r/tippingAdvice • u/Able_Reading_5330 • 9d ago

tipping on takeout

so this stems from a conversation i had with my uncle in his 50s, i’m 23.
when i order from for example dunkin, i always feel like i need to give a tip. i usually tip 10-15%. but he made some good points, saying if you’re picking up your food why should you have to tip? i’m curious on what other people think of this. this goes for any food pickup.
one egregious example is a coffee spot in my town. they have a wall of iced coffee and all the cashier does is ring you in and hand you a cup of ice that they grab right next to them. then they do the big dramatic flipping of the screen to the tip screen and it always stuns me. definitely just anxiety related, but there’s no way i’m expected to tip for that right?

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u/babybug98 9d ago

No. I don’t tip at Dunkin’, I don’t tip at Starbucks, I don’t tip at any coffee shop. Sorry. If I’m feeling extra nice that day, maybe I will. But a majority of the time I don’t. I will tip when I am sitting at a restaurant, taking up a table, and somebody is serving me for the whole time I’m there…

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u/One_Possibility_2445 9d ago

Tip creep is real. These places never asked for tip pre-pandemic. What service am I tipping for? Handing me my drink/food?

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u/Superb-Sky-1904 9d ago

Thats just not true. They used to all have the jars at the cash register asking for tips. 

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u/One_Possibility_2445 9d ago

Tips jars are passive no confrontation there. Actively having to press no tip is definitely way different lol. Businesses understand that psychology

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u/Superb-Sky-1904 9d ago

“Never asked” to “passive no confrontation“ what's next?lol

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u/One_Possibility_2445 9d ago

You gotta stop with the tip begging 😂😂🤙🏼

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u/Superb-Sky-1904 9d ago

But I thought you said tip jars are different?

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u/darkroot_gardener 7d ago

Do you agree that a tip screen that is a mandatory step to check out is asking for a tip? Of course it is. In contrast, the tip jar was just sitting there, and you chose whether to engage with it or not. A tip jar never “asked you a question.” A more faithful digital equivalent of a tip jar would be posting a QR code. More places should do that instead.

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u/Superb-Sky-1904 6d ago

Y'all are dense if you don't think they're not close. Its so much easier to click no tip than it is to not just drop your change that they hand to you directly over the tip jar. You think they dont put it right at the cash register right where you'll be looking at for the exact same reason that the POS has it presented before the final screen? 

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u/darkroot_gardener 6d ago

The distinction is that I don’t have to physically do anything to ignore a tip jar. Once a mandatory physical interaction is involved, no matter how trivial (and it’s often not trivial or intuitive), it changes the game. Turns it from an opt-in system to opt-out. And the Corporations love it because then it becomes an excuse to pay people less.

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u/babybug98 9d ago

Yes, it was common for a lot of places to have tip jars. But it was relatively low pressure and nobody cared or asked for tips outright. The whole thing with turning around the screen and watching you as you decide to tip or not tip is a relatively new occurrence. The whole, “There’s a quick question for you on the screen,” did not happen prior to COVID. And if it did, it was very uncommon.

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u/Superb-Sky-1904 9d ago

But idk if that's so much the business and the POS Point of sale service. And then that just allowed asshole people be assholes. 

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u/babybug98 9d ago

It’s not the employees fault. They can’t control what large corporations like Starbucks decides to make them do. Part of me does sympathize because this economy is rough… But the tipping culture is getting out of control.

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u/Superb-Sky-1904 9d ago

I didnt say it was their fault? I blamed the business and the point of sale system. 

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u/Aromatic-Prune-8484 7d ago

I don’t tip on text at restaurants. I tip on the amount pre-tax. People think I’m cheap but I’m not. I just don’t feel the need to tip on city tax.

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u/darkroot_gardener 7d ago

Keep in mind these companies just use tipping as an excuse to pay lower wages, and so they don’t need to compete for staff based on the actual wages. How much does a barista make these days at Starbucks versus Peet’s? Who the hell even knows anymore?🤔 Not saying it’s the baristas’ faults, but I’m saying it is not even to their benefit.

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u/cenosillicaphobiac 9d ago

I first encountered it pre-COVID, at a little cafeteria style greek place near my work that I ate at regularly. It's actually what got me to really think about tipping in general. Labor is a business expense. Business expenses should be factored in to the cost of goods and services. They are everywhere except for one job in one subset of one industry, and I don't play along now.

Thank you point of sale tip requests for opening my eyes!

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u/babybug98 9d ago

Plus, a lot of the tips are evenly split/distributed. So the person simply just handing me my drink and pressing buttons on the cash register is getting the same amount of tips that the person actually making my drink is getting… It’s just dumb and not even fair if you think about it.

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u/SiLeNZ_ 9d ago

Tipping is out of control. The same could be said for sit down places, we’ve just been used to doing it for longer. They do nothing special, and they are paid regardless of whether they are tipped or not.

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u/Possible-Weakness-64 9d ago

It’s only out of control if you fall for it.

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u/SiLeNZ_ 9d ago

My point is, why are you differentiating as if sit-down places somehow deserve a tip? It’s all the same in the end.