Tipping in America

[User74893677]

I’m going to New York and Boston at Easter with my children. The flights were a gift but I’m paying for our hotels and obviously food, activities etc.

Ive read that we should tip at least $5 per night for housekeeping. And similar if the hotel looks after our bags before/after check in/out. And generally for pretty much everything - helping take our bags to our room, provide local information etc.

Ive worked out that we will easily spend more than $100 just on tips for the hotel staff alone - for services it’s not customary to tip for here in Europe.

AIBU to consider not tipping for these things? We are travelling on a budget and $100 (or more) is a lot of cash!

I know we will have to tip in restaurants but we’re not planning to eat out much - it’ll be warm so the plan is to buy picnic/take out food for at least two meals a day to keep costs down (also I have the least foodie children in the world and they’re very happy with picnics and take out burritos etc!).

I anticipate people saying that if we can’t afford to tip, we can’t afford America 🫣

Don't tip housekeeping at the end of stay. The cleaners may not work every day or may be shifted around. The person getting one big tip at the end of a stay may not have done the work.
Leave the tip in cash each and every day. Somewhere obvious like the pillow. We usually write a "thanks for your work!" note so they are sure it is for them.
Ffs, I am amazed anyone needs to be told this.

I've only been to the US once and that was years ago. Knew about tipping in bars and more than we normally would in restaurants so that was fine albeit a bit stressful trying to get it right and feeling really awkward in bars. Never heard of tipping in the hotel room. So you can be amazed if you want to but it isn't obvious to me.

I haven’t been to the USA in 20 years but I do remember that eating out was cheaper than in London so adding on the tip didn’t seem too bad. Presumably if wages are so low, the price of the goods themselves are also still lower.

...

These replies are so interesting. So $100 is about what I’m budgeting per day for food and public transport. So yes, $100 feels like a lot.

I absolutely understand tipping in restaurants and will be doing that!

We have X amount to spend. We could stay in 5 star hotels (actually weren’t insanely expensive though!) and mainly eat at places we can take out, or stay somewhere less comfortable and central and have more money for restaurants. As my children couldn’t give a stuff about restaurants (mainly) we chose option A. But we still have a fixed budget - any more and I’d be going into debt.

I have budgeted for loads of activities but many of them are free or don’t cost too much. We’re not going to see a play on broadway or to the top of multiple skyscrapers. But we are walking the high line and Vessel (for example).

Im still reading through… It’s a big cultural shift for some of us to tip for absolutely everything. We travel a lot in Europe and I’ve been to America a lot for work but this is a big holiday for my children and I’ve planned really carefully to keep it affordable.

I don’t want to be stingy. Equally I don’t like being pressured into services I don’t need. (The hotel I say in for work always tries to push a cab service on me which is $120 to JFK. The flat rate for a yellow cab is more like $85 including tips and tolls and I actually prefer to get the subway and air train. I realised last time that the hotel gets a commission from the service they’re trying to persuade me to take. It felt really manipulative and I politely said no.

It has never been 10%. My mum's family lived/lives in New York and we used to visit. I texted mum to be sure and she says that back in the 1980s and 1990s it was 15% standard (or just double the sales tax) or 20% for good service. Sometime in the 2000s it went to 20% as standard. Now some people are trying to push 25% as standard but they are mostly, as the youth here say, delulu.

When places went to touch screens they started putting tip options in on everything and there's quite a lot of backlash. It used to just be a tip jar on the counter at the coffee shop, not an option on the payment screen.

And yes, there is a segment of servers who love the tip system as they make out very, very well. Some high end restaurants were trying no-tip policies, and Covid made them go back to tips as no one would work for a flat wage. If you are at a nice restaurant, especially where people drink, you can really make a lot of money. On the other hand, if you're working at a diner or similar, you're not getting massive tips on people's coffee and eggs.

The consensus of North Americans (I include Canadians here as while they are not as huge tippers as Americans, they do tip) is that if you can't afford the tip, you can't afford to eat there.

One day we can hope the US will stop being so backwards and that Americans will grow a pair and start advocating for themselves and a proper wage. Someone states do but It should be all. It is for the employer to pay wages and therefore staff's bills, not the customer, after all. It won't happen anytime soon through idleness and excuses, but maybe one day.

Exactly this, you are being gifted what , the equivalent of £1200 mimimum. So bloody tight.

It's not anymore. US wages have risen more rapidly than British ones and the pound is worth a lot less than it was 20 years ago. Back then NYC was a bargain for the Brits, now it's very expensive. The minimum wage is not terribly high, but wages climb rapidly.

OP you absolutely can decline things like bag carry, just be firm.

Equally, if you don't want your room cleaning put the sign on the door saying you don't want cleaning for the duration of the stay. We have a friend who does this because they are too tight to leave a small tip for the staff.

YANBU for declining services-it's your choice

However

YABU for not tipping the services you get. It's hugely insulting to those providing them

We were in NYC at Christmas. Tipping in restaurants was 20%. In Cafes, 20%, In Bars 20%, Any service 20%. It soon racks up. We left housekeeping a few dollars in change as I had already paid for the hotel on line before. It was more expensive than London and portion sizes are more in line with Europe now.

@User74893677 "These replies are so interesting. So $100 is about what I’m budgeting per day for food and public transport. So yes, $100 feels like a lot."

How many people is this to cover? Food prices in the US are high, even in supermarkets. $100 a day for a family doesn't sound like it would stretch that far in NYC.

So why are they expecting 20% tips then? Back in the olden days when I was there the reason for tips was to top up a crappy wage.

I meant wages overall, not specifically for servers. In some places, not NYC now, they really do make only $2.13 base.

the bigger answer, though, is that it continues because there's a sufficiently large number of wait staff, as well as employers, who benefit from the system. Whether you'd make more with a higher wage or with tips depends on where you work. If you are in a restaurant that not only has pricey food, but people are routinely ordering nice wine (at quite a markup) or fancy cocktails... well, that is going to add up to a lot of tip money.

Terrible hourly rates
Terrible holiday allowances
No sick pay
Unlimited Hours

Land of the free eh

Thank goodness we had Unions in this country.

Unless you are planning on going back to the exact same place in the near future, only tip if you feel the service warrants it. Housekeeping at the end is maybe a nice thing to do if you’ve had good service. I wouldn’t worry about a frowning worker or threats of being treated poorly (which in this case is carrying your own bags!). 20% is ludicrous and the expectation is baffling.

It's an absolute con when percentage-based extras - anything; not just tips in the US - are periodically increased over time.

Inflation of course means that prices keep going up, so a percentage-based tip is already taken care of automatically in that. Double-dipping and saying that 10% now needs to increase to 15%; or 20% needs to rise to 25% or whatever is a transparent scam, and I'm amazed that anybody just accepts it as such.

But presumably whoever gifted the flights intended to gift them to OP and family; not to free up extra money that de facto then becomes the entitlement of strangers.

That's a strange argument. If you got a promotion or pay rise at work - or even any kind of generous birthday or Christmas gift - would you feel horribly tight if you didn't immediately hand a large chunk of it to charity?

We were in NYC last Spring. A lot of bars and restaurants seemed to calculate and a suggested tip to the bill, especially if they had electronic card machines. We found that easier and less awkward!

We stayed at fairly basic but fine hotelon the uppet west side and there weren't services like bag carry or anything lile that. We didn't leave a tip for chambermaid as we didn't know it was a thing, we didn't see room staff but our room was made up fine each day and the front desk were lovely to us.

I got in to the swing of tippimg culture by the end of the trip. The only time I declined was in a Costa style cofee shop in Boston where a suggested 20% tip was added to the cost of a cold canned drink I took to the counter with the intentio of taking it away - I thought it was a bit much to ask for a 20% service charge for ringing up a three dollar drink and taking payment!

We brought our own bags up. I left a tip for housekeeping at the end as there were four of us squashed in the room and they did really well to make the beds!!

The tipping really adds to the cost of everything!!

The UK is very, very far from perfect in many ways, but I still struggle to believe some of the healthcare-based horror stories you hear from the USA, when people fall through the cracks with health insurance and job-based security.

You see and hear all the devastatingly sad stories about how people with health problems suffer in desperately poor African and Asian countries; then you see the countless reports from supposedly the richest country in the world, and so many people end up needlessly suffering and dying there too.

There's so much wrong with the UK, but the (far from perfect) NHS is a real jewel in our crown that we should never, ever allow to be jeopardised.

If you go to the states you need to tip.

It's simple really.

When you have people dying from manageable illnesses like Diabetes, because they can’t afford basic medication, whilst the manufacturers are making billions, you know there is something wrong.

… forgot to mention, no Mat leave either

Tip if you are happy with the service. Many places work out the tip for you at the bottom of the receipt. Usually as they rely heavily on tips they provide a better service than other places. For the housekeeping I leave it the last day. Can’t really be bothered to fuss about tips at all times so that is what I do. However, is handy to take cash for tips.

Ugh the tipping thing 100% puts me off travelling to the US. It's crazy. I obviously don't have a problem with paying whatever the costs are but I wish they would just put the costs on the bill. It feels deceitful. In London when you go out for dinner you get a bill and that bill includes service and tells you how much that service is. Why can't it just work like that? I don't want to have to do mental gymnastics every time I do ANYTHING and I don't want to have to carry cash about. It's such a PITA.

That’s just rude and quite unkind. I can make this holiday work for my family because I budget carefully and don’t waste money. For example we will get the underground to Heathrow, not the Heathrow express. We’ll get the subway from JFK and not a cab. All part of the travel experience, my children don't feel hard done by but these savings make the whole trip possible.

I don’t want to be rude and avoid all tipping. I always tip in restaurants in America. I’m just curious about wider hotel tipping culture and what is acceptable generally.