SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | SEPTEMBER 2023 9
By Clare Mendez, Resident
Tip screens are very popular with
restaurant owners these days. Almost
every one you go to has a "tip screen" to
help you calculate the gratuity you will give
your server or, more likely, to encourage
you to tip generously. We all know we are
expected to tip our wait staff for bringing
us the food and drinks we order. We want
our drinks hot or cold and in a timely
fashion. We don't want our food sitting under a heat lamp while
the wait staff converses with one another around a corner. On the
other hand, if we send our waiter back to the kitchen over and
over for "more butter, please." "Do you have any grated cheese?"
or "can I have more ice?" In that case, we should probably leave
a decent tip so they can afford a cocktail while soaking their tired
feet once they get off work.
Personally, I don't like tip screens. ey turn gratuities into
a multiple-choice test. Business owners choose which tip
suggestions to present to customers by tinkering with the default
options. In this way, they nudge their customers to give bigger tips
(sometimes beginning with 18 percent). So far, it seems to be a
successful strategy for business owners. A study done by Cornell
University found that larger suggested tip
sizes increased how much customers tipped
while having little impact on customer
satisfaction. However, setting suggestions
meaningfully above the social norm, (higher
than 25 percent), caused fewer people to tip.
Regardless, increased overall tip revenue
went up.
Most people have a strong tendency to stick
to default options both because it is easier and
because they assume the default is the social norm. e screens
also trigger our desire to be perceived as generous, especially
when asked to make a choice in front of the person receiving the
tip and other customers standing in line.
Tipping more generously was a good practice during and
immediately following the pandemic to support businesses and
their staff who struggled during lock-downs, but now it's time
to return to normal. Anyone feeling frustrated or financially
stretched by tipping pressure should set their own standard and
get comfortable with awkward interactions. Know that etiquette
dictates that you don't have to leave a tip, just because you are
asked to do so. Feel free to type in your own amount, skipping the
preselected multiple choice options.
Tip Screens
