The rules for tipping have evolved over the years. Now, with grocery delivery, Uber drivers, Amazon drivers, carryout food, pet groomers, and on and on, it feels like there are more opportunities to empty our wallets.
If you’re grumpy about tipping, it’s probably because norms have changed. It has “become less discretionary, and the tipping percentage has also increased,” says Shelle Santana, an assistant professor of marketing at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Santana’s research focuses in part on the psychology of money, and there are plenty of emotions tied up in how we give money.
So, if you’re not feeling particularly generous, you may wonder — is it ever OK to not tip?
Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself if you’re debating whether to tip.
Is This a Situation in Which People Are Expected to Tip?
Tipping, in general, is a way to show appreciation or gratitude for a service, especially if it exceeds your expectations. If you’re dining out, then you really should offer up a tip, Santana says.
[Related:The Cost of Dining and Drinking Out Is Rising: How to Manage the Tab]
“While there are no hard-and-fast rules about when to leave a gratuity, it’s generally accepted that servers in bars and restaurants should be tipped. The same is true for other service providers such as barbers and hairdressers. Other than that, it truly is at the discretion of the customer,” she says.
How much you should tip can get complicated, but at restaurants, “the expected tip is around 20% with many customers paying in the range of 15% to 22%,” says Dipayan Biswas, a marketing professor at the University of South Florida who has analyzed tipping behavior at restaurants.
If you’re paying a tip on the company card, or perhaps if you work for yourself and the service worker knows that, you may want to go on the higher range of a tip, says Tomomi Horning, executive director of the Edward and Lynn Breen Center for Career and Professional Development at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania.
“Sometimes the act of tipping is not about you, but who or what you represent. This could be your employer, your own company brand, civic or religious organizations, community affiliations, boards that you serve on and other entities that would claim you as their own,” Horning says.
She explains that sometimes, “tipping has the power to convey social messages or create impressions that outweigh its dollar value.”
In other words, if you don’t want people to think your employer is cheap, you may want to tip generously.
[Related:Best Tip Calculator Apps to Download Now]
When Can I Just Say No?
Let’s say that you are at a cash register buying a doughnut and there are suggestions at the credit card reader for a gratuity. Do you tip for being handed a doughnut?
Santana says that if you frequent a place, you may want to add a tip when you’re confronted with the tip request at the screen since you probably want to maintain a certain level of service.
“Most of these digital payment kiosks tend to have default settings for tipping on the screen,” Biswas says. If you don’t know who the tip is going to — such as the business owner rather than the cashier or cooks — you can feel even better (probably) about not tipping, he adds.
“Overall, customers should not feel obligated about having to tip in these settings unless they want to or the employee provided excellent service,” he says.
[READ: How Much to Tip Hairdressers.]
Was the Service Bad?
“This is a tricky question. With the significant compression of the minimum wage in the last 30 years, tipping has become the only way for some service workers to make a living wage,” says Gery Markova, a professor at the Wichita State University Barton School of Business, in Wichita, Kansas.
“Generous tipping, like politeness, is considered good manners, even if the service is subpar,” Markova says.
So, even if the service is bad, you probably want to offer a tip, especially if you think it’s due to management not hiring enough workers and you feel the employee is doing their best.
But use common sense. If a service worker is rude to you, don’t tip — and maybe have a talk with the manager.
The Bottom Line on Tipping
Unless the tip is included in the price, you don’t have to leave one. But tipping isn’t going anywhere — nor is the question of whether you should tip or not.
“Until living wages prevail in the service sector, tipping will continue to be expected as the way to bring up employees’ wages,” Markova says.
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Here’s When You Don’t Have to Tip originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 04/19/24: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
