It's crazy how some workers actually defend the tipping system and blame the consumer. They're doing the work of their oppressors and can't even realize it. The business isn't subsidizing lower prices, they're lining the pockets of their investors and telling the workers to get mad at the consumers.

Unfucking believable. Not a single mention of the actual problem in that article. Not a single mention of who is to blame.

I feel for this guy having to make a living with the meager pay of a barista, but setting the minimum wage to a livable level and pegging it to inflation is a much better solution. Hell, throw in some single-payer, universal healthcare, and take that item off everyone's personal budget while we're at it.

I’ve worked minimum wage customer service jobs for a decade. I haven’t worked in jobs that rely on tips (though I have worked in a bar where tipping exists, but is way more normalized) but there’s no way in hell the customer is the answer to paying employees a livable wage—that’s just insane. The burden here shouldn’t be on the customer to subsidize the employer, this “economist” has it ass backwards. This is a situation that has to get worse before it gets better, I am not going to tip more to help the greedy owner undercut their employees

Tipping is a way customers sponsoring greedy capitalist ability to pay below minimum wage.

In my country, people usually don't tip. They only tip in some special service, such as sex workers.

Stop making the customers pay your workers. They’re not our responsibility

I've dropped my average tip percentage back down to 15% (20% for good waiters / waitresses I see often). Complying with larger tip percentage is exactly what the business owners want us to do, and to think that it's going to stop at 25%? 30%? Their default tip range will just keep climbing.

I would feel less offended if on every bill they would just raise the price my 20% and give that to the workers.

Recognizing that the act of asking for an unsolicited tip as a requisite part of buying a coffee is making both customers and himself uncomfortable, acknowledging that his take home pay is so abysmally low that he depends on tips to make a living, and then after all of that, blaming the customer as the primary problem for not being willing to tip in the current economy/environment, is like making a 95 yard run and then tripping over your own shoelaces at the endzone.

Tipping a barista while paying would almost always mean tipping BEFORE the service is rendered. This is not a tip, it is just an added fee.