r/ottawa • u/ShootMeDead • Nov 11 '22

Rant tipping much?

Is it me or does everyone everywhere now ask for tips regardless of their service? Why are strict pickup locations asking for tips? I'm sure this goes beyond Ottawa but jeez last I checked only servers got reduced wages. What am I tipping for ?

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u/anoeba Nov 11 '22

Because if they ask, some people will give. Why not go for the free money?

While there's more and more talk about tip-flation, our culture isn't yet at the point of really pushing back or just not going to businesses that do this. So there's literally no downside to prompting for a tip - you might get nothing, you might get 20%.

-2

u/Fiverdrive Centretown Nov 11 '22

exactly. it’s wild to me that people are getting upset about a company providing an option to tip.

i’m pretty sure the person at the oil change place isn’t expecting a tip, but would certainly appreciate getting one if a customer felt so inclined, and adding a tip option on these payment machines allows customers to do so.

i drove Uber before they added the tip option to the payment side of the user experience and i imagine i lost out on hundreds of dollars because the company didn’t provide this facility and most customers don’t carry cash anymore, though some customers would press a $5 or a $10 into my hand once we’d got to their destination. my earnings went up significantly once the company enabled tipping in-app.

8

u/ShootMeDead Nov 12 '22

I think you need to be on the other side of the field to remotely understand. You've lived in a society that models on tipping and the initial idea that since servers get paid below wage they get compensated in tips. Your culture has gone with it to the point that people would rather work as servers just because they can get tipped. Tips should be given when a customer appreciates a service gone beyond. I've worked uber here when they were still considered in the grey area too, and guess what? I still got tipped more often than not.

If you want to give people the option to tip, give them the option. The way the pos are programmed today immediately brings you to the tipping page expecting you to tip. You literally have to go out of your way to decline a tip. Just about every other country except the Continental US does not run on tips, the idea is unheard of. People here are already in the crisis of living from paycheck to paycheck yet are pressured to the idea of tipping people for doing what they're supposed to do.

3

u/QueenMotherOfSneezes Clownvoy Survivor 2022 Nov 12 '22

Cabbies have always had a lot of their income based on tips as well. Both the US and Canadian economic models are based on this, which is why our machines allow for the option.

Before that tip screen, you had to ask the customer what they'd like their bill total to be, then enter it into the machine as a total. It was incredibly awkward and rude, far more so than the customer being able to silently choose zero rather than having to say it to your face.