How Will Tipping Change Post-Pandemic?
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Here's your money briefing for Thursday, May 20th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. A lot of people pulled back on their spending during the pandemic, but there's at least one area where many of us got a bit freer. Tipping. A generous tip was a nice way of supporting businesses and service workers who might have been struggling. But how should tipping work as we get back out into the world and start spending on more things?
So you go from paying only rent and groceries, essentially, to then happy hour and flights and hotel stays and Airbnb and on and on.
Coming up, our reporter J.J. McCorvey will discuss the new rules of tipping and how to fit it into your budget. That's after the break.
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How did tipping habits change during the pandemic?
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The pandemic changed how we think about gratuities. For the past year, we often dug deeper into our pockets for the person who made or delivered our meals, for example. But as more people are vaccinated and start heading back out into restaurants, should we tip service workers any differently? The answer isn't clear-cut. J.J. McCorvey is a reporter for WSJ Noted, and he looked into this, and he joins us now. J.J., thanks for being here. Hey, J.R., thanks for having me. So tell me, how did the pandemic change the way that Americans view tipping?
The biggest ways that people change their tipping habits is through circumstance as opposed to amounts. I looked at data from Square, the payments company, and while it's true that tips on credit cards were relatively stable through the pandemic, I think what changes our tendency to tip on takeout and carry out and also our tendency to tip for long distance orders. So obviously a lot of restaurants were not doing full service. So we started tipping more on orders where there's no service involved, where we're just picking up the order and calling over the phone or placing on our apps.
And one of the people you spoke with was an etiquette expert, and she suggested 15% as a new minimum and 20% on average. Of course, that can vary depending upon the situation. So what if you don't know how much to tip? You know, you don't want to shortchange the workers, but you also want to tip within reason.
In those types of instances, you can always just ask. You can say, hey, what do people usually tip? Or if I want to be generous, what do your most generous customers usually tip on something like this? And I think that kind of can disperse a lot of the uncertainty and kind of self-consciousness as you're trying to decide in front of the cashier and maybe your friends on what to tip on this item.
So now that the economic climate is improving, is that changing the way people are thinking about tipping?
So I spoke to this young woman who, she's 29, she's an advertising account manager, and every day she goes to this coffee shop and she talks about this moment that we've all experienced that you get your coffee and they flip the iPad over and you have to sign your name for the check, but then you're presented with
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