Tipping Point

Tipping is another oddly American tradition that we all pretty universally hate. Perhaps you did not know that the modern conception of tipping arose during reconstruction as a means to not have to pay black people for their labor. We explore the origins of this strange, uniquely American tradition, why it persists, and what is probably going to make this problem much, much worse. 

Recommendations

• Abraham: Unconscious Mind (https://luckyduckgames.com/usa/?srsltid=AfmBOor3zWBbHAlhJyg2tsekDN2j6PpVGbsEfOw5nXwKAJYmT7PnPmJV)
• Shane: Hotline TNT - Raspberry Moon (https://open.spotify.com/album/3MVdeSmUl32TTzLy6dFFtZ?si=tD1AgdpJRkSxi6kRIekR6Q)

Holidays (7/9/2025):

• Call of the Horizon
• Fashion Day
• Martyrdom of the Bab
• National Don’t Put All your Eggs in One Omelet Day
• National No Bra Day
• National Sugar Cookie Day
• Durian Fruit Day
• National Dimples Day
• Argentina’s Independence Day
• Wimbledon
• Rabbit Week
• Air Conditioning Appreciation Days
• Be Nice to New Jersey Week
• Dog Days of Summer
• Freedom Week
• National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee Week
• National Farriers Week
• Shark Week

Links and References: 

1. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33170/33170-h/33170-h.htm
2. https://www.7shifts.com/blog/history-of-tipping-restaurants/
3. https://www.povertylaw.org/article/the-racist-history-behind-americas-tipping-culture/
4. https://www.foodwoolf.com/2010/08/history-of-tipping.html
5. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230606-how-to-tip-around-the-world
6. https://www.westernunion.com/blog/en/global-tipping-guide/?cust_src=organic_search
7. https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants-civil-war/ 
8. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tip-sheet/ 
9. https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/
10. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
to Why we do what we do. I am your
Please Tip Me host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I am your twenty five percent host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and sometimes we
talk about the weird traditions that we have picked up
that nobody likes, but we do them anyway.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
And that, my friends, is tipping, you know, and we'll
talk about this, I'm sure, but I wonder if the
reason tipping is so aversive is because it's so confusing.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
That could be part of it. We'll talk a bit
about the reason that persists. But you know, one of
the things that people have never liked about it is
that you are paying for things twice. Sure, you get
to pay for it, and then you get to pay
for that same thing again. You don't get any more,
you just are. You're just paying more for the thing
that you already agree to a price for and are
now spending even more money than you thought you would. Right,

(01:06):
There's a lot to unpack there, and we will get
into all of that. But if you are joining us
for the first time, thank you so much for being here.
We are happy to have you and we hope that
you enjoy what you hear in this discussion today. And
if you're a returning listener, then thank you for joining
us again. And we would like to hope that you
enjoy what you hear in this one and that you
continue to join us in the future. And either way,
if you have if you're in either of those groups

(01:27):
and you have not already taken the plunge into supporting us,
one way that you can do that is to join
us on Patreon and there's all kind of bonus stuff
that you get over there. You can leave us a
rating and review, pick up some merchant or merch store,
or go tell a friend. Those are all ways that
you can help. And I will describe more about these
ways of supporting us at the end of this discussion,
but it wanted to get them out of the way

(01:49):
just so that in case you were jumping into this
and you're like, I already like the cut of this, guys,
jib I already want to support them, those are some
ways you can do it. Love that before we even
jump into our main topic, we have to acknowledge that
it is July ninth and that is the Call of
the Horizon day, so uh celebrates in whatever way it
makes sense to you.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah. It's also Fashion Day, so there's that.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
We've talked about fashion a little bit on this show,
so not explicitly, I think in an episode, although kind
of I don't remember we did at some point. But yeah,
it is Murderdom of the Bab Day. I honestly don't
know if I want to know more about that. I
just like the name of the day so much.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, I think I'm going to leave it right there
and just we'll do with that what you will write
in and tell us what you think if you're celebrating.
It's also National don't put all your eggs in one
omelet Day unless you only have one, or unless you
want a really big omelet.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Or that it is national no broad day, no comment
but fun.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, enjoy yourselves. It is a National sugar cookie Day. Delicious.
I love that.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
It is Durian fruit Day. Delicious to some people.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yes, it's National dimples Day, cute to some people.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
So smile. It is Argentina's Independence Day.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I love that. It's Wimbledon. I guess if you like tennis.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Sure, it is a rabbit week. Those rabbit enthusiasts. I
love rabbits.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
They're cute, they're adorable. I had a friend who got
a rabbit and it clawed him up really bad, and
he was like, I didn't know rabbits could do that.
And I was like, welcome to the world of rabbits,
my friend.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Butanicola, we'll drink.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
That's what I'm saying. I'm saying now, Yeah, I had
a thirst for blood. It became a real problem f rohim.
It's air conditioning Appreciation Days. As a Floridian, that is
every day for me.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, I was gonna say absolutely, that's particularly now be
nice to New Jersey. Week is the week it is
that they tell us at least.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, I mean I dress the pine bearns seem nice.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
That's as nice as I could go. All Right, it's
a dog days of summer.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
It is understandably. I guess Freedom Week because we are
very recently around probably this is why we're very recently
around the United States Independence Day. I guess that's why.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, And it's also probably our last freedom week, so
you know, celebrate it why you can.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
We're eliminating it as much as humanly possible. In the
United States. So yes, yeah, yes, celebrate freedom while you're
free to celebrate freedom.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It is National Aborigines An Islanders Day
Observance Committee Week.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
That's a mouthful. That might be the longest day I've
ever seen on here.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah yeah, so far. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
National Ferriers Week. Cool.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, And it's also Shark Week. So but again, being
in Florida, every day, Shark week because there's sharks everywhere
all the time.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Fair, fair enough, all right. So those are holiday things
that you can know about and or maybe you already know,
and we're just shouting out to you nowhere of those days.
But we're not here to talk about those holidays specifically.
We're here to talk about things that we do and
understand or attempts to understand why we do them. And

(05:07):
a huge part of understanding why we do them is
understanding the history of how we sort of got there,
and then the contextual variables that continue to maintain support
or affect the trajectory of those things. So, as we said,
we're talking right now about tipping, and it is the
kind of tipping you're probably thinking about. It is the
idea of paying extra on top of an agreed upon price,

(05:32):
and it is extremely common. I think most people will
have encountered this in restaurants and like dining out at restaurants,
you probably will have also encountered this in bars and
in like coffee shops and that sort of thing in America.
But this practice in America again in particular, has gotten

(05:53):
absurdly out of control. And this has people now asking
for tips at a doctor's office, a movie ticket counter,
and even at self checkouts where you're the only person
participating in that transaction.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Right, So we're going to try to answer where this
came from, why do we still do it, what we
can do about it, and really just kind of unpack
the behavior and the context of tipping as it pertains
to not only the US but globally.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yes, although largely the US unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, because it's almost I don't want to say almost exclusively,
but it is really a US centric problem.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
We it is a thing into itself here all right away?
Sufficient to dive into our topic. Is there anything we
need to add before we get going.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Let's get into it, my friend, Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Okay, So here's a bunch of information that you already know,
but said in a decontextualized way to help highlight the
sort of weirdness of it. And I feel like that
strategy is kind of a part of the why we
do what we do. Brand Like, let's just say things
but without a lot of contexts, so that you can

(07:04):
kind of hear how weird it is that that's the
thing that we do. Yeah, just by taking the little
pieces out. So I'm gonna describe what to do that
for like a couple of a couple of exchanges here,
in a basic economic arrangement, a vendor assigns a price
to an item. A patron accepts the price or maybe
haggles with the vendor. But once both parties are in agreement,

(07:27):
then the patron forks over their money in exchange for
the good or service of their choice. That's the basic
economic exchange. So protextualize a little. I'm not talking about
a specific example of pain for something, but that's kind
of how the overall exchange works. And hearing it that
way again, the point is start to like that part.

(07:49):
I think we get we understand that part, but the
next part's the important wrinkle here.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yes, So if you are engaging in this exchange at
a restaurant in the United States, specifically, you're also expected
to pay an additional fee on top of the price
set by the restaurant. So you've already haggled the price,
you've agreed upon the price, you pay the price, and
then you pay an additional price on top of that price.
Interestingly enough, the amount of that additional price or that
fee is decided at the discretion of the patron, who

(08:15):
is not legally obligated to pay anything above the set price,
so the tip could be zero. However, culturally, we will
pay anywhere from ten to twenty percent, sometimes up to
thirty percent or more than the set price, and a
vast majority of people followed these expectations, the ten to
twenty percent usually.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
And so this idea of this old thing that we've
we've been describing tipping in particularly in restaurants, has been
very normalized in American culture for like generations at this point. Sure,
although most people seem to have hated it ever since
its existence. But in recent years it has become more ubiquitous.
I mean, and maybe that's not the right way to

(08:54):
say that, because ubiquitous kind of already means everywhere, but
increasingly valent. It's growth and spread has spawned a bunch
of terms in the lexicon to denounce how reviled it
is by the overwhelming majority of people. So people will
say things such as tipping, fatigue, guilt tipping, tip creep, tipflation,

(09:16):
and viral tip shaming to illustrate the mounting discontentment with
the fact that tips are now being asked for even
in a transaction where the customer performs the entire service
by themselves or by people who already famously earn very
high wages, such as doctors. Like why would you need
to tip a doctor someone who's already charging you the

(09:38):
equivalent of like a car for the service that they've
provided you, right, And like we know that the reason
a lot of people want to become doctors is because
they make so much money, So like tipping in a
doctor's offices seems very very silly, particularly as we get
into the reason for tipping to begin with. But that
is it is just spread to so so many places.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, I feel like it's everywhere. Like I feel like, uh,
like my tattoo removal place has a tipping like a
tipping app wo like, which is just kind of like
like I get it, like you're you you are shooting
me with lasers. I am in a lot of pain.
And like tattoo culture, tipping is expected, like that is
part of like the culture inside of that too.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
That's part of it.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
But like I thought it was interesting, like the opposite
is true. So I tipped you to get the tattooed.
Now I have to tip you to get rid of
the tattoo. That's like a weird I'm having a hard
time with that one. Like that one's that one's like
it's it's like spinning on my head a little bit.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
No matter what, you're like paying more money than what
you kind of budgeted to pay. Yeah, and as you said,
you're doing it in both circumstances. Both to receive the
service and to unreceive the service, you get to pay
more money. Yeah, I mean, it's it's an incredible arrangement
that we've sort of that we've all sort of just
agreed that that's the way that we're going to do things. Yeah,

(10:50):
and we all just allow podcasts to play ads.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Oh man, we did. Why would we do that?

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Well, let's really start to understand tipping by digging into
the history of tipping. And understanding where this comes from.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, so let's get the word tip out of the way.
A lot we keep saying this word and the word
tip is an acronym for to ensure promptitude. People think
that at least, and that's a myth. It's not what
the word means or where it comes from. So according
to Snopes, the word tip is used as a verb
in its way. Likely it comes from a sort of
slang in which tip meant to give or to share with,

(11:34):
as in to give someone an informational tip, often with
shady dealings and stuff like that, like oh, I'm giving
a not much tippair.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
I know.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
It was one of those things, and we still use
it in that way. So it never changed, meaning it
just added another level to this.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, there's this whole idea that that's where it comes from.
And like Snopes did a great job etymologically breaking down
why that wouldn't even make sense to have been where
that came from. But yes, if you hear that, it's
this to ensure promptitude or to ensure promptness, or to
ensure performance, to ensure prompt service, like those are all

(12:09):
things that people have come up with. None of them
are true. They're all a lie. You've been lied to.
That is not how it goes. All myths all myths.
It was just the word tip that was sort of
used as slang, and then it came to mean, in
addition to other things, giving someone money. Right now, according
to journalists who research these things, tipping seems to have
emerged during the Middle Ages in Europe, of course, where

(12:31):
bad things come from, and the sort of aristocratic and
sometimes monarchical masters, if you will quote unquote masters, they
would sometimes provide serfs and servants with an extra gratuity
for particularly exemplary service. That was one of the places
that we think is one of the first instances of

(12:52):
what looks like modern tipping today.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Sure now, in addition to that, tips may have been
used in European taverns to incentive quick and high quality service,
and from there. It is important to understand that Americans
and an echo of their European ancestors, love the idea
of class structures and feel it necessary to rank themselves
above others whenever possible, so a quirky feudal practice that

(13:15):
got embedded within and throughout so many aspects of European
culture that you hardly notice is there even when you're
looking right at it. It's easy to see how Americans
could go, oh, I see that, I like that. And
so what Americans did? They love showing off how successful
and awesome they think they are. And so a tipping
kind of hierarchy or ti tipping structure established power dynamics

(13:36):
very quickly and exemplified wealth. So Americans went, oh, this
is good. This really shows off my wealth, what I'm
hoarding that you'll never be able to get. So I'm
gonna go ahead and we're gonna do tipping to the extreme.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah. Yeah, the whole sort of feudal system that was
largely endemic in Europe, but I mean there were other
places too, But like that is that is a place
where that sort of became just the cultural norm. It
just left this like I feel like it just embedded
this value of ranking yourself above others, and in other

(14:11):
parts of the world, that's just not how they ever
approached things, Like it was not as much or as
culturally common to emphasize your success above other people because
that's right, honestly, kind of a messed up way to
treat people. Yeah, it's not nice, but that became very,
very embedded, and I mean I think you see it
in a lot of things, and in the United States

(14:33):
and other vestiges of European and colonization sort of cultures
where in particular status is so important. Like you drive
the fancy car just because you want to be seen
driving the fancy car, not because it's it's better, not
because it offers any real advantages. It's just expensive to
show off that you can afford something that that's expensive,

(14:53):
or people buying, you know, paying four hundred dollars for
a haircut, or buying a five hundred dollars bottle of
wine with dinner, like there's no actual advantage to doing
it at that price point, but it allows you to
have that status, right, And that's like this weird thing
that sort of seems to have just festered its way
through culture over time, particularly in this sort of European cultures,

(15:18):
and definitely made when it made its way to the Americas,
and the idea of sort of masters and slaves really
did not help. And we will get to that in
a second, we certainly will. But that's why people wear
powdered wigs and they buy expensive birds, and they eat
expensive fruits, right, they do it because that's I mean,
that's what I do at least like And when I
walk around in my town, I wear a powdered wig

(15:40):
and a long cloak, but I make sure the cloak
has logos on it, specifically expensive logos that you know,
people know that my Balenciaga cloak and my powdered wig.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
I got to have both of those things together. That
tells you that I am wealthy beyond all reason.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yes, with an expensive exotic bird on your shoulder as well.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Of course that only speaks in French.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yes. So there was this version of tipping that what
you might have seen in taverns in Europe, where they
would essentially try to guarantee quick and good service by
just paying a little extra on top of what they
were already paying. And when wealthy Americans encountered this practice
when they were traveling to Europe, because we're talking in
like eighteen hundreds at this point, yeah, they ate it up.

(16:21):
They loved this idea. They were eager to bring this
practice back home to the States and to share it
with everyone, and they felt that it created the sense
of aristocracy among the American elites because a lot of time,
particularly back then, there was still the sense of like
looking up to European aristocrats and monarchs and the elites there,

(16:42):
and so the American elites wanted to rival and sort
of emulate that same attitude and bring this idea of
tipping back with them where they had this power dynamic
where they could show off their wealth.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Right, And like most sensible people, most Americans, like you know,
the American population in general hate hate, hated so much
to hated tipping. Like you know, what you might see
in the news today is like you might explain that
people Americans hate tipping because it's from another country. That
might this current administration might argue that, But here I'm
just saying, like most most of us don't like tipping, right,

(17:14):
and they hated tipping so much that it was actually
deemed undemocratic. William R. Scott wrote in nineteen sixteen, quote
tipping and their aristocratic idea it exemplifies is what we
left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the
breast of democracy. End quote. That's pretty powerful metaphor. I
think it's pretty clear now Americans were a hard working bunch,

(17:37):
most of them, not the elites, of course, and not
eager to spend more of their hard earned money that
they were already kind of busting their asses to get
on what they was already expensive dining experiences such as restaurants.
They didn't want to spend more money than they already
had to spend to have these experiences.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah. But even though like there were those many elites
sort of upper class people who did like this, there
were still many of the wealthy America who didn't like
the idea of tipping. And Mary Anne Morgan, who was
daughter of the famous JP Morgan, Yes that JP Morgan,
the one you're thinking of. Yeah, she famously hated tipping.
She was also like a big time philanthropist and did

(18:13):
a lot of other sort of social justice causes, but
she began an anti tipping crusade. And one of the
strategies she pursued in this anti tipping was like you
can hear that and be like, oh, of course, like
the wealthy don't want to pay any more money for things,
So that's why she hated it. Not so, Actually she
kind of put her money where her mouth was. Part
of her strategy entailed opening a low cost restaurant that

(18:38):
not only didn't want tips and made tipping against the
rules in that restaurant. I found a whole article clip
that sort of described this idea of her restaurant where
tipping was not allowed at the restaurant, Like we're gonna
we're gonna pay her workers, We're gonna pay them fairly.
You were going to pay the price that we set
and we're not going to ask you to pay more

(18:59):
than that.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
So glad that you brought that up, because I was
thinking about this as we were talking about it, Like
what we understand of tipping today is like it's not
that we are trying to take money from people who
are working. Like the tipping culture includes really two aspects
of it, right, like where you're paying this additional feed
to the person who's your server or who's in this space,
but they're also not making a living wage or an

(19:21):
hourly wage that is meeting their needs, so like they're
relying on tipping to supplement the income that the restaurant
should be paying them for regardless. Like that's I think
the important piece of this, Like we're not talking about
tipping like, oh, tipping is bad, We're talking about tipping
culture is really bad.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
There you go and we're going to elaborate on that
a lot. In matter of fact, that would be we
are like kind of the most of the rest of
this discussion as we go.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, just kind of talking about you know,
miss Morgan, all at even a merely universal hatred of
tipping was not enough to combat the power of racism. Shockingly,
I'm sure you're not surprised. Racism plays a huge role
in this. It plays a pretty powerful role in this
tipping culture. Right, So for the next part to make sense,
it is important to understand that there was no such

(20:05):
thing as a legally mandated limit on how much or
how little someone could be paid for their labor. Okay,
not tipping, but their actual labor. People had to be paid,
and they likely wouldn't work for barely anything. So there
was sort of like a mutual contingency for both the
employer and the employee that the employee would be paid
an amount that worked for them, or else they would

(20:26):
find another job.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, but important to note that, like back at this
point when they're like, tipping has made its way to
the United States, but back in the eighteen hundred, it's
like there was no lass saying you had to pay
your employees, or that you had to pay them any
particular amount. Do you pay them whatever you thought was fair?
And like a business that didn't pay their employees unlikely
to last very long, probably no one worked there and

(20:47):
they would stop being a business. Right, So they're like
kind of was some there was contingencies on both sides
to sort of ensure that something happened, but there was
no requirement that you actually had to pay them any
reasonable amount. And again, like that may have even worked
if you didn't. Then also throw in the embedded racism

(21:08):
and the sort of problems with slavery. So again the
difference here is like that all made sense except for slavery, right,
And in that arrangement, of course, one person is forced
forced to work without pay and no other like worker
protections at all, and no escape from that life at all.

(21:28):
It was terrible, something for which we should always remember
our horrible shame and never do anything like it ever again.
See your episode on slavery, which we did record a
year or two ago that outlined the problems and the
issues with this. But nobody would want this life, like
we definitely heard people who have tried to say, oh, well,
they don't talk about the benefits of slavery. I'm like, well,

(21:49):
if you think it's so great, go be someone's slave
for the rest of your life and your children and
your children's children. Yeah, and see how much you like
it and if that's the thing you want for yourself,
and if you still like it, then great. But otherwise
I bet you won't you, And then you do not
have a leg to stand on as far as trying
to defend that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, And because we're talking about such a serious topic
like slavery, we're not going to do a funny ad break.
We're just gonna take a quick ad break because it's
kind of a rough topic. So here's an ad.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it does make sense that we we acknowledge
the lewdness of this with the lewdness of an ad. So, yeah,
we'll transition back to our topic at hand. We were
just talking about, essentially, like how what minimum wage which
didn't exist, what wages looked like, and then the fact
that there were people who were forced to work and

(22:42):
not earn any wages at all.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah. So, at the end of the Civil War and
the abolition of slavery, formerly enslaved black people needed work
to earn their own money, and so they commonly took
jobs and service positions such as waiting on people in
dining or drink settings. So you saw that quite a bit,
especially like right after slavery was abolished.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, it's not like they particularly immediately after, Like they
would have had a lot of job experience aside from
service that they'd be able to really lean on. So
they needed something to be able to sort of take
care of themselves.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Now.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
According to journalist Nina Martyris, tipping largely became popular in
the United States during the eighteen nineties and specifically with
one event. And I've actually heard this and I've seen
this multiple places, so I feel pretty confident that whatever
information was dug up on this, this seems to be
the catalyzing event here, although it's possible something else would
have taken its place if it wasn't this sure, but

(23:33):
that event was the establishment of a luxury train service
run by the Pullman Company. Was what it was called.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
The Great hold On Real Quick. What a great last
name for trains. That's a good point. I did not
think about that, But you're right. Is that works fun?
That is awesome?

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, that works a little too. Well, that's suspicious. How
well that works?

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I don't like that. Did I ever
tell you so? Did I ever tell you? Like we
did our family tree all the way back, and we
learned that, like my immigrant family that came here when
they came here in the eighteen hundreds, the reason my
last name is Spiker is because they were working on
railroads and they were the ones that would set up
the railroad spikes.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
I did not know that. That's fun.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, that's something we learned in our in our dives.
I mean, who knows how accurate that is, but that's
what that's what we learned as we were investigating that.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Wow, okay, maybe some history here then. Speaking of trains, Yeah,
speaking of trains, So, the founder of the Pullman Company,
George Pullman, he did hire these formally enslaved black men
to work as service importers on his train. And while
that sounds altruistic and one hundred percent was not, to
decrease his costs and maximize his profits, he installed the
system in which he paid his employers, the black employers, specifically,

(24:43):
next to nothing. It was as little as twelve dollars
per month, or even nothing in some cases, but offered
the opportunity to earn more money on top of what
he paid them in the form of tips from customers. Now,
even back then, you hear twelve dollars a month and
you're like, yeah, but it was the eighteen nineties, like
that was probably a lot. Like no, that was still
basically nothing like rent would have still been more than

(25:04):
twelve dollars a month at that point. So like they
were probably living in abject poverty at rates of pay
like that, or barely scraping by and maybe if they
had more work they'd be okay, But that is very
very little amounts of money.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Right, So, as an employer, effectively paying your employees less
and relying on them to make tips was a way
to offload the responsibility of paying your employees and just
really put it back on the customers, right, And so
they got to choose whether and to what extent they
would make up the difference. And that's really kind of
like a core thing about tipping culture. It tips are

(25:40):
supposed to make up the difference if the restaurant doesn't
want to pay their employees. That's exactly it, And that's
kind of like the crux of it, right, so now
he could get away with not paying a fair salary
in increasing profits for himself and allow racist Southerners to
treat workers as they felt they deserve to be treated poorly.
And as it was a train service, it traveled to
a lot of different places and spread the cancerous idea

(26:02):
of tipping with it. Restaurant owners in particular quickly glombed
onto this practice and started using it within their service,
specifically with their serving staff.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, the start of this is like, how can I
not pay black people who used to be slaves and
make them work anyway? And that's kind of the system
he came up with. And then restaurant owners, who are
usually operating off of pretty thin margins to begin with,
were like, well, this is a way I can actually
increase how much my business makes is by not paying

(26:32):
my staff, right, and instead the customers will pay my
staff and we'll just sort of shift the obligations over
here a little bit. And it kind of worked. Despite
the growing popularity of tipping among businesses such as bars, restaurant, trains,
and places with serving staff, the public at large still
did hate pain for things twice and so finally, the

(26:54):
various governments of the United States. These are state governments.
They finally stepped into do something about this, and around
the beginning of the nineteen hundreds, forty eight of the
fifty US states passed laws outright banning tipping. And to
be fair, at that point, I think they were only
forty nine states, but.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, there were, there weren't very many. There weren't all
fifty yeend.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, almost all of them tried to ban an outlaw
tipping at the turn of the nineteen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah. But the problem was that none of these laws
were very very difficult to or nearly impossible to enforce,
and the governments of different states repealed their anti tipping laws.
So great lip service. Great that you passed it, and
they went, oh, how do we do this? Oh we
can't okay, never mind.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah that was basically it is like there was there's
no mechanism by which they can enforce this. I mean again,
for one thing, there was no minimum wage yet, and
for another, like nothing is being recorded digitally, so they
could just write down whatever and then report that if
they're going to report it at all, right, And another
thing is they couldn't necessarily control customer behaviors, so like
they just kind of can continued to foster this culture

(28:01):
to the best of their ability, so they could continue
to offload their costs of paying people and put it
on to customers instead. Right, it was very, very difficult
for the government to do anything about it. So, okay,
so restaurants, bars, and other service industries are using the
practice of tipping that started with racist policies designed to
avoid paying former slaves. And anyway, they're using tipping to
have an excuse to not pay their employees and instead

(28:23):
have the customers pay their employees while keeping their prices
low to create a sense that people are paying lower
prices than what they actually end up paying, because of
course they're then paying that amount on top of whatever
the service or good that they paid for.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
It was, right, exactly. So it's smoking mirrors, baby, that's
all it is.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, but we had to set up that for the
next part.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yes, yes, so you might have heard us say there
was no minimum wage, and let's talk about that. This
issue could not have possibly persisted with the adoption of
a federal minimum wage, especially when that became a thing. Actually,
that's very wrong if for some reason it did. And
here's why. When the fair Labor Standards Act established a
federal minimum wage. They specifically carved out an exemption for

(29:08):
workers who had tips as part of their wages, which
meant that everyone who earned tips could be paid less
than the federal minimum wage because they could potentially earn
their money from tips. As somebody who worked in a
restaurant at one point in time, my hourly rage was
two dollars and fifteen cents because I was making that
when I was getting tipped, and if I did not
get any tips that night, I only made two dollars

(29:30):
and fifty cents per hour during my shift.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yes, that's exactly it. That is how that works, and
that was legal well and that still is like that
is still that is those are still the laws right now.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
So, yeah, I didn't work in the eighteen hundreds. I
worred was this was this was two thousand and one, you.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, So there was a federal minimum wage.
It exempted employees to essentially less than that. Now, there
was this a s Preme Court ruling in nineteen forty
two that tipped employees were not obligated to share their
tips with other restaurants staff. And while we might hear
that and be like, oh, what jerks that they ruin this? Actually,

(30:10):
I think what they did here was maybe a little
more clever than it sounds. I think what the reason
for this ruling, or at least an outcome of this ruling,
is that if only the service staff, the people who
were out on the floor bringing plates and whatnots people
were the ones who were working on tips, that would
have made it so that the staff who were not

(30:31):
the front of the house serving staff, like the cooks
and the people behind like they would have had to
have been paid at least the federal minimum wage because
and not been exempt from that like the serving staff were,
because they would not then be considered a tipped employee.
So I think that was actually what they were trying
to do, is they were actually trying to reduce how

(30:51):
much of the burden was being offloaded in this tipping
culture by allowing the workers who earned the tips to
keep all those tips to themselves. I think I think
that was the plan. I couldn't find anything to corroborate that,
but that would have been an implication of that, because
to be deemed exempt from minimum wage, you had to
be a tipped wage earner. Essentially So anyway, what happened

(31:13):
then is Congress created a tip credit, and this allowed
employers to pay employees a sub minimum wage that was
specifically forty to sixty percent of minimum wage, again with
the understanding that the rest would be made up from
tips that that would fill the gap. Which is kind
of funny thinking that, like, if they're paying let's say generously,

(31:36):
they're being paid sixty percent of minimum wage, right, that
means that to get the amount they would have to
be tipped to make up that gap is forty percent,
and no one's tipping forty percent, right, right, So just
the thing to consider anyway, that meant that minimum wage
for tipped employees because this was set out of percent,
like Congress said it, So it's forty to sixty percent

(31:56):
of minimum wage. If that system is in place, then
as minimum wage increased, tipped employees would also continue to
have their wage, their minimum wage increased as it went
like that would have been how that played out. So
that was in I think the nineteen sixties or something
like that that they made that they passed that law.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Right now, in nineteen ninety six, Republicans controlled Congress, and
so Congress froze the wage of tipped workers at two
dollars and thirteen cents per hour, which is about four
dollars per hour today. This dollar amount, two dollars and
thirteen cents is still current minimum wage for tipped workers
in nineteen states in the US, almost thirty years later.

(32:39):
I remember when this happened because my mom has spent
her entire life working in restaurants and she was a
server at the time, and I remember when this happened
and everybody was fuming, fuming about it, yeah, because they
were like, this is it's unfair. We're already scraping the
barrel like to get paid, Like we're already working, busting
our asses to get paid. So thirty years later, it's
still two dollars and thirteen cents per hour today.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Like today, people in nineteen states in the United States
could be earning two dollars and thirteen cents per hour.
Two dollars and thirteen cents. That is a crazy low number.
So I just want to throw a bunch of these
states under the bus really quick. These are the nineteen
states where this is allowed. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska,

(33:27):
North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.
Those are the nineteen states that still have two dollars
and thirteen cents as the exempted sort of minimum wage
for those workers from that nineteen ninety six law. So
what do those states have in common, you decide?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
And I'm thinking a specific.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Queue me too for most of them. There are some
states that have actually completely removed this exemption. That means
there is no such thing as a sub minimum wage
in those states. That means that in those states, if
you're a worker who works on minimum wage, you get
paid at least the federal minimum wage or the state

(34:09):
minimum wage. And actually for most of those states, they
do have a state minimum wage that exceeds the federal
minimum wage. Right, and so the states that have completely
removed this are Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Those are completely gone as far as the MINIMUMI. That
means that if you go to a restaurant in any
one of those places, the waiters there are being paid

(34:32):
at least the state minimum wage, which might also be
the federal minimum wage. But if you go to any
of those other states, any other state besides those, they're
likely being paid a sub minimum wage, and possibly they're
being paid only two dollars and thirteen cents an hour
if they're in any of the states that I listed before.
So just wanted to get that out there. I wanted
do you all to know if you're in those states

(34:53):
or you visit those states, that's kind of what you
can expect as far as what's being paid for those employees.
We only get paid for like patron supporters. And then
sometimes adds oh, all right, so we just threw a
whole bunch of people under the bus, and I guess
sort of complimented some states who have moved away from

(35:15):
the system. So let's continue on from here. Have we
solved the issue of tipping by removing the subminimum wage?

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah, I mean, based on what you said, it sounds
like tipping culture is diminishing, but it's not. It's actually growing.
It's getting worse. So it's growing in a way that
is like a little bit icky. We'll say that, scientifically speaking,
it's icky. Yeh. So, as we mentioned at the top,
tipping is growing so common you might be asked to
tip a business for a job that you performed yourself,

(35:44):
or to tip people who famously make a lot of
money from their jobs, and like.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Various other places, there are places you've just never been
asked to tip before that all of a sudden you're
being asked to tip. And again, like tipping people when
you do takeout. That kind of does make sense in
a restaurant industry, particularly in the States. But who knows.
But like then tipping again, like a self serve kiosk,
you might be asked to tip. I'm like, who is

(36:08):
this for at this point? Really, it's definitely gotten. Just
it's so common and so and people hate it understandably.
Why does this continue to spread? Okay, so this is
kind of why this happens sort of thing. This is
that that section of this discussion. For one thing, people
who have the opportunity to earn extra money, they're not
going to turn that down in a lot of these cases, right,

(36:30):
That is right. The behavior gets reinforced by successfully augmenting
people's income at least a little. And further, the response
effort to like set up a process for tipping is
extremely low. All you have to do is make it
available and some people will do it and you just
keep the cash. So it's just like by the way
we accept tips, and then every once in a while

(36:51):
you'll get tipped, even if it's not a place that
commonly receives tips. So like, if you're already going to
get a little extra money for it, and it costs
you almost like basically nothing to do and really no effort, like,
it's easy to understand why people would ask for it
in settings where it doesn't really make as much sense
for them to do. So. Another thing I think to

(37:13):
consider is that, like effort and reward are not the
only factors in determining the choices that people will make
about things. There's also like is it acceptable is a
thing for which you will be socially stigmatized? There's kind
of no social stigma associated for asking for tips, at
least not anymore, right, And there's even less stigma the
more that this happens, and the more common it becomes,

(37:34):
that people feel comfortable asking for tips, So people are
really incentivized to participate in a system that costs them nothing,
has no social disapproval, and may earn them extra money.
Who wouldn't at least try to do it? With a
system like that. Right, So sure we're facing three major
goliath contextual features that make it the people are definitely

(37:58):
going to ask for tips and in places where again
it just is not really a place where that would
the reason for tipping to supplement income that doesn't exist
in that space.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now another reason, of course is guilt
or social convention. So again, when we talk about behavior,
behavior goes two ways. It either goes towards something or
goes away from something. It's generally speaking.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Right, generally speak.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Generally speaking, it's obviously more complicated that, but to simplify
it for this context, I'm either trying to get to
this thing or get away from something. And sometimes we
tip because of guilt or social conventions. I want to
avoid being misjudged. Right. The act of tipping is not
just customary, it's a message. A tip indicates appreciation, kindness, respect.
A tip is often followed by a thank you or

(38:42):
some other reciprocal appreciation. Sometimes we feel guilty, so we're like,
I don't want to feel guilt, so I'm gonna tip
you because I feel like I'm supposed to. Right, we
have those, Yeah, but let's talk about the behavior tipping. Right,
If we don't tip, we feel like we're sending the
message that we don't appreciate, we don't respect, or we
don't care about someone specifically, like their performance. Right, we
feel like we're we don't respect your performance, we don't
appreciate all that. Yeah, and we might be wondering, is

(39:04):
this person getting over by their employer. I might be
really helping them out by sparing an extra dollar or two, which,
you know, if I'm out of the restaurant, I feel
like I can sometimes, right, and some of us might
just hit the tip button because we aren't really paying attention.
It happens like that too. So there's also just kind
of like the rote response of oh, yeah, here's that button, right,
here's the number, and so we could do it. Could

(39:24):
be for any of those reasons.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
You know. I've had that experience where I see the
option for tip, I'm like, if you have to ask,
that makes me think that like something's going on here
where you need this, you know.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
And one of the problems is like we feel like
we're being generous, and we are and that people who
get those tips definitely appreciate it. But the more we
do it, the more, we create a condition under which
those people can become tipped employees. Yes, like they could
actually have their wages shifted from earning whatever they earn
to earning the sort of tipped employee status and earn

(39:58):
sub minimum wage status. Yes. And we also just create
a culture of prevalence where that becomes part of all
of our financial transactions. And it's not like we're gonna
be paying less for those services. We're going to be
paying the exact same amount and then a tip. So
it's like this is just a lose lose situation for
everyone here. So anyway a thing to consider that does

(40:21):
lead us to, though, I think, what can we do
about this, this practice that has just gotten so unbelievably
out of hand. A lot of people have already taken
approach that they just won't tip anymore, And unfortunately, I
just that really can't work. Tipping is too fully embedded
for that to be a workable solution. Too many people
would suffer too much for us to just go like,

(40:42):
all right, no more tipping, We're done. Certainly we don't
need to tip every single time that we're asked for tipping,
particularly things where like that doesn't make sense. We're not
supplementing income. Maybe nobody even engaged with us and we
did it ourselves, or like we're we're paying people who
already make plenty of money. We've described before, Like in
those cases, it doesn't necessarily make sense, but there are

(41:04):
people who still subsist on sub minimum wage who definitely
desperately depend on that money. Right now in most states,
like so many states, there's only that handful that have
eliminated the sub minimum wage, even the ones that aren't
operating off the two dollars and thirteen cents an hour,
some of them are literally two cents more than that.
I did see two dollars and fifteen cents in the list,

(41:26):
and I just didn't include them because they were more
than the two thirteen, but only barely, you know, And
there are plenty of them that were less than five
dollars an hour. That was super common to see. So like,
there are people who are making exceptionally little money in
those states. So most of them do have a situation
like that. So until we can fix their earnings, simply

(41:47):
stopping tipping would cripple them financially like that. That just
can't be the solution right now. That would absolutely destroy
the financial viability of people who currently have a status
as a tipped worker right now, even situations where people
do earn minimum wage.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
The federal minimum wage right now is currently at seven
to twenty five okay, seven to twenty five per hour,
which hasn't increased since two thousand and nine. A worker
earning minimum wage who works forty hours per week will
earn fifteen thousand and sixty dollars per year, which is
pretty much at the poverty line and not a livable
wage at all. Although to be fair, many states have
their own minimum wage it can exceed the federal government. Washington, DC,

(42:25):
Washington State, California, parts of New York are the highest.
But that is to say, again, if we just stop tipping,
even those earning the federal minimum wage or state minimum
wage are likely to be barely scraping by or actually
live in poverty.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah. So again, like the solution here, it can't be
that we stop tipping, and it even like getting rid
of the sub minimum wage would definitely help, it would
definitely not get rid of that problem, as we've already seen,
because there are states where they've gotten rid of the
sub minimum wage and people still do tip. And part
of that is because, like even out minimum wage, those

(43:01):
workers will probably still need tips because that's just not
enough to just get by on just that amount of
money for a lot of those people. Yeah, Now, some
businesses have tried to sort of replicate Maryanne Morgan's vision.
If you remember at the beginning we talked about her
restaurant where they wouldn't allow tips. And so I've been
to these restaurants that they discouraged tipping, and they will
even expressly advertise that they pay their staff a living

(43:23):
wage so that a tip is not necessary or expected,
and they'll say, like, listen, we know that a lot
of people want to do this. If you want to,
you can, but we're telling you it is not expected.
It is okay if you don't tip, because we are
paying our employees enough. I've been to at least two
that I can think of on the top of my head.
And to answer the question you probably have, yes, I

(43:45):
paid more for my food. Did I pay more than
I would have paid if I had paid you know,
whatever it was, and then added the tip on top
of that. Probably not right. It probably was what I
end up usually paying what the tip included, And I
felt really good about that being a place where I
can go and just pay the agreed upon price and
know that the people who work there are not then

(44:06):
suffering financially because of my decision to do that. Right.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Absolutely, have you been to a place like that, Shane?
I have, and it's it's pretty interesting, Like, but Florida,
Florida doesn't really Florida's not very forward thinking about things.
You don't say, ah, yeah, weird, right, So most of
the places, like unless it's like a new restaurant and
maybe like a city like a Orlando, you're not gonna

(44:30):
see that. I mean, the town I live in is
not very like ahead of the time, so like you're
gonna see folks that just like you know, at restaurants,
at least you're they're making minimum wage. I mean, my
mom works at a restaurant where they're still doing that,
so like they're making less of minimum wage should say're
making that sub minimum wage. So yeah, I've been to
place like that, but it's it's few and far between
here in the South. At least.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
I was surprised that Florida was not on the list
of places where they had they still had that two
dollars and thirteen cents an hour. I forgot what it was,
but it was above that at least.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
It's like four or five or something like that. It's
like it's still really low.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, I think it was like in that sort of
if you take the averages of the sub minimum wage,
it was like kind of right around with the average
sub minimum wage was as quite closer to five dollars
an hour. Yeah, yeah, which is so barely anything.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yeah, it's nothing.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
And you know, we didn't talk about this, but the oh,
actually no we did, because the whole point of the
minimum minimum wage is like if you oh no, we didn't.
It was like if you make thirty percent of your
wages for the month come from tips, then you count
as a tipped employee. It's something like that, Like that's
how they define the criteria for calling someone a tipped employee.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
Yeah, and there's some like weird laws about like how
it gets counted for tax purposes and stuff like that,
and how you claim tips and like it's such a complex,
an unnecessarily complex system.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, unnecessary, like ads are unnecessary.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Oh exactly, exactly, all right, we're back.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
There are some other strategies that have been proposed to
try and get rid of tipping. So here they are.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Okay. So some places have proposed changes such as profit
sharing among employees, charging a service fee at places with servers,
which I've seen that, but I've I've seen them charging
service fees, but the service fees are going back to
the restaurant because they're like, this is a living fee
wage and they're not like it's like weird, Like I've
seen that happen a couple of times. Huh, But charging
a service fee to make up for the tipping will

(46:29):
be what they should do, right, Increasing the cost of
products sold and paying staff at a higher base salary,
many or all of these could be viable options to
move away from tipping.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, but we the commonality of tipping in our culture
makes it so that even with those policy changes, it
would be a long, slow, gradual change to get rid
of it. And it's right now it's only accelerating, like
we're only seeing it more and more. Right, So, Okay,
this next one we've got to be a little bit
careful on. But it's it's really important to understand and

(46:59):
break down because people are going to hear this and
immediately be a little bit up in arms. There's a
large proposal to eliminate taxes on tips. This was both
parties advertised and campaigned on this in the last election cycle.
Sounds great. Workers who rely on tips definitely gonna love
this sort of thing, but we again, this is a

(47:20):
sneaky thing that we need to actually pay attention to
what this incentivizes. Many scholars think and predict that this
would actually make tipping culture significantly worse, and the reason
is that tipping is already a way to offload compensation
responsibilities from an employer to a consumer instead. If they
can get away with earning income without having to pay

(47:41):
taxes on it, more people will try and exploit that
system of earning income so that they don't have to
pay taxes on their income. Like they will push for
more wages earned via tips and actually accept a lower
hourly rate because they will be taxed at a lower
rate for the money that they earn from tips alone.
This will powerfully incentivize systems at all levels, from the

(48:06):
lowest worker to the highest CEO to push for tips
harder than they ever have before. So unfortunately, eliminating tax
on tips, while that sounds very appealing and I don't
want to take away the gain that would be rot
from employees who do depend on tips. This would actually
make the tipping problems substantially worse in our culture, Like

(48:27):
it might actually double in how often we are expected
to do this, or more like, it could show up
in every financial transaction you make. If they could shift
their income to a non taxed income, they're gonna do that,
and they're gonna do it hard. So like yeah, yeah,
So what I think would be a much better system

(48:50):
is to just pay your employees better, Like, rather than
incentivize going whole hog on tipping, let's just pay our
employees better. I think the like that will even if
it doesn't necessarily remove tips, it can at least curb
the acceleration of tips.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah. One, I mean, basic behavior would tell me like, oh,
I'm gonna engage in the behavior that's going to produce
the most reward without any sort of like cost or
without any sort of punishment. Right, so, like, oh, a
source of income without any penalties on it, You better
believe I'm gonna go for that. Like why wouldn't I
go for that?

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, exactly, And so then then tipping goes everywhere, every
absolutely everywhere.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Everywhere, everywhere. With that being said, it would definitely be
helpful for any of us if we're in a situation
where there's transactions in which a tip is not really
needed or necessary to stop asking for tips. Those folks
should stop asking for tips in those situations, and we
should also probably not tip in those situations. Like when
I go again, going back to my tattoo removal, I

(49:52):
should not be tipping. I should not be tipping this place.
Nobody there is on a sub minimum wage scale, like
nobody's nobody's there working on they're all actually pretty highly paid.
So and because most of the time insurance doesn't cover it,
it's usually like direct pay, it's usually like a private
pay circumstance. So it's a situation where like, we really
shouldn't be tipping, so we should please stop. But I

(50:13):
do think it's important to remember that there is a
cultural kind of expectation to tip in the United States
at least, and it's very difficult to overcome that urge
to tip, even when you're told not to, even when
situations say like, hey, you don't need to tip here,
you still feel it, especially for those of us who
have worked in service industries. And like feel guilty that

(50:34):
somebody is working and serving us and we want to
make sure they're tipped right. And it is unlikely to
become a popular trend anytime soon. And even if we
were eager to philosophically embrace the idea of not tipping,
we might struggle with it emotionally due to the difference
in costs that we would immediately be confronted with. So
Douglas Miller, a lecturer at the Hotel School of the

(50:54):
South Carolina Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, Good, lord,
that is a long.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
That's the longest title I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
That's the longest school.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Yeah, that was the reference that I saw. So I
was like, all right, I'm putting it in there.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, yeah, here we are, okay. So Douglas Miller pointed
out that quote as a culture, since we underpay for
the quality of the food that we eat in the
United States, then that presents a dilemma where the customer
doesn't want to pay for the food end quote. Yeah,
And in such of the argument he's making is like,
we get exceptionally high quality food when we go to
a restaurant. And I agree, I think we have great

(51:29):
restaurants here in the United States. Some of them are terrible,
but like, we have some great restaurants here, and the
quality of the food that is guaranteed by the regulations
that specify how food must be prepared and like, and
all of that is makes it so that we are
reliably getting very safe to eat nutritious things at a

(51:49):
lot of these restaurants. And we do not pay as
much for those things as we would have to if
we were paying the cost that the restaurant was paying.
And so they instead shift that cost to us by
having us tip the employees instead, and they pay those
employees less. And if we just shifted it back so
that we weren't said paining what that food is actually worth,

(52:11):
we would be like, Nope, not paying those prices, even
though ultimately we kind of are already paying those prices.
And if we're not, then all we're doing is ruining
someone else's life. So like tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
It's gonna be difficult to do this, Yeah, but I
think most of us agree that it'll be worth it,
So agreed, we'll see if we can get there. There
was a fun little segment here that I found that
were tipping cultures our practices around the world, because, as
we've been alluding to this whole time, the United States
does tipping hard. No country on earth has embraced tipping
the way that the United States has. Tipping in the

(52:45):
US is like guns in the US wildly out of control,
way way beyond basic common sense and reasoning, and happening
at a staggering, alarming rate. I could just say gun violence,
but I would just say just getting guns in general
here is ludicrous and like the kinds of things that
people have access to and buy all the time. But

(53:06):
that's just to give a quick analogy for people who
understand what gun culture is like in the United States.
And I will say that like North America broadly has
pretty similar tipping practices across the countries of North America,
although again it's mostly at restaurants. This tipping for everything
thing that's going on in the United States pretty unique
to the United States.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Right absolutely now. In Japan and China it is not
only not customary to tip, it's actually insulting and embarrassing.
So if you're traveling these places, tipping is traditionally unwelcome,
to say the least, And you know, what because sometimes
this happens, like when I was in Italy, like it's
not accepted. Tipping was not accepted, but it was one
of those things where it's still popped up here and there. Yeah,

(53:46):
like it showed it just enough that was like a
little bit perervasive. So I would imagine that like you
should assume that in Japan and China, like based on
kind of like the cultural this stuff that we're talking
about here, that it's not welcome and it's offensive, but
you still may see it come up in some places.
So you may and that may be a little bit jarring,
like you might go, oh, I thought this was not
a thing, but like it still may pop up.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Well, And that's exactly it is that as more and
more travelers go to particularly from the United States, but
North America brobably, I guess as more and our travelers
go to places like Japan and China and try to
tip and leave extra money, many places, particularly in urban areas,
they are starting to accept tips here and there, and
even in some cases maybe slightly are starting to expect it.

(54:31):
This is a very unfortunate evolution of global capitalism, and
hopefully we can stem of the tide of this bad
idea before it embeds itself overseas the way that it
has in the United States. So generally speaking, I would say, like,
pay attention to what the expectations are. Ask if you're
not sure, and they will tell you. And do not
expect probably to be tipping in those definitely not in

(54:52):
rural spaces in Japan and China and maybe other other
Asian countries. Those are the two I found explicit information on.
But the expectation is no tipping. You might start to
see it crop up. Don't go out of your way
to do it right, like it's actually to like what
I read is, in a way, it's sort of like
saying like I'm better than you. Here's somebody to show
that I'm better than you, and they're sort of like

(55:15):
that's rude, Like just keep your money, I don't need
your charity.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Jerk right right, right exactly. So in Egypt and some
other parts of the Middle East, there's a culture of
tipping pretty much all service staff, doorholders, bathroom attendants, taxi drivers,
food service workers, guides, and hotel staff. However, the ethos
around tipping is very different. It is called bakshish and
as closer can to tithing or a sort of loosely

(55:39):
defined pay it forward type of system. It's very expected
regardless of the type of or quality of the service.
And evidently not tipping might mean that the doors are
locked and bathrooms are less accessible and service is not
as readily provided, whereas when you tip, you might find
your ability to move around and do things much easier.
There's far less barriers there.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
And I also think that the amount of the tip
does not have to be particularly excessive. I don't even
think it's necessarily a percentage. It's like, here's a little
extra cash. And then they're like, oh, by the way,
this bathroom that was restricted is now open to you, right,
surprise stuff where they sort of have a levered a
poll to just say, like, you make my life a
little more comfortable, and I think your life a little
more comfortable.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
But there is this sort of again pay it forward
type thing where it's not it's just not set up
the same way as the United States. But that was
a place where I saw that tipping does exist again,
not quite like the US, but it does have its
own version right absolutely Denmark. Denmark is labeled as one
of the happiest countries on Earth, and they have very

(56:40):
very little tipping in their culture, almost none. They largely
don't need it and kind of never really adopted it.
They just made sure people were paid appropriately. However, throughout Scandinavia,
it is fairly common to round up your check to
like the nearest dollar amount as sort of a gesture
of appreciation. I mean, this is going to come to
a percentage, like a single percent, like one percent or

(57:02):
less of your overall check. But rounding up is just
a way to say, like, here's a little extra. You know,
it's the like you gave me this change. I kind
of don't want to carry it around with me. I'll
just give it back to you and you can pocket
it and that's fine. Yeah, and they're like, thanks, that's great.
So like that was a gesture that seems to appear
in sort of Scandinavian countries. Yeah, not at all at
the level of the United States, where you're no basically

(57:24):
paying for your meal again or whatever.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
You're the know, when you round up your check to
the nearest dollar here, it's to donate to a medical cause,
because our health care system is not is totally privatized.
So like instead of like rounding up to like, you know,
show your appreciation. You're rounding up to donate to Saint
Jude's Children's Hospital to help childhood cancer. So very different
experience here, I think. Yeah, all right, So as a

(57:47):
general rule, if you're traveling, you should ask if tipping
is customary. I respond accordingly, And in many circumstances people
will not mind earning a little extra. But in some
places it may be very insulting. And at the very least,
no one really wants to spread tipping culture where it
doesn't already exist. We want to try to avoid that
if possible, because it has created so many problems. And
so we as a general recommendation and maybe a call

(58:10):
to action, let's go ahead and do everything we can
to keep this tipping cancer culture contained. If we can't
get rid of it altogether, at the very least, let's
quarantine it off and prevent everybody else from adopting it.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yes, so that is tipping. It is a thing that
we do that we don't want to do, and we
would like to stop doing it, and hopefully if over
time we can move our culture away from it. But
we do need to ensure that we don't set up
systems that promote, elongate, and incentivize tipping culture to persist.
So again as a sort of call to action, like

(58:42):
if you don't need a tip, like, please don't ask
for one. I get that it's very tempting to get
that extra cash, but if you can go without it,
please don't ask for one. Yeah, but in places where
people depend on tips for them to survive, please tip
them until we get our system fixed and they can
like earn a living wage, like we've got we gotta

(59:04):
be taking care of our people who are who are
out doing those things. So it's unfortunate, but like that
is the system we currently have, so like we can't
just stop tipping them until we figured out a way
to fix this.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Yep, exactly.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
I think that's take on points. Though, is there anything
you'd like to add or anything that I forgot before
we transition to our recommendations.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
I think the only thing we forgot is our next tadbreak.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
All right, we are going to recommend some things. These
are things that we find joy in that are not
necessarily related to our topic. Sometimes they are today they're not.
This is I think a fun part. But before I
do that, I would like to get through our credits
really quick and then we'll get to the fun part,
which is the recommendations. So thank you so much to
my team of people writing in fact checking from Shane
and myself. Thank you for recording with me today.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Shane Hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And our person
who makes the sounds good is Justin. He does all
of our audio engineering, and the music that you hear
us also by him. Wherever you hear music, Justin did that.
So thank you Justin.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
He's the best.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
And of course thank you to our patron supporters. If
you would like to support this podcast, one way that
you can do that is by heading over to Patreon.
In addition, you can get episodes without ads, you can
get episodes before they actually publish, and you can get
other behind the scenes content and goodies of that nature.
And in addition, the thing that you probably want is
you want to hear your name from my voice on

(01:00:25):
these episodes locked in permanently in time for the period
of time that you are a patron supporter, and that
includes the like of such lovely people as Mike m Meghan,
Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara, and Charlie.
Thank you all very much. We really appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Ah, you're the best. We love you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
In addition, you can leave us a rating and review,
tell a friend like and subscribe. You can head over
to our merch store. Apparently our our shopping cart link
is broken, so I will fix that. But we do
have merch for sale over there, and I will get
that fixed and figure out what's happening and why things
aren't working. But eventually they will, and I will report
back with an update when that happens. I'll probably post

(01:01:06):
to social media. Yeah. I think that is it for
our credits before we get your recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Yeah, sounds good.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
All right, let's do it, yay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Recommendations. Okay, So my recommendation is music. If you like music,
I like music, most of us like music that we
hang out here, and so hopefully you will enjoy this
new record. There's a band out of New York called
Hotline T and T. I believe they're out of New York.
They seem to play in New York a lot. They're
called Hotline T and T, and they are a newer

(01:01:41):
I would describe as like a shoegaze band, very fuzzy instrumentation,
very nineties feel, like, just really really good and really
catchy stuff. They have a new record out called Raspberry
Moon that is phenomenal if you like kind of like
the current feel right now where you know you like
guitars that sound like they hear played through like fifteen
distortion pedals, but they're still melody to it. Like, if

(01:02:03):
you like old Smashing Pumpkins and anything in that vein,
then I think that you'll dig Hotline T and T.
I think it's an update on the genre. I think
that it is a little bit catchier than some of
the more like heavier Smashing Pumpkins. It's like all the best,
all the pretty parts of Smashing Pumpkins put onto an album,
so it's worth giving it a listen. So if you

(01:02:23):
like that sort of stuff, the band is called Hotline
T and T and their album is called Raspberry Moon.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Fun All right, cool, Yeah, I'm gonna recommend a board game. Yeah,
it's been been a minute since I did that, probably
at least two episodes, so I'm gonna do it again.
I will preface this by saying that the theme of
the game not good, but the game itself quite good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
And so the theme of the game is called unconscious Mind, okay,
and this is all about Freud's theory of the unconscious,
and it's just not particularly tongue in cheek, although they
do have some intentional Freudian slips written to the rules.
It's pretty funny. If you look at pictures of this game,
it looks very intimidating and overwhelming, and even reading through
the rules the first time, I was a little taken aback,

(01:03:09):
and then I figured out how it all works together,
and I was like, oh, I get it. It's actually
not that it's not that complex, and it looks very complex.
It looks alarmingly complex, but it's really not actually not
that hard to learn or to teach. It's one of
those things where it's like, on when it's your turn,
you choose one of three things that you're gonna do.
That's pretty much it. Where it gets complicated is that
every choice you make could have a cascade of effects,

(01:03:30):
and so you're just trying to plan, like what cascade
is going to be the biggest advantage to me. But
they also did a really good job that like, no
matter what decision you make, it's probably not gonna not
do anything for you or even like hurt you in
any way. It just won't be as good as it
could have been. And I love that when they set
that up well in a game. Yeah, so the art
in this is fantastic. They have all these cards that
are called latent Dreams and there's manifest dreams, and the

(01:03:53):
art on these cards to depict dreams phenomenal. It's so good.
I love that they have these client that that are
these cards that they're like objectives you have to complete.
All you have to do is just it's actually like
you're barely doing anything to complete these objectives. You literally
just like move a dial down like they're done.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
That's fun.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
What's really clever about it is they have these transparent
cards that are the same size that have this sort
of roar shock ink blot looking like haze that you
then put on top of the client card and that's
called their grief layer. Okay, and it's just this really
fun idea where you have to first get rid of
the grief layer and then you can like finish treating
the client.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Oh that's fun.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Yeah. So again, theme is terrible, but the game itself
is actually very cool and very very well designed. I
really like how they worked everything together, and it's actually
really fun to like try and plan, like, Okay, if
I take this action, that'll cause this cascade of things
that'll happen, and I'll get all these cool bonuses along
the way because I set it up beforehand or something.

(01:04:52):
That's pretty much it, and I really like it. It's
a cool game. So if you're interested in checking out
a game that's going to take up your whole entire
table and look very intimidating but ultimately be pretty fun
and easy to pick up, it's called Unconscious Mind. It's
from Lucky Games, and I think Fantasia Games of the
two publishers on that very cool. I love that sweet
all right, If you would like to tell us about

(01:05:12):
board games or hotline, T and T or other bands,
or if you would like to chime in with your
thoughts on tipping and anything that we've talked about in
this episode. We did take some somewhat controversial stances, but
really try to do so in the context of supporting
humans ultimately, Like it sounds like we weren't in some places.
Probably when we say like no, taxes on tips, probably
not a good idea, but we did really try and

(01:05:35):
think of like big picture, like how is this going
to help or hurt people in the long run? And
if you have thoughts about that, you can email us
directly at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com or on
the social media platforms and we do look forward to
hearing from you. But as I said, if you would
like to go leave us a five star writing that
really helps us get into other people's feeds and then
we get more listeners and then they get to learn
things too.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
I think that is what I have to say. Is
there anything that I'm missing or that you'd like to
add before we wrap up today?

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
I got nothing else.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
All right, let's end Tipping together everybody. This is Abraham.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
YY, this is Shane.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
We're out. So.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Yeah, you've been listening to Why we do what we do.
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day.