Do you think ‘tip culture’ is getting out of hand in the US? Why or why not?

Of course. I’ve always been of the opinion that tip culture is absolute BS, especially for people who have lived abroad in non tipping cultures like in Asia.

There’s a few problems I have with tipping culture.

Firstly, the fact that employers basically can underpay their workers and use customers to subsidize their wages and make up the difference with tips. This is ridiculous. Just pay your workers a decent wage! instead of getting customers to make up the difference.

Secondly, the premise that ‘tips incentivize better service’. It does not. Anyone who’s been to Asia can tell you that the service especially in Korea and Japan – are fantastic, and no tips are ever expected. In America you are expected to pay a tip no matter how bad the service is there seems to be a minimum amount for a tip – maybe 10% or so and you have to give even more on top of that to reward good service. But how much? Some places expect 15% as minimum. Other places you should pay 20 or 25% if the service is good? I mean its just getting ridiculous. That’s 25% on top of the base price just to provide a quality of service that’s very often STILL below Asian standards. and even if the service is horrible, you have to pay 10% at least or be faced with a glaring face.

Thirdly, the underhanded tactics these tipping places use. I’ve seen places purposely set the tip % much higher to 18% or so on the machine, then you have to go through the hassle of going through the menu to find the lower (proper) percentage to pay or just pay the higher amount for people who don’t bother to deal with it. Or the machine is not in percentage and in fact the custom amount is in $ in that case you have to do a manual calculation which a lot of people won’t be bothered to do. Or, for takeout they still give you the machine and the machine still asks you to tip. For takeout you don’t need to tip, but this still might confuse some consumers to tip. Or, you come in a large group and a *minimum* tip amount is added on top of the meal. Then they give you the machine and AGAIN they ask you to tip, so it might be a situation where you end up double tipping, which is essentially robbery. They also tend to do this in large bars and restaurants where they know a lot of international people and drunk people are so that they can trap more easily confused people. This is just slimey and these ridiculous tactics really make me despise the tipping culture.