Looked at less cynically, it’s also just lingering generosity from a challenging shared experience.
Many people, including myself, who experienced the luxury of secure remote work during the pandemic felt especially appreciative of the people who found themselves in more marginal or high-risk situations.
When I was given the opportunity, I was happy to share that appreciation through larger tips. Now I’m just used to it. So are a lot of others.
Higher prices and friction in the experience will just drive people to eat out less.
So you may have higher tip %'s, but if people on average eat out only half as often, the service staff still receives less tips in aggregate.
Frankly, the best way to address this is overall improvement of the safety net in the US, starting with single payer health care. Tips are a small shim-fix at best, and realistically a wedge between the service staff and their customers.
Sure, but when I feel warmly for the person who just helped me out, I’m not usually weighing the optimal strategies of civic development. I’m just sharing what I have to spare.
For historical reasons (not wanting to pay for non white labour) in the US, it is customary by businesses to pay service personal minuscule wages, and shift the responsibility for their wages into the customer.
As such, not tipping in the US is utilizing uncompensated labor, which is highly immoral.
Until the current system is dismantled, you can either tip, or not participate in it. But not tipping and enjoying free labor is abhorrent.
You are not allowed to tip as much as you want in all scenarios. GrubHub currently disallows tipping >350% of the order, but, if memory serves, it used to be lower.
Not saying it's wrong - it probably prevents fraud. But still :)
This isn't quite true, unless you bring various bill sizes to go along with a credit/debit transaction. And even then, it can be jarring for some of the situations mentioned in a negative context here (versus baked into the payment steps).
Many people, including myself, who experienced the luxury of secure remote work during the pandemic felt especially appreciative of the people who found themselves in more marginal or high-risk situations.
When I was given the opportunity, I was happy to share that appreciation through larger tips. Now I’m just used to it. So are a lot of others.