I would really like to see it become normal for tipping people this way (that isn't at a cash register / tap) but with AirDrop.
For example, I recently had movers. I went out of my way to get a cash tip for them earlier. It would have been nice to skip that and just ping it at them somehow without awkwardly saying "Hey friend do you have Venmo? Apple Pay? CashApp? I'd like to tip you. What's your phone number?! Let me get that, thanks, bye, delete.".
This is NFC and a bit different but just my thoughts.
Eh, I hope it doesn't. Tipping needs to die out. I'd prefer to have the moving company pay the movers a living wage such that a tip would be unnecessary and politely refused.
Please don't confuse the restaurant industry where tips subsidize wages with the original idea of tipping as a sign of gratitude an thanks. A tip can be a meaningful and impactful way to say "You went beyond expectation, did an awesome job and I really appreciate it". Why would you not want that option?
Because it doesn’t actually work that way and it’s in no way an “option”. In reality tipping becomes expected and people withhold it when the service does /not/ meet expectation. That’s awkward and too confrontational for a lot of people so they’ll just tip anyways.
Personally I also find it exhausting to have to judge every single service I get. So I just tip a standard amount, there’s absolutely no feedback involved. So there is no point.
There are lots of downsides with very few upsides.
For situations where laws allow for sub-standard wages, such as restaurant wait staff, I agree with you. It's not really an option, it's exhausting, there's no point.
For situations that aren't codified into law like that, it can more legitimately be modulated according to how the service made you feel, from zero to "keep the change" to a couple bucks to sky's the limit.
The former should be solved by abolishing tipping. The latter should be solved by technology that's somehow as frictionless as cash.
> laws allow for sub-standard wages, such as restaurant wait staff
The law does not allow for sub-standard wages, however. If everyone stopped tipping today, wait staff would get the same minimum wage as any other job.
However, I think the point being advocated in this thread is that businesses should have to pay minimum wage (before tips). That said, it would be interesting how employers would respond if that was required by law - since removing tips would not save the employer any money, I wonder if that would result in less hiring.
You can see the results in states that have no tipped minimum wage, such as WA/CA/OR.
Generally, restaurant prices are higher (minimum $25 per meal per person without alcoholic drinks), but tipping is still expected by the waiters for waited service. Bottom line is waiters earn more money, but possibly fewer people can afford to eat out and maybe there are fewer waiters overall.
I dislike waited food service anyway, I much prefer to just buy at the counter and bus my own table, and it might result in more restaurants like that.
What are your thoughts about using a counter and self-bussing but the clerk faces a tablet at you with 3 large buttons: 18%, 20%, 25% ?
Not only will the personal service be minimal, but the only part you can even judge at that point is how well they took your order... who knows if something will go south! So it's clearly just about keeping menu prices artificially low.
I have always been able to choose “no tip”, along with those other options.
If it was not there, then depending on who I was with, I would either walk out or eat the cost and then never go back and leave a review that says they bait and switch pricing.
Tipping is about price segmentation / discrimination. Good for the seller, bad for the buyer.
Employers are obliged to ensure that employees they are paying below minimum wage because the employee gets tips get paid at least minimum wage including tips.
If an employee lets their employer know they did not earn enough tips to meet minimum wage, then the employer must pay them more to ensure they get minimum wage.
Also, in many jurisdictions of the US where the same minimum wage applies to traditionally tipped employees, the tipping dynamic has remained. For example in California, Oregon, and Washington, the cultural expectation is that customers will still tip waiters, even though the waiters are earning the same minimum wage as everyone else.
If businesses see their employees making more, you can guarantee that they will reduce wages. Because total compensation is the bargaining chip in this contract between employer and employee, and what determines demand for that job. When this happens, it hurts the people who are less advantaged in making tips. You can find plenty informartion on how gender, race, age and appearance play a huge factor in making tips.
Tipping at a restaurant is the only place where I would tip face to face. Maybe a valet but I avoid that like the plague too since you're giving your car to someone and no accountability. Name a few face to face tipping scenarios besides food and valet that is common? I'm seriously blanking on anything.
Maybe I'm a prude but I wouldn't tip for any of those services besides getting a hair cut. Need to add elevator driver and that guy in the bathroom who stands around and makes everyone uncomfortable.
Mainly because it gives perverse initiatives to pay employees less and tipping to be standard not unusual gratitude. Sometimes you can't have nice things because the way society collectively behaves.
I'd prefer to have the moving company pay the movers a living wage such that a tip would be unnecessary and politely refused.
Clearly, you have no idea of how the moving industry works. Everybody's a contractor of a contractor of a franchisee. The person who picks up your stuff is not always the person who delivers it.
When I move (frequently), I make sure to tip each person packing my stuff $50, each person loading my stuff $50, and the driver $100 for < 1,000 miles, or $200 > 2,000 miles.
Lifting and carrying and handling other people's prized possessions isn't an easy job. This is how I show appreciation when the job is done well.
>Clearly, you have no idea of how the moving industry works.
It's really no answer to say I need to understand how each industry works.
Why would I? And why should I? It's the government's responsibility to understand the nuances of, and regulate, each industry.
Do we really want to live in a world where consumers need to understand the detail of how each industry operates so they can ensure sub-sub contractors can be remunerated appropriately?
This is obviously a bit flame-y / unrelated / political.
Regardless of how you personally feel about US wages and the 20% I already prepaid for tip through the company to them, to be able to send money to others would be useful.
I'd be really interested to know what to properly call it, but IMHO this is the kind of thing that the market will never solve top-down because the structure of the relationship would never support it.
I think an on-the-ground solution that caters to the long tail would be the only thing that would basically survive. Everything else would succumb to social forces and basically just fizzle out.
AirDropping Apple credit could be an interesting pilot study, but I doubt Apple would do something like that sadly :/
I'd rather an industry standard payout, but the workers getting pay proportional to revenue is actually not a bad model. I just hate the analysis paralysis
The lollipop and aftershave man in my local nightclub's toilet has one. I'm tempted to give him a pound next time to see what pops up on my bank statement (and for some probably counterfeit cologne).
For context: I don't know if they're a thing in the States but in most male toilets in nightclubs (and more 'clubby' bars) in the UK there's usually an annoying guy in the toilet who turns off the hand driers and gives you paper to dry your hands whilst passively aggresively demanding a tip in return for a lollipop or a spray of various aftershaves/deoderants.
Yeah “restroom attendants” are definitely a thing in the US as well. I used to think it was stupid but from the club owner’s point of view it probably helps a lot to avoid vandalism, drug use, etc. that might otherwise occur in the bathrooms. I do end up seeing a lot of people just not wash their hands because they don’t like feeling obligated to tip the guy for handing them a paper towel.
I just take a paper towel myself. If there is a guy standing there holding the only paper towels in the bathroom, I'll just ask him why he's holding them. I wouldn't use one from him either, that just seems gross. I wouldn't tip for it in any case. It's just slightly glorified panhandling, I assume it isn't at all condoned by the club owner and they'd probably throw the guy out if they were aware. I haven't actually seen it in the US, though, just at international airports outside the country, so maybe the dynamic is different here.
Most people prefer to play along and have a good time and not think much about it and focus on the night itself. Less about making a point and more about having fun at the place you'll walk back into once you exit the toilet.
I would really like to see it become normal for tipping people this way (that isn't at a cash register / tap) but with AirDrop.
I totally agree.
At a parking garage the other day, there was a long line of people trying to get their cars back from the valets because one person was trying to tip with some random app.
"Oh, you need to download this. Yeah, open the App Store. Then download it. Yeah, it take a while. OK, now sign up. --five minutes elapse-- OK, now what's your username so I can send you the money? Did you say 'e' or 'v?' Was that '4114' or '1144?' OK. Sending now..."
Indeed - I'm really surprised that Apple doesn't have some kind of "just pay another apple user" feature.
I know that would open them up to lots of KYC requirements, as well as require them to do some of the evil things that financial laws require (eg. tracking all payments, closing accounts and banning users for certain things while not being able to tell the users why, freezing users money till they can present documents they don't have, etc.)
But it still seems worth it to take over the payments space from venmo, cashapp and paypal, make the wall to switching to android a little taller, etc.
While true that that could be nice, I don't think the burden of asking for an alternative like Venmo or CashApp like you listed is that high, and this case requires that the movers would also have an iPhone.
I had movers a couple months ago and tried to tip them. Note that I don't ever carry cash and am a proponent of abolishing the Federal Reserve. I asked them for their Ethereum or Bitcoin address, and they said, "neither of us don't have that, but we take cash." I calmly tried to explain to them the evils of the Federal Reserve for around five minutes, then began to set them up with their own cryptocurrency wallets on their phones. I then plugged in my Ledger Nano S and had them each read me their public keys, which I entered into Ledger Live and sent them each their five dollar tip. It was a simple process and did not take longer than thirty minutes. By the end of the exchange, they were both very happy with the arrangement and thanked me profusely for setting them up to use the future of currency, although I was still in the process of explaining its importance.
"Teach a man to fish," they say, and I believe I did it on that day. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
Transfer fees on Ethereum are currently $2.75, so either the movers got $2.25 or the dude paid an extra 55% just to pay them in something that's less useful for them.
> By the end of the exchange, they were both very happy with the arrangement and thanked me profusely for setting them up to use the future of currency, although I was still in the process of explaining its importance.
Given the 'about' section of their user says "you're all idiots" it seems reasonable to assume everything they say is either satire or an attempt at it.
>> I calmly tried to explain to them the evils of the Federal Reserve for around five minutes
...
>> sent them each their five dollar tip
...
>> It was a simple process and did not take longer than thirty minutes.
I also had movers, and wanted to tip them. When I asked what they took. I was shocked when they said Bitcoin!
They said some person that they had helped move before had helped them set up bitcoin addresses.
They were so excited by this. It was also pretty easy to convince them to read me both their public and private keys for those addresses (I told them that if I sent it to their public key, it would be public so their boss and the IRS would find out, however, if they gave me the private key, it would be completely private).
I then tipped both of them $50. They were so overjoyed.
Then later that night, I emptied both of their wallets.
(By the way, to the OP, thanks for teaching them about cryptocurrency, and for the $10).
I love this analogy[0], but to play devil's advocate I do a lot of tipping in cash and it's kind of a pain to break down big bills, so I can see some benefits to normalizing more digital options that actually work.
My bank is digital, it doesn't have a local branch, and most ATMs around me dispense cash in $20 bills. So I can make a small purchase near the ATM if it's in a shop and then ask them to give me change in smaller bills, but usually there's nothing I want. I don't have a local branch to drive to, but maybe other banks would help split bills? It's not awful, but it is pretty inconvenient.
Of course, the way to fix that might not be for everyone to standardize on iPhones, it might be to just have more ATMs that dispense smaller bills. But I do see why someone would find tipping primarily over, say, Venmo preferable, even though I don't think that appeal is enough to outweigh the benefits of cash tips (privacy, universal compatibility, simplicity, etc) in many situations.
Or I could just start tipping everyone everywhere in increments of $20 bills I guess, but I'm not that generous.
----
[0]: assuming you did actually mean it as an analogy for dropping cash for digital payments
I solve for this by stockpiling small bills in a drawer from which to replenish my wallet. I add to the pile by specifically paying with a large bill whenever the pile starts to dwindle, and I use a card whenever possible otherwise. The trick is to not habitually spend them except in situations (like tipping) where there's no reasonable alternative.
That makes sense. I think part of the problem is I'm trying to play both sides and mostly use a card for normal purchases, and mostly use cash for smaller purchases/tips. So you're right, I'm almost never using cash in situations that net me more small bills than I started with.
If I was a bit more consistent about occasionally just paying for something normal with cash it would possibly be more sustainable, right now I usually try to break apart small bills specifically when I'm completely out of them or when I know I'm going to need to tip someone in like an hour.
Also yeah, having a stockpile would probably be a good idea, since right now I typically only keep enough small bills to get me though my immediate tipping needs and no further, so any surprise situations mean I'm immediately out of small bills and can only pay for things by card.
Regardless, definitely more management than I would like to do, so I get why people might want a system that doesn't force them to think about that stuff at all. It's just that the alternative digital systems come with other downsides.
So how does not carrying cash equate to getting rid of the Fed? You know it's not the money printed on paper that matters, but the actual number in a database?
Let's not turn hn into a discord channel about how crypto is going to disrupt all the things and make them more "decentralized" by having "federated exchanges" that allow you to "stake" your assets where, otherwise, it would be impossible to form a "liquidity provider" since, of course, without it why would you even want to live.
I have to go out of my way to get cash. It’s not that I avoid carrying it, it’s that I never use it for anything so I don’t have it on hand. I never pay for anything with cash except tips, and the smallest bills I can get from an ATM are $20, which (except in the case of movers) is already more than a typical delivery tip.
Exactly. I haven’t carried a significant amount of cash for several years now. I’ll pull out a little if I’m meeting friends at a cash only bar or something but otherwise, it’s just an encumbrance and a liability.
> I read this sort of thing all of the time and it sounds as if you're just going out of your way to not carry cash for the sake of it. The drawer behind me right now has loose change in it, my jeans pocket always has a fiver.
What happens when you tip that fiver away? You have to go to the ATM and replace it.
It's been years since I've carried a wallet in my pocket. When I go out I have my keys in one pocket and a phone, whose case has a slot for a credit card in it, in the other pocket. I never have my debit card with me, and my memory of the PIN keeps getting rustier. The barrier to getting cash and then carrying it around keeps getting higher; and it's rare that I have a problem from the lack of it.
The big problem here is you've no fall-back for when the place you're trying to pay, or their merchant services provider, has a communications/network outage or malware attack or has assets frozen - some of which affect multiple large retailers.
There have been many instances over the years, even just in the U.K., where small and large stores have been unable to accept digital/network-required payments and ended up with massive queues or customers abandoning shopping carts full of items due to not having cash.
And there's no fallback for when you have to make multiple payments and don't have the cash on hand already. There's no fallback for an ATM outage where you can't withdraw the cash. There's no fallback for a communications/network outage at the bank where they can't query your balance and withdraw funds for you.
There are problems with any system. This one has the advantage of convenience.
Ok. But it's the rare instance where I can't postpone my purchase until the system comes back online, or just go elsewhere. I can't remember the last time the US had a nationwide outage like that. Maybe an individual store but not the entire region.
I keep an emergency $20 on me going back to the early 1990s but I've only ever needed to spend it once in almost 30 years.
He went out of his way because he simply doesn't carry cash anymore, what's so hard to grasp?
I live in a capital city in Europe and I hardly ever have cash at hand because EVERYONE accepts credit cards, I can even go days without reaching for my wallet because of NFC.
It sounds like the whole benefit behind this new form of Apple Pay acceptance is that there is no app. You just double tap the sleep/wake button to open Apple Pay and then tap the phone to the payee's phone. That's no more complicated then reaching for a wallet and pulling cash out of the wallet.
It's significantly more complicated because there's a protocol and negotiation involved.
If I want to give you $1, I hold my hand out and there it is. I can literally stuff it into your back pocket. You're not involved in the exchange, there is no exchange.
We can even do it UDP style - imagine that I check out of a hotel room and leave a dollar on the bedside table for the room staff. There's not even an ack.
By contrast this involves me asking if you have an iPhone, and then asking if it has this feature, and then we both get them out, and then I type in an amount, and then we tap. We'll just assume that it works perfectly first time. Maybe you need data, maybe you don't. It's not everywhere, basement of a bar, long distance train comes to mind.
It's not rocket science, sure, but it's way more complicated.
In the UK I can send payments using online banking. If I already know the payment details of the recipient, then sending a transfer is approximately the same level of convenience as cash e.g. I just choose the amount and press send. But the initial setup is far more onerous.
It's only simpler if you're a cash refusenik for whatever reason and so you first inject the whole "well then I had to go to an ATM". The equivalent would be like me saying "well first I had to get an iPhone", obviously that would be unfair.
The user doesn't know that any of that stuff is going on, though, and you don't need data for this to work.
It's not anywhere near as complicated as you're making it out to be. Those saying "I had to go to an ATM" are simply voicing a legitimate downside of cash that this doesn't have because you only have to get an iPhone once whereas you have to go to an ATM/bank every time you need cash.
I'm at your house and I've just done a thing for you. You want to give me some money.
This is the protocol: "Hi, can I pay you for this?" "Sure." "Do you have an iPhone?" "Yes." "Okay, here you go." <writes numbers in, taps phone>.
This is assuming I actually have one. Otherwise you have to do a fallback method.
Contrast with the protocol for cash:
<reaches into pocket, counts out $x, hands over $x>.
It's the same amount of effort as the very final step of the other protocol.
There is no fallback here because I can guarantee that I have cash.
The whole thing is just obviously overcomplicated. If you like cards and phones and stuff because they're techy, that's cool man. I like tech too.
But it's utterly false that they're somehow simpler or more convenient. They work in some specific golden paths whereas the only case in which cash doesn't work is online.
The whole ATM problem you're describing is also super contrived, you may as well say that baked beans are difficult to eat because every time you eat one you need to buy one. Well sure, but you don't buy them one by one do you.
And it's not as if the only place a person gets cash is an ATM, everyone who I pay or who pays me has just gotten cash from.... not an ATM.
I dunno man, whatever, this is just a really weird thread in general, it's like you're treating cash as this magical archaic thing Grandad used to use when to me it's an integrated part of my everyday life.
Is this one of those "Cus COVID" things that don't actually make rational sense but apparently loads of people do it now just "Cus"?
I have to go out of my way to have any cash, which I do, since I happen to go to bars that still accept cash (many in my area are cashless). It's nice to throw down cash in a crowd vs. trying to swipe and sign when the line is crazy.
To get money, I have to drive to an ATM and pay 1-5% fee to convert my money from bits to paper. Fortunately I have a bank that refunds ATM fees.
The point of this thread is that we are one step closer to making your first scenario "Hey let me tap you the money" and that's the end of the discussion.
For example, I recently had movers. I went out of my way to get a cash tip for them earlier. It would have been nice to skip that and just ping it at them somehow without awkwardly saying "Hey friend do you have Venmo? Apple Pay? CashApp? I'd like to tip you. What's your phone number?! Let me get that, thanks, bye, delete.".
This is NFC and a bit different but just my thoughts.