I can’t remember if we recently discussed this, but maybe this is the generation that puts an end to tipping madness.
I posted this article in another thread, but I will post it here, since I think the entitlement attitude shown is very relevant:
John McQueen, a 50-year-old stretch coach who lives in Flatiron, used to frequent a liquor store in the East Village.
But just before Christmas, a stock person suggested he offer her a gratuity because the holidays were approaching.
“It was my favorite wine store. But suddenly, every time I walked in, she would say she was open to receiving tips,” McQueen told The Post. “She became aggressive about it, and finally I said, ‘You are open to receiving tips? Really? So am I!’ And I stopped going in because it made me uncomfortable.’’
Good for this guy. And, I would have either asked to see the manager or written a letter later telling him why I was not coming back.
And, for this one:
Peter Longo, 71, who owns Porto Rico, said McQueen is far from alone in his frustration.
“I’ve experienced a lot of complaints from customers who felt they were intimidated and made to feel like cheapskates,’’ he admitted. “I’m offended myself, but when we switched from regular cash registers to a POS system, the tip request was included automatically. I explain, but people are still miffed.’’
Longo said he considered going back to the old cash registers, but the staff overrode his decision.
“Once kids began receiving credit card tips, they wouldn’t go back to the old system. I’d have a mutiny,’’ he said with a sigh. “The younger employees have been groomed to expect this.’’
That last sentence says it all.
I have decided that from this point forward whenever I am prompted to leave a tip before any service has been provided, I am going to select zero. If anybody says anything to me, I will cancel the order and leave. If somebody really pushes me, I will ask them what service they are providing that merits a tip, and if there is one, why should I tip before I know how good the service was.
Last week my wife and I were going to her doctor’s appointment and had time to grab a bit to eat. Of course the restaurant at the complex was a bit pricey, but that is par for the course. However, after standing in line and placing our order at the register, I was prompted to leave a tip. I did not. They brought our food to our table, but then we never saw anybody again after that, and I doubt we would have seen anybody had we left a tip either.
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There’s got to be a way to not have a tip request at checkout. The guy should check with who he bought the system from.
I should add, this seems to be going to the extreme in reverse. I remember saying in another thread, and I have seen others say it, that if you go to a place where a tip is traditionally expected and where the employees rely on tips for income, a tip should be expected unless the service is really awful. If you don’t leave a tip or leave a lower tip, you are punishing the server. If you don’t want to leave a tip in an establishment like that, you should not be going there in the first place.
Yesterday my wife and I went to one of our favorite sit-down restaurants for lunch, and I gladly left a 20% tip - pre–tax, of course. 
Agreed. When I read that I had a similar thought along the lines of what I said earlier in another thread:
I agree with you. This guy could change the system, but he chooses not to. It is on his customers to all select the no tip option now.
Tipping may well go the way of the dinosaur in America, as it largely has in Europe.
I see both behaviors (begging and stinginess) as symptoms of the same root cause: inflation.
Inflation erodes generosity over time the same way the elements erode a riverbed into a canyon.
Higher costs & stagnant wages create pressure on both parties…the workers want more, and the customers want to pay less.
None of this has anything to do with morals or ethics. Those are distractions. The bank(st)ers and politicians are the ones responsible for all this, and yet they’re suffering virtually no consequences.
Maybe there should be a comment card explaining your tip, for example you leave 20% and say “excellent service”. Leave 15% and say “service just average, waited 15 minutes for an ice tea refill”. Zero tip “service sucked, the wait person should find a different career”.
This would let the server know you’re not a cheapskate and why they got what they got.
I doubt it, too many people are used to being tipped and it’s difficult to take something away.
Disagree completely. That article says only 35% of Gen Z tips every visit to a sitdown restaurant. That has got to be a major sea change from earlier generations.
Tipping is voluntary, and customers who do not tip suffer almost no consequences for refusing to do so.
It’s already disappearing, just slowly.
I hope you’re right but I’m skeptical.
I disagree with you. Or, perhaps, it is better to say, I see another reason. I think people have no shame whatsoever these days. All of us can find many examples of instances where in an earlier time the person providing the service would never dream of asking for a tip but where you see that today.
One that I remember and have discussed before was when I was getting my mobile phone repaired. The repair shop was charging a decent price, and I was getting a service. Yet, he had a tip jar on the counter with a note saying that tips were not expected but would be appreciated. And, this was several years ago, and well prior to the pandemic, so this has been going on well before then.
When I was growing up the idea of soliciting a tip like this would have been unheard of. No self-respecting repair shop would have ever done this. And, I would bet that if a customer had offered a tip on his own, the businessman would have declined it.
Times have changed.
Bingo!!! Customers have the option to not tip. It is on customers to not tip where no tip should ever be expected.
The only time I hear of customers suffering a consequence for not tipping is at a restaurant where the waiter chases them down and asks why they left no tip. This usually comes under one of two headings: (1) the service was lousy, or (2) the customer is cheap. For the second one, restaurants will sometimes remember repeat customers who do not tip, and they will get the appropriate level of service on their returns.
I have my car washed at a car wash that used to highlight that they paid their employees well and tips were not accepted. And if you tried to offer a tip to the kid who cleaned the interior, they would always decline it. But the last time I took it in I noticed that the no tipping signs were gone and in it’s place was a “voluntary” tip box. I didn’t put anything in it since I paid $40 for a car wash and interior clean. And prior to the appearance of the tip box, I believed that the higher cost was because like they told me - they paid their staff well. I noticed that their web site also removed the verbiage about tipping.
Two questions:
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Has the price to wash the car gone up, or it it the same as before?
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If it has not gone up, if it had gone up, would you still be going there and paying the higher cost?
Regarding the second question, this is not loaded but a sincere question. If it were me, and assuming they had done a good job, I would still be going there and paying the higher price. However, if they did not raise the cost but instead put in a tip jar and started asking for tips, hoping that they could get more money that way without raising their price, I would not be tipping.
Side note: I have a feeling that whoever had the bright idea to create that POS (multiple possible acronyms, deliberately 
) system to prompt people to add a tip at the register when paying though he was being really clever at finding a way to push the envelope with tipping. This may end up being an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, where pushing too far led to an unintended backlash.
Edit: Add to the POS system the proliferation of tip jars.
I don’t believe that the prices have increased. They haven’t decreased either. A lot of stuff has been taken off their website, but the have always been paying at least $17 per hour to their staff. They were not cheapest car wash in town, but the services were good and the layout and process was pretty hassle free. But the fact tipping wasn’t allowed…not that they weren’t expected…they weren’t allowed - period , justified the higher costs for the services ($40 for a car wash and vacuum ain’t cheap in my book). I did not tip, and to be honest, the tip box is not placed in a very high visibility area. But since they have always paid well over minimum wage, I wonder if the tip box might be an attempt to justify not increasing the hourly pay for inflation.
Compared to when you grew up, that is certainly true.
But these shameless specimens didn’t just fall from the sky or materialize from an alternate universe.
Times always change, and the causes for people’s behavior are diverse & complex.
I suspect that kind of confrontation is exceedingly rare.
I foresee both camps (customers & hourly wage employees) continuing to move in the same directions they currently are.
Employees will keep asking for more. Customers will keep giving less.
This is a chicken & egg conundrum. Difficult to argue one caused the other.
I kind of wish we had been tipped when I was in IT. When someone has a tight timeframe and the hardware and software are having issues, I could have just put a tip jar on my desk or changed the service request system offering them the ability to tip.
I’d love to see somebody try that. Ask his fellow employees for tips for merely doing his job when he is salaried well beyond minimum wage.
My guess is you’d go home each day with $0 in tips & plenty of contempt from your colleagues.