The History Of Tipping Culture, And How We Got To The "Tipping" Point
Tipping has become an issue for every American, but how did we get to this point?
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I have a theory that for people who have finally had enough with tipping, whether it's at the barber or restaurant or wherever, you can trace their attitude back to one over-the-top request for gratuity that they received.
There was one request for a tip that was so galling, so ridiculous that they decided from that moment forward that they just weren't going to tip it all, or at least they dramatically scale back on their generosity.
You might even call this a tipping point that many people hit.
And for some, it's getting asked by the iPad at the coffee shop whether you'd like to tip 20% on a $6 latte.
For others, the culprit, the machine demanding the tip is the grocery store self-checkout, the hopper app that you use to book your hotel, the ATM at a Jiffy Lube, the kiosk at the movie theater or drive-thru.
These are all real examples.
When an inanimate object is demanding that you throw in a little extra to tip who knows who, it's extremely tempting to conclude that tipping is in general, all of it, a gigantic scam that no one should just ever participate in ever again.
So here's another example.
And this is one that we need to talk about in some detail.
It's a brand new prompt that Uber Eats has started adding to certain orders.
And you can see it here.
Take a look at this.
This is a screenshot from an Uber Eats pickup order.
It's the very last screen that pops up and it says, add a tip.
Restaurants are an important part of our communities.
They'll receive 100% of your tip.
And it defaults to 20%, yes, 20% of the order price.
Now, this solicitation won't appear every time you place a pickup order on Uber Eats.
Restaurants have the option of disabling it.
And it's probably not something that shows up in every market.
All the same, you have to marvel at the sheer audacity.
First of all, in general, restaurants already mark up their prices on Uber Eats.
If you're placing a pickup order via Uber Eats, as opposed to calling the restaurant yourself, you're already paying a premium in most cases.
You're paying multiple premiums already.
Secondly, they're asking for a 20% tip for doing absolutely nothing besides preparing and bagging the food.
At no point does a waiter or any kind of customer service enter into the equation.
Like by getting into your car and driving to the restaurant, picking up the food, returning to your car and driving home, you are exerting yourself infinitely more than any waiter ever does at any restaurant.
If anything, in this scenario, they should be the ones tipping you.
You took all this work off there, off the table for them.
And while I'm at it, why are these tips expressed as a percentage in any event?
If I accept Uber's suggested tip amount, why do I have to tip $4 if I pick up $20 worth of food, but I'm supposed to tip $20 if I pick up $100 worth of food?
From a service perspective, these two jobs are identical.
Someone has to bag the order and hand it to me when I get to the restaurant.
That's it.
Like bagging an order of food that's more expensive is not more work for the person bagging it than bagging the order of food that's whether you're bagging fries in a hamburger or you're putting filet mignon in a bag.
It's the same work.
It's the same amount of work.
So they don't deserve five times the tip because the bag contains five more burritos or contains a burrito that's five times as expensive.
But the most egregious part of this latest stunt from Uber is the message that they include along with their solicitation.
Again, it says, restaurants are an important part of our communities.
They'll receive 100% of your tip.
This is a sales pitch that originated in the deepest depths of COVID lockdown hell, and it should have stayed there.
Like you might remember that during the lockdowns, there were many efforts to guilt trip us into showing gratitude, usually in the form of financial contributions to people who were doing the job that they were already being paid to do.
In fact, whether you like it or not, whether you were employed or not or had any savings or not, your dollars went to subsidizing many of these people already, even without giving tips.
And while you can try to make an argument for this kind of subsidy during a national emergency, even if that national emergency was self-imposed, like the national emergency is that the government was shutting everything down, it doesn't work when there is not an emergency.
In the year 2025, there's nothing brave about the guy at Arby's showing up to work and putting my sandwich in a bag.
I don't need to pad the bottom line of a fast food place owned by a private equity firm because it's an important part of my community.
That's not how capitalism works.
It's not how common sense works.
And make no mistake, when they say that 100% of the tip of your, the 100% of the tip for the pickup order goes to the restaurant, they're not talking about the rank and file employees.
After all, none of those rank and file employees are doing anything to serve your order.
The accounting department is just collecting free cash.
Now, I'm harping on this example, not because Uber Eats is the worst example of the excesses of tipping culture, although it is a really bad example, or because I think it's some great tragedy that people are getting fleeced on their pickup orders.
And you do have a choice after all.
You can say no.
The point is to identify when tipping culture got so out of hand and how that happened.
And this tactic by Uber Eats offers a very important clue.
So here's another clue.
This is a report from CNBC Watch.
When those in the service industry were feeling the brunt during the coronavirus pandemic, consumers started tipping for things they never had before.
And the percentage of remote transactions when tipping was an option in which the consumer tipped soared from about 46% before the pandemic to around 86% in January 2022.
Another reason consumers are tipping more, newer technologies.
Kiosks and tablets with three large tipping suggestions that pop up on the screen in front of you.
Three options chosen by the business.
I have not yet been to the restaurant where they recommend 5, 10, or 15% for quick takeout.
It normally always starts at 15 as a bare minimum, sometimes even starting at 20, 25, and up to 30.
According to a 2022 creditcards.com survey, 22% of respondents said when they're presented with various suggested tip amounts, they feel pressured to tip more than they normally would.
Now, in case you missed it, before the COVID lockdowns, 46% of remote transactions, in which tipping was an option, ultimately included a tip that was paid by the customer.
And a remote transaction, of course, is any transaction where you're not there in person.
So you're ordering DoorDash or Uber Eats, a pizza shop, total wine or something like that.
But after the COVID lockdowns in 2022, fully 86% of remote transactions in which tipping was an option included a tip.
This is a change that, although it's subsided somewhat over the last year, is legitimately hard to comprehend.
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During the lockdowns, when the stock market crashed and most people trying to save as much money as possible, tipping nearly doubled.
Now, why might that be?
As you heard, for in-person transactions, the kiosks became much more aggressive.
They began prompting customers with specific tip amounts.
So if customers didn't want to tip, they had to press a big no-tip button.
In other words, customers had to take an affirmative step and press a button in order to not tip.
Whereas before, before these kiosks were invented, customers simply had to ignore the tip jar, which is pretty easy to do.
That doesn't explain the rise in tipping for remote transactions.
It doesn't explain why people are so vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.
After all, just because a kiosk gives you the option to vaporize your own money, that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to do it.
Something else has to be going on here.
So here's a thought.
This is a still image from a film called The Petrified Forest, which came out in 1936.
It's a crime drama featuring Humphrey Bogart.
And take a look at the sign in the background.
It reads, quote, tipping is un-American.
Keep your change.
Meaning in the establishment that's depicted in this scene, the owners were voluntarily telling their customers not to tip.
Out of a sense of patriotism, they were declining additional income.
And yes, this is a work of fiction.
But the point is, signs like this were common at the time.
This was a minor background detail in the film.
No one in the audience thought it was unusual.
And there are plenty of nonfiction historical works that confirm this.
The author Kerry Seagrave in his book entitled Tipping in American Social History confirms that in the early 1900s, quote, it was not uncommon in restaurants in cities as large as St. Louis to see signs proclaiming, no tipping.
Tipping is not American.
A group called the Anti-Tipping Society of America formed in 1904, attracting hundreds of thousands of members, all of whom were asked not to give a tip to anyone for 12 months.
And in June of 1908, as reported by the New York Times, one of the most prominent politicians in the country gave the anti-tipping society a big boost, even if he wasn't a member.
Talking about the Secretary of War, Republican presidential nominee and future president, William Howard Taft.
And here's the article from the Times, which I'm going to quote at length, because this old-timey writing is kind of endearing in a lot of ways.
But here's what it says.
Washington, June 19th.
Secretary Taft is not only the standard bearer of the Republican Party, but he is the patron saint of the anti-tip crusaders.
The secretary has not joined any organization for the suppression of tips, but in a quiet way, he just stops paying when he has reached the amount indicated on his check.
His sympathy with the anti-tippers came out today in connection with his getting a haircut.
The big secretary shaves himself every morning before leaving for his home in Cincinnati.
The Republican nominee entered a well-known barber shop, which he has patronized for a number of years and had his haircut and his clothes duly brushed by the boy in attendance.
That part over, Mr. Taft counted out 35 cents, the price for the haircut, paid it and left.
Tips nothing, replied the barber in response to a question.
He has been having his hair trimmed here for three years, but never a tip did he give.
I understand that he thinks he has paid for the work when he gives the regular price, and I guess he is right.
I know he shaves himself, for I hone his razors.
Close quote.
Now, if this kind of story were written today, you know it would have a completely different tone.
The barber wouldn't concede that Taft was right not to tip him.
And the New York Times would publish a full front page spread about how Taft's behavior was a symptom of his internalized white supremacy, for which he should immediately repent and all that kind of stuff.
At the time, the mood was very different.
That's because in the 1800s and early 1900s, Americans viewed tipping correctly as a vestige of medieval times and European class hierarchies.
And these were precisely the kind of institutionalized hereditary-based class hierarchies that the United States was founded to eliminate.
So no one is sure what exactly the concept of tipping originated.
You'll find reports that the Romans did it, along with plenty of evidence that nobles would tip the house staff when they were visiting friends and family.
But in the U.S. in the early centuries, most people saw tipping as fundamentally un-American, anti-American.
They'd rather lose money than debase themselves by begging for extra cash.
And depending on who you ask, a couple of things changed in the mid-19th century to explain the rise of tipping in American culture.
First, Americans began traveling more to Europe.
So they learned all about tipping and brought the custom back.
But the real explanation, according to various highly credible historians and tenured professors of hotel management, is that white supremacy, that is the root of tipping culture.
Watch.
Tip stands for to ensure promptness.
Tipping may go back as far as the Roman era, but according to most experts, the practice likely has its origins in medieval Europe.
Noblemen taking passage on roads would throw coins to the rubble to ensure safe passage.
One theory is that it evolved in eating and drinking establishments as a way to forestall envy, that when you're eating and drinking, you're having fun and the people who are serving you are not.
Fast forward to the 19th century, when waiters who received a full wage went on strike demanding higher wages, they were replaced with women who employers could pay less.
A decade later, there was the population of newly freed slaves.
The idea from these restaurant owners was that they were giving the luxury or privilege of a white person's tips.
That was without a full wage.
So this is the one time in my entire career that I'm willing to concede an argument like this.
Now, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
There's no logical reason why in a white supremacist hellscape, any white person would voluntarily tip a black person.
There's no logical reason why this arrangement would replace wages for black people or how it would be sustainable or why tipping culture would continue to get worse for generations, even as black people gained more and more rights.
None of that matters right now.
At this moment, with total sincerity and without a hint of irony whatsoever, I'm willing to acknowledge that tipping is a white supremacist concept that has its roots in slavery.
And we'll just go with that.
Let's go with it.
And therefore, we need to abolish it entirely.
The little iPads with the suggested tips, those are, yeah, those are definitely racist.
I mean, those are more racist than like the N-word uttered by the whitest guy you know, the second he's cut off a traffic by a busted up Chevy Malibu in Compton.
I mean, it's more racist than that.
And don't get me started on mandatory tips that they make you pay in most restaurants if you have a party of four or more.
Those mandatory gratuities for large groups are, that's like straight out of Mein Kampf, as far as I know.
And in the name of anti-racism, channeling Henry Rogers, a.k.a. Mex Kendi, we must abolish all of these expressions, these vestiges of white supremacy.
That's my argument, and I'm standing by it.
Now, that said, I understand that my timing isn't ideal.
It's not 2020 anymore, so the odds are fairly low that anyone's going to buy this particular argument.
So in the alternative, I'll make an appeal to patriotism, as they did in the early 20th century.
Tipping is inversely proportional to the pride Americans have in their own country.
As this country has become less patriotic, tipping has surged.
But when this country was scrappy, when we openly celebrated our distinct identity, which was clearly superior to anything the Europeans had to offer, tipping was a moral abomination.
So that's the solution to the crisis of tipping culture.
Our problem isn't new kiosks or lockdowns.
It's the fact that when people are beaten down and lose their sense of identity, they're more likely to open their wallets and light their own money on fire.
That's what you do when you have no self-esteem, no sense of identity.
It's what we did during COVID.
It's what we've done at scale ever since the allegedly progressive reforms of the mid-20th century.
But we could put an end to this insanity just as quickly as it began.
All we have to do is channel Taft.
No matter how many people are watching or judging, all we have to do is walk in, pay for what we ordered, and walk out.
Leave the New York Times reporter and the whiny barber behind you.
That's the way to end tipping culture.
And as Taft demonstrated, it's probably not a bad way to get ahead in life either.
Now, it's not to say that you should never tip under any circumstances.
If someone is going above and beyond, performing a job that you don't want to do or you can't do in a field where their extra effort and experience matters, in a setting where you might come back to them for more work, then tipping can be reasonable.
But that's really about it.
And that scenario applies at most to like 1% of these kinds of situations in which you might be asked to tip someone.
In every other case, tipping is irrational at best and a shakedown at worst.
As Americans used to recognize, we created our own country so that we could avoid shakedowns like this.
And now that Uber Eats is demanding 20% tips on pickup orders, the shakedown has become officially intolerable if it wasn't already.
Everyone, including service workers who genuinely earn their tips, should be outraged by that.
Tipping is un-American, as that sign said.
And that is absolutely correct.
No, we shouldn't tax tips.
That's only because, for the most part, we shouldn't have tips.
We should all be able to walk in, receive a service, pay for it, whatever the cost is, and walk out.