Yahoo Finance Overdue Idea: The Universal Tip Card
THE ISSUE: Sunday afternoon at the buffet, and you’re already regretting your adventurous mixing of french toast, moussaka, and pork vindaloo.
The bill arrives, and you grandly offer to pick up the tab for your table of four. The total is as expected, but you pause on the space marked “gratuity”. How much to leave?
“Nothing,” a friend says. “We served ourselves.”
“But the server brought us water,” another objects. “These people depend on tips.”
“There wouldn’t be a space if they didn’t expect something,” says the third.
“Should I leave ten percent?” you ask, getting a round of shrugs in response.
You panic and scribble down a 15 percent tip, guessing high on the math so you don’t look cheap. Your grand gesture has cost more than expected, adding to the already bad taste in your mouth.
THE VICTIMS: Tipping is part of life, but consensus on when to do it and how much to leave is nearly impossible to find. Nobody likes to look like a cheapskate, so the options boil down to erring on the side of a fat tip, even when one may not be expected, or leaving too little and avoiding eye contact as you pass over the credit card slip, hoping you don’t get called out for it.
In the end, you either feel two feet tall, or like you’ve been ripped off. It’s time to clear up the uncertainty.
THE FIX: With cashless payment systems quickly putting an end to the pocket change era, it’s time to bring tipping into the 21st century.
The Universal Tip Card would be a credit or debit card feature, kid of like tap-and-go. When you use the card, it would do the thinking for you, figuring out what kind of business you’re at and deciding whether a tip is appropriate. If so, it would calculate it and automatically add it on.
Restaurant table service? For sure. Pizza guy? Here you go. Dryer delivery? Sorry, there’s already a charge for that. Starbucks barista? Fraid not. In fact, no way in hell.
No tough math for you, no bellyaching about not having a few loonies ready to awkwardly pass along.
If the service is either outstanding or awful, there would be options to increase it or reduce the percentage, but the idea would be to stick to a normalized rate, so the customer doesn’t have to agonize over it.
So at the hair salon, when that blonde colouration job ends up a nice emerald green, you could take a few points off. Or if that cab driver gets you to your meeting on time despite impossible rush hour gridlock, maybe you add a few. But really, we should expect good service for any tip, right?
And if you get the stink-eye from the server as you walk out of the Swiss Chalet, you’ll have a great excuse: Sorry, the card figured it out that way. It’s not my fault!
