Perhaps you’ve noticed. We have reached a tipping point in the country over tipping.
To tip or not to tip has led to Shakespearean soliloquies by customers explaining why they refuse to tip for certain things.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers were grateful for those who seemingly risked their safety so we could get groceries, order dinner or anything that made our lives feel normal. A nice tip was the least we could do to show gratitude.
But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained; and customers are upset.
A new study from Pew Research shows most American adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.
Like with every single thing that humans try to do to help each other, corporations have figured out how to exploit it for themselves.
We feel like tipping helps people because literally handing money to someone SHOULD help them. Except what actually happens is that corporations, with the full support of the government that they own, simply use that social convention to offset the wages that they have to pay their staff.
Reminder that tipping only exists because of racist and greedy motives, not because of people being nice. Sure, you could tip because you’re nice, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but we were told to tip from the beginning to keep blacks underpaid in their shitty service industry roles. Tipping started at the top, not the bottom.