OPINION | The Tipping Point: Rethinking Gratuity in the Age of Self-Service

Photo Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News via Wall Street Journal

Nov. 5, 2023. 3:00 PM. JFK Airport. Queens, New York, USA.

The Griffins’ Nest Editorial Board sits at a round table at a restaurant in Terminal 5.

In this restaurant, you are required to order your food on a website and pay by typing in your credit card info — much like one does when shopping online. The food is then brought to your table by a waiter.

As the Editorial Board finishes ordering — a tedious process in itself — we are given one final ask: to tip the staff. But for what? We took ourselves to our seats, took our own orders, and typed in our own credit card information. The only service we actually received was the waiter bringing our food — which hadn’t even happened yet, since we had to pay first. Not to mention that the food was incredibly overpriced — though we expected that from a US airport.

(It’s moments like these that make us want to quit our jobs and become waiters, especially at that restaurant.)

This experience is a common occurrence across North America, which we call the “flipping the iPad” phenomenon. This name is derived from a common experience in fast-casual restaurants, in which the staff at the counter punch in a customer’s order on an iPad, then flip it around to ask the customer for a tip before any service is even provided.

Tipping, which once existed as a way to thank an employee for above-and-beyond service, has become an expectation in almost every industry, even when most of the service comes from the customer — not to mention that many businesses ask customers for tips before any service is even provided, defeating the entire purpose of the act.

The most outrageous example of this is food delivery apps, where upfront tipping is encouraged to ensure that the service is provided properly in the first place. If you don’t tip your delivery driver in advance, you can expect your order to arrive stone cold, if at all. And this tip, of course, is on top of the already-increased price of the food to ensure the delivery company makes a profit.

Interestingly, this tipping frenzy is not an occurrence outside of North America; many places we’ve visited in Europe and Asia don’t require this additional fee, and in some countries, it’s seen as rude or disrespectful to tip for your meal, even after receiving exceptional service. So how did this North American “tip inflation” occur? 

While several factors have contributed to our current tipping problem, the most glaring issue is that employers, especially in the US, are often encouraged to pay their tipped employees (such as waiters) less than minimum wage. For instance, in 15 states in the US, tipped workers are only required to be paid $2.13 per hour, since the expectation is that their tips will make up the remaining balance of the $7.25 federal minimum wage. Even though this rule doesn’t apply in BC, where the minimum wage before tipping is $16.75 per hour — and set to increase to $17.40 in June — customary tipping culture has naturally spread here, despite it not being as necessary.

Now, not only has tipping culture lost its purpose, but it has come at a terrible time. With the dramatic increases of the cost of living in recent years, especially in BC, food and beverage prices have already been hyperinflated. In a time during which a latte costs upwards of $6 — and we know this because we ordered some just before writing this — we are now also asked to pay an additional 18 to 25 (and sometimes even 30!) per cent tip in order to appear respectful. Some restaurants even have a mandatory “service fee” for all transactions regardless of party size.

While we understand that service workers are not paid enough to live comfortably in BC, it is not the responsibility of customers, many of whom are also paying upwards of $3,000 per month in rent, to relieve these workers’ financial troubles. It’s time to start asking the broader question: why is everything so unaffordable, anyway?