More than three-quarters of Americans believe tipping culture has gone too far as prompts for gratuities on credit card machines pester consumers in virtually every establishment, according to a survey.
The survey by discount-finder website CouponBirds also found that about two-thirds of the 1,100 people polled tack feel pressured to tack on a couple of extra bucks because of “guilt tipping.”
Roughly 65% of those guilt tips are purely to avoid awkwardness with staffers who are typically standing right there and awaiting a gratuity.
Meanwhile, 63% guilt tip to avoid confrontation, per CouponBirds’ survey that was earlier reported on by Daily Mail.
It’s not always humans tipping humans, though — half of CouponBirds’ survey respondents said they had been asked to tip at an automated, self-service checkout.
No matter the situation, just 30.7% of survey respondents said that they “always tip,” CouponBirds found, while 22.9% said they “often” did and just 5.7% “never” added a gratuity.
To offset the painfully unpleasant interactions, a staggering 84% said they believe the minimum wage should be increased for servers.
Some states have already done this, including the Big Apple, which implemented a $1 hourly wage hike, from $15 to $16, at the beginning of the year
In the remainder of New York State, the new minimum wage rose to $15, from $14.20.
The state’s minimum wage is expected to increase every year until it reaches $17 in New York City and its suburbs, or $16 in the rest of the state by 2026 under an agreement between Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders announced last April.
The figures are well above the United States’ federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, the going rate since 2009.
According to CouponBirds, many minimum wage workers in other cities across the US are entitled to receive as little as $2.13 hourly so long as they make $5.12 or more from tips per hour.
There are 18 states that follow this structure, which is the national law, CouponBirds notes, including the Carolinas, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming, among others. In other states, the minimum wage varies wildly.
In Washington state, for example, minimum wage workers earn $16.28 per hour before tips, while in California it’s $16. In New Jersey, however, employers can hand out cash wages as little as $5.26 per hour before tips.
Six in 10 hourly-wage workers told CouponBirds that they’re reliant on tips to make ends meet as those funds typically account for more than 30% of their annual income — which ranges from as low as $28,176 per year for restaurant workers to nearly $68,000 for service industry workers like hairdressers.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
