this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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So think about it this way. If you were at a restaurant without table service (like a pizza place or deli) that had a tip jar on the counter, you probably wouldn't get upset. You'd either tip or not tip and leave it at that, but unless you're a very specific kind of classist you probably don't mind the general concept of a tip jar quietly existing.
Square literally is just leaving the option of a tip jar. If they don't prompt you to leave a tip, you can't leave a tip if you want to. Either there's a tip jar or there isn't. If somebody decides to give a little extra help to the people they're asking to help them, it gives them that option. It's nice to have even if it doesn't get used all the time, because someone who's feeling generous can tip extra, which is great.
You should not feel like the existence of a Square POS immediately means you're being pressured or obligated to tip. If you're in a situation where you'd traditionally be expected to tip, like sitting in a restaurant or getting a ride in a taxi, then yes, obviously the social obligation remains. But if it's not one of those situations? Simply being given the opportunity to do so doesn't mean you have to. No more than you have to donate to St Jude.
Nah, tip jars don’t bother me. What I don’t like is that the person at the register can immediately see exactly how much I’m tipping. It’s impossible to be discreet. If I’m leaving a generous tip, I don’t like to feel as if I’m showing off.
With tip jars, I make a point of tipping when the person at the register isn’t looking (like when they’re relaying my order to the kitchen or something). Maybe I’ll toss some money in the jar on my way out the door. When I’m getting table service, whoever waited on me doesn’t see the tip until I’ve already left the room.
I don’t like the Square POS (or whatever) because it turns tipping from a spontaneous, pleasant surprise to a in-your-face formalized routine.
I can’t blame you if you find my response frustrating. I’m fully aware that I’m being irrational.
I mean, shouldn't that say something to you, then?
Like, if it bothers you that they can see what you're tipping, maybe you're not fulfilling an expectation that you know you should?
Like, what do you owe to the people who spend their days enabling your comfort and convenience? What do we owe to each other in general?
I feel like you know in your heart that we owe something to others, and that when you're afraid of owning your actions it may be an indicator that you know you're not living up to that.
Personally, as a tipped worker who herself tips generously, I'm proud to give the tips that I do and glad to see the response to them. It's worth more than the little bit extra beyond what would be a mediocre tip, even if I'm pretty broke myself. Keep it going around, you know?
I feel like the world would be a lot better if we stopped worrying so much about our own defensive tendencies and started worrying more about making the kind of world we could have with a little more empathy. Selfishness literally will make you miserable no matter how much you have, because it doesn't feel good to nitpick about what you 'deserve'. It feels better to help.
It tells me that businesses have decided it’s okay to be obtrusive and rude.
I’ve had jobs where my income was heavily dependent on tips, so I keep that in mind when leaving a tip myself. I understood that tipping could be a sensitive subject, so I was careful to never make guests feel like it was mandatory or expected.
I certainly never asked for a tip before any service had been rendered - but that’s what has become normal for many businesses. The employees aren’t the problem. The owners/managers who choose the POS software are.
“What do we owe to each other in general?” is an excellent question. I’m not being shown the same degree of courtesy that I worked hard to show others, and that bothers me.
I don't think this is ever a measure that we can really use constructively. If you do the right thing in some category of behavior, you're going to find that often people don't do the right thing.
Think about it like driving. A competent driver is going to notice how terrible a lot of people on the road are at driving safely. People do some wild shit. The question, though, is what are you going to do with that? Are you going to use it to make yourself frustrated and potentially make your own driving worse as your focus shifts to it? Or are you going to be someone on the road who's paying attention, reacting to their environment, and not letting their sense of entitlement to a clear road get in the way?
We can't be good at everything and we can't make everything our focus; as humans we prioritize what we think is important. If something isn't on our radar, we probably aren't thinking about it at all.
So, like, the effort you put in to make sure that customers don't feel pressured is based on your morals and ethics, your outlook, and your feeling of what people want and should be able to expect. That's you living your values, but those aren't everyone's values. People won't even know that you're internalizing that value unless you tell them.
If you look at your values as some sort of transaction, where you do others the 'courtesy' of following your values in regard to your interactions with them, you're going to continuously be disappointed when they fail to have the same values as you in return.
The reality, though, is that you're doing your values for yourself, because you believe in them. You feel they ought to be done, so you do them. But they're not my values. It's not a favor to me for you to do your values, it's a favor to you. You can't expect that just by you doing them I'll suddenly possess them. I value different things because my experiences have very likely been very different.
We can talk about how they differ, but I feel like if you set out a path for yourself where you end up resentful of a world that doesn't share your values, which is just statisically incredibly likely to be the world you live in a vast majority of the time that you interact with other humans, it's probably going to be kind of frustrating.
Obviously the stakes matter here. Like, if by values we're talking about not killing one another, that's pretty dire. But if it's like what the best way to be a service worker is? Ehh, probably less so.
Honestly, framing it this way works pretty well when people don't tip, too. To my values, if people ask for a ride and don't tip they're essentially asking me to pay for part of their ride. But that's not how everyone feels. I'm not going to charge myself extra in the form of cortisol for the trouble if I can help it.