Question Tipping

[mediumone]

When you guys say 10 usd per tank. Who does the tip go to.

It's my experience that the tip can be given to either the captain or dm, and it's split equally between them.

 

[hilljo88]

$10/tank. Round up if you are doing a week's diving. Ask if tips go into a communal jar at the end of your stay, or if there is another system.

 

[bhalah]

It was 10 dollars a tank forever for me but I recently upped it to 20 per tank. Inflation.

Assuming $100.00 for a 2 tank boat dive, that's a 40% tip. That seems high to me. I tip my Coz dive op staff 20% and some times 25% on special occasions, and they don't seem to be insulted by that.

 

[lermontov]

tipping is a cancer - raise the fees slightly and pay people a better wage-tipping should be reserved for over and above service expectation

 

[DandyDon]

In my opinion, tipping anywhere started out with the best of intents and then once employers noticed it, they likely started a downward payment trend. Totally guessing and simply sharing opinion.

I went to a place last night with my daughter's household including exchange students and great-grandkids that served overpriced fancy snowcones in cups, and as I paid - the screen asked which percentage tip to add for counter service. "None" was an easy choice. Nowadays we have the waitstaff industry expecting significant hourly incomes for minimal skilled work. Yeah, they have to deal with retail customers, but so what - many of us have in nontipping work. Yeah, sometimes they're drunk, but that's a personal choice. It's really gotten outrageous.

There have actually been several studies and respective articles available on the net on how it started, how unfair it is, etc. In the US, it started around the time of the Civil War. Excerpting from: Fact check: Tipping began amid slavery, then helped keep former Black slaves' wages low

A history of tipping in the United States​

The practice of tipping workers has unclear origins but likely began as a result of the caste system in Europe in the late Middle Ages.

At least two accounts state that there was no tipping in the United States prior to 1840, Kerry Segrave writes in "Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities." Wealthy Americans are thought to have brought tipping back to the United States from lavish trips to Europe in the years leading up to the Civil War.

The new custom was thought of by many as un-American because it was classist, Saru Jayaraman has explained to several reporters over the years. Jayaraman wrote "Forked," a book about restaurant worker pay, and, in 2018, was co-founder and president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and the director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley.

That anti-tipping sentiment found its way back to Europe, contributing to labor movements that ended the practice.

But in the United States, fresh out of the Civil War, formerly enslaved people were able to find most work in food service or as railroad porters, jobs that relied on tips. Many employers who wanted to hire the formerly enslaved also wanted to keep them at a low wage.

"When the practice came to the United States, the newly freed slaves, the black workers, were the equivalent of the proletariat in the feudal system," Jayaraman has explained in The Washington Post.

 

[Scubagolf]

My default is 20% for full service restaurants and dive boats. For Cozumel, that is usually $10/tank.

 

[Lorenzoid]

as I paid - the screen asked which percentage tip to add for counter service. "None" was an easy choice.

Bartenders provide what could be considered "counter service," and it's traditional (in the US) to tip them. And if you want them not to ignore you when you want another drink, you'd better tip them properly. So when coffee baristas started putting out the tip jar, maybe it wasn't quite as radical as it seemed at first? I find myself tipping baristas now. I tip at food trucks as well, even though the people behind the counter likely own the truck. Like a lot of people, I am ambivalent--no, make that completely confused--about tipping for counter service.

 

[Aura]

And if you want them not to ignore you when you want another drink, you'd better tip them properly.

So tipping is really not for rewarding good service, it's to keep people doing what they're paid to do in the first place?

 

[Lorenzoid]

So tipping is really not for rewarding good service, it's to keep people doing what they're paid to do in the first place?

Sadly, in some service sectors in the US, yes. But you already knew that.

Edit: Maybe it's part of our culture that some of us try to use money to get better treatment or be moved to the front of the queue, whereas in other cultures everyone is willing to wait their turn.

 

[Aura]

But you already knew that.

I've only visited North America once, so I actually know very little about it. It's a very foreign concept to me, and it seems like a very big hassle to deal with for someone who comes from a non-tipping culture.