People are a little bit stingier in barber chairs and Ubers than they were just a few years ago.

The shares of adults who say they always tip their hair stylists, servers at sit-down restaurants and food delivery people have each fallen 8 percentage points since 2021, according to a Bankrate survey released Wednesday. That rate slipped 7 percentage points for taxi and ride-hail drivers over the same period.

Three years ago, the economy was reopening from the pandemic and inflation was higher than it is now, but so was concern for front-line workers.

At the time, three-quarters of consumers reported always tipping restaurant servers, but today just two-thirds do. Despite modest upticks since last year, barely more than half of people now count themselves reliable tippers of hairdressers (55%) and food delivery drivers (51%), while only 41% say the same when it comes to ordering a ride.

The survey reflects Americans’ growing ease bypassing ubiquitous tipping prompts, from coffeeshops to airport terminals in the post-Covid economy, especially as sticker prices have risen. While consumer spending has held remarkably steady, many households are feeling the squeeze from persistent inflation and tightening their belts accordingly. Some of that newfound caution may be factoring into when, where and how much people tip.

  • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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    24 days ago

    Gotta love corpo news.

    have made some people stingier

    They’re no longer appreciating service industry workers

    Shut the fuck up and pay them a living wage you animals. Don’t try and continue pitting individuals against each other. “Blame the consumer for everything” is so played out at this point.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      23 days ago

      The reality is that many of these jobs rely on tips. If they were to “pay them a living wage” then the cost of the service would just go up.

      Don’t get me wrong, I want tipping to go away, and it’s gotten absurd where people are asking for tips now. But it’s absolutely stingy to not tip in these places where traditionally they would be tipped. If you don’t want to tip, don’t buy their services. It should be a recognized part of the cost: you just think it should be made official, some think it should be based on the quality of service they received.

      • Bertuccio@lemmy.world
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        23 days ago

        The cost would not increase. That is not how supply and demand works.

        It is extremely unlikely this has not been explained to you before.

          • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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            22 days ago

            When entrees are all up in the 30s versus in the 20s, it doesn’t matter if [customers] know that you are gratuity-inclusive.

            I tip 10-15%, how are prices so much higher that then jump into the 30s for a meal? Most of my meals our, tip included, don’t hit the $30 threshold. I think that their prices, even accounting for tips included, were off.

            “I think a lot of people don’t see the system as being broken, or anything. And a lot of people love tipping,” he observed. “They feel some kind of power.”

            He thinks people like tipping because they have power? That’s kind of fucked.

            They spend a bunch of time saying that the locations they included tips in payed $5-6 less per hour. How can they even say they ran a location with tips included if they didn’t even match the tipped wages? They overcharged for food and still didn’t pay the staff enough. I’d say that’s a lot of mismanagement rather than a failure of a no-tipping restaurant.

            Here’s another core concept that places don’t seem to understand, if your business cannot make it without underpaying staff then you shouldn’t be in business. Someone else who can manage it will fill your gap in the market or the market will correct itself.