I don’t tip/gift our mail carrier or garbage men. One year I did a little bag of chocolate chip cookies for the mailman and FedEx, UPS, and Amazon drivers just because Kiddo really wanted to bake and I was sugared out so it was a great way to get rid of the extra. Since I WFH I just kept an eye out the window for a few days and would run out to flag down the driver on their way out (they have to drive past me to get into the neighborhood then past me again to get out).
I do tip our dog groomer sometimes even though he’s the owner of the business cause I had been paying more at Petsmart and he’s better with our pup and a lot quicker. I only take her in for her nails so it’s not like we’re singlehandedly keeping his business afloat lol.
A large part of my frustration with tipping in the US is that it is a lot of unspoken rules I’m magically supposed to know and remember.
read more for my unhinged rant against tipping as a social and power dynamic I am extremely uncomfortable with!!
It makes me feel constantly like I don’t belong places because I don’t magically know the rules, and I resent being asked to pick up the slack in employers paying the real cost of their business labor. And tipping inflates the cost of goods past what I expect and what is listed in ways that also feel like secret rules I don’t understand and feel caught out by. I don’t want to withhold someone’s wage, but I am too [insert social mal-adjustment here] to just know and there seems to be a deep cultural commitment to having absolutely no rhyme or reason for when tipping is required or expected and also the situations where it is expected keep expanding.
If a business relies on tips to pay it’s employees it should automatically be applied the point of sale. I hate hate hate guessing. I’m not a business person in any of these industries, why is it on me to know all the secrets of how various professions are paid? Why, when I ask the price of something, is there a semi-secret GIANT TAX on the actual cost of goods and services?
Does the person working the self service drink kiosk at the auditorium really get the tipped wage??? If yes, that seems like a bonkers classification, and if no, what service am I tipping for if they are effectively a case stocker? Am I just making up the insane cost of living in my town? And if so, why is that my job and not the entity that’s selling me $20 tallboys at a concert? I have no idea and that feels like such a weird thing to tip, if we are working under the noblesse oblige model of tipping where I am such a rich bitch that I can make or break some poor workers night in complete ignorance. It feels the same as trying to tip the worker who is sweeping the hallways, but the tip line is there, so whatever. Am I tipping them to check IDs for alcohol purchases?? Am I making a distinction where there isn’t one because they aren’t behind a counter? Magic unwritten/unexplained rules are the worst, is what I’m saying.
Tipping feels like a weird power trip I have over the workers, and I haaaaaaaate that. I do not want to be in that position, and am forced to be by the terrible labor laws in this country and I will be mad about it forever.
I’m glad to hear that a tipped wage works for some workers, because as a customer it fills me with anxiety and anxiety-induced anger.
Stole part of your rant, but yes, this. It’s not tipping at that point, it’s wages, and just tell how much it is so I know what to pay. There were a couple restaurants in my area that were experimenting with this pre-covid (higher food costs because they actually paid their servers a full wage and with a note as to why and that all tipping was optional and should relate to service)…once covid hit they all seemed to go back to business as usual, but I much appreciated it at the time.
I struggle with this a lot as a Flight Attendant who must travel for work and must often stay in hotels (that my airline pays for). It’s impossible for me at year 1 pay to afford $10-20 once a week (could be even more frequent depending on my schedule). I struggle to even tip $2 each stay at this point, honestly. I can’t focus on this as my personal financial priority right now, but as I start earning more money as a Flight Attendant, this becomes something I have to figure out. It’s really weird, because FAs talk about tipping shuttle drivers constantly, but I have never heard another FA talk about tipping a hotel maid. It’s possible literally no one is doing it.
I hardly ever go to bars for drinks only. It’s been years. I tip at restaurants when I’m sitting at a table, and I know sitting at the bar means the same type of tip. I once went to an Open Bar event and did not realize I was supposed to have $1 bills on me to tip like everyone else was doing. It’s an Open Bar, the alcohol is free to me, so why would I be paying to tip? The person who hires the bar service should be in charge of the tipping implied in the service, in my opinion. I wonder if they actually do or not.
There are a two or three restaurants in town that don’t “allow” tipping because they pay a living wage and it is great, on top of also having delicious food. So relaxing! So chill! Just buy some great thai food and eat it!!
Has anyone listened to the episode “sparking your early retirement dreams”? I really enjoyed their history of the FIRE movement and where they see it going next!
They explore heavy themes and relate the FIRE movement to the Civil Rights Movement and how FIRE impacts black wealth specifically. Happy to talk about the themes here or in private but this was a great episode.
Spoiler: they talk about the Surgeon General’s warning about toxic work places and the Nobel Peace Prize winner in Economics concerning the gender wage gap and how “greedy jobs” are a big driver in this.
I might listen to this episode 2-3 more times it covered a ton of ground.
Thanks for highlighting this one! It’s a meaty episode. I’m thru about 2/3rds of it but going to listen again tomorrow when I’m not also taking care of a baby
it’s fascinating to me how much they pull from FIRE movement. I was just ranting at the shadowy one about all the ‘fire movement is dead’ stuff out there, and complaining about how many people lost track of the original ‘less consumption to save the planet’ bit. So to see others pulling out other bits that don’t involve that, but are equally meaningful is very resonant for me. (their misunderstanding of the intricacies of employee engagement research notwithstanding)
What were the pieces that they pulled from the movement that stood out to you? I wonder if the “less consumption to save the planet” part spun off into minimalism as a main pillar and FIRE/minimalism blurred some lines between them. There is a lot of overlap in my opinion.
I also think the employee engagement conclusions were painted with a broad stroke and could have been more correlation than causation.
Since I WFH I just kept an eye out the window for a few days and would run out to flag down the driver on their way out (they have to drive past me to get into the neighborhood then past me again to get out).