Millions of Americans Are FED UP With Tipping — And Everyone Knows Exactly Why: transcript

It came out to 60. And they're saying 18% is almost $30 out of 60. That's a 50% tip. So, they're trying to trick us. Look, if you hit 20, it makes it 33. >> That screen just pushed a 50% tip, and the only reason anyone noticed was a customer who stopped to check the math. So, here is the real question this whole video keeps circling back to. When did a reward for good service become a private tax that businesses collect to cover their own payroll? The receipts, the prompts, and the fees tell that story faster than any argument could.

>> Fiancé went to Texas Roadhouse tonight, and we were going to tip our waiter. He was super good. They were having a deal, it's like a $50 two meals. And when we were looking at the tip guide at the bottom of the receipt, it said 22% tip was $21. That is in fact a 42% tip on a $50 meal. We wanted to give him a nice tip, but um they're trying to get you, and they will. >> So, I come to this restaurant pretty often, and I never leave a tip, but I noticed on my receipt this time they charged me a $11.16 non-tipper fee. This is about 10%.

This I go to Shake Shack. I order my own food on a kiosk to go, and you guys want a tip? And I'm paying $48 for two burgers and a couple of milkshake and fries. You guys out of your mind? >> So, it just picked up, completely out of control. My girlfriend and I went to dinner the other night. We got two entrées. We skipped the drinks cuz they were too expensive. When the bill came at the end of the meal, the suggested tip was 25% post-tax. I repeat, they wanted me to tip on the tax. What does that even mean?

>> Did a DoorDasher really just message me and ask me to send them an additional tip because I live far away? I'm like 15 minutes from the restaurant that I ordered the food from. First of all, if the order was too far for you, why did you accept it? Second of all, this was a $30 order, and I gave them a $10 tip. That's a third of my order. Are you freaking kidding me? And you got the audacity to ask me for more money? >> This is just in shortsightedness. >> So, I left a $2 tip on this receipt, and apparently that wasn't good enough because after I handed the receipt to the server and paid, she writes a note on the receipt and hands it back to me saying, "When you don't tip, I can't feed my children."

>> Put those moments side by side. A pattern appears that no single receipt shows on its own. The tip has stopped being something the customer chooses to leave. More and more, it is a cost the business sets, and the customer is simply expected to absorb. And the first place that decision hides is in the math printed at the bottom of the check. >> What they did is that they wanted to charge you 28%, which has been disguised as 20%. Isn't that crazy? And if I was the one that caught this, I'm not tipping at that restaurant.

>> When a slip reads 20%, but quietly works out to 28, that 8-point gap did not appear by accident. The same gap grows wider when the percentage is taken on the wrong number entirely. >> Also, you shouldn't be tipping on the total because that includes tax. Why would the total that I'm trying to tip for include tax? Why am I tipping for tax? It's completely ridiculous. And that right there is another reason why you should be using the custom tip and not going by this silly little machine that they they've done some [ __ ] behind it. And the fact that tipping percentage went from a standard 15% to 20% is just just insane.

>> Restaurants are >> Whether a suggested tip is figured before or after sales tax is left completely up to the restaurant. Square, one of the largest checkout companies in the country, says plainly that sellers choose that setting themselves. So, the higher figure on the screen usually reflects a choice the business made rather than a fixed rule. The customer who caught it had one piece of advice worth repeating. >> being cheated. This is exactly why people need to be using the custom tip button, so you can tip whatever you want to tip. Cuz these [ __ ] will hide extra charges in that tip percentage. Also, you shouldn't >> Taking back that control matters because the number on the screen is propping up something most customers never see.

Tipping in the United States rests on a wage floor that lets the business push its payroll straight onto the table. One shopper summed up who actually ends up paying the staff. >> Look at this. These restaurant owners are getting richer and richer, while we as the customers, we have to pay the employees' salary. These corporations need to pay their employees a better salary, and they should stop guilt-tripping us into paying >> That observation lands closer to the truth than it sounds. It is how the whole model is built.

And some owners guard it so fiercely, they will turn away a paying customer over a few dollars. >> You're not welcome in my restaurant anymore, is what the owner of Ari and Mia's said to this young couple when they paid their $30 bill and didn't leave any gratuity. And it would have been $4.50. So, the owner is missing out on a $30 customer over $4.50. And you ask yourself, why would they do that?

>> The move sounds absurd at first. Losing a $30 table over $4.50 only starts to make sense once you understand the math behind the kitchen. A chef with 20 years in the business laid out exactly how it works. >> As a chef with 20 years in the business, I'm going to tell you why. Because the owners of Ari and Mia, they rely on you to pay for the employees that they don't want to pay for. I said it. And as a chef, I'm going to tell you how it works. See, they require service staff that get tipped to tip out the bus boy, the dishwasher, and the food runner.

>> What the chef describes is the business plan itself, built on a base wage that starts far below what most people assume. And the floor underneath it is lower than most diners realize. >> So that they don't have to pay them a living wage. They can hire them in at $7.25. And if the people make enough money off of the being tip outs, it's a lucrative job and people look for it. So the owners get filthy rich and you pay their employees. >> Restaurant owners >> That floor is very real.

Under federal law, a tipped worker can still be paid a cash wage of just $2.13 an hour. A figure that has not moved since 1991, as long as tips carry them up to the $7.25 minimum. Employers are allowed to count more than $5 of those tips toward the wage they are supposed to pay, so the tip ends up doing the job the paycheck used to. That was never the deal. Spread across every shift and every table, it turns the customer's generosity into the staff's real payroll. Once the tip becomes the wage, the prompt stops staying at the dinner table and starts following people everywhere.

It shows up first where a simple drink costs more than it ever has, and no one really served you. >> I just paid $6.95 for this drink. That's a lot to me. I remember back in the day, when I was in junior high, so what, 10, no, 15 years ago, it was $3.95 for a large. So $6.95 is crazy to me. And every time I get a Starbucks, which is like never, it asks if I want to tip them.

No, I don't want to tip you on a six >> A coffee that ran under $4 a decade ago now sits just under seven, and the machine still asks for more on top. None of that extra was going to a server, because there was not one standing there. The same question follows your takeout right out the door. >> So, I just picked up takeout for myself. I already paid $27 for one meal. You didn't bring it to my table. You didn't refill my drink. All you did was tie a plastic bag together, spun the damn iPad around, and you're asking for a 25% tip.

I am so sick of this tip culture and this trend. >> Nobody carried that food, refilled a glass, or cleared a plate. And yet the screen still spins around. No one served you. The ask now reaches all the way down to handing over a single cookie. >> If Starbucks is charging $6.95 for a drink, why can you not just pay your workers more? Like, you shouldn't be asking your customers for tips all the time. Crumbl Cookie, they ask for tips. All they do is scoop a cookie up. Why would I tip you?

>> When the entire service is a scoop and a lid, the tip line feels like a reflex that nobody stops to question. It even turns up where the store has removed a worker entirely. >> Self-checkout. Self-checkout used to be an option. Now it's the only open lane. No cashier, no bagger, just a blinking screen and a damn 8-in platform to stack $250 worth of groceries on, where if you make the wrong move, half of it falls to the floor.

>> The lane with no cashier and no bagger has still found a way to ask. The machine does not care. More and more customers are answering it with a flat rule of their own. >> basic work. >> I'm so over tipping. It's gone too far. And so, here's my new perspective, my new strategy when it comes to tipping. Number one, I am not tipping anywhere where they ask me to tip before I experience the service. >> That rule is simple. No tip before the service has actually happened. And when the labor disappears completely, the resentment only grows sharper.

>> It used to be a nice little entry-level job, you know, something for kids during the summer at least, or maybe something you know, you just want to get your foot in the door to kind of work your way up, or just a part-time job as some supplemental income, right? And we just gave all that up for terrible service and a little bit more profit, I guess. I don't remember. >> The work got pushed onto the customer, and the tip request simply stayed behind.

One shopper drew a hard line the moment a smoothie order turned into a tip request. >> For example, I went [snorts] and got a $9 smoothie the other day, and right when I was like ordering my smoothie, I was like, "Oh, I'll get the breakfast smoothie." Then they're like, "Okay, it's just going to ask you a few questions." The answer is no. No. One, y'all haven't made my smoothie. Two, I haven't tasted my smoothie. Three, I don't even know if I'm going to like this smoothie yet. Why am I tipping? >> Being asked to tip before the food even exists flips the whole idea of a reward on its head. By the time it reaches the ice cream counter, the argument makes itself >> You scooped my ice cream for 15 seconds and put it in a cup. Like, I'm not No.

You guys are paid hourly. Like, hourly rates. If they're not enough, talk to your employer. But why is that burden being put on the consumers, I will never understand. As a business owner, imagine if every single time you guys bought a planner from my site, it was like, "Oh, just leave a tip." Leave a tip for what? >> self. This is where the numbers get genuinely hard to argue with. Pew Research found that only about one in eight adults regularly tips at a fast-casual counter, and roughly a quarter at a coffee shop, which shows just how far out of step these prompts have drifted.

And the amounts they ask for keep climbing past anything that used to count as normal. >> You can see all the three options for tipping. Uh, 20% used to be the high end. 18% was okay service, and 15% was just, you know, your your baseline. But now they want 25%, which >> If you guys thought that was bad, look at this [ __ ] 30% on the low end, mid-range 40% tip, and then 50% tip. These people are >> When half the price of the meal is printed as a baseline tip, the word voluntary has lost all of its meaning.

That is the whole problem. One diner summed up the exact moment the math finally stopped making sense. >> is mind you. There's got to be a breaking point where either people just stop tipping or people just straight up stop going out all together. And I feel like we are getting near that point because if you're asking me to tip 25% after tax, we have lost the plot, my friends, complete. >> That breaking point is showing up in the data, too. A 2025 Bankrate survey found that about two in five Americans are annoyed by the preset tip screens, and roughly a quarter now tip less or nothing at all when they see one.

A habit built over years of being asked at nearly every counter is finally starting to crack. For a growing number of people, the tablet turning toward them has simply become an automatic no. >> I'm done with the think. I'm serious. From now on, any place that puts a tablet in my face and asks for tips, and I it's it's automatic, no tip. No tip at all.

>> These customers can clearly afford it, and they say so without flinching. They have the money to tip, and they are choosing to keep it. >> to pay. I got money to pay for tips. I just don't want to. I'm going to pay if I want to pay, and there's nothing you can say or do to make me do it. I'm going to do what I want to do. If you deserve a tip, you're going to get a tip. If you don't deserve a tip, you're not going to get it. That's it, and you can't stop me. >> Pew also found that roughly seven in 10 adults say tipping is now expected in more places than it was 5 years ago, and a similar share do not want businesses adding automatic charges to the bill at all. Still, most of these customers are not refusing to tip. They're refusing to be told what the tip must be.

>> And I'm going to tip as much as I feel that service is worth. If you have a great service, you make me smile, and I enjoy my dinner or whatever I'm doing, and you're on top of everything, I'll tip you. I'll tip you good. >> The willingness is tied directly to the one thing tipping was always supposed to measure. For these customers, it comes down to effort and nothing else. >> Take my order. I mean, if you come and take my order, and then somebody else brings my food, and I don't see you till it's time to pay the bill, you're not getting any tip.

You're just doing your job. >> When someone simply takes an order and never comes back, the case for a tip quietly disappears. The frustration sharpens most when the service itself never actually shows up. >> your order. So, you're telling me that if you are a waiter, and you work by tips, you're going to sit me down, take my order, not even come one damn time to check on my table, not refill my waters, not refill my drinks, not ask me how everything is, not check on me the whole time we are there.

Okay? And I'm in the wrong for not wanting to tip you? >> This is the fair question hiding underneath all of it. A tip was always supposed to measure the service at the table, and these diners just want it to work that way again. >> effort to want to earn a tip. I don't need to just leave you a tip just because tipping culture says you have to. I don't have to. I don't have to leave you a tip. At least have customer service for me to want to leave you a tip.

>> It is worth remembering that most of the world runs its restaurants without any of this. >> Right here, where we are like the only country that tips like this. In fact, other countries that American tourists go to beg us to not bring American tipping culture to their country cuz it would just wreck the economy. But I think it's wrecking our economy because no one wants to go to restaurants anymore. We had two entrees and it was over $50 for chicken and mashed potatoes and a pizza. >> Other countries build the wage into the price and move on, which is exactly why the American version of this feels so strange to visitors from the outside.

A server in much of Europe or Japan takes home a full and predictable paycheck, whether the room is packed or completely empty. Strip away the screens and the shifting percentages, and this story has very little to do with stingy customers. It is about a system that turned a thank you into a line item, and then asked the people at the table to quietly cover wages the business itself chose not to pay. The tip screen did not kill tipping. The pressure stacked behind it did.

Every new prompt and every pre-check percentage wore down the goodwill that made people want to leave something in the first place. What is left is a country full of customers who are simply no longer willing to pretend the number in front of them was ever truly their own choice.