The screen swivelled toward me and offered 18, 22 and 25 percent. The transaction was one coffee, in a paper cup, which I had watched a machine make and a person hand across a counter eighteen inches. There was a fourth button, smaller and grey, that said Other.
I want to say something narrow about that screen, because the American tipping argument is usually conducted at a level of generality where nobody can be wrong.
The screen is a wage negotiation. It has two parties in it: me and the person eighteen inches away. It has one party conspicuously absent, which is the employer, who set the presets, who bought the terminal, who chose the percentages, and who is not in the conversation at all.
That is the trick and it is a good one. A raise is a conversation between a worker and a boss, in which the boss must say yes or no and can be judged for it. A tip prompt is a conversation between a worker and a stranger, in which the stranger must decide, in front of the worker, in about four seconds, how generous a person they are. The employer has converted a cost into an interaction and then stepped out of the room.
Notice who bears the awkwardness. Not the owner. The worker, who has to stand there while I look at the screen, and who did not choose the presets and in most cases finds them embarrassing. And me, mildly. Between us we are conducting the compensation policy of a business neither of us controls.
And the absence is not a metaphor, it is written into the law. In a state with a tipped minimum wage, the employer is permitted to count my four seconds against what they owe. The dollar I put on that screen is not a bonus sitting on top of a wage; up to a statutory ceiling it is a substitute for one. Every state draws that line somewhere different, which means the same gesture at the same counter means something different four hundred miles away, and nobody standing at either counter knows which one they are in.
The standard defense is that tipping raises take-home pay above what these jobs would otherwise pay, and in food service that is often true, and I am not going to pretend a barista would be better off if the screen vanished tomorrow with the menu prices unchanged. That is a real point and it is the reason this persists.
But look at what it converts the money into. A wage is a number you can plan on, borrow against, and take to a landlord. A tip is a mood — it depends on the weather, on whether the last customer was rude, on how the presets were set that quarter by somebody in an office. Moving pay from the first category to the second is a real loss even when the total is identical, and the total is not always identical, and nobody in the transaction can find out.
The presets went up. Ten years ago that screen offered 10, 15 and 20. Nobody announced the change. There was no negotiation and no notice, because it was not a wage change, it was a default, and a default is a thing you can move without telling anyone.
I pressed Other. I always press Other, and I always tip, and the number I choose is my own, and I have never once done it without noticing that the smaller grey button is exactly as small and grey as it needs to be.
The tipped minimum is the mechanism and most people arguing about the screen do not know it exists. A dollar on that screen is a dollar the employer does not owe, up to a ceiling that varies by state.