coffee grounds

Drip, drip, tip, tip?

Tipping for coffee is a hot topic, it seems.

Caleb McDaniel asks "Does anyone have some rough and ready etiquette to guide tipping for coffee?"

No, I don't have a guide. I'm just relieved to see that other people have the same low-level-at-the-counter anxieties that I do about the issue.

My criteria is that if it's a good cup of coffee I'll tip. I would like to reward people who make good coffee. But the moment of tipping comes well before you consume the coffee. If I know the barista is good I'll tip before getting the coffee, otherwise I'll go back and put some money in the tip jar as I leave, and say thanks for the coffee then. I also tip more [frequently and at a higher percentage] at the two places I go to often. Like others I figure that this will be repaid in extra care the next time I come in.

Caleb points to this overheated discussion of the subject, largely revolving round tipping at Starbucks. As best I can make out the anti-tipping-at-Starbucks crowd have these points to make

• I am angry. I am very angry. I am made angrier by the very sight of a tip jar on the counter at a coffee shop.
  
• Starbucks is overpriced. I do not have the intelligence to realize the following
  
  
  
  1. No one forces me to buy coffee there
     
  2. No one forces me to tip
     
  3. Make a cup of coffee myself.
     
  4. It's not only the coffee I'm purchasing. For example, if I was to sit down for four hours and buy nothing else while in the store, no-one would ask me to leave.
     
  
  
• Because Starbucks workers make more than McDonalds workers, you shouldn't tip either.
  

If you don't want to tip, don't tip. But some of the elaborations offered for not tipping at Starbucks bear the mark of being cheap, mean, and secretly guilty about it.

Posted by robe0419 at April 11, 2005 7:42 PM