Are we the baddies?

So yes. Status seeking, and differential price seeking probably is a-social as a pattern when it's weaponised against the consumer.

That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door (how that didn't get them excluded as a corporate scofflaw is beyond me) and they continue to export all the profits offshore, but taxi services had become shit and now we have got used to Uber and I just don't worry about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly.

My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.

The European push to mandate included luggage in flight is seeing a fair bit of trolling. So there are still true believers who think needing clean underwear is weak.

I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

1.) Owner needs workers and wants to make the position attractive.

2.) Owner is given the option to enable tips, and entice works with "Pay, plus tips!"

3.) Owner doesn't pay tips, patrons do.

4.) Workers blame patrons, not owner, for not tipping.

5.) Patrons feel guilty and tip. Workers make pretty good money from this, and enjoy the job more.

In a way it's kind of like a social mind virus, where the workers and owners benefit, and the patrons feel pain for not going along with it.

The only fix I can come up with is a law that tips can only be solicited after a service has been rendered. And entering something into a computer is not a service.

tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the same number of hours, the higher skilled driver earns more because they get more tips.

this "work harder => more pay" incentive is pretty unique in the industry; in manual labor jobs where each day has a set limit on the amount of work that can be completed, like grocery merchandising, workers that work harder get paid less than average workers. stock incentives are the closest comparison, but it's too far removed from the individual worker's output when the company's size grows above 100 employees.

the point is, part of the problem is the lack of other incentives that reward the hardest/best skilled workers.

If anything; tipping leads us to “leverage information to ensure you get a large amount of high-tipping customers => more pay.”

Continuing that logical process, we might realize that “make your coworkers have to deal with the bad tippers => more pay.” Which might lead us to “socially manipulate management to get optimal shifts and locations => more pay.”

If you really want “work harder => more pay,” then just pay a high/fair/livable hourly rate, and add a bonus for number of orders fulfilled in the shift (or total sales volume during the shift). Certainly, some perverse incentives remain with this approach. But nothing nearly so bad as tipping. And like with tipping, the higher the hourly rate compared to the bonus, the more those problems are reduced.

But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult.

I have had more than a few conversations with tipped service workers. Some are even friends of mine. While a lot of what you say is true (the manipulation of shifts and spotting/monopolizing desirable customers) it really fails to capture what most folks tell me about these jobs.

They like tips. The ones that hustle and build up a bank of "regulars" do quite well. It takes a lot of work, and if you hustle on your shifts you usually get more tables assigned to you or drinks poured per hour, etc. This means even more pay.

A slow unskilled bartender is making far less money than a highly skilled efficient experienced bartender with a stable of regulars taking up half the bar stool seats every slow night. It is a night and day difference in total pay rates - all to do with skill. This can be two bartenders behind the same bar on the same nights. The unskilled bartender is not going to be known in these closely knit industry circles as good talent, and will likely never get the opportunity for a position at the top-tier establishments known for good tippers. Those positions are highly competitive.

While we can pontificate about how businesses "should" reward the top tier employees, it isn't happening. In this area of work these are often the only types of jobs available that offer significantly more hourly pay by working harder or being better at your job than your peers. Tilting at windmills only goes so far - sometimes you take the only options available to you to immediately improve your lot in life.

And yes, some of that is "manipulation" of your work environment - just like how we call it "managing upwards" in our white collar world. Same thing.