Welcome to the A to Z English podcast. My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host
Sochil and today we are in the culture corner and we're talking about tipping culture in
America. And Sochil, what do you think about the tipping culture in America? I just visited
America not just like a couple months ago. Oh, that must have been so hard for me because
Korea has no tipping culture. I know it hurts so much. We say this is going to sound cringey
but we call it double OC out of control. It's just that was cringey. Yeah, that was very
good. It was just for you. That was just for you. But okay, the tipping culture is definitely
inflated in the US and it's for anything like any little service. Being a person who worked
in the service industry even recently, I can say that I appreciate when people would tip me even
just a buck or something. But it should be up to the corporations to deliver a working wage
to the point that we don't have to depend on tips. Because if you're working in the food service
or whatever, even if you're not waiting tables, you might be making like $15 an hour and then
the odd person might tip you dollar for making their coffee or whatever. That adds up substantially
over the course of the month and then you might make a hundred or 200 extra dollars.
And that really helps. But at the bottom line, the company should be providing a wage where you
can live off of that. And $15 an hour doesn't really cut it anymore with how expensive things are
in the US. And the companies with tipping, they're basically letting you pay the salary of the worker
instead of them. It's like, not only are you buying the product, but you're also paying part of
their salary. How stupid is that? I mean, to me tipping is just, I do it because it's a social,
there's a social stigma against not doing it. If I don't tip, everybody looks at me like I'm cheap.
I'm a cheap guy. I'm a jerk. And you're like a male Karen or whatever.
A male Karen, you know, crying about tipping. But the fact that the government pays those people
so low because of tipping, they're allowed. Like the law in America, there's a carve out for the
minimum wage for like a food workers. Whereas they don't have to pay them as much as the minimum
wage because they get tips. I mean, how stupid is that? That's like the restaurant workers of
America or something like that. This, this, yeah. Anytime you're a server, like a waitress,
specifically, they make like $2 an hour. It can make like $2 an hour. And in fact, they don't
make $2 an hour because that's all taken by federal taxes or state tax, federal taxes, I guess.
So you end up having $0 on your paycheck. You're only making tips.
Right. And they can make a good, they can make a decent living off of tips. But it just doesn't
make sense. Why is, why does the restaurant get to offload their, the salaries of their,
of their servers onto you when you're already paying for the food and you're paying for the
dessert and you're paying for the drinks and all these things. It doesn't make sense.
Tip stands for TIP to ensure proctitute. Not to pay salary, TPS.
Hey, TPS. Yeah. This is TPS.
Yeah. I have a question for you, Jack. Has tipping culture evolved in your lifetime,
like the percentage and stuff because for me, I remember when I was a little kid, I think 15%
was, was a norm. But now it has to be at least 20% or your cheap.
Well, here's the thing is if you're paying with a credit card, now they've got a tablet,
like an iPad. And it basically gives you a choice. It says you can pay 20%, 25% or no tip.
You know, there's a place at the bottom that says custom amount and you can just,
Oh, is there? Okay. I don't, I don't want to do math. I don't want to do math.
I just want to do like five when you just custom amount, you can put the exact amount of money
you want to give them. And then I'll okay, okay. Well, I usually just do the calculation of 20%.
I give the lowest, you know, but 20% is still like, you know, that's all right.
I just, it doesn't, it doesn't mean anything. The person wasn't ensuring proctitute.
It was a person I was buying a smoothie. Like that's their job is to make a smoothie for me.
And just like, you know, I'm not sitting down at the, you know, Spago Wolfgang puck restaurant
and being, you know, seated by, you know, some fancy guy in a tuxedo. It was like a smoothie shop,
you know? It's completely gone out of control. It's off the rails. We need to get rid of tipping.
We need to pay those workers a minimum wage that's livable so that it's like Korea where you
don't tip at all, but they get a certain wage to do their job. And we're, and we need to get rid
of all of this, this tipping nonsense. It's garbage. And also, why don't McDonald's workers get
tips? They're serving you food. Oh, they can. Oh, I'm not sure. Well, I know that pretty much
every fast food chain, I was working on a panero bread and we could get tips. Okay. So it's
sad to come. Maybe there's like, maybe there's like a really sad cup there that says,
Mick tips on it or something like that. Yeah. Actually, I think you're right. I think
McDonald's still hasn't gone that low yet, but everywhere else pretty much you can tip. Yeah,
it's, it's weird. So the thing in, in other countries, I'm curious, I know in South Korea,
there is no tip. And in Mexico, there is tipping culture for certain things like going at a restaurant
or something, but 10% is the expected tip. Oh, okay. That seems that, yeah, that would be the
same as not tipping in America. Yeah. 10% people like spit on you, basically. Yeah, exactly.
You eat older. You might as well be old man. Yeah. Yeah. I always usually tip 20% here in Mexico,
as well, because I feel bad not doing it. Yeah. And my parents don't, they'll tip like 10%. And I'll
give them a dirty look because they've never worked in the service sector before. Yeah. That's true.
I that is true. Oh, I guess my mom maybe did briefly, but my dad, my dad did, but it's been so long.
He's like 60 something. Yeah. Back in his days, when you got a tip, like a quarter was like,
oh, boy, I got a cold quarter. Yeah. That's true, basically. Yeah. And I think it's like tip
inflation. I think it used to be when I was a kid, 15% was a fine amount to tip. And now 15%
is like getting you dirty looks. But the smoothie shop never, you never tipped in the 1990s
in the 2000s. Smoothie shop. Now you do 2010s. My childhood was mostly in 2010s, I would say.
And mid 2000s. And yeah, you didn't tip in a smoothie shop. You didn't tip in a coffee shop.
But tipping was for restaurants. Yeah. Or like concierge at a hotel or what, you know what I mean?
Certain. Yeah. A bell hop at a hotel. You give them like a buck or a couple bucks or something.
Yeah. Yeah. Certain luxury experiences. But it wasn't a common thing. Exactly.
All right. Well, let us know what the tipping culture is like in your country. I'm very
interested to know. Shoot us an email at a.tz.englishpodcast.gemo.com. Leave us a comment down below
at a.tzenglishpodcast.com or join our WeChat WhatsApp groups to join the conversation. And we'll
see you guys next time. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye bye.
