Should You Be Tipping More?
August 25, 2011, By Kasie Baltes 0 comments
No matter where you look, someone somewhere is going to be asking you for money. It’s the cable bill sitting in your mailbox, it’s the mortgage payment automatically deducted from your bank account and it’s the tip jar haunting you at every cash register. No one likes it. In fact, we loathe it. Giving out our hard-earned cash day in and day out is what keeps people up at night. Some are necessities and some are choices, but in the case of tipping—it has become a social norm that evokes absolute rage and annoyance, leaving people constantly guessing.
In a previous article on how to tip at a restaurant, I laid it on the line with a tipping etiquette guide. I sourced a few books, polled friends and read countless suggested rates for tipping—I averaged what I found and shared it with all of you hoping to spark a conversation. What I got was a flame of comments, questions and e-mails making tipping much more than a few bucks under a coffee cup. It’s personal. No one likes to be told what to do—including me—but whether we like it or not, tipping says a lot about who we are.
Why We Tip
The typical person probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about tipping. It is a sidebar to our lives. It’s not mandatory, but we spend nearly $40 billion dollars a year on tipping and for what? Is it really based on service? Steve Dublanica, author of "Waiter Rant" and "Keep the Change," says it rarely has anything to do with service and everything to do with obligation.
“Most people are tipping anyway. Most people will leave a tip because of an overpowering reason to uphold this social norm. A fear of the unknown,” said Dublanica.
So it boils down to peer pressure. Don’t get me wrong; there are people out there who tip based on how well they were served. If they had a great experience, they may even tip over 20 percent, and if the service was horrible they skip the tip. But the majority of people tip without thinking. There isn’t an analysis of service, but more of an “I do this because I have to” mentality.
NEXT: To Tip or Not to Tip
