I was originally thinking about delivery (isn’t it basically the same effort to deliver 1 or 2 pizzas?). Shouldn’t delivery tipping be based on distance/effort rather than cost of food?
The same goes for restaurants, of course. If I go with a friend and we have the same meal but I have three glasses of wine, and she has three cokes, I am expected to tip more, but the server’s effort is the same for each of us.
Was it always like this or did it change with time?
Note: I’m only trying to understand this aspect of Us tipping culture. I know that tipping isn’t the norm everywhere.
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Business works on markups. Why do you pay more for the tip when your bill is higher? Because the assumption is that if you can afford more for your food and beverages, you can also afford more for the service.
Tipping has always been based around the idea that the price you see on the menu is for the item on the menu. Service is extra. How else do you justify having the same price for takeout vs dine-in? There’s no service with takeout, so if you’re paying for the service as part of the food price, why don’t you get a discount when there’s no service?
Because the service is extra. It’s not part of the food price. So then we get into the question of how much your server deserves to earn for their labor? Should they be poverty workers? Is that cool of us to complain endlessly that we don’t earn enough and then turn around and gladly make excuses to pay the people who work for us trash wages? No. We’d like to see them earn a wage that justifies showing up to work, and that’s expensive. It’s actually more than most people can really afford.
So it ends up that the question isn’t so much why you have to pay more for the tip on 3 glasses of wine v 3 glasses of soda. It’s why people who get 3 glasses of soda get away with paying so little for the service.
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