Smart tipper

I love reading about the tipping culture in the US, even if I don’t really understand it :joy:

I think I’d either lose a fortune tipping disproportionately, of be seen as a tight wad for not tipping enough.

I don’t think I understand it either as I’m baffled that it is still being tolerated in this day and age.

Is there not a movement or anything to boycott businesses who treat their staff this way and don’t pay them an honest wage? How is it deemed acceptable that owners want customers to pay their staff resorting them to essentially beg for bits of money?

Or is it the case that a meal (for example) is cheaper because you’re expected to pay a tip? :confused:

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I also don’t get why the tip is not included in the total apparently til presentment… Why? If I add a tip with card here in the UK it’s just, added to the amount I pay. So the authorisation is for that amount. I don’t get why it should be any different to that?

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How will you add it before without going into the back office? There are no wireless terminals in US restaurants. The card is run on a wired machine in the rear. We also use signature CVM, so you need to sign the reciept so they can compare it against the signature on the back of your cards. Restaurants do not have PIN pads.

Yeah, I’m not expecting the restaurants to do it differently, more whoever designed the whole payments system over there! Although I will admit I still don’t quite get it.

That all seems so crazy to me btw, just the idea alone of giving someone your card to take off to the “back room” just… Seems so odd to me lol.

So how does the tip actually get added then out of curiosity? Does the person just say to the waiter “add this much tip on”? In which case why can’t they do that when the waiter comes to take their card, and then the waiter just puts that through at the same time as the rest of the bill? I have been to the US but it was a long time ago so I think we just paid everything with cash.

It was designed in the 1950s

Historically cards were charged using an imprinter, then it was a dial up connection. Many stores have not upgraded. Even those that take chip, had no reason to take cards table side as there is no need to input a PIN.

How did things work in the UK before mobile card readers??

You write the tip on the receipt.

it looks like this:

1 Pasta Carbonara…$8.99
1 Soda…$2.99

Subtotal…$11.98
Tax…$1.07

Total…$13.05

Tip…______ Tip+Total...............................______

Signature__________________________

Discourse is messing up the formatting:

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Perfect, no reason to change anything then :laughing: :see_no_evil:

It is a lot of devices to change

That’s not an excuse :man_facepalming: You’ve got to start somewhere or in another 70 years you’ll still be where you are now.

Thankfully it looks like things are slowly starting to change from what I’ve read and it appears that tourists are driving it.

Ah ok so the waiter will get the person’s card, go to make the bill in the back and charge the card, then go back to the table with the bill where the customer signs and then writes their tip and leaves the bill for the resataurant. Then all the tips get manually added later? I still feel like there is a much better way to do this.

Re: UK
Pre-remote terminals people would just go over to the bar or some similar area to pay, if they were using card. Tbh I am only 30 so only vaguely remember others paying before chip and pin but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened then too. I’m sure some people did take the card away from the table and come back with it and I think that was what allowed high levels of card fraud and drove the push for chip and pin, so astute people would go over to the payment terminal so they could watch their card and keep it safe. This is all from vague childhood memories of course.

With tipping, it’s only really become a thing over here in the last 15 years or so. People would just tip with cash, until they started having the card readers ask if you wanted to add a tip (maybe ~13 years ago or so) so now you can do it that way.

When I was in the US a few years ago (2017 I think), I recall that the only place I could pay chip and PIN were fuel stations. Every restaurant was a signature. Bizarre how far behind they are but from what I understand it because there is no parity in their payments network.

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99% of Europe has managed it :grinning: :grinning: :grinning:

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My impression in the UK is that tips aren’t expected in many places, yes they’ll be glad of them but there’s no agonising about what percent to tip. In a group a tip of a few quid a head is not untypical, if just one or a couple the tip is often more a rounding up of the bill. This is my experience based upon ‘normal’ restraunts, for more lavish eating out I’d imagine tipping is slightly higher

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We have travelled extensively over the last few years, and have found a way to make the complicated business of tipping quite simple. (for us anyway)

Apart from the countries where tipping is not expected (and sometimes even considered rude) we normally use the following:
Restaurants - as near to 10% as I can get using whole numbers.
Taxi - round up to nearest whole note.
Bars - most don’t expect a tip, but you can always offer to buy the bartender a drink.
We never use the services of hotel/station porters, etc so we don’t have to worry about getting that wrong.
Using a set percentage also means we don’t have to worry too much as being seen as crass in some less wealthy countries when leaving tips, as they are proportionate to that country’s cost of living.

The culture of tipping 25-30% in the US just doesn’t sit well with me. Sorry
(The equivalent of about £7 on a meal costing around $25 seems just crazy)

Not sure if they can share but curious to know how Monzo are thinking about implementing smart tipping given all the above?

This is pretty much it. My husband and I will always tip in table service restaurants now unless the service is awful or the machines aren’t set up for tips, we don’t worry too much about percentages though, just give a few pounds - probably somewhere around 10%. I think it’s less common with older people as they spent a long time almost never tipping.

I very rarely tip anything else, taxis, bars and the like. I’ll sometimes leave an Uber tip when prompted by the app, and at our wedding we got gift cards for the main two staff who ran it. And we leave a Christmas tip for our recipe box delivery driver. That’s about it!

10% seems low to me. Last time I was in the US I tipped 15% (easy to calculate, it’s 10% and then add half of that on). I gather 20% is more common now. I’ve always found the important part to have done a little research ahead of time, so you know how much the tip will likely be - that way it doesn’t come as a shock when you pay, and also if that seems too much you can decide to go elsewhere/order something different, instead of stiffing the poor server when paying.

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Tipping in the US is 15-20%

Not sure if you know, but tips are a workers wages. Tipped workers do not need to be paid minimum wage in the US as tips are considered their wages.

Employers are only requires federally to pay $2.13 per hour.

That’s disgusting.

Anyone who supports this or claims it the be fine because it is “normal” need to take a look at themselves.

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I did not say I support it, but if people fail to tip, they need to realise they are essentially saying this person does not deserve to be paid. Tipping is very much mandatory until the law changes.

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