The other one I'm seeing lately is a semi-stealth "service charge" on the bill. Something like 18% to 20% added to the bill without really standing out. This used to be something they'd do for "larger parties", but now I'm seeing it even when I'm eating solo.

This makes for an uncomfortable situation where I now have to ask the waiter or bartender if they receive this as a tip. Then I need to decide if I want to tip something like 5% to 7% extra, which would be a good 25% tip in total, but looks like a crappy 5% tip.

So after dealing with that, I just don't go back to those pubs or restaurants.

There was one bar where the waitress told me she doesn't get that service charge. It just goes to the house. So if she was telling the truth, all of the prices on the menu are just a lie.

I dread the day I have to eat at US restaurants, or even get something delivered. Part of the reason is cultural: I’ve never lived in a country where a tip is mandatory and you’ll be called out if you don’t. The other reason being it involves a degree of social pressure and shame, if one doesn’t tip enough. Both don’t sit well with me.

But I can attest that if I’m forced to tip, I’ll not return to that establishment.

I work at a Dominos and we of course accept and expect tips on delivery, because without tips the drivers would make <$5 an hour after paying for gas and their vehicle’s depreciation.

But at checkout for carryout orders the card terminal also now opens a tip menu. I would never tip on this screen because the employees are already paid a true hourly wage, albeit a low one, not a server rate that is below minimum wage.

Furthermore there is no way for the customer to know if the employee they are tipping is even one of the bottom paid line cooks or a manager or driver who are already making $20/hour at my restaurant—what most servers make after tips. I am a driver and sometimes accept payment for carryout orders and end up receiving credit card tips that should really go to the line cooks. When we aren’t busy I make an effort to reach over and click “no tip” for the customer, as checkout employees at other restaurants sometimes do for me, but sometimes it’s busy and I get tips anyway.

As others have said I think doing away with tips altogether would be best but it seems unlikely that will ever happen. A compromise would be to somehow ban “customer facing” tipping for things other than delivery—no tips at cash registers, only for “pay at the table” establishments.

To generalise the observation: I've definitely shifted my own behaviour where I find coercive, obnoxious, or toxic patterns.

"Loyalty coupons" where the number of items bought to receive one free escalated on subsequent purchase? Stopped shopping at that store. I'm not someone's Skinner Box experiment.

Websites with increasingly user-hostile experiences (or moderator-hostile), o hai reddit and googs, yeah, eff that noise.

Manufacturers selling shoddy products and failing to support them? Bad reviews and shop elsewhere (though that's often quite difficult).

As the poet notes, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

<https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46569/do-not-go-gentl...>

(Dylan Thomas, whoever he was: <https://genius.com/Simon-and-garfunkel-a-simple-desultory-ph...>.)

I suspect metrics show benefits amongst those who tolerate such abuse. I'm curious how well exits are measured and assessed.

A.O. Hirshcman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit%2C_Voice%2C_and_Loyalty>.

Went bowling yesterday. A tip prompt turned up when it was time to pay with no obvious way to avoid tipping. To do so you just had to hit enter instead of picking one of the preset choices but I couldn’t fathom why I’d ever tip the guy who hands me my one shoe back after knocking down some pins.