No I am not paying a tip for $20 burger in a barely heated fast restaurant with no table service.
Another place doing this is subway. No I am not paying a tip to the "sandwich artist" for doing the same job as has been done for what 30 years with no automated tip extortion by default on the POS kiosk.
As a consumer these fast food tip beggings offend me.
> The CEO of HEI Hotels, which owns and manages more than 100 properties in the U.S. across Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, and others including the Westin Grand Central, The Gwen in Chicago, and Revere Hotel in Boston as well as Liberty Hotel Boston and Claremont Resort & Club in Berkeley, explained that,
> He was having a difficult time recruiting employees
> Because they were demanding to be paid more
> So he needed to encourage guests to pay them more via tipping
> If he raised wages, other hotels would match that – but doing a better job getting guests to pay the wages via tipping was a sustainable advantage.
The real reason is to dodge taxes. Wages from the employer are taxed more heavily than tips now (in the US):
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/treasury-irs-issue-guidance-lis...
To the extent that a "TIP" portion of customer payments goes "directly" (as far as the IRS knows) to the employee, Marriott can pay less and still retain the employee, whose take-home hasn't suffered.
This changes the competitive environment for hoteliers -- this sort of coercion of customers will become the norm. Completely predictable of course, to anyone who thought through the implications of "No taxes on TIPs".
billy99k•1mo ago
salawat•1mo ago