It seems that everyone has an opinion about tipping culture, but no one can agree on the rules. What is good service? How big of a percentage does it deserve? These questions are hard to answer definitively, especially when people’s livelihoods are at stake.

However, Reddit user RoseKaKe believes he and his wife have just had an experience so bad that it wasn’t worth anything. The couple were repeatedly ignored by the staff and their night didn’t really start for nearly half an hour. So after the bill arrived, they got up without leaving a single penny.

Now, the man wants to know if it was the right move, so he’s asking the members of r/AITAH to share their opinions on the situation.

This man and his wife received service they believe deserved a 0% tip

Image credits: msvyatkovska / envatoelements (not the actual photo)

So he told their story online and asked if others agreed

Image credits: RoseKaKe

Most view tipping as a form of performance review

Image credits: zinkevych / freepik (not the actual photo)

In many places, tipping expectations have changed over the past few years. For example, according to a 2023 Pew Research survey of nearly 12,000 adult Americans, about 72 percent say they are being asked to tip service workers more frequently than in the past, and only about a third say it’s “extremely or very easy” to know when and how much to tip.

Shubhranshu Singh, a marketing professor at Johns Hopkins University, thinks there have been two major reasons for this.

One is the pandemic. We started tipping people we didn’t use to and more than usual as a way to support workers at a time of crisis. The second is the technology around how we pay. For instance, companies behind electronic payment screens, such as Square, usually get a cut of each transaction, so creating software that encourages tipping (and in bigger amounts) means more money for the business.

A recent Bankrate survey found that 59 percent of Americans view tipping negatively. This includes:

• 37 percent who believe businesses should pay their employees better, rather than relying so much on tips;
• 34 percent who are annoyed about the pre-entered tip screens they encounter at coffee shops, food trucks and elsewhere;
• 14 percent who would be willing to pay higher prices in order to do away with tipping; and
• 11 percent who are confused about who and how much to tip.

The survey also discovered that a majority of people (64 percent) say the amount they tip is most influenced by the quality of service.

This makes sense. If the employer is placing the burden of paying their staff onto the customer, then the customer must also receive the right to set the rate.

In that sense, tipping becomes like a form of performance review—an immediate feedback system where the quality of the interaction directly impacts the reward, rather than an obligation to make up for the employer’s greed.

No wonder we say “the customer is always right.”

People have had a lot of reactions to the story, and most of them said the couple did nothing wrong

But some disagreed with their decision to leave without tipping

Some also shared other similar cases

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