The History Of Tipping Culture, And How We Got To The ＂Tipping＂ Point
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Summary
When an inanimate object is demanding that you throw in a little extra to tip, it's extremely tempting to conclude that tipping is, in general, a gigantic scam that no one should just ever participate in, ever again.
Transcript
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I have a theory that for people who have finally had enough with tipping,
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whether it's at the barber or restaurant or wherever,
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you can trace their attitude back to one over-the-top request for gratuity that they received.
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There was one request for a tip that was so galling, so ridiculous,
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that they decided from that moment forward that they just weren't going to tip at all.
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Or at least they dramatically scale back on their generosity.
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You might even call this a tipping point that many people hit.
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And for some, it's getting asked by the iPad at the coffee shop whether you'd like to tip 20% on a $6 latte.
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For others, the culprit, the machine demanding the tip,
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the hopper app that you use to book your hotel,
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When an inanimate object is demanding that you throw in a little extra to tip who knows who,
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it's extremely tempting to conclude that tipping is, in general, all of it,
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a gigantic scam that no one should just ever participate in ever again.
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And this is one that we need to talk about in some detail.
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It's a brand new prompt that Uber Eats has started adding to certain orders.
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This is a screenshot from an Uber Eats pickup order.
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Restaurants are an important part of our communities.
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Now, this solicitation won't appear every time you place a pickup order on Uber Eats.
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And it's probably not something that shows up in every market.
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All the same, you have to marvel at the sheer audacity.
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First of all, in general, restaurants already mark up their prices on Uber Eats.
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If you're placing a pickup order via Uber Eats, as opposed to calling the restaurant yourself,
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Secondly, they're asking for a 20% tip for doing absolutely nothing besides preparing
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At no point does a waiter or any kind of customer service enter into the equation.
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By getting into your car and driving to the restaurant, picking up the food, returning
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to your car and driving home, you are exerting yourself infinitely more than any waiter ever
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If anything, in this scenario, they should be the ones tipping you.
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And while I'm at it, why are these tips expressed as a percentage in any event?
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If I accept Uber's suggested tip amount, why do I have to tip $4 if I pick up $20 worth
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of food, but I'm supposed to tip $20 if I pick up $100 worth of food?
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From a service perspective, these two jobs are identical.
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Someone has to bag the order and hand it to me when I get to the restaurant.
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Like bagging an order of food that's more expensive is not more work for the person bagging it than
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That's whether you're bagging, uh, you know, fries in a hamburger or you're putting filet
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So they don't deserve five times the tip because the bag contains five more burritos or contains
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But the most egregious part of this latest stunt from Uber is the message that they include
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Again, it says restaurants are an important part of our communities.
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They'll receive a hundred percent of your tips.
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This is a sales pitch that originated in the deepest depths of COVID lockdown hell, and
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Like you might remember that during the lockdowns, there were many efforts to guilt trip us into
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showing gratitude, usually in the form of financial contributions to people who were doing the
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In fact, whether you like it or not, whether you were employed or not, or had any savings or
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not, your dollars went to subsidizing many of these people already, even without giving
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And while you can try to make an argument for this kind of subsidy during a national
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emergency, even if that national emergency was self-imposed, like the national emergency
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is that the government was shutting everything down, it doesn't work when there is not an
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In the year 2025, there's nothing brave about the guy at Arby's showing up to work and putting
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I don't need to pad the bottom line of a fast food place owned by a private equity firm because
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And make no mistake, when they say that 100% of the tip for the pickup order goes to the
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restaurant, they're not talking about the rank and file employees.
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After all, none of those rank and file employees are doing anything to serve your order.
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The accounting department is just collecting free cash.
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Now, I'm harping on this example, not because Uber Eats is the worst example of the excesses
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of tipping culture, although it is a really bad example, or because I think it's some great
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tragedy that people are getting fleeced on their pickup orders.
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And you do have a choice, after all, you can say no.
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The point is to identify when tipping culture got so out of hand and how that happened.
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And this tactic by Uber Eats offers a very important clue.
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When those in the service industry were feeling the brunt during the coronavirus pandemic,
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consumers started tipping for things they never had before.
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And the percentage of remote transactions when tipping was an option in which the consumer
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tipped soared from about 46% before the pandemic to around 86% in January 2022.
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Another reason consumers are tipping more, newer technologies, kiosks and tablets with three
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large tipping suggestions that pop up on the screen in front of you.
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I have not yet been to the restaurant where they recommend 5, 10 or 15% for quick takeout.
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It normally always starts at 15 as a bare minimum, sometimes even starting at 20, 25 and up to three.
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According to a 2022 CreditCards.com survey, 22% of respondents said when they're presented
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with various suggested tip amounts, they feel pressured to tip more than they normally would.
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Now, in case you missed it, before the COVID lockdowns, 46% of remote transactions in which
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tipping was an option, ultimately included a tip that was paid by the customer.
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And a remote transaction, of course, is any transaction where you're not there in person.
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So you're ordering DoorDash or a briefs, a pizza shop, Total Wine or something like that.
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But after the COVID lockdowns in 2022, fully 86% of remote transactions in which tipping was
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This is a change that, although it's subsided somewhat over the last year, is legitimately
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During the lockdowns, when the stock market crashed and most people trying to save as much
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As you heard, for in-person transactions, the kiosks became much more aggressive.
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They began prompting customers with specific tip amounts.
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So if customers didn't want to tip, they had to press a big no tip button.
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In other words, customers had to take an affirmative step and press a button in order to not tip.
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Whereas before, before these kiosks were invented, customers simply had to ignore the tip jar, which
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is pretty easy to do, but it doesn't explain the rise in tipping for remote transactions.
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It doesn't explain why people are so vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.
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After all, just because a kiosk gives you the option to vaporize your own money, that doesn't
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This is a still image from a film called The Petrified Forest, which came out in 1936.
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Meaning in the establishment that's depicted in the scene, the owners were voluntarily telling
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Out of a sense of patriotism, they were declining additional income.
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But the point is, signs like this were common at the time.
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This was a minor background detail in the film.
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And there are plenty of nonfiction historical works that confirm this.
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The author, Cary Seagrave, in his book entitled Tipping in American Social History, confirms
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that in the early 1900s, quote, it was not uncommon in restaurants in cities as large as St.
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A group called the Anti-Tipping Society of America formed in 1904, attracting hundreds
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of thousands of members, all of whom were asked not to give a tip to anyone for 12 months.
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And in June of 1908, as reported by the New York Times, one of the most prominent politicians
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in the country gave the Anti-Tipping Society a big boost, even if he wasn't a member.
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Talking about the Secretary of War, Republican presidential nominee, and future president,
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And here's the article from the Times, which I'm going to quote at length, because this
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old-timey writing is kind of endearing in a lot of ways.
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Secretary Taft is not only the standard bearer of the Republican Party, but he is the patron
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The secretary has not joined any organization for the suppression of tips, but in a quiet
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way, he just stops paying when he has reached the amount indicated on his check.
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His sympathy with the anti-tippers came out today in connection with his getting a haircut.
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The big secretary shaves himself every morning.
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Before leaving for his home in Cincinnati, the Republican nominee entered a well-known
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barber shop, which he has patronized for a number of years, and had his haircut and his
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That part over, Mr. Taft counted out 35 cents the price for the haircut, paid it, and left.
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Tips nothing, replied the barber in response to a question.
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He has been having his hair trimmed here for three years, but never a tip did he give.
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I understand that he thinks he has paid for the work when he gives the regular price, and
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I know he shaves himself, for I hone his razors.
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Now, if this kind of story were written today, you know it would have a completely different
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The barber wouldn't concede that Taft was right not to tip him.
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And the New York Times would publish a full front-page spread about how Taft's behavior
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was a symptom of his internalized white supremacy, for which he should immediately repent, and
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And that's because in the 1800s and early 1900s, Americans viewed tipping correctly as
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a vestige of medieval times and European class hierarchies.
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And these were precisely the kind of institutionalized, serenitary-based class hierarchies that the United
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So no one is sure when exactly the concept of tipping originated.
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You'll find reports that the Romans did it, along with plenty of evidence that nobles would
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tip the house staff when they were visiting friends and family.
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But in the U.S., in the early centuries, most people saw tipping as fundamentally un-American,
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They'd rather lose money than debase themselves by begging for extra cash.
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And depending on who you ask, a couple of things changed in the mid-19th century to explain
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First, Americans began traveling more to Europe, so they learned all about tipping and brought
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But the real explanation, according to various highly credible historians and tenured professors
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of hotel management, is that white supremacy, that is the root of tipping culture.
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Tipping may go back as far as the Roman era, but according to most experts, the practice
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Noblemen taking passage on roads would throw coins to the rubble to ensure safe passage.
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One theory is that it evolved in eating and drinking establishments as a way to forestall
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That when you're eating and drinking, you're having fun.
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Fast forward to the 19th century, when waiters who received a full wage went on strike demanding
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higher wages, they were replaced with women who employers could pay less.
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A decade later, there was the population of newly freed slaves.
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The idea from these restaurant owners was that they were giving the luxury or privilege of
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So this is the one time in my entire career that I'm willing to concede an argument like
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There's no logical reason why, in a white supremacist hellscape, any white person would
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There's no logical reason why this arrangement would replace wages for black people, or how
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it would be sustainable, or why tipping culture would continue to get worse for generations,
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even as black people gained more and more rights.
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At this moment, with total sincerity and without a hint of irony whatsoever, I'm willing to
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acknowledge that tipping is a white supremacist concept that has its roots in slavery.
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The little iPads with the suggested tips, those are definitely racist.
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And those are more racist than like the N-word, uttered by the whitest guy you know, the
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second he's cut off in traffic by a busted up Chevy Malibu in Compton.
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And don't get me started on mandatory tips that they make you pay in most restaurants
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Those mandatory gratuities for large groups are, that's like straight out of Mein Kampf,
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And in the name of anti-racism channeling Henry Rogers, aka Ibram X.
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Kendi, we must abolish all of these expressions, these vestiges of white supremacy.
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Now, that said, I understand that my timing isn't ideal.
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So the odds are fairly low that anyone's going to buy this particular argument.
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So in the alternative, I'll make an appeal to patriotism, as they did in the early 20th
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Tipping is inversely proportional to the pride Americans have in their own country.
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As this country has become less patriotic, tipping has surged.
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But when this country was scrappy, when we openly celebrated our distinct identity, which was
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clearly superior to anything the Europeans had to offer, tipping was a moral abomination.
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So that's the solution to the crisis of tipping culture.
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It's the fact that when people are beaten down and lose their sense of identity, they're
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more likely to open their wallets and light their own money on fire.
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However, that's what you do when you have no self-esteem, no sense of identity.
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It's what we've done at scale ever since the allegedly progressive reforms of the mid-20th
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But we can put an end to this insanity just as quickly as it began.
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No matter how many people are watching or judging, all we have to do is walk in, pay for what we
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Leave the New York Times reporter and the whiny barber behind you.
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And as Taft demonstrated, it's probably not a bad way to get ahead in life either.
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Now, it's not to say that you should never tip under any circumstances.
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If someone is going above and beyond performing a job that you don't want to do or you can't
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do in a field where their extra effort and experience matters, in a setting where you
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might come back to them for more work, then tipping can be reasonable.
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And that scenario applies at most to like 1% of these kinds of situations in which you
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In every other case, tipping is irrational at best and a shakedown at worst.
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As Americans used to recognize, we created our own country so that we could avoid shakedowns
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And now that Uber Eats is demanding 20% tips on pickup orders, the shakedown has become
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Anyway, everyone, including service workers who genuinely earn their tips, should be outraged
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That's only because for the most part, we shouldn't have tips.
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We should all be able to walk in, receive a service, pay for it, whatever the cost is,
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And the more the service industry keeps pushing the issue, seemingly without realizing it,
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