Tip Jars make me uncomfortable. I feel self-conscious around them and I don't like being showy with my tips or feeling like I have to tip. I am a big fan of tipping well and try to do so, but sometimes there are situations in which I do not feel a tip is necessary.
When I order takeout food I do not expect to tip because I haven't paid for any special service. No one has waited upon me, other than the two minutes it takes me to pay the person at the cash register. Maybe it is just me, but I often feel like there is this unspoken push, like they are trying to use the jedi-mind trick on me to encourage me to tip.
But the standard takeout meal is not really where this problem lies. It is more of a Starbucks/Ice Cream store issue. I order my overpriced Latte, pay almost four bucks for it and then am expected to leave something more.
I have friends who routinely leave the change, but I feel cheap and stupid leaving seventeen cents and since I have already paid a premium for the food item I don't like throwing in another dollar.
But a guilty conscience impacts me too as I consider that some of the employees of the establishment are relying upon tips as a way to help support their families and here I am engaging in this decadent behavior.
So I wrestle with my conscience and my hunger.
6 comments:
Upon seeing the title of your post and before reading further, I immediately thought of Starbucks. I don't like the tip jar, either.
I consider myself a generous tipper, always leaving at least 20% at a sit-down restaurant, more if I think the service/food has been outstanding.
But I took my daughter to the ice cream parlor last night and there was a tip jar at the register. It annoyed me.
Sorry, but scooping ice cream or making coffee doesn't warrant tipping in my book.
Starbucks comes to my mind as well. It is wasteful to throw your change in.
If you are truly concerned about it, make your own tip jar at home. You can use the change to buy something or give it to tzedakah.
Let me ask this:
(and this is purely theoretical since it could never and will never happen)
Would you be more willing to fork over $6 for this overpriced latte and NOT have to tip or still pay the $4 and tip what you want?
They did a thing here on local radio about tipping...from the city-employed trash collectors and road workers in our little metropolis to the postman. I have problems with this. I tip well for good service. But fail to ask me for that second iced tea and I'll stiff you every time. But seriously...city-employed workers who I pay with my now-6-mil-increased local taxes, who get better benefits and sick pay and sick time than I could even imagine? I worked for the city engineer for a while as a non-city employee ($9/hour, no bennies, no time off) and saw the abuses. Tip THEM? I think not.
People who work at any job ought to be able to make a living.It is a nice idea, but making it happen seems to be far more complex than it should be.
http://www.xanga.com/CuOnGiEpOo
this guy is totally ripping off your posts!
What tip jars mean is that business owners want you to pay their workers for them so they can make more profits. Back in the 1960's the restaurant industry actually got a bill passed through Congress which allows businesses to pay tipped employees $2.13 an hour.
What the bill equates to is employers can steal part of the customer's tips to pay their minimum wage obligations. Take an employee who receieve $7.00 an hour in tips. According to the tip credit provisions which where passed by Congress back in 1969, this employee's employer can reduce his hourly wages from $7.25 an hour to $2.13 an hour due to the fact people are tipping him enough to bring his earnings up to $7.25 an hour.
So while customers are giving the employee $7.00 an hour in tips, his employer is reducing his hourly wages by over $5.00 an hour. Rather than the tips benefitting just the employee, his employer is benefitting himself to most of the tips customers are presenting his employee.
Now that lobbyist for the restaurant industry have been able to turn the customer's tip into savings for the business and subsequently increased income for business owners, businesses across this country are soliciting tips.
What tip jars are is, an attempt to solicit money for the business owner. While the employees may be benefitting some from the tips, in many cases their employer is benefitting much more than the employees are from such tip pools.
Not only are employers able to save over $5.00 an hour for every worker who receives tips, employers have convinced our courts that they should be able to share the tips in their tip jars with all their workers.
So while you may think you are tipping the employee who served you when you put money in a tip jar, what you are actually doing is giving money over to the business owner to share with all his employees. Most employers want everyone working for them to share in the customers tip so that all those working for them can be paid $2.13 an hour.
While tipping currently gives employers an ability to pay a worker $2.13 an hour, forcing workers to collect tips into a tip jar with no one's name on it allows employers to spread the tips out to all their workers rather than just those directly serving the customer.
Each employee that is added into the sharing of tip jar funds is an employee who can be paid less in hourly wages. Rather than allowing customer's to simply tip a few of the workers who directly service the them, employers realized that by putting out a tip jar with no one's name on it they can spread the tips out to all their employees and pay them all $5.13 an hour less in wages.
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