‘I’m not getting peer pressured by a tablet anymore’: Woman picks out greeting card at grocery store and heads to self-checkout. The register asks for a tip
'I booked a hotel room ONLINE and it ask for a tip. Like who am I tipping? A website?'
Gotts is a popular fast-food (think burgers) restaurant in the Bay Area. The first Gotts was a roadside stand in Napa, which still exists, but now Gotts has a presence in SF’s ferry building. The burgers are pricey, but good. We went to one in San Rafael recently. A lighted screen reveals the menu. Customers stand in front of what used to be called a “cash register” and give their orders to an employee, who presents a card reader. It also displays potential tip amounts. Subjoined to those are comments ranging from nothing to “Wow!” depending on how much tip the customer chooses. To be fair, there is a smaller box with the words “No Tip” that the customer can choose. The employee stands in front of the customer, watching what he chooses.
Tipping for what?
The cashier gives the customer a vibrating device that is activated when the order is complete. At that time the customer walks to another part of the restaurant, picks up his order, napkins, catsup, plasticware, salt, pepper, added condiments (think tabasco), water, and returns a time or two more because he can’t carry it all at once, sits down and consumes his meal, then carries papers, containers, and wrappers to the garbage can. Some wet napkins and wipe down the table before leaving. No employee interaction whatsoever.
Tipping for what?
I have always tipped because I received service, more than normal if it was good, less if it wasn’t. Gotts didn’t serve me anything. The employees did the absolute minimum that their job required, and there was no interaction with the customer. This is becoming a rule, not an exception called “tipflation.”
"It's a relatively new phenomenon," said Dipayan Biswas, a marketing and business professor at the University of South Florida. "I see it becoming more widespread."
“If you thought airplanes were a tip-free zone, you might want to grab some singles before boarding. Consumer Reports say budget carrier Frontier Airlines is now giving passengers the option to tip flight attendants for serving refreshments. "In the drive through and they've been asking for a tip," said another TikTok poster.”
More
A waitress’s breast size correlates positively with tip size.
Husbands tip more when dining with other women than their wife.
A butcher’s daughter’s car was impounded for a parking violation. After paying nine hundred dollars, including a “convenience fee” additional gratuity options showed on the screen when he inserted his card.
Tip prompts have been spotted at a Boy Scout popcorn sale, Sonic Drive-Ins, a UPS Dtore, and self-checkout kiosks at Newark International Airport.
Final Words
A well-regarded black East Bay restaurateur had this to say:
"We use the service charge to pay a really consistent wage, and I just think that tipping has a really nasty history that we just don't want to continue," he said. "Tipping in the United States started as a way to not pay newly freed slaves ... It started with the railroad system in the 1880s ... It spread into restaurants and hotels next, where there were a lot of Black people working that they didn't view as skilled workers who should be paid a wage. So, it's basically a continuation of slavery."
Instead, Davis instituted a 20% service charge, a move that almost 50% of diners polled about tipping would prefer.
At a New York coffee shop the owner said, “Wages should be a fair trade for work. Tipping is sort of like pity for somebody who’s not making a decent wage. It’s clearly just a way to shift more power into the hands of the people who already hold power.”