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I’m Sorry, But I Can’t Tip the Whole World Olivia Reingold

Published

9 months ago

October 25, 2023

Photo illustration by The Free Press. (Photos via Getty)

This summer I was at Newark Airport, racing down a moving walkway to grab a bottle of water before takeoff. I snatched a Smartwater, scanned it at a self-checkout, and then gritted my teeth at the price: $8.

What a rip-off, I thought. But I know retailers hold us captive at the airport, so with no other options, I swiped my card.

Suddenly another notification flashed in my face: Would you like to add a tip?

The kiosk listed three amounts: 15%, 18%, 20%.

The chutzpah of this robot. Surely it was infected with a virus to think it could ask me, a human, for a tip at a time when inflation has hit record highs.

This is where we find ourselves in 2023. After enduring three years of rising prices, where the cost of ground coffee, gasoline, and other staples has jumped by 20 percent since 2020, the machines are now asking us for spare change.

But we humans can’t pony up, because we are struggling. At least half of people making over $100,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, according to one study. The majority of Americans now have less money than they did before the pandemic. So when a barista looks up at me, as one recently did on a Saturday morning in Brooklyn, and flips a monitor around asking me if I want to add a tip on top of a $6 latte that became $9.08 after the upcharges for oat milk, ice, and tax, my answer is no.

But even so, I could feel the stares of four or five Brooklynites in line behind me, huffing in their ironic carpentry pants and “work” boots. To them, I knew the tipping prompt read like this: Do you care if your comrade eats tonight?

To which my answer is yes. I mean, no. I mean, maybe—but only if the standard were still 10 to 15 percent. Now, a 20 percent tip is considered the floor, with many tip screens urging customers to go 30 percent and up—even though most things cost 20 percent more than they did pre-pandemic.

We can’t all be billionaire Warren Buffett—and even he is said “only” to tip around 22 percent, or 25 percent on a good day.

Turns out I’m not the only curmudgeon out there. The internet is awash with complaints about tipping inflation gone mad. In early August, one online commenter was baffled when they went to pay the $40,000 bill for their home upgrades, and the online form asked if they wanted to show their “appreciation” by adding a 5 to 15 percent tip. The average American doesn’t have a thousand dollars set aside for emergencies, let alone a $6,000 token of gratitude.

Others have bemoaned that online clothing boutiques and discount travel sites are now asking for tips during the checkout process to “show support for the team.”

Then there are the restaurants that demand we cover not just tips, but various service charges too, like “employee wellness fees.” These extra costs, first introduced during Covid, have outlasted the virus. In Washington D.C., some residents were so fed up that they started tracking these charges in a spreadsheet, which now has over 200 entries and counting.

But food deliveries are where tips really take the cake.

This past spring, one courier bemoaned to The New York Times that he was tipped “just” $20 for delivering $388 worth of sushi in Los Angeles.

“It’s hard to fathom how people could have so much money,” Brantley Bush said, “and tip so little.”

That makes sense if you replace the word tip with donate. But in theory, this is a business transaction, not a charity. Twenty dollars isn’t bad when you have to work a full hour at a minimum wage job in Los Angeles to earn $15.50.

Some couriers are even holding orders hostage until the customer forks over a bigger tip. In May, one Reddit user posted that her DoorDash driver sent her almost ten messages in a row, badgering her for a tip after claiming the restaurant made him wait too long for her order. That was after she had already tipped him $5 for what she said was a “small order” from a restaurant less than three miles away.

“As someone who has worked in delivery myself for 5+ years, I find asking for an extra tip in very poor taste and I sincerely hope this is not normal practice for you,” the customer scolded the Dasher.

There’s no denying that the wages from apps like DoorDash can be low (one article claims the base pay is $4 to $10 an order), but this is less a problem for DoorDash customers than the company itself, which reported $2.1 billion in earnings during the second quarter of last year alone.

To be clear, the problem isn’t that I don’t want to tip. I do. But I can’t when it’s coming from the Lyft driver, the bathroom attendant, the hairdresser, and every cashier I meet. While my empathy may be limitless, my funds are not.

So, in a moment when everyone’s feeling the squeeze, how do you turn down these requests with class?

I took my question to Miss Manners, otherwise known as Judith Martin, who for the past 45 years in her syndicated etiquette advice column has been telling us barbarians how to behave better. As it turns out, “the majority” of the questions she receives these days are about tipping or other financial norms. She told me she’s even noticed “tip creep” herself.

“The tip jar is everywhere, including self-service,” she told me, referencing greedy robots like the one I encountered at Newark Airport.

There are two kinds of tipping, she explained. The first is when tips are an expected part of someone’s wages. “The other is where people have just gotten on to this idea, ‘Oh boy, I can get a little extra money this way.’ ”

That second type, she says, is “not anything I have to give in to.”

Miss Manners admits it takes more to live these days, but that’s not the only thing driving tipping inflation through the roof.

“Tipping advice is often given out by the people who expect to receive it,” she adds, “and they’re very generous with themselves.”

Sometimes too generous.

Earlier this month, Harrison Snowden, an options trader from Chicago, was kicking off his vacation in Anchorage, Alaska, just grabbing some breakfast for himself and his two friends, when a tipping screen stopped him in his tracks.

Staring him in the face were four suggested amounts: 20%, 30%, 50% and—100%.

Snowden was so stunned by the suggestion he snapped a photograph of the screen to send around to his friends.

“It was shocking,” he said. “It just felt like a huge middle finger. They know no one is going to tip that much.”

In the end, he forked over $3.00. That’s around an 8 percent tip for an order that already cost him a whopping $37.25.

“Had it not been that big of an ask,” he says, “I actually think I would’ve ended up tipping more.”

Olivia Reingold is a writer for The Free Press. Read her recent essay “A Cold Email Got Me My Job—and an Afternoon with Gay Talese,” and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @Olivia_Reingold.

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Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

10 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Substacks

TGIF: The Week Unburdened by the Week That Has Been Suzy Weiss

Published

17 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Union Station to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)

Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.

→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”

→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.

That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.

And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.

Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”

→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.

Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

21 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

https://marchforourlives.org/in-a-first-ever-endorsement-march-for-our-lives-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-economic-growth-regains-steam-second-quarter-inflation-slows-2024-07-25/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/biden-economy-employment-inflation.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/entertainment/jennifer-aniston-jd-vance/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/jd-vance-wrote-foreword-book-project-2025-architect-kevin-roberts-and-proceeds

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-might-not-shot-1930037

https://people.com/was-trump-struck-by-bullet-or-shrapnel-fbi-director-testifies-8683340

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-fbi-director-resign-immediately-chris-wray-rcna163641