Leave no tip and risk being seen as stingy. Leave fat tips everywhere and create an unsustainable situation. And the confusing middle — if service sucks, is it bad to tip less?
Here’s a heuristic that’s useful for life and finance: When the system is inconsistent, create consistent rules for yourself.
Here are my personal rules after much trial and error:
- Tip more if service staff in my city/state relies on tips for minimum wage.
This is easy to find via the Department of Labor or googling your locale. California requires at least $14/hr to restaurant workers. My hometown of Los Angeles requires a minimum of $15/hr. If I visit the South, where workers have a much lower guaranteed minimum wage, I’ll tip more. - Determine what you tip and do not tip for. I tip 15% as a standard and 20%+ if the experience is solid. I never tip for merchandise that just requires the cashier to hand it to me. It peeves me when I ask for a bottle of kombucha and the Square register is turned towards me: would you like to tip 15, 20 or 25%? Uh, no.
- Tip based on the pre-tax amount, not the post-tax total. Some restaurants are sneaky and suggest tips based on post-tax amounts, or they don’t provide an itemized bill so as to make it harder. You…
