Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

If you're served by a human and tips are not included in normal pay by law, you tip.

If it's a country where people can't live with just the one job, you tip a lot.

There are a set of pretty arbitrary customs about where you tip and where you don't tip. You would be considered a weirdo if you tipped at the grocery store. In the US, you have to tip at sit-down restaurants.

Traditionally, in the US, people rarely tipped when they had to go to the counter to order and pick up food.

That's just the custom, though it seems to be rapidly changing, so that basically any food or drink service now involves tipping.

Tipping everybody who you hand cash to is crazy. And the US is the only place where you have to do it for a large percentage of that population.

There’s a place that does this less than a block from me right now. Actually probably 2-3 places if you extend a block further.

By that logic, most reading these comments should expect to hear from their employer:

  What annual bonus?
  What stock options?
  The company is paying full price that your time was being sold at.

This mostly happens at smaller stores and not big chains.

Coffee bars are a grey area. If I'm ordering something fancy, I'll probably tip. If I'm getting a cup of black joe from an urn of pre-made coffee, I may or may not.

I'll continue to tip well for people working in traditionally tipped positions. The last few years have seen companies attempt to massively expand that list of positions so that their employees get paid more without their bosses having to pay for it. Those cheapskates can give their workers raises instead of turfing it off onto us.

We learned his schedule, we made sure to make his drink so it would be ready on time while also handling the hundreds of other orders in the morning rush. This is something we tried to do for every regular customer with a fixed order.

I'd argue that this sort of thing is well within the bounds of what was 'tippable' service back then.

But to be clear, tips weren't expected then like they are now. It was an infrequent thing. If you dropped your ~15¢ change into the jar once or twice a month, you were a generous tipper.

We served Steve for many years and he was definitely an outlier. He wasn't the only other customer that never tipped. But he was the only one that was famously rich, which is what made it so amusing to us.

Stock options are because you could be paid more or you are taking risks for future rewards.

A mandatory tip is because your employer doesn't want to pay you full wage and instead of increasing the price and pay you more, they pass it over to the customers. So they get the same profits without having to bother.

Quite different reasons.

  > Annual bonus is either performance based

  >>>> We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! 

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When tipping is no longer customary to receive good service and seeps into other aspects of lives it leads to all sorts of problems and situations.

This[1] is an extreme example of that situation in a different country but are we really ready to accept similar consequences and say they should've just paid the poor nurse ?

1. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/up-mainpuri-infant-die...

Sounds like a tip to me.

> Stock options are because you could be paid more or you are taking risks for future rewards.

Sounds to me like the allure of a job in which tipping is expected.

> A mandatory tip is because your employer doesn't want to pay you full wage ...

Tips are not mandatory by definition.

evidently the tips under discussion were not mandatory.

Baristas are paid to make iced tea. The customer doesn’t expect them to do more than that, but they can be nice, learn your name, prepare your tea ahead of time, change the tea recipe to something you enjoy more. Don’t you think they should get a nice bonus too?

In the service industry, you wouldn't need to say end customer, because the person you're delivering to is already the end customer. Either way is still a results based cash reward paid by the entity receiving the direct output of your work.

Which doesn't seem like it should be a big problem in an already not tip-heavy, but there are a surprising number of people who make a very big show of not being able to tip because there's no credit option.

Variable, pseudo-optional tips seem like a much bigger problem.

Since tipping is done by customers. It is like employers tell employees you can let customers know good service is for good tippers. Maybe car repair mechanic can pour sweet tea in instead of engine oil since customer is known to be bad tipper.

I am sure that will go very well with that business.

In the scenario I set forth, an employer assumes the role of customer during annual reviews of their employees.

> It is like employers tell employees you can let customers know good service is for good tippers.

This is non sequitur as clarified above.

In the scenario I set forth, an employer assumes the role of customer during annual reviews of their employees.