CBS News
Has tipping in America reached a tipping point?
Poughkeepsie, New York — A controversial question facing customers at almost every cash register these days is whether they would like to leave a tip.
Many Americans think tipping has gotten out of control: Is it discretionary kindness or relentless obligation?
A November 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center found that 72% of people think tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago. Some businesses that perhaps in the past were not known for asking for tips, such as drycleaners and hardware stores, now are.
Tipping is not just about percentages on a screen.
Dr. Paul Wright, senior vice president for the Neuroscience Institute with Nuvance Health in Poughkeepsie, New York, says that with tipping, the brain releases feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin.
“Tipping is very similar to when you’re doing a good deed,” Wright explained. “…Many people do it for themselves, and not just for the recipient.”
But many Americans are not feeling that dopamine hit.
In a recent June 2023 survey from Bankrate, two-thirds of Americans now have a negative view of tipping, and one-third feel it’s “out of control.”
There’s also that pressure of the so-called “guilt trip tip.”
“Do I feel more obligated to tip when someone is looking at me with their big doe-eyes?” one woman at a coffee shop in Poughkeepsie told CBS News. “Probably.”
Others tip to right the wrong of wage inequality.
“People should be paid a living wage,” another coffee shop patron said. “People shouldn’t be dependent on the tipping system.”
Poughkeepsie restaurateur Russell Beck tried that.
“I think you should pay your people what they’re worth,” Beck said.
His “no tipping, please” wine bar, the 1915 Wine Cellar, began paying employees up to $30 an hour. But in wine there is a hard truth.
“Our accountant came back and said, ‘Listen, either you’re closing or you’re changing your pay model. There’s really no in-between,'” Beck said.
Beck believes he was naïve to think it could work. Now, with tips, both the bar and its employees have made more money.
Beck personally tips big. But he draws the line.
“It’s gotten crazy,” Beck said. “I ordered something online and I was asked if I wanted to tip the people that were going to be packaging the box. And I was like, excuse me?”
A stowaway somehow made it onto a Delta Air Lines flight Tuesday from New York City to Paris without a boarding pass, officials confirmed.
The woman boarded Delta Flight No. 264 from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, CBS News learned. She was discovered while the plane was in midair and was taken into custody in Paris.
In a social media video posted by a passenger, the captain can be heard over the plane’s intercom — after the plane landed in Paris — telling flyers that “we’re just waiting for the police to come on board, they may be here now, and they’ve directed us to keep everyone on the airplane until we sort out the extra passenger that’s on the plane.”
The circumstances of how she was found were unclear, and her name was not immediately released.
A Transportation Security Administration source told CBS News that the woman went through an advanced imaging technology body scanner at a checkpoint in JFK Airport after somehow bypassing the document and ID check portion of the TSA process.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a TSA spokesperson said that it could “confirm that an individual without a boarding pass completed the airport security screening without any prohibited items. The individual bypassed two identity verification and boarding status stations and was able to board the aircraft.”
In order to be present at an airline departure gate for boarding, an individual must have cleared a TSA security checkpoint.
After getting through TSA security, it’s unclear how exactly the woman boarded the Boeing 767-400ER without showing a boarding pass or passport to Delta staff.
“Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security,” Delta said in a statement. “That’s why Delta is conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.”
French law enforcement and the TSA are separately investigating. The woman could be subject to a civil penalty or fine for bypassing the document check process.
There is new technology known as e-gates that are being rolled out at airports which involves using biometrics to check travel documents as part of the international departure boarding process. Such technology would have caught the stowaway.
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