To tip, or not to tip?
That might not be the question if a restaurant pre-selects a tip amount for you.
A now-deleted post to the r/a**holedesign subreddit states that a customer went to a restaurant. When they were presented with the opportunity to tip at the end of their meal, they claimed there was a sticker placed over the part of the screen that was home to the “no tip” option.
The post, shared by u/syzygee_alt, has been deleted from the subreddit for being a “commonly reposted” topic.
It appears that the post was a repost of a previous story that made it to Reddit. It was about a now-closed restaurant that attempted to use a sticker to encourage people to leave tips.
However, all of the discussion sparked by the Redditor is still there—and pretty relevant to the ongoing controversy of whether to tip or not to tip.
The Daily Dot has reached out to the original poster, u/reddit_Lemur, via Reddit message.
Redditors divided over tipping standards
Some users were of the mind that they typically choose to tip anyway. However, the sticker would be particularly off-putting.
“I’ll generally be tipping but seeing things like that makes me go out of my way to ensure that I leave no tip,” one commenter wrote.
“I went to pickup some wings the other day and when I went to pay they had pre-selected a 30% tip,” another said. “I gave them 0% and said I wasn’t coming back. If you want a 30% tip for doing literally nothing you are out of your [expletive] mind.”
“Quickest way for me to never come back again,” a user echoed. “I have no problem tipping for carryout, be it only 5%-10%, but force me to tip and you’re getting 0.”
Some suggested sending an image of the altered payment system to the payment processing company. This is in case the sticker might violate their terms of service.
“That is completely illegal and if you send that photo along with the location to the Verifone company, they will remove their access to use their products,” another commenter wrote.
“Report this business to verifone, and tell them they are altering their POS system by using stickers to confuse the customers,” another claimed. “I 100% know, in their terms for using their pos systems is they may not alter the device in anyway.”
Is this legal?
A tip is entirely separate from a gratuity, in which a restaurant imposes a required amount to compensate servers for the additional work done for large parties.
Tips are entirely discretionary, meaning that a customer has to choose whether to leave one and how much to leave.
So when it comes down to it, no, it is not legal to require a customer to leave a tip.
So what happens to the tips I leave?
Employers may not keep tips from employees, but they can require that they share tips with kitchen staff or pool their tips among each other. But generally, tips, especially cash tips, do go directly to the server being tipped.
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