out of the car, report the incident, walk away, and order another driver.
Never used Uber, what's the problem with someone knowing where you're going? Doesn't the app tell the driver before they pick you up? (Well I guess not, or they wouldn't call you...)
The destination shows up when the ride starts (i.e. you get in the car). Calling beforehand is a an indication that the driver might want to cancel the ride if the destination is "inconvenient" (e.g. from city center to a remote suburb).
This is a big problem with taxi drivers is australia. At 2am you'll be lucky to get a taxi home, because they change over at 3, so they don't like to go 10 minutes in the opposite direction.
I don't know why you're using quote, there are legitimately dangerous neighborhoods that someone may not want to drive to at 2:30 AM. Granted, if that's the case, then they shouldn't be Ubering at 2:30 AM, but it's still a legitimate concern.
The risk that they cancel you/reject the ride if they think you aren't going far enough, going too far, going somewhere they are unlikely to get a fare, going into a bad part of town, etc. Uber wants to provide service to where you want to go, not where it is most profitable for the driver to go.
I've had this problem numerous times at LAX: driver will call then cancel when i tell them i'm not going downtown ($50) and instead to the west side ($15). I waited on the curb for an hour while 7 drivers canceled on me one after another.
Uber will often give you a credit when you report this but they don't seem to be actually fixing the problem.
The problem here is your cancel reflects poorly on you in Uber's rating system.
But otherwise you're absolutely right. I have taken rides from two people who've called, asking for my destination, and I refuse to tell them. It hasn't caused me any problems in those two instances.
> your cancel reflects poorly on you in Uber's rating system
This is simply not true. I just checked: My rating is 4.73. I've probably taken a few hundred rides with Uber. I assume they adjust ratings for bad experiences, especially if you're a regular rider.
By the way: It's not that hard to get consistent 5 stars as a passenger. Be respectful of the driver and follow these steps: 1) Say something like "Hi, are you looking for Brandon? That's me. Good evening. How's it going?" 2) Suffer less than 20 seconds of smalltalk 3) Go about playing with your phone or talking with your co-passengers quietly. 4) Say "This is my stop right there by the red car on the right. Thanks a lot, you have a good night!" - If you're an extrovert, you'd do this anyway (assuming you're not an asshole) and if you're an introvert, it's a good opportunity to exercise your smalltalk with low stakes.
What in this list would you do differently? I'm probably a weirdo with insufficient empathy, but I have a hard time imagining how a civilized person would behave otherwise.
I get into the car, surf the web and never talk to the driver. Occasionally if driver starts a discussion I give short answers so it stops quickly. My rating is fine and I enjoy no human interaction
You never say anything at all? I mean, like, you open the door, sit down, when he stops where you're supposed to be you just get out and don't acknowledge the driver at all?
Sure I don't chat with taxi drivers unless I feel like it but you at least say 'hi' and 'thanks' when you get in and out, or not?
Of course i say hi & thanks, these are "handshake" words I use automatically interacting with anyone. But no smalltalk, and outside the US, drivers are often silent too
Oh OK, yeah that's how I interpreted the GP as well, so then I still wonder how the steps described aren't the default or even just blindingly obvious to the point that doing anything else is weird. I mean I can see when someone is drunk and is annoying, but apart from that.
I recently read several discussions from uber drivers about passenger ratings.
Many drivers will rate passengers 4 or below if they don't tip. And many drivers skip passengers 4.5 or below, some start skipping passengers at 4.6. I posted some quotes from the discussion below.
I don't think it's about averages, it's about perception. Drivers know that they get fired at 4.6, and they know that most passengers and drivers give 5 star ratings regardless.
It's the nature of surveys. People know that a sub-100% rating in most surveys is bad - troubleshooting sub-perfect ratings shows up all over the place from restaurants to call centers. So happy people give perfect ratings - 5 stars in this case - for the most part.
Drivers have to rate riders before they get their next ride, so every rider gets rated by every driver they pair with.
Lyft states (at least they did) openly that a 3 star rating or below will ensure that the driver and rider are not paired again, and will prompt for a text entry explaining what went wrong.
I don't disagree that the rating system is broken. But it is what it is and it's not likely to change soon.
This is why if you have a car salesman you like it's important to give them a perfect rating, including the areas where they're not even mentioned, as the entire survey reflects solely on them. If the question asked how your experience with the Finance Manager was, and you give it a 9/10, it could cost your salesman thousands in bonuses, and have no negative impact on the FM at all.
> I picked up a 4.5 tonight and guess what is was a 4.5 type of ride. 2 stars bucko
> 4.5 or below are usually problem passengers in my market
> Usually I'll pass on anyone lower than a 4.5.
> I check the score and if they are below a 4.6 I text and inform them that THEY need to cancel and request another driver.
> 4.6 and below? Sorry about your luck. Let the next Uber driver pick up your $2.40 non tipping ass.
> I'm hesitant about anything 4.6 or below (depending on if it's a slow night and other factors).
> i'm usually skeptical of rides under 4.8, but accept trips at a base of 4.5 in the mornings. most of those folks i've chalked up to being bad drunks, and decent during the day.
> If I'm knackered I'll reject a 4.5 or 4.6 as I'm too tired to put up with potential crap.
> I skip anyone below a 4.5 unless it's really slow and I'm desperate.
I would just let that ride sit and open up another app. I'm fine if the driver doesn't want to take me as a passenger, but I'm not going to take a finacial penalty to support their preferences
> I check the score and if they are below a 4.6 I text and inform them that THEY need to cancel and request another driver.
My response would be:
"Nah, you can cancel. I can always walk back inside the bar and grab a few more drinks, while you can't operate your source of income until you cancel."
If you have a really shady experience. You report it directly to Uber. Let them know that you think the driver may have adversely rated you, and I feel like customer service will roll it back if it's that important to you. but to be honest, an single experience will get averaged out in the wash.
I drive Uber from time to time. I've only gotten a tip once over ~50 rides.
A lot of the time the traffic conditions mean that after costs (I assume $0.40 per mile costs for mileage, gas, maintenance, etc.) my hourly is closer to $8 an hour (because after I drive for a while sometimes I need to drive a long way back as well on my own dime), which is below minimum wage. That's not including having to pick up plastic bottles after people or cleaning seats so they don't smell like sweat.
It's basically never worth to pick up anyone who is going far away from your house, you end up actually driving for free since you have to drive there and EVENTUALLY drive home. Why do you think Uber drivers don't want to drive 40 minutes away just to get paid less than if they drove for 40 minutes inside their own city? I'll never accept a ride to San Francisco (40 minutes away) ever again, it's never worth the price unless there's surge pricing in effect.
If I make $8-12 an hour, getting a $1 tip is like a 10% increase in my wage. I don't badger people for tips, but if I got like 10% of people to tip me, it would be super worth. The one tip I got was $20, btw. Even if we assume a 12% tip rate up from 2% if I ask for them explicitly, and the average tip size of $5 (median would be more like $2, but if I get a few more $20 tips the average would be higher than the median), I would make $0.50 more per hour which is a 5% increase in my earnings.
Maybe it's something I should actually start doing.
Maybe you can explain something that I've never understood. I see drivers saying "driving for Uber is terrible and a waste of money". I see them saying "after expenses I'm basically working for free." But they keep doing it. They keep driving for Uber even though they know that they're basically just working for free, in order to make money for Uber. If you take vehicle depreciation into account, you're probably not even breaking even.
Why? Why do that? My guess is that it's easy work to get and it gives you some immediate cash, and so it's more appealing than spending the time hunting for a 'real' job, but I've never heard an Uber driver actually admit that.
The implied social judgment whenever Uber drivers come up is a bummer.
Yes, people prefer to make a little bit of money instead of not having money. This is surprising?
And when someone earns a little bit of money, they might wish that they made more money. Again--not news.
I think before getting critical about why Uber drivers are so dumb, it's worth thinking about why you don't drive for Uber. The answer probably starts with "because I don't feel like I have to." It does for me.
If someone has a great highly-paying full time job and still drives for Uber, then sure, question that person's judgment. Most Uber drivers are not in that situation though.
I'm not being judgemental, and I'm not saying they're stupid to drive for a small immediate profit instead of doing nothing.
I'm just perplexed when they say they're losing money (or making so much less than minimum wage that they may as well be) but they keep on doing it instead of stopping. If they're not just blowing off some steam with hyperbole, they would literally be better off staying home on the couch.
> I'm just perplexed when they say they're losing money (or making so much less than minimum wage that they may as well be) but they keep on doing it instead of stopping
Most people don't drive Uber as a job. It's a second or third job. Make-you-own-hours is what makes that possible.
> If they're not just blowing off some steam with hyperbole, they would literally be better off staying home on the couch.
I mean, ditto for payday loans -- you're better off not having the money. Unless you actually need the money to make rent. Then you're screwed.
Uber is better than payday loans, but if you're depreciating your car at a faster rate than you're making money, you're still up against a negative expected value.
If you drive for Uber could you partially count the depreciation of your car (for the miles you drover for Uber) on your taxes? At least then you'd get some benefit in the form of a reduced tax bill that could offset the losses.
Landlords use depreciation to have low taxable income despite being cashflow positive. I don't see why Uber drivers shouldn't be able to. They're making business use of a physical asset (their car).
My understanding is, yes, you can deduct the IRS per-mile (54 cents per mile driven) as a business expense, which will reduce the amount of taxes paid. At least one Uber driver I rode with told me he did this. In fact, not doing it would be missing out on a huge tax benefit!
Example 10-mile trip: 1.25 base fare + (10 miles * 1.15 per mile) = 12.75 * 80% (driver's share) = $10.20 revenue - 5.40 deduction for mileage = $4.80 revenue reported. For somebody in 20% tax bracket, this could yield $1.08 in savings.
Although using the per-mile deduction negates the ability to deduct line item expenses, such as gas, car washes, etc.
I was thinking more like depreciating the value of your car according to whatever depreciation schedule the IRS allows, prorated by the proportion of the miles you drive for Uber.
Something like - your car cost $30,000 and depreciates over 10 years, so $3,000 per year (just making up numbers, no idea if/how the IRS depreciates a car). So you'd have a $3,000 loss in the value of the car per year until it drops to 0. If the car was used 40% of the time for business (driving for Uber) you could claim 40% of the depreciation - $1200. I guess then you'd have to separately itemize all the gas, maintenance, etc.
But if you're actually losing money on the Uber-driving endeavor when that is factored in, whatever revenue you get should be tax-free. Of course, I suppose that only works if you're an independent contractor / business, and Uber drivers fought so hard to get treated as employees instead. Oh well. Employees get screwed when it comes to taxes.
But the comment you're replying to is saying what's the point in working literally for free or at a loss? Sure, if you're not making much, that's one thing, but actually making zero is what they were talking about.
The post above that one (the actual Uber driver) says that their hourly rate is about $8, not $0.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says "today I'm going to drive for Uber literally for free." Of course not. Let's use a little common sense here.
Uber drivers expect, plan, hope to make money. The point is, they don't make much, and sometimes it's very little (like on a long fare).
So the question is, then why do they keep doing it? And I'm just suggesting that maybe a lot of them don't have a higher-paying alternative that they are dumbly choosing against.
> I'm just suggesting that maybe a lot of them don't have a higher-paying alternative
This still doesn't make any sense. If you are losing money working for Uber, then you do have access to a higher paying alternative - which is literally standing in your house and doing nothing. Because zero is greater than a negative amount.
I think there are really three explanations that make sense:
People are not literally losing money working for Uber, or maybe they are sometimes but not overall at the end of the month, and they're just rhetorically exaggerating in frustration.
People are literally losing money working for Uber but only when you include depreciation of their car, and that is a long term cost, so people are effectively taking a loan from their future selves.
People are literally losing money working for Uber but morally feel that they should be working rather than not working, even if there is no economic reason for them to do so, and they just hope their situation will improve in the future.
>> People are literally losing money working for Uber but only when you include depreciation of their car, and that is a long term cost, so people are effectively taking a loan from their future selves.
I believe this is it. They need money now, Uber is better than a payday loan but yes, they are mortgaging assets to make some cash now.
People are literally losing money working for Uber but enjoy driving as a hobby, and Uber helps them recoup at least some of the costs of driving around all the time.
(yes, I've had drivers tell me they do Uber/Lyft for fun because they love driving)
I love to drive, and while being a taxi/uber sounds like fresh hell to me, I know I would represent myself as 'driving because I love it' in my shitty ford to save face when I am trading the equity in my car i am still paying off for food in a downward spiral of depression and poverty. People who love to drive, drive sports cars, not taxis.
They're not making $0. They're trading $8/hr now against the cost of depreciation that they'll be able to "pay" later. Is that short-sighted? Yes. Do people feel like that's necessary when they have looming bills that need to be paid right now? Also yes. It'd be nice if people in that situation could afford to be more future-minded, but that's easy to say when the income from your primary job easily covers your expenses. Not so for many people.
$.40 per mile is not too far off from the federal rate of $.535 per mile, which does include depreciation. This is the number any driver should be using, short of crunching the actual numbers for your vehicle.
I drive for Uber part time even though it pays literally 8x less than my day job. It's relaxing and gives me an excuse to drive my car while someone else pays for the gas and mileage.
Given they're basically saying they drive for fun and this is a way to cover some of the costs, that seems kind of moot. Nobody's paying me enough to buy a new motorcycle after mine wears out, but I'm still gonna take it out and ride it.
Yes of course. Looking at my records it's something like $0.65/km driven in revenue, which is well over the $0.54/mile quoted by the IRS for all-in vehicle costs.
Because they're exaggerating to put pressure on Uber to give them a better deal. Everyone does this. Waiters, union workers, teachers, actors, firefighters, etc. Complaining makes you feel good and has a small chance of making things better for yourself. Why not do it more.
I force myself to get inside my car and start my app. There are no people who want a ride next to my house right now. I may be waiting for some time before I get a request that takes me to San Jose or another populated center. Or at least next to a hotel or something.
I drive around, worrying that I don't get dragged into Los Altos (nobody wants rides OUT of Los Altos late at night - they're all coming home). Sometimes I will drive for a few minutes picking someone up before they cancel. If I didn't get far enough to pick them up I get no money for this. I finally pick up the person and try to make conversation with them. They're not always willing to talk, but I understand.
After driving for a while it gets too late to get too many requests. I start late because driving in traffic is a horrible hourly rate.
I had to deal with app crashes, the maps app being wrong due to changes, people putting the wrong address, people not finding my car and calling me in a noisy place etc. Some people don't like this because they think I'm a full time driver and I'm supposed to know how to deal with these situations. I'm not a professional. I never received any training by Uber. I don't know every single street in your neighborhood. I don't even have enough experience doing it to know how to deal with every situation.
So I would use the odometer to see how much I actually drove (Uber doesn't count picking up as distance - a hold-over from taxi companies). I calculate my profit using the amount of miles, and minutes (I time when I start, not when I make my first pick-up). When I see a single digit number it makes me disappointed yet again. Even when I'm driving at football games it's still more like $12 an hour because of the damn traffic. It's 3x more expensive, but it takes very long to get out of the parking lot and to get into it.
Don't even let me get started on star ratings... giving an Uber driver 4 stars basically says "this person shouldn't be driving with Uber" since the minimum rating is like 4.3
Taking depreciation into account is a red herring unless the car is only used for Uber driving.
There is significant utility in owning a car. So much so, in fact, that many people are willing to take on the entire cost of ownership without ever earning direct income as a result of their driving.
This is not the type of Uber driver I want. I don't want someone complaining about their life choices when I'm paying for an agreed service from A to B.
I've had some drivers straight-up tell me that they enjoy driving for fun, and they drive for Uber/Lyft just because it gives them an excuse to do it. And I'm sure that even if they don't make a profit, driving for Uber/Lyft is less expensive than just driving around and not getting paid at all.
Is good service and hospitably an antiquated notion?
I'll happily give a bartender, server or a driver an extra buck or two when they make the experience pleasant/informative/friendly because, far too many people treat their jobs not as a privileged but a chore.
Without tipping far too many would take your money for granted and the quality of service would decline across the board because there is zero incentive to provide anything better.
> Without tipping far too many would take your money for granted and the quality of service would decline across the board because there is zero incentive to provide anything better.
I don't mean to sound flippant but, have you ever been to Europe? I've traveled to Germany, Ireland, Finland, and Iceland multiple times. None of those countries has a tipping culture and the service I receive, even at your basic fast food restaurant, is the same or better than in the States.
I must ask, why do you believe your statement to be true?
Possibly a cultural affect though? His statement could be true for the american context.
In a capitalism steeped melting pot, it does seem like things that might be more commonly 'seen'/appreciated in other cultures - pride in one's work, common standards of politeness, sense of serving/interacting with 'your community' rather than just 'anonymous strangers from other communities' - that could be non-financial motivators for good service elsewhere that are simply missing or too few & far between here.
In Germany a 5-10% tip is customary in (non-self-serve) restaurants and bars. I usually tip taxi drivers about the same percentage, not sure if everyone does it.
Sadly, tip amount is not correlated very strongly with good service. No matter how good of service a person provides, they aren't going to change how much they are tipped very much. Since this is the case, it is unlikely quality of service is going to go way down because of no tips.
Do you believe that in Australia and Europe, restaurants and taxis are non functional because they don't have tipping?
I've eaten out hundreds of times in my life, never left a tip, and never thought I needed an incentive system directly between me and the waiter. Same with taxis.
There are only so many ways to screw up bringing food to a table. I've never once though "wow that waiter really brought my plate to me badly".
Why not apply your logic to everything? Why not change hairdressing to a tip system? Why not surgery? Why not painting and building? You'll get better service, right?
Hairdressers, massage places (the fancy ones (e.g. resort spas) give you an envelope which explains tipping for foreign travelers), sometimes auto mechanics, maître d's (fancy restaurants get expensive when you have to tip the person who sat you, the waiter, the chef, and the sommelier), valets, parking garages where they park your car since it's so tight that all the cars are in a grid (common in e.g. SF), bell persons, hotel rooms (customary to leave some cash on the dresser, again fancier places usually have an envelope explaining it), pit bosses at casinos (you're buying favor), baggage handlers at the airport, gardeners / pool cleaners, repair persons in some cases...
Yeah, it's crazy and dumb and not changing drastically any time soon.
Fast food, cafeteria staff, receptionist, fast casual (Chipotle-like places), coffee shop (this is debatable), tech support, cable repair person, salesman, public bus driver, any cashier, bagger, phone support, librarian.
It's so arbitrary though, order a Pepsi from McDonald's no tip, order a Pepsi from a pub, $1 tip minimum. Tip the person who hands you a bottle of beer but not the person who makes your sandwich.
(Self serve soda machines are common now in fast food, but when I worked at McDonald's we poured the soda, no machines, and no tips)
Though I usually do tip at fast food or fast casual (if there's a tip jar or a spot on the CC receipt), and always tip at a coffee shop.
But the others, yeah... spot on.
The beverage pouring thing is especially insane; I'd never thought about that before. At a bar I'll usually tip 20% for a cocktail, but only 10% or so if I'm poured a beer or soft drink. But even that 10% is crazy when you wouldn't tip a fast-food cashier for pouring you a soda.
"It's so arbitrary though, order a Pepsi from McDonald's no tip, order a Pepsi from a pub, $1 tip minimum. Tip the person who hands you a bottle of beer but not the person who makes your sandwich."
As an outsider, it's all quite insane especially when the baseline isn't 0% but more like 15% for default service in many situations. Or a $1 tip for something ridiculously basic at a bar like getting post-mix soda or uncapping a bottle of beer as you said.
Especially a bodega/deli sandwich maker. Making a sandwich is just as labor intensive as making a cocktail. I load up my sandwiches with at least 10 ingredients (lettuce, tomato, onions, spinach, peppers, banana peppers, olives, salt, pepper, mayo,... Whatever they have!) and the average cocktail has, like, 3-4 ingredients? And it's certainly more labor intensive than carrying a plate.
View on Europe on HN seems to be a little skewed. We have tipping here as well, maybe not to the same extent as in US, but it's definitely present. Even sandwich or coffee places would have "tip jar" where people would drop their change when they pay cash, but it's not required or even expected. It's not like there is no concept of tipping at all.
Sure, but that's still drastically different than in the US. With little exception, you're expected to pay an 18-20% tip just for the base level of service. Paying less than 15% -- even for mediocre or poor service -- is considered cheap and shameful.
To compare apples to apples, in a sandwich/coffee place in the US you're still expected to tip the standard amount, even if your change from a cash payment falls short. And not tipping at all in those situations is considered bad form.
I'd say the European system is far preferable, but I like Japan the best: a taxi driver would be nearly offended if you tried to tip them. I had one get out of the car and nearly chase me down because I got out before taking my 30 yen in change.
Just charge what it costs to provide a living wage and don't require or expect a tip, ever. Remove the social stigma associated with being cheap for not tipping. In the US, eliminate the comically-low minimum wage for tipped staff, and make them pay the regular minimum wage. To ease the transition, reduce payroll taxes for such businesses (tips aren't subject to payroll taxes) so they don't have to jack up prices 30+% to compensate. I know this will never happen here, but I can hope...
I get what you're saying, but there is a huge difference between maybe leaving a couple Euro on the table if you happen to feel like it, vs being made to feel like a piece of shit because you didn't tip the expected $10 on your $60 dinner or taxi ride.
In Germany at least, it is common to round up. Probably because we like paying with cash, since it's just less of a hassle if the price is odd. Round up to the next full Euro, or the next 5/10€ if it's close/you're feeling generous/don't like coins.
AFAIK this is a common mode for the other European countries as well.
In some cases, that makes sense, or at least, enough sense that I can see "reasonable people disagree..." there.
In other cases, I just want a ride home. I don't care about being regaled with tales, or how hyperoptimized the route is, or fake friendliness, or even refreshments. I just want to know, unambiguously, what it takes to satisfy my obligation for this specific service, and reasonably expect that the provider is on the same page.
Uber wanted to create a special zone for exactly this, and make expectations as clear as possible for everyone going in, and yet that still isn't good enough for many people.
(Though, FWIW, I think they also abused their position by driving rates insanely low.)
Yeah, and that's the thing. I think Uber started off with a great idea: eliminate tipping for a job where tipping is the norm. But then they failed to fix the reason for tipping these days: paying the usually-tipped person a living wage.
> Is good service and hospitably an antiquated notion?
No, good service and hospitality are literally what your base wage should cover.
If your service job doesn't pay well enough to for you to provide good service and/or be a decent human being, perhaps you should seek out a less service-oriented job.
That's interesting, because one of the Uber drivers I spoke to recently said that he had the ability to "request" a pickup/destination twire per shift; the intent was to allow him to monetize his "commute" time into the metro area where he normally drives. I don't know how you get this feature turned on, but it can't hurt to ask.
> because after I drive for a while sometimes I need to drive a long way back as well on my own dime
It seems like this is something they could help with. Can't they mark your home territory and try to schedule you rides that take you the right direction? If not immediately, maybe after a few rides in that area that don't take you too much farther away? It seems like this should be one of the main points of using Uber or Lyft, smart driver scheduling in areas where there's enough demand..
> you'll be waiting for someone to want a ride south for a very long time
Why would you wait long? It's not like the system doesn't know where you are. Just start driving back, and if someone is around that needs a ride that direction, deliver it to someone already heading back to home territory in the same direction. Worst case you don't get anyone and drive back without any fares. All it should take is a slight bias towards those traveling back from long drives if it's going the same direction.
> Why would you wait long? It's not like the system doesn't know where you are.
Because while there ARE people that are driving south, other Uber drivers are closer than me to them.
> Just start driving back, and if someone is around that needs a ride that direction, deliver it to someone already heading back to home territory in the same direction.
I tried that. Every single time I did it, I ended up home before Uber found anyone. The only time the feature was useful is getting closer to the freeway that I was going to take.
Uber charges the amount that they need to get enough drivers to drive the number of customers they have. When there aren't enough drivers willing to drive at the given rate, they go into 'surge' pricing to intice more drivers to drive.
You know what would happen if they raised the rates and paid more to the drivers? Two things - fewer riders would ride, and more drivers would drive. You would end up with a lot of drivers sitting around not getting any rides. They would most likely end up making LESS money per hour because they would not have enough riders to drive around.
You are probably right about there not being an 'imbalance', but I would like to add that just because there is an efficient market in place doesn't mean there can't also be structural problems in the society. The value of labor continues to fall as automation and machinery improves, which is why uber drivers are so cheap to entice to drive. For most people, the only thing they have to sell is their labor, and as we continue to find alternatives to labor through automation, that downward pressure on the cost of labor is only going to increase.
We really, really, need to address this as a society soon.
I don't think it's zero-sum, though. Before Uber/Lyft, I very rarely took a taxi, not because of cost, but because of the difficulty and uncertainty in being able to find and secure one (in SF). (I would either drive myself, and have to leave earlier due to the difficulty of finding parking, or take the bus, and have to leave even earlier due to how slow it is.) If Uber/Lyft were to increase prices to the same cost as a taxi, yes, I'd use them less, but I'd certainly use them more than I ever used taxis... because I'm getting a lot more for the money.
The only problem here is that this would limit the usefulness of the service. The most likely end game for this feature is that most downtown areas have a bunch of drivers fenced in, and nobody can find a ride to or from those areas. There are a ton of people in suburbs that would like to not drive into or out of the downtown in my area, and we use services like Uber/Lyft to avoid this. If the drivers in our area confined themselves to just near the downtown, we would have to drive there either way, and so the service becomes useless to us.
If the service instead allowed drivers to designate a "home zone" where the base price is payed, and then trips to successive neighboring zones have a multiplier applied, this would probably work better.
I can see some abuse here. If I live in a suburb, set it as my home zone, then just work downtown.
Perhaps limit the "home area" designation at the end of the day. So before someone is "ending" their day, they can click a button and service only in their home area.
That way, the usefulness of the service is not compromised as much.
I think it'd be reasonable to only allow use of that feature when heading home at the end of a shift. Could enforce it by (for example) refusing to allow the person to sign back into the app as a driver for an hour after getting home or something.
I'm fine with a driver having an (unobtrusive, tasteful) tip jar in their car, but if a driver ever actively asked me for a tip, I'd give them a lower rating (commensurate with how hard they pushed for the tip) and report them to Uber for making me feel uncomfortable while captive in their car.
I use payment-in-app services in part because I don't like carrying much or any cash around, and when I do, it's usually just a few $20 bills, which aren't very useful for tipping in this scenario.
And yes, I do tip in-app when I use Lyft, in part because their social contract includes tipping, and I can do it without the on-the-spot pressure of needing to do so in the car. Uber explicitly states that tips are not expected or required, and does not provide an in-app way of tipping, so I wouldn't tolerate tip solicitation from a driver. (Hell, I wouldn't tolerate tip solicitation from a Lyft driver, either. Asking me for a tip when the app does it for you counts as "worse service" to me.)
I don't agree with the argument that passengers should tip because Uber isn't paying their drivers enough. That sounds like welfare for Uber. If the pay sucks, Uber should have trouble recruiting drivers.
I really hate tipping culture in America. In Germany, servers are surprised if you give them anything more thana euro. I have friends who visit from non tipping cultures who ask "Why isn't it just included in the price!"
I agree with the author. Tipping is out of hand. Charge more for food, clearly state it on the menu/check, remove the tip black on the receipt and pay people a decent wage!
I don't mind tipping in principle, but I really hate the payment terminals that are preconfigured with outrageous options, so it prompts you to pick 20%, 25%, 30%, "other", so you feel like a total sleaze giving a normal 10-15% tip.
It's the worst when I'm picking up takeout from a restaurant that also has tables. Like, am I supposed to tip in this scenario? Do I have to go into "other" to tip less than 20% for being handed a brown bag?
I agree with the preconfigured options part. However it's important to realize that tips often get split between the whole staff. Most of the time you're not just tipping the person handing you the bag but everyone involved in preparing the food.
I was in a situation where I was getting takeout from Applebees's several times a week for a few months. I didn't tip in those situations, since I walked directly to the door, grabbed a box, and left. After 2 weeks, as the door closed, I heard the waitress complain "that guy never tips." I was mortified; I hate having that sort of bad reputation, deserved or not.
No one likes tipping, but it's become a moral issue. Something transformative has to happen in America to change the situation.
In that situation I still tip, just less, since my "load" on the restaurant staff is much less, no one had to take me to a table, take my order, bring my order, and clean my table. The tip is for the kitchen and for boxing/bagging up my order in that case, essentially.
I hate that even that is required, though. I would gladly pay an extra 15-20% for the food itself if I didn't have to leave a tip & the staff was paid the "normal" minimum wage, or more.
Yea, I always figured tipping was paying for table service, but who knows. Ambiguity around what it's for and how much is "normal" is just one of the many, many reasons tipping is so idiotic.
1. There is a weird regionalism in the outer boroughs of New York City where the grocery stores don't hire someone to bag groceries. Either the cashier does it (which I think is totally normal) or there's someone who isn't paid by the store who bags groceries and collects tips in a little cup in the bagging area. I think it's so weird and it's the one place I've never tipped. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen someone actually drop money into the jar in 10 years and the jars only ever seem to have pennies and other change in them.
2. At gas stations outside of New Jersey and Oregon, I had always thought you were supposed to tip when someone pumps your gas for you.
A friend is a cook who says that even at decent restaurants, cooks don't get paid much and they get just a minimal share of tips. So when I get takeout, I tip 10-20% and say "Thank-you, here's something for the kitchen." Sometimes I get thanks in return, sometimes just a sour look from a server who expected something more for putting my order in a bag. I have no idea what they'll do with the cash, but hopefully some of it gets to the back of the house.
The cash aspect was incidental. "Front of the house" workers here net a significantly higher take-home because they are the ones receiving the tips and what they pass on to others is typically discretionary. Even many of the best establishments will pay cooks subsistence wages. A few restaurants are going tipless, raising prices slightly and discouraging tips, so they can distribute pay more equitably, but then they can have problems retaining wait staff.
This was my understanding as well. If they just ring up the total and pass you food, there's no expectation of a tip.
I do tip from time to time at places where I'm a regular customer. If I get takeout somewhere near work of home ~4 times a month I'll drop a dollar in once every couple of trips.
It's not normal to tip for takeout, but if you want to, 10% is the standard tip as opposed to 15% for table service. But again, a takeout tip is not expected, especially for a simple order.
This is an over-simplification. It is actually hard for a foreigner who has no tipping experience coming in.
It's not what to tip, It's when/where that is the problem.
So sure the general rule is this percentage is for service, but what constitutes service as opposed to the job I'm paying for in the given price?
Full table service restaurant, ok I can handle that.
Taxis... apparently, sure... but again why is there a service component separate to the fare?
Fast food joint. No they don't really do much that constitutes service. Ok fine
Restaurant where you order and pay at the counter but they deliver to table... umm I'm not sure now, plus if its service shouldn't that be judged after, not before?
Bellhops/Luggage people at Hotels.. Apparently yes, but I've had many just out right refuse to take it. Or better yet, I don't have a huge amount of bags, I don't actually want your service of bag carrying (separate from the money thing), but you're insisting and now I'm in the corner on this one.
Massages or beauty therapies.. Fuck knows. Apparently yes. but if I'm tipping you for a fantastic massage service, what I'm I paying for strictly speaking?
YumCha places (Many servers) Hah... good luck working that one out.
There's more I've encountered in my time where I just didn't know and it wasn't readily apparent how/if it worked that way.
It isn't clear cut and definitely for foreigners coming in, its completely impenetrable whether you should or shouldn't.
I've lived here my entire life and I can tell you it's definitely not this simple. I can think of a dozen examples where it was ambiguous what to do: the first taxi I took, the guy who came to repair our washing machine when I was home alone as a kid, the guy upthread here claiming that 20% is the "widely-accepted minimum", someone else on this thread talking about how a waitress complained that he never tipped on his takeout orders (you're supposed to tip on takeout orders??). It's a fundamentally idiotic system and I don't have trouble understanding at all why people like GP would find it unpleasant as a traveler.
With tax miracullously not included in price, calculating tip and final total is a fun guessing game that you have to play each time you make an order.
No. It's simple. Just don't give a fuck and never tip - social norms be damned. If they want a certain amount then they should just charge that amount and cut out the tipping BS.
Locally even here in rural Idaho, one of our best local restaurants recently switched to no-tipping pricing. I'd say that as a diner, I _feel_ like I'm paying more for my meal, even though I always tipped at least 20% before the switch.
As someone who grew up in a "tipping culture" I'd say that the act of tipping doesn't bother me, so much as the pain point of having cash in the correct denominations for things like tipping Uber drivers or valets.
The part about Germany is not true at all! Sure servers may be surprised if you give them more than a euro when your total is less than 10 euros... Having been a server in a restaurant during most of my studies, i can tell you we definitely did not appreciate no or small tips - 5-10% is expected.
The same is true for tipping in restaurants and bars; it may seem like you're helping the server/bartender, but actually you're subsidizing the business.
This is the same US mentality where businesses are allowed to advertise the pre-tax price of a product. Essentially it's just a way for the seller to lie about their product price (yet the financial industry has free rein to force business to not itemize the CC fee).
Everything seems more expensive in Europe, but at least you're paying prices that already include VAT.
This is like saying, "paying for your food is subsidizing the business." No customer can "subsidize" a business. If anything, you're hurting the business by tipping your servers. If you were to pay the bar directly and not tip, you can't assume that 100% of that would go directly to the bartenders. Profits are generally seen as some percentage of revenue, so those would be taken out, then the inceased wage would mean the business would have to pay more in payroll taxes, so that gets taken out as well. The only way to ensure the bartender doesn't _lose_ money from the change would be to pay the bar _more_ than you would have tipped. But in that case, you'd buy fewer drinks. In the end, the only one who profits is the tax man while you get less beer and fewer appletinis.
It depends my friend worked as bartender when he lost a job in 2001 he made about 90K thanx to tips which was not too far off what he was making as software engineer. So I highly doubt a bar would pay anything close to it.
I too am not a fan of tipping culture. But I don't see it as welfare for Uber, if Uber charged 18% more, and passed it on to drivers, the net effect would be the same.
One thing I think it would do is harm the perceived cost of uber rides. Partitioned pricing works. Anchoring users on a lower base fare + 20% service, is, unfortunately, "cheaper" than 1.2 * fare for most people. At minimum Lyft would have to agree to do the same.
Balanced out by the fact that the 30% (or whatever the number) who don't tip would now be paying a fairer share, instead of being effectively subsidized by other fares.
Hundreds of trips on Uber, in Australia -- There is no tip culture here. Out of those hundreds, I've had two ask for positive ratings, absolutely none ask for a tip.
With drivers who have seemed friendly enough I've tried to politely and diplomatically inquire about how fair they feel the system is. Several ex-taxi drivers have told me it is better than driving for an official taxi company in every way, including pay. (Note that taxi drivers are never tipped either.)
I have been surprised by the number of people who have been driving for Uber as a bit of cash on the side, and not as a primary income -- all of them have told me it's "worth it" except for learning a lesson early on not to drive late at night and pick up drunks, as the chances of having to clean up after an extremely messy fare is too high.
My theory on this is that Uber is not 100% transparent on what drivers will earn, offering them incentives and promises that skew the numbers for new drivers. Because there are always drivers willing to try and get burned out, prices stayed depressed.
If you're tipping the drivers off-app, then uber sees 0% of it as a cut, versus 30% or whatever crazy percentage it's become. So it's exactly anti-welfare for Uber. Are you complaining that other passengers are changing the expectation of what the drivers should be paid (and doing so out of their own wallet?)
Lyft is the only major ridesharing app allowing in-app tipping, so they get to set the industry standard here, and in-app tipping is cut-free according to Lyft
"Lyft takes no commission from tips, which passengers can add easily through the app. That's right — drivers always keep 100% of tips, whether it's a buck or a Benjamin."
yeah they had a bit of a problem with this when lyft's original surge pricing was billed as a 'mandatory tip'. But they corrected it by eliminating the word 'tip' from primetime when the started taking a cut from it. There was about a two week period when they were not in compliance with the laws on the matter despite that I emailed them in advance of change warning them this was going to be a problem.
Not quite. By "welfare for Uber", they meant the burden of compensating the driver shifts from Uber to the passenger themselves, rather than on Uber to the driver a "fair cut" (whatever that may be).
I guess most of HN never were so broke that they can't put themselves in the place of a worker who can receive a tip.
Tips go directly to a person. Often a low paying or second job. It is about generosity and helping a fellow person. It's not about economic theory or even JUST how they served you.
The tip -$1 or $2 or $5 gets the person a gallon of gas. A meal. A cup of coffee. It helps pay off a bill. It is savings for their childs prom dress. It pays for food.
It allows the tip receiver to be generous themselves (1). To have extra to tip others. (The largest tippers are or were poor) One of lifes most enjoyable things is to be generous.
Tipping shows a lot about the tipper, too.
If Tipping to my fellow HNers is only about placing a value on the service given, then I say you don't know the entire story of working a job where tips make a real difference.
Ask your next uber driver why they are working.
(1) last month I had a fellow give me a $200 tip. The next night a neighbor came over and said her mom just died. She used to live with her and now in a home. Eventually she asked to borrow $20. Well. I don't ever have an extra $20 anymore but I was able to give her $100 because I got the tip.
This sort of post is actually yet another reason why I dislike tipping culture. I'm being guilted/pressured -- and not even by a driver -- into supporting a system in which drivers are underpaid and every customer has to individually think about how they can make up for that.
When/if lots of customers start regularly tipping, I fear Uber will just take advantage of the situation to reduce wages even lower -- untenably so. This will end up forcing all drivers to be completely reliant on tips. And once that happens, there's pretty much no going back.
This is an opportunity to have a major service that finally does away with tipping in the US. I don't think we should bend over backwards so easily and just give up on that possibility.
This. I use uber over other ride share services and taxis because I know what its actually going to cost up front and I wont be pressured to tip at the end.
Tipping is a lovely thing when YOU decide to do it. The point is no one wants to be forced to tip. When the tip is required or demanded it's no longer "generous," it's something else when you feel obligated.
I'm sympathetic, because you're not wrong. But those of us on the other side of the argument aren't wrong either.
> The tip -$1 or $2 or $5 gets the person a gallon of gas. A meal. A cup of coffee. It helps pay off a bill. It is savings for their childs prom dress. It pays for food.
I am not your employer; it should not be my job to figure out what is required to pay you a living wage. Your employer should be doing that. It sucks that they aren't. I wish I could fix that.
> One of lifes most enjoyable things is to be generous.
That's just, like, your opinion, man. And if it's so enjoyable to be generous, why isn't Uber enjoying themselves by paying drivers more? Why is it my responsibility as a rider to fill in this gap?
But yeah, I do agree that it's enjoyable to be generous. But you know what's not enjoyable? Being subject to guilt and societal pressure to tip. "Being generous" is not "being generous" unless it's completely voluntary. Tipping is not.
I donate to charitable organizations not because they ask me to or because I feel pressure to do so, but because they further causes I believe in and want to support. That generosity is something I enjoy. Tipping just makes me feel anxious and like I'm getting ripped off by having (yes, having) to pay more than the advertised price.
That's not an argument for tipping. That's an argument for organized labor action, or finding a different job. Hell, just work for Lyft (ok, yes, I know, Lyft is not available in every market Uber is); I believe they pay comparably, and also have a tipping culture and in-app tipping.
This is an important point. I hate tipping culture, but the solution isn't to not tip when you're a part of a society where certain classes of labor are reliant on tips. My solution is to tip 20% rounding up to the nearest whole dollar. I don't care how horrible service was. On Lyft, I've given lower ratings (safety) and still tipped 20%.
My solution is not to use services that have tipped workers. I do not get grocery delivery, in part because I'm not going to tip somebody when I haven't even had a chance to see if all my items were delivered. I visit full-service restaurants less because of tipping. And if tipping becomes expected on Uber, I will stop using it.
I don't think this solution helps tipped workers either. But I'm not going to be guilt-tripped into giving people money.
I really enjoy and strongly prefer going to places where you order at a counter and eat in the dining room at your leisure. I can really relax at those places without feeling hustled and hounded.
I, too, am trying to avoid full service restaurants for the most part.
This is a good point, but I do want to note one caveat, which is that in a lot of restaurants now tips, at least those that aren't in cash, are split between front and back of house staff. This means that even if you tip extra for the purposes of rewarding your waiter/ress for their service, it may not go to them.
This does not mean you shouldn't tip extra if the service was great, amazing, etc., but just something to be aware of.
the reason for that is it takes the whole team (server, host, line cooks, busser, etc) working in concert to give you good service (timely, tasty, well-prepared food in an enjoyable environment).
I'm not sure why this is a caveat or how it is responsive to the post you are responding to. losteverything's post wasn't about "rewarding your waiter/ress for their service". It was about the disproportionate effect a little extra money can have for someone that's desperately poor. That applies even more so for dishwasher, bussers and line cooks as it does for servers.
Pooled tips across both parts of the house are a step forward on a broken system. It is unfortunately very difficult to do legally in NY.
Tipping when mandatory (and this behavior, makes it that way) is also a hidden fee, why not just charge more? If Uber is not paying enough, why not work for someone else?
In the end by tipping you I'm essentially subsidizing Uber and enable them to pay you less.
I worked for about a dozen restaurants, bars and clubs back in the day. I lived in some of the shittiest places imaginable (in the US,) including 3 weeks in my car parked outside the low-rent, skank-infested strip club at which I DJed.
I get it; life is hard. However, tipping isn't a "charity surcharge" -- it's to reward service that went beyond the service you agreed to buy. A gardener watering my plants doesn't get a tip. A gardener helping find an escaped dog -- definitely.
I donate to charities I care about. I pay my taxes. I ensure the team I have working for me now gets paid before I do. I definitely don't need to be admonished that because I am a white guy that makes a bit of money now that somehow I don't understand the plight of those in service industries.
The great majority of people on HN aren't Stanford grads born with silver spoons -- nearly all of us worked our asses off to get the luxury of writing code or making companies.
Regardless of all that the implicit requirement that we tip as a form of charity is nonsense. The reason low wage people don't have a 'living wage' is because the supply of their labor is greater than the demand. Nothing will change that unless we implement a Soviet economy. Even Sweden has a poverty rate of 7% -- the U.K. is at 10% -- Spain is at 15%, France is at 14%.
The idea that "living wages" or tipping somehow makes any difference in poverty is not supported by facts. If we want to really help the poor, we should be supporting a culture of entrepreneurial freedom instead of excessive regulation. Some lady wants to sell tamales out of her house -- legally she can't do it without a health inspection and a permit. So someone that could have the means to start a small business with just a few dollars and some labor can't do it because of all of the barriers to entry. Some guy wants to cut hair on a street corner -- he can't do it without a cosmetology license. Some family wants to use the family car to pick up people at the airport -- they can't do it without permits, licenses or approvals.
Promoting micro-entrepreneurism would have a far bigger impact that tipping an Uber driver $10.
But the same people that love to virtue-signal often happen to be the same kind of people that support increased government regulation in all aspects of society. We're so busy protecting people from themselves that we stifle any ambitions they might have to attempt to improve their lot.
I'm one of the few that likes tipping for this exact reason. Cash if possible. I guess I like how direct it is (no middle organization to dilute and diffuse) and it seems to make them happy. I feel better, they feel better, all is good. Of course this doesn't work every where (e.g. in France tipping is generally looked down upon).
Now being highly persuaded for a tip I don't agree with but this is actually more of a general problem.
Just look at the sleaziness of online advertising and email marketing! Hey thanks for you order but can you review this and buy some stuff from us! Buy Buy Buy!
I appreciate your point but you're describing charity more than you're describing tipping. Furthermore you make it sound like you're entitled to tips and charity... Which undermines both.
Tipping is the worst possible thing for everyone involved. Your employer should be paying you a living wage, not expecting the customers to do so with tips.
Give me a break. I've been poor as fuck. I've been unable to afford a cup of coffee. Ive gone hungry some nights. I'm very well off now, but I certainly remember those days of struggle.
I still don't want to be guilted into leaving every person I interact with in a day money because their employer doesn't feel like paying them for doing their job.
The more you tip someone the less their employers pay them.
Wouldn't you prefer a steady paycheck to relying on the kindness of strangers to be able to pay rent?
Where does this madness stop? Since you are personally so virtuous, do you also tip the cashier at Walmart every time you buy deodorant? The shelf stocker? Deli meat slicer operator? The person bagging your groceries? McDonald's employee who made your Big Mac? Do you walk into the kitchen to slip a Washington into the cook's pocket? The person at the bodega who made your sandwich? None of those people make much.
How about the receptionist at the doctor's office? Your doctor? Your mechanic? Pharmacists? Pharmacy assistant? Bank teller? Theatre attendant? Garbage collector? Police? Mail carrier?
How about the adminstrative staff at your office? Do you slip them a few bucks for scheduling your meeting and emailing you the meeting minutes? The cafeteria staff?
There's many low paid people who don't interact with the public. Do you mail a check to Amazon's wearhouse for the people who packed your Christmas gifts? What about when people provide customer service over the phone or Internet? So you reply to emails you get with your credit card number to tip the email sender?
>The largest tippers are or were poor
This isn't even remotely true, people use tipping to signal their power and wealth. It's a social signal. It's classist. It is not a bunch of poor people passing around the same $5 to each other.
>One of lifes most enjoyable things is to be generous.
I don't find being guilted into paying other people's wages to be either generous or enjoyable. I don't find turning every interaction into a business dealing to be enjoyable. I don't find living in a society where people won't do their job without not-so-subtile bribes enjoyable or something to strive for.
Do you want to live in a society where it's ever increasing amounts of customer extortion over legitimate customer service?
I don't think highly of people who enjoy throwing coins at those "below" them and enjoy holding that power over them. The people who enjoy pulling out a $20 to "make sure they are taken care of" that day are not generous. I have some unkind words to describe such people.
Oh, by the way, I intend to leave my entire estate to charity. I am not an unkind or stingy person.
Yup, I know a guy buying a brand new car to uber. He ubered his last nearly free car into the ground and does not realize he is just driving the value out of his car and losing value at the end of the day.
I'd love if an economist of somebody with a better financial background could comment on this:
When you're giving a tip, you're effectively giving money to the people who own the company (or participate in profit sharing). Tips allow employers to pay their employees under market rate. By paying enough tip to bring the employee's wage up to the market rate, you are subsidizing the company's profit, not the employees profit.
Tips are bad for employees because they are inconsistent, bad for consumers because the price of goods are not well-indicated, and good for employers because it allows them to offset their labor cost by hiding it in tips, which they have convinced consumers are going to the employees as a perk.
So I don't know that I agree that the Uber app should implement tips (from a consumer or an employee standpoint). They should charge me more money (or rather, charge me the same as I am paying now, just make it more consistent), and pay their employees more money.
Even though the former model offers stability and fair pricing, there are some outperformers in the tipping world which must take pride in their customer service skills. If no-tip and tip business coexist in the same industry, the adverse selection bias kicks in and the no-tip business gets stuck with average employees at best.
Indeed this problem goes away. A new one pops up though: mediocre service, such as having to ask many times for refilling the tap water bottle or get condiments, and struggling to get the waiter's attention in general.
Coming from a country that doesn't enforce tipping, I have not found a noticeable lack of customer service compared to the US. In fact the opposite - I find service at restaurants in the US to be noticeably fake and insincere.
I'm not sure why you don't think that tips are the only incentive for businesses to have good customer service. Places with poor waitstaff drive customers away, and that restaurant goes out of business or the waiter's fired.
> I find service at restaurants in the US to be noticeably fake and insincere
Also, really really slow! They gotta show off their serious "oh mx customer, look at what a unbelievable level of service I, your server, am giving you, the money-haver, right now" while 10 more people patiently wait in line for their turn on the throne.
I much prefer surly service, if it means I can get my coffee and get out on my way a minute faster. That's time I could be spending with my loved ones.
I have not seen this in most of Europe. I've seen more than enough times in the US. When I get service where the person just disappears for a long time and never pays attention to the table. I will refuse to tip and write the issue on the check.
In fact, service in those countries is much better than in the US. I would even say that if there's a correlation between tipping and quality of service at the country level, is negative.
>mediocre service, such as having to ask many times for refilling the tap water bottle or get condiments, and struggling to get the waiter's attention in general.
This is already the case at the vast majority of restaurants I frequent. It's not as horrible as you make it seem.
A significant upside that I don't see getting enough attention in this thread is that you don't have to worry about whether or not staff (front and back) are having their wages and/or tips withheld. This is extremely common in California when workers are being paid under the table.
IMO the biggest reason for tipping is tax law. Tips technically have to get accurately reported as income to the IRS, but basically nobody ends up giving Uncle Sam the full amount. Random google searching says that something like 15-20% of cash tips get reported and taxed.
Yea, I don't get where this idea came from that tipping is either good for the employee or good for the customer. The employee is getting paid a crappy wage and the customer is being guilt-tripped into making up for it. The only winner is the employer.
Don't forget that you're implicitly paying a premium to compensate for the unpredictability/lumpiness/[1] of the tips!
[1] as well as "the presence of people who deliberately flout the expectations" and whose non-payment must be made up, in expectation, by more honest customers.
So essentially subsidizing the profit of the employer and subsidizing the cost of the goods that people who aren't adhering to the implied price structure are paying (non-tippers)!
I wonder how this came about? Like was this something a clever businessperson invented at some point? It sounds like the US is the only place with a tipping culture like ours.
I don't think "subsidizing profit" is an effect of the tipping system; what the restaurant gains in lower wages, it loses in higher effective food prices.
In fact, I think, ignoring the tax evasion effect, the tipping system reduces profitability, because it scares away business by that "compensate-for-unpredictability" tax, which takes from what could be restaurant revenue.
One other side effect which is generally not discussed because it's contentious, is that a number of people who receive tips will underreport their tips. Especially those who receive cash tips. So the state and federal governments are partially subsidizing their wages too.
I waited tables in college at a medium priced restaurant. On my great shifts I would pull down $50/hour on my best nights, $25-30/hour on typical weekends, and $10-20/hour on weeknights. Like most servers, I did not report most of my tips so it wasn't taxed.
This was AMAZING for me, the employee. If I was an hourly worker, I doubt I would have gotten paid over $10/hour.
Tips avoid taxation, so employees can earn higher wages than they otherwise might, with customers spending less than they otherwise would, and owners paying out less than they otherwise would.
Now, tips are not supposed to avoid taxation but it works out that way...
This is 100% inline with what I'm thinking.
I am amazed by how many people don't realize that tips are mainly a scheme managed by the employer to guilt-trip the customers into paying an extra mandatory unpredictable amount of money.
The thing that makes me so sad about it, is that the waiters are the first ones to guilt-trip the customers, but never the employers. It really hits a nerve when I read those blog posts from ex-waiters, explaining how difficult it is to "live with a waiter wage, so please make sure you tip 25% at least". That attitude is exactly the reason why employers continue to take advantage of employees.
I agree that in the current state of things, tips are needed for waiters to survive. But it doesn't make any sense economically. If mandatory minimum wage was set for waiters, and tips were built-in, everyone would be better off.
I think your logic is a bit flawed. If an employer can not get enough employees at the rate they are paying, they can either encourage tips to their employees to supplement their wages, or charge the customer more and pay their worker a higher salary. In the tip model, 100% of the extra money charged goes to the employee. In the charge more and pay more, the money might be split in other ways.
I am failing to see how the tip model helps the employer more.
There are cases where the employer is obligated to make up the difference if the minimum wage isn't reached by tipping. In that case, the alternative to you tipping the waiter $5 is that the restaurant charges you $5 more for your meal and passes that on to the waiter to meet the minimum wage requirement. If the restaurant eats the loss and doesn't raise prices, then you would be right, but restaurants already have thin margins and high competition so they would have to raise prices to raise wages and stay competitive. If tipping went away, menu prices would go up. However tipping is a form of price discrimination and an incentive for good service, which are both arguably good things.
Obviously the much more common case is where the tip would not be replaced by the employer. So in that case if you don't tip the $5, the waiter is just $5 poorer. The restaurant's profit isn't affected one cent.
Let's just take restaurants as an example. You say "tips allow employers to pay under market rate," but that can't be the case as a matter of logic. The market rate is _defined_ by what employers pay employees-employers as a whole simply can't all be paying below market wages or else the market rate would just be lower.
Perhaps you mean, "less than the market rate for similarly skilled labor in non-tipped sectors" (shoe sales, as an off+handed example). The question then becomes, "are the workers' skills in these sectors transferrable? Could workers simply change jobs if offered higher wages elsewhere?"
If so, then it follows that we can assume that the negatives you mentioned, like lower wages and less predictability, would drive workers out of the tipped sector and into the non-tipped sector. This would drive wages back up in the tipped sector. We don't see that.
What I think we see, and I admit this is a little anecdotal, is that restaurants (in healthy markets) are quite easily able to fill their positions. In fact, there's competition _for_ the positions amongst workers.
The fundamental rule to keep in mind is that if workers are being underpayed, they would simply change their line of work, driving wages up as the of supply of labor thinned. But what we see is that on the low-ends of both markets, wages generally stick to the minimum wage.
If tips were suddenly outlawed, do you think that restaurant wages would skyrocket to $30/hr? That's roughly the equivalent of 4 $40 tables with an 18% tip. I don't think so, because workers from other sectors would flood in from other sectors causing the wage to be pushed back down. A new equilibrium would probably be found somewhere just above the going rate in non-tipped sectors. If anything, tipping probably lowers wages for non-tipped employees more than the tipped ones.
I think the more interesting experiment would be to see how take home pay would be affected in a "tip-only" restaurant. In most, places around the country, the minimum wage for tipped positions is ~$6/hr. Losing that would be like losing one ~$33 table. On the employer's side, they would gain ~$9 back when you account for payroll taxes. I think what we'd see is that most of that wouldn't just be pocketed by the employer, it would probably go back into the restaurant in the form of better ingredients, materials, marketing, and/or additional staff, all in hopes of increasing the number of tables turned overall. Non-luxury restaurant profits are driven by tables turned, not the price of each plate. E.G. hiring an extra busboy or dishwasher might help you turn over more tables more quickly, increasing restaurant profits and also the number of tips earned by the servers.
I don't know, this is all an interesting thought experiment.
In general, I'm pretty wary of "employers pay workers less by taking advantage of X" arguments. Unless it's poor government policy distorting the labor market or something like a recession, labor markets probably function like any other market. Supply and demand still reigns king. Underpaying employers will have a hard time keeping employees. Highly skilled workers in any sector will sell their talent to the highest bidder.
My uber drivers have been steadily dropping in quality, more often than not taking the wrong directions to my destination, despite the fact that the GPS right in front of them tells them where to go.
I've been using Lyft more and more lately. Drivers just seem.... better. And I don't mind tipping in the app.
I agree. I'm consistently amazed at how many people I end up giving sub-five star ratings to these days, and I have been a huge proponent and defender of Uber in the past.
If you pick me up promptly, follow your GPS, have a car that is functional, and either engage me in pleasant conversation or say nothing at all besides 'hello', I will give you five stars. Many drivers seem to act as if they are driving their friends around as opposed to driving their clients around.
> I'm consistently amazed at how many people I end up giving sub-five star ratings
That in itself is possibly a contributing problem. Incentives go all wonky when four-star ratings essentially don't exist. Five-star ratings should be reserved for exceptional service, and three-star ratings should be for average service, not "I'm unhappy with this but not enough that I won't feel bad giving a negative review, so I'll give it three stars." People don't know how to rate, and it makes all our rating systems much less accurate.
It is because of the rating system ambiguity that five stars is the norm. It signals that there is unequivocally nothing wrong. Anything less than five stars could be interpreted in many ways and is very subjective: did the user have a problem or do they just rate differently? It is why five star rating is also the standard for acceptability on Amazon and Ebay.
Personally I don't care if there is no incentive to go above and beyond the base level of service. All I want and expect is the base level of service. If you want to reward epic service, do so with off the books tipping.
> Personally I don't care if there is no incentive to go above and beyond the base level of service. All I want and expect is the base level of service.
This is the exact problem. A base level of service should be three stars, but people have been conditioned to read five stars as base level, and anything below as problematic. The whole point of a rating system is to get an idea of what to expect. When different people rate on different metrics, the data doesn't actually represent what you think it does (whichever metric you subscribe to).
The only reason anything less than five stars is interpreted weirdly is because people started rating weirdly and then start taking that into consideration when looking at the ratings, and it gets all confused. Many of these ratings systems clearly state what each rating level means, and people still don't rate by those criteria. People have been culturally indoctrinated to rate things incorrectly (that is, they specifically don't follow the instructions in lieu of following what has become the norm). This compresses one end of the spectrum which leads to loss of fidelity on that end. It's clearly worse than a system where people actually followed the criteria and we could actually identify a five star average as exceptional, a four star as good, and a three star as sufficient.
Perhaps a "likes" system +1 or +0 would be better? It's a simpler question, and if you apply some basic curving to the likes, you get a more decent score.
Then again, everyone wants that "I ordered 4.9 star out of 5 item on Amazon" reassurance...
In the Uber EATS delivery stuff, we rate like this.
When I go to a restaurant, pick up the order, I rate the restaurant either thumbs up (all went well) or thumbs down (something wrong, with option to choose what). They also rate me. I drop off, same thing happens. I rate them up or down, they do too.
I've been using for Uber for almost...six years now? And Lyft since 2012 or '13 or something. I'll occasionally switch from one app to the other and there are definite waves in driver quality, pricing, routes (for pool/line). For the last several months in my local market Uber seems to have gotten a wave of new drivers, and they generally tend not to know what they're doing.
I agree on this also. I haven't used Lyft but in my city a lot of people have complained that the quality of Uber drivers is dropping. A lot base it on lack of English, lack of following directions, focused on getting tips rather than getting their customer from point A to point B knowing you're already getting paid.
I just made an account to post this, a factor that isn't really being brought up by any of the comments I've seen in this conversation is drugs and other illicit practices used by Uber drivers to make money.
I have known several drivers who sold marijuana, small individual shot bottles, smoking papers, flavored cigar papers, and other 'party related favors' out of their cars to make their Uber driving more profitable. Without this source of income made from people going to/from parties and bars on weekends, alongside their actual ride fares, their profit margin is not even worth the time.
These 'tipping' hustles are frankly extremely mild in comparison to my experiences. I'm of the opinion that these hustles are publicly frowned upon, but in practice are not effectively policed on purpose. If Uber policed these sorts of practices in an effective way(like if they had cameras/monitors in cars) they would lose a substantial portion of their drivers instantly.
While I don't doubt this happening, where are you located? I've taken over 1,200 Uber rides in the Bay Area and LA, at all times of day, and have not once been solicited for drugs or smoke shop/convenience store items. (Plenty of other hustles, though.)
My experience getting offered relates to southern/midwestern states, TN/NC/GA stand out to me, and the drivers I've met/spoken with who did this most regularly operated in areas of Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs specifically.
Although I have also experienced this several times in the upper Midwest. I suspect there might be some bias in my physical appearance that makes me get offered more? Several drivers had a sort of setup where they had goods in a box/console and opened it to make the offer, so it seems likely that if they didn't feel a fare to be the partying type they would simply not make the offer? One I saw had an entire cooler setup.
Another possible explanation could be that in very competitive areas like LA or the Bay the rank/yank system cuts out bad drivers more quickly than middle-america where there is maybe not as large of a pool of people applying to be drivers?
I have never had a bad or sketchy ride in Bay/NYC/Chicago/Dallas. (I have had no experience with Uber in LA)
That's what it would be here, except that it was co-opted by the usual Horatio Alger types as a means to underpay for labor and hide that cost. Then, like so much, it just became "how it was done".
Sure, they probably would, but would they be right? Are they getting the best for their not-dollar? 9/10 New restaurants fail after all... typically investing in a restaurant is a losing bet.
Unfortunately it's the nature of the beast when wages are so low. Bartenders are typically paid next to nothing and depend on tips, whereas in Europe they are paid a decent amount and don't need tips to get by.
Unfortunately US politics means this won't change any time soon. Evidently it's simpler for every American to carry around spare dollar bills every day than it is to pass meaningful legislation.
There is a whole other inequity that arises out out of the ridiculous US tipping regime, I will quote restauranteur Danny Meter again:
"What is a tip? It’s a multiplier of menu pricing and as menu prices have gone up, so too has the multiplier over the course of my career which is now 30, 31 years.Tipped employees, happily for them, are making about 300 percent of what they were 31 years ago. During that same period, everyone in the kitchen — the dishwasher, non-tip eligible employees — have seen their hourly income go up about 20 percent."[1]
If Americans would stop tipping then the current wages would become untenable and the restaurants and bars would lose staff. They would need to increase wages (and prices) accordingly. This is something the American people have the power to change without legislation.
In a sense you are right, but practically speaking individuals can't morally unilaterally defect from tipping. When nearly everyone agrees that 15% is the tip for normal performance, and one person leaves 0% for normal performance, that one person is free-riding and effectively hurting an innocent victim.
One practical solution would be to close the minimum wage loophole for tipped employees. The difference between the two minima is the presumptive value of the normal tip, so this is a means by which you can coordinate an instant and universal change from relying on tips to having no reliance on tips. It's not exactly ideal, given that everyone knows waiters typically make a lot more in tips and evaded tax than that difference, but it is at least consistent and nominally fair.
I am not sure what other practical solutions you might have in mind.
How would they organize that sort of collective action? There are lots of people already who don't tip, but it hasn't changed anything. I can't control what the guy next to me does, only what I do. If I stop tipping, it only hurts the person serving me - it doesn't change the tipping culture.
I always find these sorts of arguments vexing - people act as if we can just 'decide' as a society to change something, and it is that simple. I can't 'decide' for society to do anything, unless we organize, coerce, and perhaps legislate.
Sure, but in that window of time people who like paycheck to paycheck will suffer a sudden loss of income and likely slide into poverty. Which is why we take proactive political action. At least in theory, anyway.
There's been an interesting move by Danny Meyer and Tom Colochio two well-known and very successful restaurateurs in New York City to abolish tips in favor of a flat service charge to be shared amongst everyone in the restaurant.
Danny Meyer talks about the history of tipping in the US in which he claims is rooted in post-Civil War racism and the old Pullman cars.
Because then you look more expensive compared to the pre-tip prices of other restaurants. As long as businesses can get away with posting prices that are less than what people actually have to pay, this silliness will continue.
Yep. For whatever reason, charging $50 for a restaurant outing and expecting a $10 tip gets perceived as being a better deal than a restaurant that charges $60 and does not allow tipping.
Born in the US and I find tip culture here weird. In fact I hate it. It has taken away the pleasure of giving a great tip to someone who really earned it.
Uber pool is just a terrible experience in many levels
1. Many drivers think they make less if the passengers are using Uber pool. I am not sure if this is true or if they are confused. However, when they find out I am using pool they instantly turn passive aggressive and start complaining how they make nothing on a pool ride. They make me feel as if I am taking advantage of them.
2. Uber also tries to pack the car these days. A lot of times, it is probably much faster taking public transit than using pool. One time, my pool ride was just going around picking up people and 15 minutes later I was exactly a block from where I started. I got off the ride and Uber has the balls to charged me $10 for "cancelling". Decided to quit Uber on that very day. Will only ride public transit or Lyft these days
Tips are a way for an owner to scam personnel out of decent salary. There is literally 0 reasons to have it these days. Every issue they were designed to solve either disappeared, easily solvable, or when solved via tipping leads to more significant problems.
Low income? Pay workers more. No one thinks it's a good idea to start tipping, say, teachers.
Can't afford higher salary? Split X% of profits among (smaller) staff. No one sells furniture for 10% less, halving cashier salary and making tips a requirement.
Suffering of preferential treatment of tippers (like giving out seats for money)? Fine or fire offending personnel. Why what effectively a bribe considered okay in these cases?
But no, somehow US culture still decides it's better to move that pressure and responsibility onto the customer provoking conflicts.
I'm from Sweden and generally I never tip anything for any service available - neither does the absolute majority of my countrymen - with the exception of being on vacation in other countries or eating at some real fancy restaurant.
I were in US a couple years ago and found it pretty emberrasing how people are expecting a tip. I understand that they're paid less and i've spoken with some of them and waitresses etc may make about $3/h+tip. It's not the customers job to see to it that the employees stay at their job - it's the companies. At the hotel bar we had some kind of happy hour where everything was free which of course made it a bit crowded so unless you held up a tip / bribe the bartender just ignored you.
I understand that there are cultural differences but in my opinion you get a tip for a job well done - but it's ALWAYS optional and you should never feel obligated to give one.
Tips are often a major source of compensation
for wait staff and other U.S. service providers.
Employers often pay these employees lower wages
in anticipation that tip income will provide a
significant portion of the employees' income.
Customers should realize that they are not
auotmatically paying 'more' (due to tipping).
In non-tipping countries, the tips are simply
built into the price of the food. An advantage
to tipping, therefore, is the ability to tip
whatever is appropriate: if the service is
poor, a small tip should be left, signaling
to the server that their service was subpar.
I understand that they count on it as salary, it's the same with the Uber drivers - they don't make enough so they depend on the tip. Either way it's not acceptable - if they can't support themselves on the wages they have they should demand higher wages from their employers who equally raise the cost of the product.
I'm also from sweden. Here we all pay 13.5% tip included in the price for restaurant food. This comes from a general tax of 8% that was put on all restaurant staff a long time ago because of expected tips. This was not seen as fair because not everyone gets a share of that tip. So now we pay our staff more, we pay a decent price directly and the tip we pay to the staff (if we do) is expected to be payed tax for at the end of the year. I doubt this part happens though, not many knows they are supposed to pay tax for it.
Younger waiters however seems not to know about this general tip that is baked into the bill and expect another tip on top of that. Watching too many movies from USA I guess :-)
Serious question for those who are pro-tipping...where do you draw the line? How do you choose which products/services are tip-worthy and which aren't?
Some people who are pro-tipping are that way because they think the people are worth it. Maybe they have worked in a position that relied on tips. Maybe someone close to them did or does. Maybe they know that a dollar or two actually makes a difference for many people.
Tipping is an incentive for employers to squeeze the workers even more. Employers need to pay the workers a decent wage rather than them relying on tips.
> You are subsidizing their wages and making it seem ok for their employer to pay them peanuts.
You're going to end up paying for it either way. But yes, I agree - I'd rather get rid of the culture of tipping and just pay a reasonable price for a service.
The thing that really sucks though, is per federal law an employer paying the 'tipping minimum wage' is required to make up the difference if an employee makes below the normal minimum wage - they almost never do from what I can tell. By choosing to not tip not only am I just being an asshole, but the employer won't change anything either because the chance of them being caught being a douchebag is slim.
I treat tips the same way that sales managers treat commissions. (I wouldn't be surprised if that's the model it came from, actually.)
If you pretend to care about me and my company while we eat at your restaurant (or whatever) and do all that you can to make the experience a good one for us, then we will tip you well and we will more than likely come back. 20% is usually my minimum, but I've tipped 50-100% sometimes.
Treat us like shit, and you'll get tipped equivalently. (I've tipped 5% before for really crappy service. I don't like doing that, though.)
I'm not the person you were responding to, but my reasoning is that I still get paid even on days when I phone it in and do poorly at my job. Why should I in turn get to deny pay to others, as long as they did the bare minimum?
I think the bar for someone to not get paid for working should be really fucking high.
Service industries. It's pretty simple. Any job where the worker is unlikely to be appreciated by their boss for going above and beyond but it makes a big difference to me.
The cook in the kitchen gets no tip. Unlikely to be appreciated, gets no share of the tip, and could make my dish a delight, or spit in it.
The guy/girl says "i'm gonna be your waiter tonight", and that's the last time you see them, others bring the dishes and clean the table. And by law, they cannot share the tip.
When I pay for service, I'd like the employer and the market to figure out for me what's a fair wage. Don't put it on me, 1) I'll most likely be wrong and unfair, and 2) I just cannot tip the cook.
The restaurants I worked in were pretty openly corrupt about that sort of thing. If you didn't tip out the hostess and busboys, you wouldn't get customers or clean tables. If your tables turned more slowly, you would eventually get canned.
The cooks all made more money. Front of house people made like $2.25/hr (mid 90s), the line cooks made $12.
In America (well, at least in Florida), policy at some restaurants dictates that servers "tip out" some percentage of their tips to the cook and ancillary staff. It's most certainly not illegal here.
You forced me to check my sources. Thank you. I cannot just trust my memory.
Looks like the front of the house can pool their tips in many states in the USA indeed. But according to Nolo, they cannot pool with people who typically get no tips.
"Only employees who regularly receive tips can be part of the pool. Employees can't be required to share their tips with employees who don't usually receive their own tips, like dishwashers or cooks."
Just because it is not legal to force servers to share some with the bar backs and the cooks does not mean it is not expected in most places. Not all social customs should be codified in law. Some flexibility in life is good.
In practice it's any sort of delivery job that you personally interact with the worker. It's pretty uncanny actually. Taxis, waiters, bartenders, some couriers & porters. People who have worked those jobs feel strongly about tips. People who were left out of the tipped class feel like it was bullshit.
A bunch of others expand with a communal tip jar, but it's very rare for anyone to care about putting something in the jar. You don't tip cafe workers, convenience store workers, retail workers and so on even though they get paid the same minimum wage.
Did Uber change the way they deal with driver ratings? Their "rank and yank" system [1] was once the object of considerate consternation. You would think that it would have been quite effective at dealing with "aggressive, tip-hustling" drivers.
They cut anyone with a rating below X where X is determined market by market in order to balance out the number of new drivers they have coming in with the number of drivers they are cutting for bad ratings and also taking into account growth for demand in the market. In new or rapidly growing markets they hardly cut anyone ever but in mature markets with ample supplies of drivers they demand a very high average rating. At one point the cut off for being let go in LA for example was something like 4.6 out of 5.
It appears only the desperate drivers are left in the system, making ranking and yanking self-defeating unless Uber wants to continue to canabilize its diminishing capacity.
I imagine the rating system would handle this effectively. I would really be annoyed if the driver was pulling the same stunts that was listed in the article.
Lyft has a good solution for this, in that they prompt you to give a tip through the app at the end of the ride. More and more they're seeming like the (at least marginally) more ethical and sane ride-sharing app.
What I like about the Lyft tipping model is that allows you to decide the (optional) tip after you have left the ride - when the driver says goodbye, they have no idea if you will or will not leave a tip.
Removing the on-the-spot pressure of tipping and the immediate human response makes it feel like a very different experience. It makes me feel truly generous when I do tip, but I also know that my personal rating does not depend on that decision in any way.
Right on. I use Lyft and frequently leave tips when I feel the driver and my ride experience has been great. I also think the tipping experience is much more friendly to both the driver and the passenger (compared to say, a usual taxi ride) and I've rarely, if ever, had an unpleasant experience with Lyft.
I used to rarely use Uber (more outside bay area) though I did have Uber installed on my phone. But I uninstalled Uber a few weeks ago as I was feeling more and more uncomfortable with Uber's corporate behavior and their CEO's personal and political reputation. This was even before the latest spate of allegations of sexual harassment and other bad publicity. I don't think I'll ever install Uber app again... the tipping policy being just one of the many reasons for that decision.
You seem to want to kill the messenger here. If Uber's practice was unlawful, it would've been stopped eventually.
And why was Uber's practice unlawful? The "free market" of contractors Uber relies on to drive down costs also allows drivers freedom of speech to ask for tips. Uber can either have an open driver market or they can limit their drivers' speech — they can't do both.
Does it make the farmers' market unfree when it declares a rule that vendors may not purchase their wares (but must grow the produce/animals on a farm)? Does that make the farmers employees of the farmers' market? Without getting into the finer points of law about contractor independence & discretion, it's a bit silly to hold the position that Uber can't regulate the service in any way. In particular, standardizing the terms of the contract to be traded in a given market is a practice even the staunchest of free market proponents accept.
"Does it make the farmers' market unfree when it declares a rule that vendors may not purchase their wares (but must grow the produce/animals on a farm)?"
At my local farmer's market vendors are neither contractors nor employees. Vendors rent space and enter into a normal commercial contract, the rules for which are very different.
"it's a bit silly to hold the position that Uber can't regulate the service in any way"
I'm sorry I'm having trouble seeing your argument here through the huge straw man.
I always hated tipping because I had to have cash on hand. I always appreciated how Lyft lets you leave a tip electronically. Now when I use Uber I make sure I have cash on hand so I can tip the driver. Why? Because I think their rates are too low, and I can afford to help someone who pleasantly moved me from Point A to Point B. I don't blame other people for not tipping, because maybe they have neither the cash nor the inclination. But I will continue tipping. Lyft is better than both taxi and Uber in this scenario because you can choose to tip after you get out (that said, I always do).
> Then some assholes sued and now Uber drivers are allowed to ask for tips. Nice job breaking it, hero.
err, tipping isn't mandatory. "The assholes" you are talking about are not employed by Uber therefore should be allowed to ask for tips if they want. Remember, Uber "is just an app", or so they say... "The assholes" want to make hands meet, just like you. You might not care about their point of view or their interests but nobody's going to be driving you at loss or with ridiculous margins for much longer. So there is no need to insult people who fight for their rights.
Rich and powerful people use the law to their advantage all the time when they don't blatantly violate it like Uber. I didn't see you complain about that, nor call them "assholes".
I'd argue it's easier to not tip when you have the option to tip in the App. If you're transacting with cash the driver knows if / when you aren't going to tip them. It'd be next level aggressive to sit and watch if you tip the driver on the app before you get out of the car. Personally, I'm fine to tip since the normal barrier to tipping for me is having cash, but either way in app tipping seems to make things easier.
I like being able to choose whether to tip once I'm out of the car, cash-free, no time pressure. Sometimes a driver does really deserve a tip, and I like that Lyft facilitates it.
People shouldn't need to beg for money in order to have a stable income when they are already working regular hours. The cash flow problems it creates for individuals and the awkward social dance it makes is problematic for everyone. No one likes two prices, they want to know what they are paying ahead of time everything included, any extras/feeds/charges/gratuities make for a bad customer experience
It makes people feel awkward. Plus some economic mumbo jumbo.
Don't pay much mind, it's the HN hive mind trying to rationalize sympathy for underpaid drivers against the libertarian-ish notion that everyone is in a job like a full stack software engineer who can just walk off the job at will.
Would you be OK to have a shitty salary but the possibility to get a tip, for which you don't know the criteria and cannot participate in the negotiation?
because people need to get fair wages instead of relying on tips.
the only country i've visited that has tipping is the us. outside the us, people get paid fair salaries and tipping is done when the service is outstanding.
I think Uber drivers try to solicit tips from female passengers far more often than from male passengers. I rarely tip Uber, have taken hundreds of rides, and have never been solicited.
(When I do tip on Uber, it is either going to the airport overseas to get rid of spare cash, or if something exceprional happened. I've taken UberX in major snowstorms and in that case happily tip $20. I left a laptop in an Uber and got it returned to me within 5 minutes, I tipped $50.)
I do Uber part-time but only deliveries (UberEats). I get tipped from time to time and I have no expectation on the tip. I also don't have the problem of driving for free as the restaurants have a radius and usually I'll be near another place or return to my spot to sit for a bit.
I find tipping awkward as the courier. Sometimes people like to explain they don't have cash to tip me and I have to explain tipping isn't expected on Uber's platform so don't worry about it. Other times there shoving $5 bills at me for driving 1.0mi down the street.
As a customer I've yet to tip a Uber driver as other stated I don't carry cash only plastic. Same goes with getting my car detailed ... Do I give them $20 on top of the $100 or leave it at $100.
Then I think how many drivers actually report the tips they make to the IRS.
What bothers me is that I don't want to tip in cash, and I never carry cash. Put tipping in the app for AFTER I get out of the car and AFTER the driver has given the rating. No rating, no tip.
> Then I’ve discovered first-hand that more and more Uber riders are calling ahead to ask for your destination to see if it’s “worth it” to pick you up.
When I use Uber the first question it asks is the destination. I assume this is seen by the driver, no? Why would they have to call?
Ridesharing apps don't reveal destination to the driver until they arrive at the pickup. This is to prevent drivers from only picking good rides and leaving riders in the lurch. One of the main selling point of Uber in some cities is that they would get you to places taxis refused to go.
I thought Uber was about pure capitalism, with surge pricing and all. I actually thought that drivers knew the destination and that the price was going up until a driver accepted the ride.
No tipping has been a big driver of success for Uber. Americans dont realise they are the only people who in the world who "tip" for completely average service/just doing your job.
I drove for Uber in a resort town and was appalled by how difficult it was to make any money at it even though I was paid twice the metro rates. The biggest problem is all the unpaid work and investment Uber drivers have to make just to drive for Uber and then Uber takes a huge cut.
There are a lot of sunken costs involved in becoming an Uber driver. The driver then has to recover those costs with miserable earnings. I suspect the burn rate of Uber drivers is unsustainably high.
In Australia we've tried tipping Uber drivers (e.g. because we've inconvenienced them with a stop to pickup food on the way home) and so far after 5 occasions no driver has accepted the tip (taxi drivers accept a tip without question, and usually won't accommodate short trips, despite the law, yet alone special requests).
Many cultures and sub-cultures don't believe in tipping for many different reasons. These cultures exist all over the globe and in the US. When tipping is needed to provide a decent wage for a service, people from these 'no tipping' cultures will tend to get bad to no service. Taxi services are heavily criticized for this behavior. I think it is great at least one of the two major smartphone hailed car services has a default culture of not tipping. Drivers can choose which they like better.
Uber rides are very cheap at the moment, especially when you get an Uber Pool and no one joins. I hope they up the fares some and pass them on to drivers and keep tipping for special extra-ordinary service. Uber is so much more convenient than conventional taxi service and I sure hope it or some similar service continues into the future.
I remembered getting hustled to buy my driver McDonalds then coming home to realize I got billed $36 dollars for his time; a trip that usually costs $9. He guilt me into thinking he does not get paid the more he waits. Alcohol...
In some countries tipping is perceived very negatively. I have had my tip money almost thrown on my face as the server accused me of taking him as a "beggar". They earn good money and they take pride in their serving jobs. Greedy American institutions have shoved this concept of tipping down the consumer throats. Increase my food prices or driving rates, and I would be happy to pay them than haggle with every other service industry person about shorting them a $1 or $2.
Curious; are Uber or Lyft drivers penalized at all for canceling? I had a Lyft driver a few weeks back call me and ask where I was, which is odd since the app tells him. Turns out he was on the wrong side of the street. Instead of just turning around, he just says "bye", hangs up and cancels the trip. Was annoying for me since I had been waiting for 10 minutes at this point but it seemed like a real poor choice on his part.
Apparently not. We had a driver the other day in Park City, UT who told us that Uber drivers are no longer held to a minimum trip acceptance rate. Whether this is true or not he said Uber lost a lawsuit and could no longer apply the rule.
He then proceeded to tell us with great glee that his trick was to go offline in-between trips until the surge price hit at least a 5-6x multiplier. He would then go back online and pick a fare that suited him. It explained why all of the Ubers and Lyfts there were insanely expensive.
I've never seen anyone so happy to tell me to my face that he was ripping me off, and he even had the cheek to ask for a 5* rating at the end of the trip.
Why would you be upset? It's just a participant in the free market playing the game. After all you just can hang around for a few hours for the surge to end.
My point is that there is no end to the surge because they are all doing it. If the drivers are artificially limiting supply at all times then why wouldn't I be upset that I'm getting ripped off? Not once during my four day stay did I see the surge price go under 2x.
I've been increasingly using taxis, especially at airports because uber and lyft are turning into gypsy cabs. Forgetting that it often takes longer to get an uber, the number of times I've been pitched on some perfume or religious thing is really skyrocketing.
Everyone has a side hustle to their side hustle now and it's generally concerning as an indicator of the economy.
It's not just Uber -- I've seen tip jars out in Australian food stalls with signs exhorting patrons to tip.
I like not having to tip, too, but it's like the Prisoner's Dilemma: once somebody starts successfully collecting tips, everybody else feels pressure to ask for them and then the whole economy adjusts to accommodate them. That's how I think we got where we are.
In Melbourne I have literally never had anyone at any cafe, food stall, or any other similar place ask me for a tip, and yet every single one of them have a tip jar.
The tip jar is always filled with silver change, almost always a "round up" from a note. If I buy a coffee for $4.20, and pay in cash, the tip jar might get my 80c. (I almost never carry cash, so this is rare in and of itself.)
The only time I've ever even seen a tip requested is as a part of some POS card readers, where it asks if you would like to leave a tip before you enter your PIN -- Conversely I've also had employees tell me "just hit enter to skip the tip bit of the transaction" before I've even gotten to that stage.
Maybe this is a thing that is starting up north and slowly working its way south? In Brisbane, nobody asked for, or per se expected tips, but a tip jar was present often with a handwritten sign that said "Tipping is good karma" or "Tippers are sexy" or similar.
With Uber increasingly squeezing profits out of their drivers, this was 100% bound to happen. I am more surprised that Uber allows drivers that request tips to continue driving with them. If they really want that extra cash, then they should just go full-time on Lyft, especially now with all of the drama they're going through.
My recent policy is to not answer my phone or texts once I've requested an Uber/Lyft. Too often I've had riders call me to ask where I'm going, and then ask me to cancel. I have had awkward phone calls where they ask me to cancel, but I politely decline and ask them to do it if they'd like.
I'm surprised that this discussion of tipping doesn't include the fact that it implements price discrimination.
It's possible that the reason tipping is so often the end point of systems is that price discrimination is much more profitable than having a fixed price for everyone. So trying to design a pricing system that replaces a tipping-based service needs to deal with this problem. How is your service going to implement price discrimination without tipping? Otherwise how is it going to be as profitable as a system that has price discrimination?
I'm not saying I prefer these systems as a consumer; I would much rather pay a fixed price. I'm saying that it seems like they create the most profit and thus competitive edge for the businesses using them.
Uber should add tipping to the app, period. The way that Lyft does it is nice because you can't be pressured into a tip - the ride must be completed before the tipping screen is shown which means you're already out of the car. Even more importantly the driver has already rated you before you make this decision. I've tipped many Lyft drivers and never had a single one ask me for a tip or a good rating. I've had many Uber drivers ask (or put up a sign), because they know the app won't ask for them.
I know what the responses will be already. "The lack of tipping is one of the main reasons I use Uber! Tipping is awkward! They should pay their drivers more it's not my job". So then don't tip. That's really all there is to it.
Lots of discussion about whether tips are good or bad. Friendly reminder that people don't tend to tip all races equally [0]. This means that having driver compensation partially in the form of tips will mean black drivers get paid less. Some interesting implications here [1]
Well if someone chooses to share their car, you should just be happy that things worked out such that it was convenient for them to pick you up. And certainly you can share an extra couple bucks with them.
The issue with Uber is tipping can affect ratings and Uber plays like tipping isn't part of the mechanics. They've pushed driver payout so low it's now important for drivers to figure out how to get extra money from their fares. Lyft has pricing parity with Uber so the same issue exists but they help the situation by allowing tips to be collected in app but not expose the tip during the ratings process. It's a more honest and mature mechanic and why I've switched over to Lyft completely.
It does not seem the drivers are part of the sharing economy, many of them have made it a full time job. As a result many of the issues with taxi services seem to be slowly cropping up.
I feel like the inconvenience of getting hustled is just a minimal tax on using an questionably moral, very low-cost, low-job-security service. You get it cheap, but you've got to interact with desperate people, and deal with how that makes you feel uncomfortable...
If you don't want to get hassled, better pay is the byline, not a tacked-on after-thought.
(Disclaimer: I found the tone of this post pretty insufferable.)
There seem to be really extreme regional differences with this. Wherever I am, when I take an Uber I usually tip a small amount ($1-$2) and as small talk I ask the driver what ratio of people leave a tip. Here in Western Mass I've gotten answers in the 30-50% area, if I'm right. New Hampshire seems to be similar. But in New York, they tell me it's maybe 1 out of 10.
I usually use Lyft and so the option to tip is there so this doesn't seem to be affecting that service yet. I honestly haven't used Uber in a while since the app never seems to work but if I got propositioned for tips with Lyft/Uber I'd definitely be hesitant to keep using that service going forward.
Lyft offers in-app tipping, well after getting out of the car. Convenience is what people want, and Lyft makes it convenient to tip the driver whereas Uber makes it convenient to not tip the driver.
I'm amazed so many people still use Uber, not even because of the rotten company culture and business practices, but because of the user experience.
Add 10 cents to every ride and divide that money amongst the drivers in the city each day based upon 1) number of rides 2) rating 3) number of canceled trips 4) distance. It will incentivize the drivers to get good ratings (more so than now) and encourage less canceled trips and more fares.
The author is more tolerant than I am. In the case of both Ride 1 and Ride 2, I would have immediately cancelled on the driver as soon as he pulled those stunts.
I actually did once get a text from a guy demanding to know my destination. I told him I already entered it into the system, and he immediately cancelled on me.
Why do they even have a rating system if they have a tipping system? Ratings for drivers should be based on how they are tipped compared to the average in the area. Ratings on riders should be based on how well they tip compared to the average in the area.
Yeah, I've never tipped an Uber driver. Not because they haven't been excellent, but because I don't carry cash, and it's supposed to be frictionless. I.e., easy. If this happened to me I'd never ride another one.
Wait - isn't tipping included in Uber app? I almost never use it myself. Gett, on the other hand, has automatic tip setting (like 5, 10, and 15%) that you can set once for all your rides.
I thought the whole point of Uber is to make the transaction cashless?
" Drivers sued because Uber was treating us like employees. Uber used to deactivate drivers who mentioned tips. The judge said Uber Drivers are independent contractors and have the right to request tips."
If you don't make enough driving Uber. Don't drive for Uber. The market corrects low pay; basic supply and demand.
Would you pay $10 for an oranage if you're buying it right from the farm? Of course not. The supply is such and the demand is such that $10 isn't the price.
Would you pay $10 for an orange in you're at Everest Base Camp? Probably because there aren't many orange trees up there.
The whole "living wage" argument doesn't hold much water with me. If Uber drivers were scarce, then Uber would raise prices (such as surge pricing.) If you aren't making enough driving Uber, then take your car, start your own car service, start marketing and compete.
Not that it's relevant but I don't particularly like Uber however I do like the free market. In this case it isn't like Uber is a monopoly.
Wow, norms change quickly. I traveled with my golden retriever several times last spring (always asking first by phone) and the drivers were all genuinely surprised when I offered a tip at the end of the ride.
There's no legal requirement to tip anywhere and it's money out my pocket and into a strangers (whom I'll likely never even see again). I never tip - for anything - no one should.
Uber grew a lot by aggressively cutting prices to boost demand, but at some point if you push drivers too hard it's going to backfire and ruin the customer experience.
I really like the Starbucks model, where you add the tip after the fact. If the drivers doesn't know who tipped them, then they would be nice to everyone.
I just paid your employer $5 to take my tipsy ass home at 3am, safely in a clean car. Why would I have to give you $3 tip? Fvck off, only my waiter or bartender get tips from me.
Not everyone knows what's been going on with Uber lately, though. If you don't read the tech press you might have never seen it, so it's not fair to say the OP is endorsing it.
Lately? Have you read what I linked? From day 1, Uber has been of utmost evil. This is not new. Even if you somehow manage to convince yourself that weakening the rule of law by deliberately ignoring taxi legislation which has been their business model since they started with UberX is somehow not a big deal, the first time that subprime shit was reported was more than two years ago.
Most of the time when I post that Uber is evil, people are quick to downvote. But Uber will fail despite all the stupid fawning. Now it's just a matter of time. You can run from law, you can bribe people to ride with you but eventually the law catches up with you and buries you. In this case, it's going to be Waymo but honestly, something eventually was due to happen.
Edit: hello downvoters! Any comments as to where I am wrong? Last time we did this I was told my claims are "baseless". OK, so I reposted my pile of links. What's your excuse this time?
> Lately? Have you read what I linked? From day 1, Uber has been of utmost evil. This is not new.
My point is that the average user of the Uber app is not aware of any of this. They were likely recommended the app by a friend or read a vaguely fawning article in a magazine, or saw an ad online.
So it's not fair to say every Uber user endorses their behaviour. They don't know about it.
Welcome to America. People who complain about tipping annoy me. I agree it's a pain to have to tip but companies in America like to not pay their employees.
Instead of giving the tipping option Uber should just automatically add 15%. But knowing Uber they would just keepo this 15% and not pass it on to the driver.
