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What’s Up With All Those Tip Jars?
By JLP | July 10, 2007
LOL! This article, What’s Up With All Those Tip Jars?, is pretty funny. I agree with the author and for the most part, I ignore tip jars. I normally tip well when we are dining out but only if I think the server did a good job (most do). The whole tip jar thing gets on my nerves because don’t these people get paid? When I carried out groceries when I was a kid, I normally did it with a good attitude and I hardly ever got a tip. I did it because it was my job and doing it with a good attitude was the right thing to do. It now seems like society expects us to pay extra for good customer service.
I did find this part of the article a bit surprising:
All this reminds me of a little incident with an Internet retailer. On the order form after I had added up the total for goods and shipping, was an additional charge of $1, for “immediate replacement of lost or damaged goods.”
…The moral of this tale is that these companies seem to assume that nobody — except for me! — will notice or care if an additional buck or two is appended to an order.
I notice stuff like this and it irks me to no end. It’s kind of like when magazines charge a “postage and handling fee” for a magazine subscription! If they would include the postage and handling fee in their subscription price, I could handle that. But to see a price of $15 with an “*” behind it, which I then have to search for to read some tiny print that tells me it’s actually $15 PLUS $3 postage and handling, is just ridiculous.
Topics: Miscellaneous | 12 Comments »
July 10th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I think of tip jars as “karma jars.” I haven’t seen many outside of coffee places, and I think that the baristas do a great job of accommodating my need for a gluten-free soy decaf mocha. Sure, that’s worth a buck, or at least my change.
When I give, it reminds me that I’m lucky to have enough to spare. Seems like a good deal to me.
July 10th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Ticketmaster is awful with random fees. Why do I have to pay $4 for “processing” and $3 for e-mail delivery?
July 10th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Andy,
I know. I wanted to buy some tickets to the Houston Texans so I went on the Ticketmaster website and found a two-game set. The seats were in the top section and they were $100 each PLUS an $8.95 “convenience fee” PLUS $30 for parking! That’s just too much money to spend to go see a crappy team!
July 10th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I hate those service charges. Ticket services now charge you extra to print them from home! About the only way to avoid any fees is to buy them day of game at the venue, but then you don’t get guaranteed seats.They will always find a way to make a buck.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
The tip jars are kind of silly, but don’t bother me too much. If the kids who are barista-ing do a decent job, I’ll throw in something…Whatever. Not if they are obnoxious jerks, though…
July 11th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Sometimes I can’t help but think if some of these tip jars are encouraged by management. If they are able to make a certain amount in them, would they then be able to be payed less as long as the difference from minimum wage was made up in tips? That may sound a bit paranoid, but after hearing stories about how far some stores will go to not have to pay people more, I see it as feasible. My wife even told me when she worked at Wal-Mart, they took up a collection among the employees because a fellow employee was having a hard time paying her bills. Not that anything was wrong with her or her health or anything, she was just working a low paying job and not good a managing her money. Though I don’t blame the store for her problems, I mean, nobody forces anybody to stay at any job, the thought of employees giving money to each other because their collective employer is so cheap, just seems like an odd concept.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I mostly ignore these. They don’t bother me, but I have to wonder what they are thinking when they put a tip jar in basically self-service joints. Should we be tipping for the awesomeness that is their use of the complex register machine?
Angie, if tip jars are karma jars, I can just put good thoughts into them then!
The guys at the local coffee shop might deserve tips if they are allowed some creativity, but Starbucks baristas? It’s a corporate chain…the ‘barista’ just follows a procedure on how to make a specific drink. What’s the tip for? For not doing it wrong? I’ll tip a barista if he has CREATED some coffee drink that I love or ALTERS the recipe to something special, but Starbucks won’t let them do that.
The magazine/ticket things, those aren’t tips, those are fees which are also out of control. Soon we’ll have $50 items going for $5 with another $45 in fees in the fine print.
July 11th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I hate tip jars. One actually got me fired! Can you believe that? I worked as a cashier and got paid normal wages. We had a tip jar next to the registar. Never saw any of that money. Maybe because there were only a few pennies and a dollar bill in it most of the time. Anyway, long story about getting fired over it but a customer squirted chocolate syrup in the jar and the manager believed the co-worker and I must have both been in the back of the store. Damn those tip jars. Get rid of them!
July 12th, 2007 at 10:39 am
What about tipping on carry out? When you pay with a credit card and there is a line on the receipt to fill in a tip do you tip?
July 13th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Those tip jars always catch our attention but that’s about it!
If we think somebody does their job above and beyond (DESERVES it), then we’re all for it! Hmmm…maybe I should put a tip jar in my cubicle!
August 1st, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Okay folks:
You all really make me quite angry. As did that article.
First off, I’m a successful musician. I work constantly, and my net worth is quite healthy. So, I’m not someone who works a minimum wage job, nor have I ever been.
But I have and do play in a lot of restaurants and cafes. I know quite well what the staff has to go through.
Yes, the staff gets paid. No, they don’t get paid a living wage.
Nobody who makes under $30,000 a year makes a living wage, really. I don’t know if any of you live in any kind of an urban center, or bothered to condescend to see what a cheap rental unit is actually like. I’m not sure if any of you really know what it’s like to try to make a decent (meaning clean, quiet, and healthful) living right now on less than that.
It isn’t easy. Yes, we’ve all read the “how to be frugal” stuff on MSN and other places, and maybe even a few of us put that stuff into practice (I have and continue to do so). But you cannot expect everyone to behave like an eccentric musician. And I refuse to believe that any of you are at all frugal (perhaps a little, here and there, but try ladies and gentlemen, to live on $12,000 a year. It’s not easy, I know, I have).
Tip people. Fill the tip jars. The people working for you are working very hard. The man who wrote the article on MSN is heartless and wrong. Minimum wage jobs are hell.
Thank you.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
I used to feel the same way as a lot of the commenters on this message board, I only tipped occasionally because I figured the folks at the coffee shop were making decent hourly wages. Then I got a job at a barista and found out most are making minimum wage ($5.15 where I live). In a perfect world we would make more per hour and tips would be reserved for truly exceptional service, but as it is we rely on them to make ends meet. If you’re just getting brewed coffee I’d say maybe you can get away without a tip, but if the person makes something for you, helps you decide on something, is just extra friendly, or if you’re hanging out for an hour, put something in the jar. I’d say an average of 50 cents is pretty standard. Although at Starbucks I occasionally put less…those people have health insurance
.