Just before and during my trip to Savannah, I started noticing that people are asking for tips everywhere, including when you buy bread at a bakery or food at McDonald’s. And by “asking”, I mean that when you pay with a credit card directly or on your phone, a lit-up sign appears at the register asking “Do you want to leave a tip?” And then, helpfully, suggesting tips, usually starting at 20% and going up to 30%. (There’s an option for a “custom tip”.) This is a form of unwarranted pressure on consumers to tip for things that, historically, didn’t require tips. It’s the capitalistic equivalent of grade inflation.
Here are a few of the places that asked me for tips in the last ten days. I left a tip for only the last one:
A $3.00 baguette I bought at a local Hyde Park bakery (from the counter, for crying out loud)
Ice cream served from the counter at Leopold’s in Savannah
Two double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s in the Savannah airport (takeaway counter service). And don’t shame me about McD’s: my plane was leaving and I needed food after a 7-hour wait. I haven’t eaten this kind of fast food in over a year, but I needed nourishment—if you call that “nourishment”. Actually, it did the job, but my tip was zero.
My Uber ride from Midway Airport to home.
Now I always leave a tip for Uber drivers, even though only 20% of customers tip and Uber itself says that tips can be given, but only for exceptional service. Tips make up only 10% of the salaries of Uber and Lyft drivers, while they constitute about half the incomes of those who deliver food and groceries. And yes, I tip when I am delivered cooked food at home, but that happens only about once very two years. (To me, food delivery feels too much like I’m a king or something.)
Because Uber rides are pleasant and cheaper than taxi fares, I usually leave about 10% of the fare as a tip. But in the past you would leave the Uber tip some hours after the ride, and after the driver had rated you as a passenger. In this last case, however, a screen was affixed to the back seat asking me to leave a tip for the driver, whose name was Muhammed. That was unfair, as that makes you tip before the driver rates you, and you’re supposed to be rated on your conduct as a passenger, not for how much extra money you give. NeverthelessI left a tip as usual, though not until the next day.
The services I usually tip for, and about 20% on average, are haircuts, non-Uber taxi rides, sit-down service in a restaurant, the people who service my cabin on cruises (less than 20% of the price!, plus a group tip for the service staff), and a few other services I can’t remember. But I refused to tip when just buying a hamburger or getting ice cream or bread to take away. I usually don’t tip when I carry out food, either, but it varies.
If this importuning for tips reflects a real deficit of salary in an establishment, I would much prefer that they raise their prices than put me in a guilt-trippy situation where I have to tip on the spot.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. I found this story in USA Today about tip inflation in American institutions. Click below to read the story for free.
A few exccerpts:
Has tipping gotten out of hand?
In a new survey by Popmenu, more than 3 out of 4 people or 78% said they believed that tipping practices have become ridiculous. Forty-four percent say they’re tipping less this year than last year.
Consumers aren’t shy about expressing their tip fatigue online and on social media sites.
“I can’t enjoy a weekend without at least 5 prompts to tip for doing absolutely nothing,” one user on Reddit said about tipping fatigue. “The anxiety that comes from this false pressure to tip a percentage on every bill is ludicrous.”
. . .People feel that “tipping has become maybe ubiquitous and that now we’re being asked to tip for everything all the time, even for things that we didn’t feel were customary or normal,” Brendan Sweeney, CEO of Popmenu, told USA TODAY.
Popmenu, which is a restaurant tech company, has been surveying customers about tipping for more than five years, Sweeney said.
Tipping really increased during the COVID-19 lockdown era and after when the hospitality industry was hurting and consumers started leaving tips for take-out or tipping more “as a warm and fuzzy” feeling, Sweeney said.
“But then I think we got to a point where it was like, wait.. is this still an emergency? Is it still we’re helping people? At the same time, people are really feeling the pinch of inflation,” he said.
But tip fatigue is starting to tell!
And more digital register systems at businesses have the tipping screen built into the software, Sweeney said.
Still, Sweeney said guilt tipping, or feeling guilted into leaving a tip to avoid the awkwardness, is a thing.
When a digital screen asks for a tip, 59% of the respondents said they feel compelled to leave one. But that’s down from 66% in September 2025. And the share of people who say they tip on a weekly basis at places where it isn’t warranted also fell from 44% to 39%. Over the last 12 months, consumers estimate they spent about $130 on tips they didn’t think were necessary, down from $150 when the same question was posed in September 2025.
. . . The percentage of consumers tipping 20% or higher for restaurant servers and delivery drivers fell over the last six months:
- 41% of consumers tip restaurant servers 20% or more, which is down from 45% in September 2025. Twenty nine percent of people said they tip servers 15%, which is similar to September 2025.
- 15% tip restaurant delivery drivers 20% or higher, down from 23% in September 2025.
- 27% tip delivery drivers 15%, which is similar to September 2025.
Tips at places other than restaurants also changed.
- 39% of consumers tip at coffee shops, down from 46% in September 2025.
- 27% tip at food trucks, down from 32% in September 2025.
- 22% tip at fast food restaurants, down from 27% in September 2025.
- Separate from the survey, Popmenu also tracked tipping on online orders received through its platform. Pickup orders with a digital tip declined from 78% in 2022 to 62% in 2026.
. . . Three in four consumers (74%) say they have noticed restaurants raising the minimum suggested tip on digital screens. Here’s what people said they did when they saw that screen:
- 36% typically leave a custom tip
- 17% choose the lowest suggested tip
- 32% choose the mid-tier tip
- 7% choose the highest tip
- 9% don’t typically tip
Consumers in the survey said they were willing to pay higher prices instead of tipping. If given a choice, 56% of consumers are willing to pay more for meals and beverages to provide higher wages for workers and eliminate gratuities.
What’s that, you say? If I buy an ice cream cone, there is labor involved in making the ice cream and scooping it out to put in a cone. Shouldn’t we pay for that labor? No—the workers should get a decent wage and costs should be folded into the prices. In the past I’ve heard arguments that if labor is involved, tips should be given, but that’s always the case and, at any rate, such sentiments were covid-related.
I much prefer the French system, which applies especially at restaurants. The menu says explicitly that labor costs are included in the menu prices, and if you like the service, you can leave a couple of euros on the bill plate, regardless of what the meal cost. There the pressure is off, and you don’t feel guilty about having to choose between a 15% tip and a 30% tip. And you never are expected to tip when you take food away.
Of course you’re welcome to weigh in. How much and when do you tip, and do you feel pressured to tip in circumstances where you don’t think it’s necessary?
Inflation is not capitalistic. In capitalism, prices go down.
Inflation is caused by government insinuation into the economy, especially it’s coercive control of money itself.
Added, the communistic demand that services “should be free.”
I like to leave about three dollars per night on my hotel room bed, upon departing from a stay there. That’s for the people who clean rooms, and who I expect make the lowest possible wage, and probably never get tipped this way. Does anyone else do this? (If so, how much is reasonable?)
Same for $2 per bag given to any driver (cab, shuttle, etc.) who hoists my bags into their vehicle.
Uber drivers sometimes get a tip, even though in my experience they are all terrible drivers – in the main unsmooth in terms of speed. Constant speed adjustments on a more or less 1Hz frequency… even on the highway, when no other motorists are nearby? Why the nervous accelerator/brake foot?
Other than that, yeah I’m irritated by the “tip suggestions” given on digital screens. I prefer tipping in cash, but that’s gotten harder to do as well, with tipping jars less common now that tipping using plastic/card is becoming standard.
I also leave $3-5 for housekeeping per night. I also tip Uber drivers. No way will I tip for counter service, though.
IMHO
It’s the doing of the software companies. They bundle everything together, then say “Well, you can just skip that screen. But if you want cashless, this is how it has to be done.”
Until the “update”, which will measure your facial expression to automatically calculate the tip.
IMHO if I feel someone puts a personal touch on things and honestly cares, I’ll recognize that – maybe bring some home-cooked food. Good customer-business relationships are important – I won’t let computers control it.
… I’m imagining Andy Rooney’s mug at the end of this post – as PCC(E) puts up sometimes! I get a kick out of that…
Aw heck, here’s a third IMHO:
IMHO
😁
The other day I got two milkshakes at a Shake Shack in Columbus, Ohio. There were only self-serve kiosks for placing the order, and a pickup station where workers simply slid the food across to people regardless of whether it was for takeout or dine-in. Sure enough the touch screen offered tip options. Crazy. The shake was amazing, though.
I tip when I get good service. Simple. Once I tipped as much as 200 percent (hundreds of dollars) because it was warranted. I also stiff (sadly, too many) people because either their service or attitude sucked.
Tipping has just about replaced charitable contributions in my world. I researched a fine charity here in AZ, but what prevented me from donating was the fact the CEO made more than $400k annually. Not a problem, he probably deserves it.
Instead, I heavily tip working people, Uber drivers, servers, even construction workers. If you do a good job for me, I will show my appreciation financially. After all, its my money.
I tip when I get good service. Simple. Once I tipped as much as 200 percent (hundreds of dollars) because it was warranted. I also stiff (sadly, too many) people because either their service or attitude sucked.
Tipping has just about replaced charitable contributions in my world. I researched a fine charity here in AZ, but what prevented me from donating was the fact the CEO made more than $400k annually. Not a problem, he probably deserves it.
Instead, I heavily tip working people, Uber drivers, servers, even construction workers. If you do a good job for me, I will show my appreciation financially. After all, its my money.
When I had my garage door fixed, the repairman’s point-of-sale software prompted me to tip him.
When the AAA replaced my battery, something I’ve had done quite a few times, the last time the screen asked for a tip. This is what you pay the AAA for.
I tip the guy in-person with ample cash.
Every. Time.
100% deserved.
Makes me appreciate living in Australia where tipping may be offered for say good service in a restaurant but is not demanded. I cannot recall anyone ever asking me for a tip.
As an aside retail stores are required by law to include any taxes in the price of goods/services and not add it on after.
Good on ya mate. My “aha!” moment about tipping occurred (long ago) in Singapore after a flight from Egypt. In general, Singapore was rich, conspicuously honest, and no-one tipped. Egypt was poor, flagrantly corrupt, and almost everyone wanted/demanded baksheesh just to do their job. I know which sort of society I prefer. IMO heavy tipping, like large numbers of homeless and beggars, is an indicator of social disfunction.
It ticks me off that the handheld devices used to process payments at restaurants suggest tips starting at 18% or even 20%. The annoying part is that it’s easier simply to give in and tip 18%, since it’s already calculated for you, than to have to calculate the 15% on your own. It’s a bit sleazy if you asked me. Yes. There is tip inflation. I still hold to the norm of 15%, so I have to choose “custom tip” and calculate my 15% by hand.
Most incredibly is when I go to an ice cream parlor and buy a cup of ice cream at the counter. The payment device suggests an 18% tip even there. I’m not sure that dipping a scoop of ice cream even warrants a tip. Scooping would seem to be part of the job. I suppose one could say the same for waiting in a table at a restaurant. (So maybe every service carried out by a human being should receive a tip.)
I once tipped our tree feller a few hundred dollars for removing some difficult-to-remove trees without destroying our house. That was money very well spent, and it wasn’t coerced by a handheld credit card reader. I just wrote a check for larger than the agreed-upon amount.
Oh well. The value of something is determined by what someone will pay for it. The same applies to tips.
I so dislike those hand-held devices used to take orders and handle payment, that there are a few formerly favorite dining spots that I no longer patronize. In a few instances, notably when my order was botched or an incorrect charge was applied but only discovered upon scrutinizing the receipt, I took the time to write to the managements with my complaints.
A couple of times, we’ve declined the electronic tip and just left some cash and coins (no relation!) on the table.
I insist either on using on a handheld device or, in lieu of that, I walk with the employee to the card reader. There are cases where restaurant workers take credit cards into a back room, copy information to a list, and then sell the list to scammers. It may have happened to me, which is why I never let the card out of my sight.
Sometimes the employee gets annoyed if I walk to the card reader, thinking that I don’t trust him or her. But, that’s not the case. If my credit card information is stolen, and the police ask me where I last used it, I’d have to send them to the restaurant to investigate. They wouldn’t want that, which is what I tell them.
Anyway, the 18% tipping “suggestion” is annoying, but I’m a big fan of the handheld device.
I have used a car service for many years, and they do have a tip built into their charges. But they frequently give outstanding service, and adding some cash for really good service makes sense.
I struggle sometimes, with knowing when to tip. I tend to err on the side of generosity, but still. I don’t tip my physical therapist, but I do tip my massage therapist. (Granted the latter probably works harder.) I always tip my movers, but I don’t know if I need to tip the guys who are going to install my new carpeting. I always tip when I dine out, unless it’s fast food or counter service. (And with the latter, I’ll still tip if it’s a holiday or I happen to have some cash on me, which I usually don’t these days.) I always tip my Uber or Lyft driver, or anyone who brings me takeout. Do I tip my hairstylist, who owns her business and sets her own wages? (I do, but I wonder if that’s overkill.) Am I doing it all wrong? I tend to tip extra for extraordinary service, or if it’s a holiday, or if the weather is cruddy or it’s late at night.
Yup, it’s out of control. The situation has certainly become worse over the last few years, another negative externality of covid that we continue to live with. I was happy to support take out service, in 2020 since it was all that was available. The data here actually make me feel less guilted into giving something that’s undeserved or unwarranted. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging back to its more normal (but still excessive) position.
From July 1st Illinois is banning swipe fees on the tax and tip portions of credit card bills, it will be interesting to see how this pans out (smoothly, or chaotically!), and whether other states follow suite.
I never feel compelled to tip simply because some screen blinks at me.
Restaurant servers (sit down meals only): 20-30%. I almost always tip 30% if ordering breakfast. A time or two I have left without tipping, but not until I had a discussion with the manager.
I started cutting my own hair during the pandemic, and haven’t returned to the barber since, but I would generally tip 20%. Don’t ask how much my wife tips at the salon. I don’t understand it. It’s like the beautician is a paid informant or something.
My father tips the postal carrier at Christmas. One year he was talking to me on the phone while waiting to give his annual tip. He asked me to wait when the postal truck pulled up and set his phone down. When he came back, he was tickled at how pleased the postman seemed. Expletives soon came through my earpiece and he hung up. When he called me back a few minutes later he was still cussing. He had a $20 bill for the carrier in one pocket; he accidentally gave him the $100 he had in the other. Yeah, he actually asked for the Ben back.
30%? Really? You are a generous man. I look at the tip screen suggesting 25% or more to me and think that restaurant prices have increased (in line or better) with inflation and the dollar value of a 20% tip has grown right along with them. Still, if you have the dosh and it makes you somehow feel better about yourself, to each his own.
Doug, my wife and I had some close family members who made their living waiting on tables. It’s hard work, and by the time they were physically forced to retire, those waitress wages didn’t add up to much of a Social Security check. I guess we still feel a distant kin connection to the profession.
I tip my dog groomer well. She takes her time and is kind to my edgy difficult dog.
Here in NYC, where we get tons of tourists, Americans at tourist-heavy restaurants are always given special attention because the Americans dine out expecting to tip, while the Europeans are often caught off-guard and leave nothing. When a guy I was chatting with who works at such a place told me this, it took me back to my first trip to Germany. My brother and I went out to dinner in Berlin, had a nice meal, and when we paid our bill no tip was added. I went inside to give our waitress some cash as a tip and she looked at me like I had two heads. (and, let’s not kid ourselves, she took the money)
Anyway, here’s my handy-dandy tipsheet.
Dining and cocktails = 15 – 20% pre-tax price
Beer at a bar = $1 per drink (cash)
Hotel = $5 for the first day plus $5 per night that the maid comes
Taxi = 10 – 20% based on how I feel about the ride
Walking tour guide = $5 – $10 per person in my group
Delivery = 10%
Towel guy at the car wash = $1
Coat check = $1 – $2 per coat
Building staff = $100 at Christmas
Fast food = 0
Deli = 0
Coffee = 0
No table service = 0
Food I ordered for pickup = 0
Cabbie who puts my suitcase in the trunk = see Taxi section
Valet = I can walk a block
Bellhop = don’t touch my stuff
Bathroom attendant = nevermind, I’ll pee at home
Subway performers on the platform = mayyyyyyyybe $1
Subway performers on the train = I’m reading this book specifically to ignore you
Said like a true New Yorker, Jon. I agree.
I almost never take ubers – just yellow cabs occasionally where I tip well.
What’s a “valet”? -hehee
Dog groomer I’m generous with – its a tough job and I want her treating my dog well in future.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
I volunteer twice a week at a cancer research charity thrift shop (volunteer-run; $$ goes to the American Cancer Society), and the cash register software automatically prompts for a tip even though we don’t accept tips (We’re volunteers who want to work for free!). Thus, I’ve learned that the tipping prompt is often beyond the control of the cashier or worker.
I live in Britain. I have not tipped at all in the last year. Life is much simpler if people just set their prices appropriately and nobody tips.
I’m also not convinced that this means poor service from, for example, waiters. If a waiter was giving poor service, then it would be in the management’s interests to rectify that.
Americans visiting Canada this summer should be aware that, at least in Ontario, the same provincial minimum wage applies to all employees including waiters and bartenders, the ones who universally expect tips. So you shouldn’t tip waiters and bartenders just on the notion that they are getting stiffed by their employer. Now, of course if a restaurant pays its staff more than the minimum wage, they might well pay the employees who get tips less than the ones who don’t.
Never tip for counter service, ever. In food service, tip only when someone actually takes your order at your table and brings your food out to you and then clears your plates. You’re not tipping for “labo(u)r”. You’re tipping for service. (I never drink in bars, so I don’t know what the convention should be for service at the bar. I suspect if you don’t tip the bartender will ignore you.) We do leave a few dollars in the hotel room for the cleaners, though.
Canada applies a VAT of 5% which is “harmonized” with traditional provincial sales taxes bringing the total tax applied on the bill to 13% in Ontario. Whatever you do, calculate your tip on the pre-tax amount of the bill, not the bottom line. I don’t know if the automatic screens that start at 18% do this correctly because I would never in my life tip 18% even on the base cost, not in Canada anyway. Because liquor is heavily taxed in Canada even before it gets onto the bill, my maximum tip of 15% assumes one glass of wine each. If you drink more than that, you are paying tip on tax, which seems perverse to me. As Doug implies, if we don’t get any alcohol, which is usual now, we would tip a bit more just because a meal without alcohol is actually a rather modest outlay and generates less tip per unit of effort from the waitstaff.
I think the ubiquitous tip screens are just there, bundled with the cashless point-of-sale software for all transactions. “Skip” should be the default choice. My good nature doesn’t let me assume that all of a sudden every employee now wants a tip for her routine work. This would have another perverse effect: management sees all the tips and is now in a position to say, “Hey, the employees are getting extra payments from customers to the tune of 11.3% of what I already pay them. I guess that means I can impose a wage cut of 11% without making them worse off than before we went cashless.”
I tip 15-20% at a sit-down restaurant unless the service is especially poor. I will never tip for counter service (they even ask for the tip before they actually hand over your order! NFW!). I go to my favorite watering hole once or twice a week where I love the staff. I typically tip 75- 100%, which is not as crazy as it sounds since they usually quietly cut the bill in half for me. Now THAT’S a good system.
And if you make a political contribution online, you’ll be asked if you’d like to leave a tip. WTF?? A contribution on top of a contribution. That’s a disincentive to making a contribution in the first place.
No shit? A tip on a political contribution? Good grief!
Having it based on percentage makes no sense either. We (4) were at a somewhat fancy restaurant for dinner, and the bill came to about $500. One of us insisted that the tip ought to be 20%. I thought, wait a minute, the waitress is making $100 (on top of her regular wage), for about an hour’s work; actually, much less than an hour, because she was serving other tables at the same time. So is it reasonable that a waitress is making ~$300 per hour? I don’t think so. Doctors don’t make that much.
6:24
She proudly practices the pursuit of happiness!” Brava to Nicole!
I confess to being a heavy tipper, unless the service and/or attitude is bad. I have been on the low end of wage earners, when I was very young, and feel sympathy for those folk. However, demands for a tip, whether by human or electronic device, irritate me, and will incline me to reduce any generosity on my part. I always choose a “custom amount”.
When staying in a hotel, I leave a few buck/night for the cleaning staff if the service is at all reasonable.
Before traveling to a new place, I ask friends or colleagues living there about the tipping customs. It’s too easy to screw up out of ignorance. By the way, I prefer to ask actual people rather than using Google or AI. I prefer the human experience; I spend enough of my life with computers. (A site like this counts as human experience.)
I keep small amounts of foreign currencies—coins and low denomination notes to use while traveling. Comes in very handy for many things—tips, ice cream..whatever.
Something to keep in mind, the US tipped employees minimum wage varies wildly. For instance the wage in Georgia is $2.13 per hour. Also, the vast majority of restaurants do not provide health insurance. (I worked at a pub that expanded and the owner started a whole separate business so she wouldn’t have to offer healthcare.)
I agree that to go retail sales do not require a tip. At my work I don’t flip the square (POS) around so the customer can’t tip. Coffee shops and such I leave a little cash. Trust me the people working there are being paid as little as possible.
As more states get rid of waiter wages, table service will decline. (It’s kind of sad.) I waited tables in Australia ages ago and was paid cash in hand. The restaurants simply couldn’t afford the taxes. And I will point out that I was legal to work. In the US that is not as common. More counter service is the result.
That’s a good point about health insurance. In Canada, of course, employers don’t have to arrange health insurance and workers don’t pay it. It comes out of general taxation. Since restaurant customers earn higher incomes than restaurant employees (probably, on average), it’s the customer who pays for the waitstaff’s medical bills. Another thing to consider when tipping if you visit, and another thing for us to consider when we visit you.
I’m a part-time Uber driver, and I don’t like tipping culture. If the topic of tips comes up during a ride, I’ll discourage my passengers from feeling obligated to leave a tip. I’ve agreed to drive them from A to B for a price I find satisfactory. I have to rate them immediately at the end of the ride, and will likely never see them again, nor remember if they tipped me or not (Drivers have to hunt through their earnings records to see who left a tip). Meanwhile they can wait days before rating me or leaving a tip, so don’t need to worry that I’ll know or care, as I don’t factor it into my earnings. So if they want to leave me a tip, I’ll accept it graciously, but they should not feel obligated to do so.
I was going to write a long comment, but I won’t. I will only note that when I was teaching secondary in 1993 just outside on Boston, I made $17K (with a masters and a number of years in) with no benefits (I forfeited them for the wage boost. I was young and generally healthy). That converts to about $39K today, or about $19/hour. It didn’t accrue to Social security, but teachers pension was supposed to (Supposed to….) be better, so I sucked up the high withholding for that. That was when I ended up moving states since there wasn’t space for yet another body to split rent.
I currently have students that, part time, are getting $16/hour (state minimum wage) or more for unskilled retail part time and complain about it. Living at home, for free, being fed.
No, I do not tip the self checkout at the grocery store, nor the $16/hour high school kid that takes 15 seconds to hand me a bagel at the bagel shop (coffee is self-serve), or, as often as not, flings the bag at the counter for me to pick up, or leaves me waiting while texting instead of pulling the bagel at all.
(yes, I still carry a second job. It pays, not counting time at home grading, doing prep work, unpaid meetings, and so on, roughly twice the hourly I get teaching. I will be taking social security in a couple months, so can quit teaching)
The US is the only country I know where tipping is expected. Here in Australia it is not. When I lived in Europe it was not expected either, though on a recent trip there I encountered the situation described where electronic payment devices ask for a tip starting at 18%. Like a typical European I would simply tick “no tip” and the servers seemed fine with that as they are used to it. Servers there don’t depend on tips as they earn a decent wage. In fact, when I asked a French waitress on my recent trip about tipping, she said she found it insulting when customers leave a tip because good service should be expected regardless.
This is the problem with the payment companies and their software being American, their “18% tip” screens are built in. 😧
I’m an American (NYC) who’s been living in Japan for 50 years. We don’t have tipping here, and receive excellent service, all the time. When I visit the U.S. and am beset with this tipping phenomenon all I ever think is: Up the price if you want, I’ll pay, but don’t ask me to evaluate the staff — or the generally subpar service. And as for being asked to tip for buying a baguette or ice cream cone, I’ll quote Tony Soprano: “It’s a shakedown!”