Restaurant tipping is broken

We'd all be happier without tipping.

Well, this was a week. That’s about all I’ve got to say about it.

1. Take your tip screen and shove it

Photo by Jens Meyers on Unsplash

Wokeness isn’t the only cultural norm in retreat. Americans have had enough of tip creep.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

People are tipping less at restaurants than they have in at least six years, driven by fatigue over rising prices and growing prompts for tips at places where gratuities haven’t historically been expected.

The average tip at full-service restaurants dropped to 19.3% for the three months that ended Sept. 30 and hasn’t budged much since, according to Toast, which operates restaurant payment systems. The decline highlights a bind restaurants find themselves in, as they face rising costs of ingredients and labor amid customer frustration over spiraling bills.

Tipping at U.S. sit-down restaurants in the past six years peaked at 19.9% in early 2021, when Americans were likely to express gratitude as Covid-19 lockdowns eased.

I’ve been whining for years about the invasion of tip screens into businesses that provide minimal service. This isn’t tipping in the traditional sense. It’s fast-food owners inducing customers to subsidize historically low-wage jobs.

That’s also why it’s catching on. Employees receive more money in restaurants with tip screens, so adding them became a competitive advantage and, later, a necessity for establishments competing for workers in a tight labor market.

As WSJ notes, the pandemic accelerated this trend. Customers were happy to throw extra money at workers who were taking risks to do public-facing jobs, so more businesses adopted tip screens to facilitate generosity.

Now, we’re stuck with them. Everywhere. The result is price shock on top of price shock.

Menu prices have risen more than 27% since 2020 and we’re being asked to tip in places where we didn’t have to in the Before Times. It’s a combination of factors so onerous that Americans are consuming more food at home — something we generally did not want to do.

I’m part of that trend. Despite higher prices, more tipping and a 33% increase in mouths to feed, my household is spending substantially less money on dining out than we did in 2020 and 2021 — some months, we’re spending less than half of what we used to.

That’s, in part, due to intentional budget cuts across all our discretionary spending (our family grew and parenting ain’t cheap). But it’s also a response to how expensive everything is. Our habits are changing.

Yesterday morning, for example, I bought a latte and a muffin at a downtown Indianapolis coffee shop. The price was $13. Naturally, the barista flipped over a tip screen. Naturally, the final price rose above $15.

That’s fine a couple times a month. But I make very few personal trips to coffee shops these days (work-related meetings are more common).

It would be much better if America adopted a system like, say, Australia, where no one tips and restaurants set higher base menu prices to accommodate good wages for staff. The prices are transparent, service is better and everyone is happy.

I don’t expect that to happen here anytime soon. But, in the meantime, restaurants are unintentionally nudging Americans to make their own coffee and bring lunch to work.

2. $Trump

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

I want to point out that the U.S. president and his wife both just created their own currencies, generating billions of dollars in wealth for themselves at the expense of Trump supporters who stand to lose the money they dumped into a worthless meme coin under the guise of an investment.

This is a thing that actually happened last week.

I know a lot of other things happened, too, and we can waste a lot of time debating whether they’re good or bad. But this very simple story is indicative of Trump’s uniquely flagrant abuse of power. It’s heinous, predatory behavior that would warrant universal condemnation for any public figure operating outside the context of partisan tribalism.

I’m not too worked up about Donald Trump being president again in the context of my own life. I’m fortunate to be doing well and I expect to be even better off in four years than I am now. But a lot of people’s lives will get worse during Trump’s term. Many of them will be the people who trust him most.

3. What I wrote

Just one column this week for me at IndyStar. I’m still not over Indianapolis’ terrible snowplowing:

• The City-County Council is finally showing Hogsett a spine over snowplowing

4. What I read

I finished two books:

• The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida and Felony by Annabelle Tometich

• Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart

Some other stuff:

Ben Dreyfuss on shutting up about Trump:

It seems to me that the story of American politics for the last few decades is one of thermostatic backlash. There is a backlash, and then a backlash to the backlash, and then a backlash to the backlash to the backlash, and then one day, you look back on your life and wonder where the time went? The smartest thing anyone can do politically is be as quiet as a mouse and wait for everyone to get mad at the other guy, as they invariably will if you don’t get in the way.

Many MSNBC-types are eager to make the case against Trump, but people don’t like them either. It seems like the better thing to do is for Democrats to wait for Trump to do something bad and unpopular. Then, they should say, “That was bad.” In a few years, they should run against all the bad things. Throughout this process, they should do their best not to act hysterical.

Nate Silver on whether conservatives won the war for the long run:

The conclusion from studying history is that American politics is quite unpredictable at medium-to-long time scales. And the start of a new presidential term is often when we have the least perspective on the trends.

This post offers important context because, while Dems are indeed in disarray and conservatives are walking around like they just took over America for the next 100 years, history shows that political winds change direction very quickly and we really have no idea what’s going to happen next. This is no time to get confident or smug in our assumptions.

5. Wake me up when February comes

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

January is the absolute worst month of parenting for people with young children. I thought about writing a whole post about that, but I’ve already been kind of whiny about parenting lately and then I saw Melinda Wenner Moyer write her own post on this exact topic.

Anyway, I’m always about at the end of my rope this time of year. After holiday break, there are sick kids and weather-related school closings and then you get sick and then kids get sick again and sometimes daycare sends your kid home even when they’re not all that sick just because they’re on high alert.

To top it off, we’re moving our 5-year-old to a new school next week. Nothing horrible happened. The school just turned out to be a bad fit for our son and we’re hoping to put him in a more suitable environment for the rest of the year. But he’s sad to leave his friends, and that has been emotionally crushing.

Anyway, this month sucks. If you’re parenting young children, I see you. You’re doing great. Spring is coming.

One week from today will be February and everything will be fixed. In the meantime, please subscribe to this newsletter if you haven’t already, or share it with someone who might want to.