What Is ‘Tip Rage’ and What Can Be Done About It?

Have you heard? We’re angrier than we’ve ever been about tipping our servers. Or at least, the proliferation of articles on the topic certainly suggests that we are. What journalistic outlets once referred to as “tipping fatigue” has boiled over into “tip rage,” as Americans become “fed up” with suggested gratuities and tip-prompting tablet screens. 

But is that really the whole story?

Here’s what’s incontrovertibly true: Coming out of the pandemic, Americans have been feeling the squeeze of increased grocery prices, as the cost of both eggs and meat have risen by about 10% year over year and doesn’t seem to be coming back down. At the same time, some people have noticed that so-called tipflation is occurring at restaurants, as some third-party payment systems either raise the suggested tip amounts or miscalculate the desired tip percentage. 

These factors have led many people to feel increased frustration with the institution of tipping, which most of us agree is a precarious way to ensure servers are paid a living wage. Many customers would prefer having those wages worked into the total cost of the bill so they’re not left doing the math on someone else’s livelihood.

Yet the description of “tip rage” by those who empathize with it can read as somewhat disingenuous. “Tip rage is the anger people feel when they’re pressured into leaving a gratuity,” Christopher Elliott recently wrote for the Seattle Times. “In recent months, coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels have become pushier about soliciting these extras. Some payment terminals are demanding up to a 30% tip before you get a takeout meal. Other times, service workers leave you with the impression that if you don’t tip enough, you’re stealing their wages.”

Words like “pressured,” “pushier,” and “demanding” are not supported here by data; instead, they’re at least partially the consumer’s projection onto technology that has stayed relatively static as our discomfort around spending has grown. A screen that offers the option to tip is not “demanding” anything (tipping is, by definition, optional), nor is there hard evidence that “pushiness” has increased — even if more businesses have adopted technology like Square, that’s not necessarily because of the platform’s tipping function. 

Wheaton College psychology professor Gail Sahar tells Elliott that, “There are now more situations than there used to be in which we’re expected to tip.” To underscore that point, many outlets point to a Pew Research Center report on what Americans feel to be true about tipping, not what empirically is. But let’s say we are indeed being prompted for more tips more often. If that’s the case, it’s indicative of a system in which cost of living has well outpaced the rise in U.S. wages. As the gulf widens between what we need and what we get, tipping is one way to fill in the gap, regardless of whether it should be.

Over on Reddit’s /r/tipping, one user concurred with the tip rage, explaining that higher wages should be paid to render tipping unnecessary: “This is especially true in the Seattle area … (all of WA state, actually) where we have the highest minimum wage in the USA and no one makes less than $16.28 an hour. No decreases or adjustments for tipped employees. Yet we are still expected to tip at least 20% or more.”

According to 2023 data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, you’d need to make more than twice that amount to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in Washington state — more than $30 an hour. So even in places with the highest wages for servers, those wages still aren’t enough to keep pace with the cost of living. 

Given all of this, it might be more fair to reframe “tip rage” as a frustration not with the servers themselves, nor exclusively with the restaurant owners working within a low-margin business, but instead turn our sights toward the greater forces at play: those that have allowed companies to raise food prices under the guise of inflation, and those that deliberately scuttle any attempt at wealth redistribution, thus putting restaurant patrons in the position of subsidizing the wages of the underpaid servers. That’s certainly a situation worth getting enraged about.

The best-case scenario for all this “tip rage” is to channel it into action. Saru Jayaraman, an attorney and leader of the nonprofit One Fair Wage, is using Americans’ tipping fatigue as an opportunity to build support for the eradication of the service industry’s subminimum wage. This way, tips won’t be such a huge majority of what servers depend on to make a living. 

“It’s a disease that comes from corporate greed,” Jayaraman told The Hustle. “These corporations are trying to fool all of us into thinking it’s okay for them not to pay people.”