Tipping was once a kind of gesture for customers. You would leave a few dollars on the table after a meal and tip the staff for their service. Those tips helped with wages that were partly dependent on them.
It felt like a simpler way to express gratitude, but now it feels like more of an obligation. Once a voluntary gesture has now become an expected part of my life in nearly every transaction.
Today, tipping culture has changed far beyond the restaurant and service industries, and many people are feeling more pressured than generous.
Traditionally, it meant sitting down at a restaurant, bar, or ordering at a cafe. Tips were seen as a reward for the attention and help servers provided throughout the experience.
But after the COVID-19 pandemic, it drastically changed. Tipping began appearing more than ever before. Many businesses started adding digital payment systems that automatically suggested tip amounts even for the smallest things, like takeouts, ordering a single pastry or even a coffee.
As these tipping prompts become more common than ever, so do the questions of the tipping culture.
But for workers, tipping is still a crucial part of how they earn a living. Husband and wife Andrew and Kristen Mintz, who have spent more than three decades in the restaurant service industry, say tips remain a crucial part of their income.
“They are all that you work for basically,” Kristen said.
The expectation of tipping has increased over the years. What was once considered a normal tip has gradually increased over the past few decades. Andrew said tipping between 10 and 15 per cent used to be the industry standard back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“The variance would be somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent,” he said. “And that's evolved to kind of 18 to 20, [even] up to 25 percent.”
Part of the reason we constantly see this appearing everywhere is the rise of digital payments. Nowadays, many people use their devices or cards to pay for things, and this has seen many machines suggesting a tipping percentage before consumers complete their payment.
While it aims to make transactions quicker and smoother, it can also make people feel uncomfortable. Kristen said that even as a customer, she still feels the obligation to tip.
“Of course, you feel pressure when they're turning the machine around, and there's an option, and they're standing there looking at you,” she said.
Despite the pressure, many workers in the industry say tipping helps them to earn more than a fixed hourly wage would provide. Andrew said that even if restaurants were to increase wages and remove tips, servers might still feel like they earn less overall, especially during busy hours.
“So we would rather there be a tipping culture, because we still make more,” he said.
Some countries have taken different approaches and implemented a service charge that is a pre-set fee between 10 and 20 per cent. This would guarantee that workers receive extra pay while removing the pressure from customers to decide how much to tip.
However, Andrew said that this system would not be efficient in Canada.
“I think the genie's out of the bottle on it, unfortunately,” he said.
Andrew said that many servers are so used to earning more tips that removing them entirely could see people leaving the industry.
Tipping culture today is a mix of appreciation and expectation. While the digital payment system has made tipping more visible than ever, it also makes customers feel pressured into giving more than they do.
At the same time, workers in the industry continue to rely on tips to make a living. But until restaurants and businesses find a better balance between a fair wage and customer appreciation, tipping remains a complicated and pressured part of everyday transactions.
What began as a simple gesture has become an expectation, and until that balance is fixed, tipping will feel more like pressure than appreciation and change what people are willing to tip.
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