Don't Tip!

1. Tipping is Hostile to Customers

Businesses embrace the tipping culture to offload the responsibility of paying proper wages onto their customers while still selling their products with a high profit margin. As a result, customers end up paying the margin twice — once included in the bill and again in the tip you're "supposed" to leave.

Furthermore, tipping is inherently manipulative, exploiting customers' egos, senses of guilt & duty; and sometimes, even peer pressure is used. Personally, I'd prefer to just pay the bill.

2. Tipping is Hostile to Workers

Employers can use knowledge about their workers' tips against them. Despite the often low & unstable income from tips, bosses may leverage them to reject salary increases, health insurance upgrades, etc. Consequently, tipping undermines employees' powers during salary & benefits negotiations.

3. Tipping is Hostile to Community

Tipping, for an employer, is a convenient way to evade payroll taxes. A worker receiving a tip, on the other hand, evades the income tax. In the end, the community of honest taxpayers is hurt.

4. Tipping Encourages Bias

The tipping culture promotes unfairness and bias, because customers are prioritized based on their perceived generosity (and treated accordingly).

This bias runs the other way too; people often tip based on all kinds of things that have nothing to do with the quality of the service.

5. Tipping is Awkward & Lame

Many can recall numerous instances when they tried to collect enough cash from the table to leave a "decent" tip, or the awkward, rushed calculation of the amount to write down in the special "Tip:" field that you know the waiter will inspect momentarily. Or the stupid iPad tipping machines that are now part of web folklore? Give me a break.

6. What We Should Do

Don't tip. Ignore businesses with mandatory tips. Don't work in a field that depends on tipping as a source of income. If this makes sense, share this with others. Or use as an excuse to not leave a tip; this will be good for everybody.