Tipping has been a part of North American culture for generations. When you drill down and look at it objectively, it’s a weird practice but it is ingrained in us for some services. Now and then we would hear of some movement or another calling for the end of the practice, but it never really would go anywhere..Something has changed in the last few years though..Tipping has expanded into non-traditional industries and the amounts being asked are growing. Consumers are feeling picked clean and they are right. Prices for everything are rising and we can’t afford to top up every purchase price with a 15% to 25% tip. It’s one thing to leave a tip for a server after spending an hour or two at a restaurant. It is quite another to expect a tip for a simple retail purchase..I will offer a recent and somewhat embarrassing personal example..I went to a specialty bakery in Calgary to buy keto diet friendly items..This bakery had signs on their outside door and plastered all over inside bragging of how they are a “living wage” employer. I shrugged and entered. What they pay their employees is their business..I quickly witnessed what comes with paying a “living wage” in a bakery. The loaf of keto friendly sourdough bread rang in at an eye-popping $16. I gulped but decided to purchase the bread and get the hell out. That’s the first embarrassment. I should have just stopped my purchase when I saw the price..When I was handed the payment pad, the all too common prompts for tips were on the screen with the lowest being 15%. What the hell did the bored looking kid behind the counter do to earn a tip?.I thought, 'I’ll show him!' I chose the manual option and only left a one-dollar tip!.That was the second embarrassment. If it bothered me, why did I leave a tip?.We are so conditioned to tip. I felt almost shamed into leaving at least a little something. A ridiculous notion and I should know better. I hope I learned something there..Businesses that didn’t traditionally command tips have been using the option on their payment pads to try and supplement staff wages. It helps them try to reduce sticker shock for customers as inflation forces them to raise prices, but it is a disingenuous way to go about it. The payment machines make it easy to slip tips in as an option without asking for them directly..I even heard of somebody being prompted for a tip for an item they ordered online. It’s getting ridiculous..Tipping needs to be reined in but not eliminated as some have called for. It has crept into the wrong businesses and consumers need to stop indulging them. I am already guilty of that..In some service-based industries though, tipping should remain..I look at tipping as something that should be considered if the person has had an extended direct experience with the service provider. In that I mean, with a restaurant or bar server who communicates, converses and serves a table for periods that could last hours. A bartender who listens to a person laying out the challenges of their lives and lends a sympathetic ear. A tour guide who spends an entire afternoon showing sites and narrating what’s behind them. A cab driver who offers good conversation on the ride and lends tips for local attractions. A hair dresser who spends an hour with a client. You can see the theme here right? The tip is for the interaction and only when the interaction goes above and beyond the basic service or product..With a tip, you are choosing to pay a bonus for your consumer experience. .Tipping is the ultimate form of merit pay. The consumer is in full control. They can directly influence the compensation of the person offering them a service and it incentivizes the worker to do as good a job as possible..When I owned a pub, it was easy to see which servers and bartenders gave the best service. Some consistently brought in as much as 20% to 30% in tips more than other workers and the formula was simple. Just be friendly, attentive and polite. That can be harder than one thinks. As a business owner, the tip levels gave me a visible measure of who gave the customers the best dining experience and of course ensured those servers got as many prime shifts as possible. Customers won. The server won. And I as an owner won..Many restaurants have tried to go with tip free models. It always fails. Earls in Calgary tried it a few years ago and it only lasted a few months. While they paid a much higher hourly rate to servers to compensate for the lack of tips, the ambitious servers quit and went to restaurants where they could earn tips. The servers remaining were those who preferred to kill time and earn hourly wages. Service levels went down while prices shot up. The restaurant had to return to the old way and fast as customers fled the expensive, low-service experience..People like to point out that tipping isn’t the standard in some other countries. That is true but in my travel experience, I also found the service dropped as well. While in Australia for example, unless you are in a formal and expensive restaurant, you have to order and pay at a window and then fetch your own food when it is ready. It's a fast food style experience. Meanwhile the prices are rather high. I would rather tip and have table service. I missed it while I was down there. If I am going to do nothing but self-service, I may as well just get takeout and go home..The only way to change the trend in tipping is for consumers to put their feet and wallets down on the issue. Refuse to tip for retail services and only tip in service based industries. Government can’t ban tipping and its well out of their role anyway. Who are they to tell me who I can give my own money to?.We have let the practice of tipping spread too far and it is up to us to bring it back where it belongs. There is a place for tipping and the practice is worth keeping..I will check myself before habitually tipping from here on in..And I sure as hell won’t spend $16 for a loaf of bread again. I like to learn things the hard way but I do learn.
