This is called a float business in finance. Starbucks has more than a billion dollars in unredeemed balances, and they make ~$200 million per year in interest with this cash. They're basically a bank with a coffee shop side hustle.
How are they getting 20% on a deposit that presumably could be called up at any time, and how can I get in on it when the stupid "High Yield" accounts I can find top out at around 4%?
I mean I’d love to have a free $21M a year, but if you’re already Starbucks then somehow it feels like pocket change compared to your actual earnings and would question if it was worth the effort.
But they also have over a billion cash at hand. I imagine at that scale and customers being private, the amount is pretty stable and Starbucks can just do whatever with this since it's extremely unlikely that customers demand all their money back at once.
If they're intentionally causing the customer to have an unspendable balance, knowing that it's making them $200m/yr, how is that not fraud (or some kind of crime)? I'd expect atleast CA would do something about it.
Customers agree to this when they accept the terms of the app. This is also how a debit or savings account at any bank works. Both businesses have sophisticated models to determine how and when customers are likely to make withdrawals, and based on these models they lend out the money based on acceptable risk criteria.
Even if it is in the T&Cs, this one feels like it wouldn’t actually hold up?
Expecting people to read those for most simple sign ups is already a high baseline, and Starbucks is not technically a banks and offers no consumer protections (FSCS or other), so that feels knowingly misleading, even if the total balances held are small per customer.
I have a feeling that this HN submission is rather some test run which dark patterns work well on technically affine users. :-)
Having the knowledge which dark patterns even work well for technically affine users while still being "socially acceptable" can be worth a lot of money to specific companies.
In fact, odds on someone who was complicit in developing many of the dark patterns that have run billions of dollars from consumers is reading this from their phone, thinking they should go to bed so they can wake up to the acai bowl, cold plunge, and early retirement to hobbies in seattle.
I once went to go pick up takeout and they covered the no tip button with a sticker. I was so confused so I put in 10 cents because I could find the button at first. I stopped going to the place since.
I help a blind friend order his groceries online from Walmart once a month. He's disabled and on food stamps (EBT/Link). The groceries are all taken care of, but the site always requests a $30 tip for the driver.
I drop it down a bit and pay it on my credit card for him, but what's the right way to deal with this situation?
"Walmart InHome is a premium service that delivers groceries and essentials directly into a customer's home (fridge/kitchen) or garage, using trained, vetted Walmart associates. As an add-on to Walmart+, it costs an additional $40/year (or $7/month) to provide unlimited, tip-free, and free-delivery-fee service."
is there a name for the phenomenon where a user immediately assumes the smallest and lowest contrast button on an interface is the option they want, before actually reading any of the words?
Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
[Matthew 7:13-14]
Nice! I’ve started only tipping on fridays for coffee, etc.
I’m a great tipper at restaurants
But being hit up for a $5 tip for a $4 drink is way wrong.
I’d tip you, but today is Thursday!
I tip great at sit-down restaurants. I don't tip at fast food places, or carry-outs where they don't actually provide and service, or at the oil change place.
Summary: if I didn't tip in a situation 10 years ago, I'm not going to start now.
I tip my barista and budtender a dollar every visit, personally. I love those people though. Restaurants get 20% unless they fuck up, then it's 15%, unless it was absolutely egregious.
IMO restaurant tips (and other service businesses) are 15% by default, 20% if they do well, 10% if they do poorly. If they do especially poorly (like, completely ignoring the table for an hour while chatting with coworkers off to the side), they get $.02. If they do especially well, more than 20% (I've gone as high as 50% once).
I also cut my own hair, but sometimes I’m lazy and just hit up the Barber shop.
She charges me $15! I tip +$25 and it’s still a cheap haircut.
My haircut has to be one of the simplest around, but 9 out of 10 stylists will leave me fixing it myself later. Once I paid $50+tip for the same cut at a swanky joint and STILL went home and fixed it. She doesn’t know what she’s worth.
My current strategy for how much total I'll pay for a coffee is FlOOR(price+.50) + 1, which keeps the bill nice and clean and kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers.
A guy with short hair should not have to pay more than $20 for a basic haircut, inclusive of tip. If you can't find someone that does it for less than that in your area, invest about $100 in professional grade clippers and cut your own hair. It's easier than it sounds and you will get better at it over time.
Learn to make your own coffee. You shouldn't have to pay more than a couple of bucks for coffee with perhaps some milk in it. An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.
While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas or YT ad-free with uBlock.
The above "tips" will save your thousands of dollars each year, and most likely also save you time. There are also things like DIY car maintenance that can be fun to learn and save you a lot of money, but you need space (a house) and some tools to get started.
> While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas
Setting up jellyfin+plex (some devices support one but not the other) and most of the arr suite (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, tunarr) has really been the best choice I've made this year. I have every TV show or movie I ever want to watch, all my favorites, all the classics. And all in one place. And I made sure to keep it local-first so I still have access at home if we lose internet. Started sharing with family and friends and I get a few requests a week to add content, so its being used.
Just removing the "what streaming service is this show on that im watching?" has been a nice improvement.
Great game. I squirmed at typing "no tips" the first time but second time was fine. I'm going to practice this a lot more to tonne down some (frequently abused) empathy
I'm one of those cowards that always succumbs to the pressure and ends up tipping, but it bothers me enough that I just won't buy anything if I know I'm going to get asked. This is good training.
On a separate but vaguely related note: if somebody comps all or part of your bill at a restaurant or bar then you should split the difference on the tip.
As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100 (I'll use round-ish numbers for this example). The bartender comps you 30% because you all are cool and discuss your shared experience bartending or jetskiing or whatever. Ordinarily your tip would have been 20% for a total of $120. In this case your bill is now $70 plus your newly selected gratuity. Take the difference between the original bill with tip and your current bill without tip and divide it in two. This is the floor for your new tip, in this case (120-70)/2 = $25. This is indeed something like a 35% gratuity but they hooked you upand made that custom drink for your charming new beau. As a matter of fact you should round up from this number because they have side work to do and you make pretty decent money as a software engineer/LLM tickler/product sorcerer. Just make it $30 for a nice round hundo.
If you're friends with the manager and they comp your dinner to do you a solid and impress your date then you should tip 50% of what the bill would have been minimum. This is why you should keep cash in your pocket - shake the waiter's hand on your way out and palm it to them. If that's not possible then go to use the restroom and talk to them on your way back so they can run your card through the POS on a blank check to give them said tip.
This is how you do things with class. This is what I wish somebody had explained to me when I was 20 and kinda broke (i.e. eager to save money that I would have spent anyway) before I embarrassed myself by failing to do such. If you are similarly unaware then now you know too :-)
As an addendum this also applies to coffee and pizza places but the numbers become coarser. Buying them the equivalent of a beer at your local dive ($3ish) is customary.
I've only been given 1 free meal (by the manager). I just gave the entire difference as my tip. I was already going to spend the money, so why not make a random waiter happy.
I'm really not trying to hate, I think you method is great and I love that you have rationalized it, but as someone whose mostly find this kind of social interactions natural, there's something "funny" about finding the algorithm for it. I never did the math and always naturally landed more or less there.
I always thought that was a casino thing (to keep you drinking so that you gamble more) but I've never been to a casino. I live in Canada though, so we might have laws against that sort of thing.
I recently had an entire meal at Chili’s comped by the manager, because I waited an hour for food. I guess their system flagged it, or they just noticed, because I didn’t complain. I was hanging with my grandson.
I tipped on the full amount but we had to get the manager again to figure out how. I was going to Venmo her but the manager just sent the $0.00 bill to the table.
I think the procedure is being misinterpreted. This isn't a scam, it's just a common social convention. It's not a scam by the waiter because they have a limited amount they can do this for and they have just chosen to do it for you.
Is this how comping actually works? I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I assumed there was some system for it (if sometimes ill-defined) and not just employees stealing.
The receipt printer in the kitchen is tied to the POS. Anything rung in for prep is saved in the computer. The manager can run reports and see who comped what and if anything has been voided. This has been a thing since the 90s.
Creating a good guest experience is how you get repeat business. Comps are part of that. You are talking about theft and I mentioned nothing of the sort. If you choose to engage in such behavior then that's your business - don't accuse me of it.
Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can serve food, I can drive a taxi, I can and do cut my own hair. I did, however, tip my urologist.
This was cool, but I got to one where it would load after every button you click. That's fine, but then I "lost" because it simply wouldn't load a winnable option in time it seems. Maybe I was moving too fast and missed the real button, but I still didn't tip in the end, so eh.
> Every checkout screen has become a guilt machine.
Is bill-paying UI also a guilt machine? If you don't pay, you feel guilty! How about holding the door for elderly people? Going to your kid's event? Not running people over in the crosswalk? Saying please and thank you? Buying birthday presents? It's all so unfair - to me!
Bot account. Last active with two posts in 2017, then started spamming today with the usual HN spambot formula. As usual, doing the weird thing that only the HN spambots do where it's almost always exactly three paragraphs of 1-2 sentences each. Not sure why they prompt for that formula but it makes it very easy to spot out. For me, I guess. This is voted to the top and the bot has over 50 karma so apparently most people are unable to detect LLM spam even when they make it as obvious as they possibly can.
Gotta try harder than that. There's a certain length to their paragraphs as well, you can see from their post history the general shape of their messages that will cue you off that you're probably about to read spam before you've even read the first word. Also abundant LLMisms. Four "not X but Y" and three lists of three in only five sentences. The sheer density of LLMisms is absurd. Not to mention that vague sense of incoherency despite overall being a grammatically correct series of words. There are so many tells it's criminal people aren't catching it.
I would suggest sending this as an email to the mods instead of a reply, what you're doing is practically a bug report to the bot owner right now. The resulting discussion isn't super interesting either (IMO).
I am not signing up to a mini-moderator who has to e-mail dang 5 times a day. I want to not see these messages in the first place, and for that to be possible, the community needs to learn and be able to recognise this for themselves so this spam can be flagged and killed on sight.
If the bot owner happens to waste their time reading the responses to the dozens of comments one of their many spambots made, and improves the bots as a result, so be it. They're already winning the war as it stands, not like things can get much worse. I'd like to at least try to make an effort to make things better.
Maybe the actual answer is that I just need to stop using HN, though, since the spambots are taking over the site and yet people are more concerned with the people pointing that out than the actual problem.
Thanks - this was a good catch, and it makes steam come out my ears to see any account abusing HN like that.
You don't have to email us, of course! But please understand that we're on the same side. We don't want to see HN overrun by generated comments (a form of spam) any more than you, or other users do. Remember that tomhow and I were avid users of HN for many years before we became mods.
All: generated comments and bots aren't allowed here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you notice an account that appears to be consistently pattern-matching to this, and have a minute to let us know, we'd appreciate a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, but we do monitor the inbox closely (including fishing through the spam bin for real users) and we take these reports seriously.
OK, I sent the email myself. You don't have to do it. Just once, not 5 times per day. Agree about community awareness, but I think emailing the mods is more effective than responding to one of the 1000 comments this account is making.
I just wish they would use bigger models. These ones always write stuff that makes no sense. Like it says "the same principle applies to mobile games" then describes a different principle
There's some bots on HN who write much more coherently and get a decent # of upvotes. I was only able to catch one because the comment started with something along the lines of "Here's a smart response for a technical audience about _____"
Astroturfing seems to be the goal. I notice sometimes there are threads in which numerous of these bots converge to promote some dubious product being shilled.
No, I check account history when the text is obviously LLM-generated. I mostly point it out because if I don't make it abundantly clear how obvious the spambot is by its behaviour, I will get people telling me that it could totally be a human and that I'm making a false accusation.
I suppose 15 years ago it would not have been possible to predict how fucking irritating these comments could be. I would rather have the old spambots back at this point. Please, spambots, go back to trying to sell me penis enlargement pills, I beg of you.
At an airport once the coffee stand had a girl behind the counter that would just hand you an empty disposable cup. She didn’t even handle cash, it was card only using a self checkout POS system. And it still asked for a tip with the default of 20%.
If you really want to make a deal out of it, you hand it back to the server and ask them to select 0 for you. Mention that you don't think the service deserves a tip, and that you resent being asked.
If enough of us start doing this, it has a chance of applying some back pressure, although unfortunately that force acts through the poorly-paid checkout operator who doesn't directly have the option to influence decisions.
Ooooh do the one where hitting ‘payment’ on the app buys $25 of store credit by default rather than just paying and deducts the 9.64 from that credit.
Then when you spend down the credit to $2 any attempt to buy something that costs more refills the credit.
Starbucks app btw. You have to specifically pay with card on the payment screen to avoid buying credit and paying as above.
This is how a lot of transit cards work, unfortunately.
if i recall, in singapore, the transit card costs are refundable.
I think that's the only place i've seen it refundable.
London oyster cards also offer a refund of your pay as you go balance.
That is wild
I've been trapped for 15 years!
Einstein's Bagels does this asinine shit, too, like I want to bank with a fucking mediocre bagel joint.
This is called a float business in finance. Starbucks has more than a billion dollars in unredeemed balances, and they make ~$200 million per year in interest with this cash. They're basically a bank with a coffee shop side hustle.
How are they getting 20% on a deposit that presumably could be called up at any time, and how can I get in on it when the stupid "High Yield" accounts I can find top out at around 4%?
They may buy bonds or something like that.
For a 20% return in a year?
The numbers given have to be incorrect.
probably 2%, not 20%.
Yielding a yearly 20%?
A quick Google suggests in 2016 it was $1.17B, and earned $21M, or 1.79%.
(via https://www.amminvest.com/starbucks-sbux-float/ )
I mean I’d love to have a free $21M a year, but if you’re already Starbucks then somehow it feels like pocket change compared to your actual earnings and would question if it was worth the effort.
But they also have over a billion cash at hand. I imagine at that scale and customers being private, the amount is pretty stable and Starbucks can just do whatever with this since it's extremely unlikely that customers demand all their money back at once.
If they're intentionally causing the customer to have an unspendable balance, knowing that it's making them $200m/yr, how is that not fraud (or some kind of crime)? I'd expect atleast CA would do something about it.
Customers agree to this when they accept the terms of the app. This is also how a debit or savings account at any bank works. Both businesses have sophisticated models to determine how and when customers are likely to make withdrawals, and based on these models they lend out the money based on acceptable risk criteria.
Even if it is in the T&Cs, this one feels like it wouldn’t actually hold up?
Expecting people to read those for most simple sign ups is already a high baseline, and Starbucks is not technically a banks and offers no consumer protections (FSCS or other), so that feels knowingly misleading, even if the total balances held are small per customer.
IANAL, of course.
I have a feeling that this HN submission is rather some test run which dark patterns work well on technically affine users. :-)
Having the knowledge which dark patterns even work well for technically affine users while still being "socially acceptable" can be worth a lot of money to specific companies.
Are you using "affine" to mean "for which one has an affinity"? I have never heard that nor can I see that as a wide-spread definition. Just curious!
I think that poster is saying that here on HN posters typically preserve points, lines and parallelism. Rude, quite honestly.
I was wondering. Maybe "refined", as a derivative of the verb?
In fact, odds on someone who was complicit in developing many of the dark patterns that have run billions of dollars from consumers is reading this from their phone, thinking they should go to bed so they can wake up to the acai bowl, cold plunge, and early retirement to hobbies in seattle.
Exactly. We're doing this to ourselves. These horrible patterns are an HN reader's JIRA ticket next week, and they're going to happily implement them.
Are you actually complicit in this or do you really feel such a part of the "tech community" that you truly consider it as a "we"?
If the former, stop doing it right now and atone.
If the latter, I don't think that's healthy, you have nothing to do with it unless you're at a FAANG or something.
jfc new 'orthogonal' just dropped
I like how at the end the author tries to get you to give him a tip with the buy me a coffee link
I once went to go pick up takeout and they covered the no tip button with a sticker. I was so confused so I put in 10 cents because I could find the button at first. I stopped going to the place since.
I help a blind friend order his groceries online from Walmart once a month. He's disabled and on food stamps (EBT/Link). The groceries are all taken care of, but the site always requests a $30 tip for the driver.
I drop it down a bit and pay it on my credit card for him, but what's the right way to deal with this situation?
Walmart InHome is $40/year and no tips.
Wow, that's not bad.
"Walmart InHome is a premium service that delivers groceries and essentials directly into a customer's home (fridge/kitchen) or garage, using trained, vetted Walmart associates. As an add-on to Walmart+, it costs an additional $40/year (or $7/month) to provide unlimited, tip-free, and free-delivery-fee service."
Can even do it when you aren't home.
Man $30 can still buy a lot of food at Aldi
Buy me a coffee? Jokes on you I just practiced avoiding this.
"But me a coffee" should instantly loose the game forever.
I chortled when I choked an input and accidentally clicked that
I had food delivered the other day and the suggested tip included tax and the delivery fee in it's calculation.
is there a name for the phenomenon where a user immediately assumes the smallest and lowest contrast button on an interface is the option they want, before actually reading any of the words?
I'm not aware of a specific term, another than just conditioning, but I am reminded of "banner blindness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
(I was definitely expecting a level to swap the contrast eventually as a trick.)
Being conditioned.
Nice! I’ve started only tipping on fridays for coffee, etc. I’m a great tipper at restaurants But being hit up for a $5 tip for a $4 drink is way wrong. I’d tip you, but today is Thursday!
I tip great at sit-down restaurants. I don't tip at fast food places, or carry-outs where they don't actually provide and service, or at the oil change place.
Summary: if I didn't tip in a situation 10 years ago, I'm not going to start now.
I tip my barista and budtender a dollar every visit, personally. I love those people though. Restaurants get 20% unless they fuck up, then it's 15%, unless it was absolutely egregious.
That's it. I cut my own hair.
IMO restaurant tips (and other service businesses) are 15% by default, 20% if they do well, 10% if they do poorly. If they do especially poorly (like, completely ignoring the table for an hour while chatting with coworkers off to the side), they get $.02. If they do especially well, more than 20% (I've gone as high as 50% once).
Have you taken into account that tips are no longer taxed and adjusted these arbitrary percentages?
I also cut my own hair, but sometimes I’m lazy and just hit up the Barber shop.
She charges me $15! I tip +$25 and it’s still a cheap haircut.
My haircut has to be one of the simplest around, but 9 out of 10 stylists will leave me fixing it myself later. Once I paid $50+tip for the same cut at a swanky joint and STILL went home and fixed it. She doesn’t know what she’s worth.
My barber earns his fat tip taming my unruly cowlicks. Barista and bartender? Definitely. Cashier at a convenience store? Oh hell no.
My barber earns his fat tip by being my therapist.
I get it. That's worth the compensation.
My current strategy for how much total I'll pay for a coffee is FlOOR(price+.50) + 1, which keeps the bill nice and clean and kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers.
I'm going to charge you $1.50, then.
I make my own coffee. It's not hard.
Sometimes I want coffee before I make my coffee
The "buy me a coffee" button at the end is :chefskiss:
I was gonna tip the developer but it feels like losing now
Intentionally and knowingly tipping is winning, no?
Unless we start arguing that gratitude is a dark pattern.
A guy with short hair should not have to pay more than $20 for a basic haircut, inclusive of tip. If you can't find someone that does it for less than that in your area, invest about $100 in professional grade clippers and cut your own hair. It's easier than it sounds and you will get better at it over time.
Learn to make your own coffee. You shouldn't have to pay more than a couple of bucks for coffee with perhaps some milk in it. An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.
While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas or YT ad-free with uBlock.
The above "tips" will save your thousands of dollars each year, and most likely also save you time. There are also things like DIY car maintenance that can be fun to learn and save you a lot of money, but you need space (a house) and some tools to get started.
> While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas
Setting up jellyfin+plex (some devices support one but not the other) and most of the arr suite (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, tunarr) has really been the best choice I've made this year. I have every TV show or movie I ever want to watch, all my favorites, all the classics. And all in one place. And I made sure to keep it local-first so I still have access at home if we lose internet. Started sharing with family and friends and I get a few requests a week to add content, so its being used.
Just removing the "what streaming service is this show on that im watching?" has been a nice improvement.
Great game. I squirmed at typing "no tips" the first time but second time was fine. I'm going to practice this a lot more to tonne down some (frequently abused) empathy
[dead]
Made by https://vladimirj.dev/
Neat game! Is this called monetary abuse?
I'm one of those cowards that always succumbs to the pressure and ends up tipping, but it bothers me enough that I just won't buy anything if I know I'm going to get asked. This is good training.
It is fun to look them in the eye as you decline the tip.
Actually doesn't make for a bad reaction time and processing game since you need to think fast and avoid distractions.
Mobile offers a speed boost for taps but heavy nerf to text entry tasks.
On a separate but vaguely related note: if somebody comps all or part of your bill at a restaurant or bar then you should split the difference on the tip.
As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100 (I'll use round-ish numbers for this example). The bartender comps you 30% because you all are cool and discuss your shared experience bartending or jetskiing or whatever. Ordinarily your tip would have been 20% for a total of $120. In this case your bill is now $70 plus your newly selected gratuity. Take the difference between the original bill with tip and your current bill without tip and divide it in two. This is the floor for your new tip, in this case (120-70)/2 = $25. This is indeed something like a 35% gratuity but they hooked you up and made that custom drink for your charming new beau. As a matter of fact you should round up from this number because they have side work to do and you make pretty decent money as a software engineer/LLM tickler/product sorcerer. Just make it $30 for a nice round hundo.
If you're friends with the manager and they comp your dinner to do you a solid and impress your date then you should tip 50% of what the bill would have been minimum. This is why you should keep cash in your pocket - shake the waiter's hand on your way out and palm it to them. If that's not possible then go to use the restroom and talk to them on your way back so they can run your card through the POS on a blank check to give them said tip.
This is how you do things with class. This is what I wish somebody had explained to me when I was 20 and kinda broke (i.e. eager to save money that I would have spent anyway) before I embarrassed myself by failing to do such. If you are similarly unaware then now you know too :-)
As an addendum this also applies to coffee and pizza places but the numbers become coarser. Buying them the equivalent of a beer at your local dive ($3ish) is customary.
I've only been given 1 free meal (by the manager). I just gave the entire difference as my tip. I was already going to spend the money, so why not make a random waiter happy.
I'm really not trying to hate, I think you method is great and I love that you have rationalized it, but as someone whose mostly find this kind of social interactions natural, there's something "funny" about finding the algorithm for it. I never did the math and always naturally landed more or less there.
I've never been comped at any restaurant or bar.
I always thought that was a casino thing (to keep you drinking so that you gamble more) but I've never been to a casino. I live in Canada though, so we might have laws against that sort of thing.
Have you tried being really, really, ridiculously good looking?
Ahhh, I see. So the GP's whole spiel was just a humblebrag.
you don't have to be good looking. you just have to go to the same place frequently, and be friendly.
You don’t have to be, but it helps not to be bad looking.
I guess you missed the part where I talked about being friendly (or friends) with the waitstaff. Nice to know that you think I'm good looking though!
I recently had an entire meal at Chili’s comped by the manager, because I waited an hour for food. I guess their system flagged it, or they just noticed, because I didn’t complain. I was hanging with my grandson.
I tipped on the full amount but we had to get the manager again to figure out how. I was going to Venmo her but the manager just sent the $0.00 bill to the table.
if you had to wait an hour for the food, what was the tip for exactly?
Just pointing out that in your example, the waiter gives themselves a $30 bonus by giving you the option not to pay a tip.
Yeah, this is too much nonsense for me.
If a waiter is comping something in exchange for a higher tip, that's not generosity or goodwill at all, it's a dishonest scam.
I will tip what I want to tip (often 0) without remorse and move on with my life.
Unfortunately this cancerous American system leeched into Canada, but we can still stop it, one $0 tip at a time.
I think the procedure is being misinterpreted. This isn't a scam, it's just a common social convention. It's not a scam by the waiter because they have a limited amount they can do this for and they have just chosen to do it for you.
feels like this post was written by a robot trying to act like a cool dude
... So pay your server for ripping off their employer?
Is this how comping actually works? I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I assumed there was some system for it (if sometimes ill-defined) and not just employees stealing.
The receipt printer in the kitchen is tied to the POS. Anything rung in for prep is saved in the computer. The manager can run reports and see who comped what and if anything has been voided. This has been a thing since the 90s.
Creating a good guest experience is how you get repeat business. Comps are part of that. You are talking about theft and I mentioned nothing of the sort. If you choose to engage in such behavior then that's your business - don't accuse me of it.
Are any of these illegal in the US or Canada?
The one where the options move when you hover over them feels like it should be but might not actually be.
Somebody had to invent it, and a lawmaker had to become aware of it, before a law could address it.
Made me want to sing that classic song from the animated movie "sausage party"
"Just the tip"
I tried to tip OP 0$, but that wasn't possible.
It should be illegal to solicit tips when asking for payment.
"Hold to skip tip" was devilish.
fun idea but a bit repetitive and boring.
Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can serve food, I can drive a taxi, I can and do cut my own hair. I did, however, tip my urologist.
You definitely get the spit-coffee at the diner.
The darkest patterns are fees that don’t exist . Like 300% tax fees and nightly parking when parking is free
This was cool, but I got to one where it would load after every button you click. That's fine, but then I "lost" because it simply wouldn't load a winnable option in time it seems. Maybe I was moving too fast and missed the real button, but I still didn't tip in the end, so eh.
There is a small "skip tip" link below the button
> Every checkout screen has become a guilt machine.
Is bill-paying UI also a guilt machine? If you don't pay, you feel guilty! How about holding the door for elderly people? Going to your kid's event? Not running people over in the crosswalk? Saying please and thank you? Buying birthday presents? It's all so unfair - to me!
I enjoyed the restaurant names
I hate every bit of this. Well done!
Superb!
"buy me a coffee"
lol, it got me to do 5% more on the first try.. i lost.
souls-like
[dead]
[flagged]
Bot account. Last active with two posts in 2017, then started spamming today with the usual HN spambot formula. As usual, doing the weird thing that only the HN spambots do where it's almost always exactly three paragraphs of 1-2 sentences each. Not sure why they prompt for that formula but it makes it very easy to spot out. For me, I guess. This is voted to the top and the bot has over 50 karma so apparently most people are unable to detect LLM spam even when they make it as obvious as they possibly can.
As a master in commenting I would argue that this is quite smart. Indeed this might be a bot.
Or maybe it's not, who knows? It's sometimes hard to tell with comments.
It's just the times we live in, uncertainty is a given, most of the time we don't know. I guess we'll have to make do.
Gotta try harder than that. There's a certain length to their paragraphs as well, you can see from their post history the general shape of their messages that will cue you off that you're probably about to read spam before you've even read the first word. Also abundant LLMisms. Four "not X but Y" and three lists of three in only five sentences. The sheer density of LLMisms is absurd. Not to mention that vague sense of incoherency despite overall being a grammatically correct series of words. There are so many tells it's criminal people aren't catching it.
I would suggest sending this as an email to the mods instead of a reply, what you're doing is practically a bug report to the bot owner right now. The resulting discussion isn't super interesting either (IMO).
I am not signing up to a mini-moderator who has to e-mail dang 5 times a day. I want to not see these messages in the first place, and for that to be possible, the community needs to learn and be able to recognise this for themselves so this spam can be flagged and killed on sight.
If the bot owner happens to waste their time reading the responses to the dozens of comments one of their many spambots made, and improves the bots as a result, so be it. They're already winning the war as it stands, not like things can get much worse. I'd like to at least try to make an effort to make things better.
Maybe the actual answer is that I just need to stop using HN, though, since the spambots are taking over the site and yet people are more concerned with the people pointing that out than the actual problem.
Thanks - this was a good catch, and it makes steam come out my ears to see any account abusing HN like that.
You don't have to email us, of course! But please understand that we're on the same side. We don't want to see HN overrun by generated comments (a form of spam) any more than you, or other users do. Remember that tomhow and I were avid users of HN for many years before we became mods.
All: generated comments and bots aren't allowed here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you notice an account that appears to be consistently pattern-matching to this, and have a minute to let us know, we'd appreciate a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, but we do monitor the inbox closely (including fishing through the spam bin for real users) and we take these reports seriously.
OK, I sent the email myself. You don't have to do it. Just once, not 5 times per day. Agree about community awareness, but I think emailing the mods is more effective than responding to one of the 1000 comments this account is making.
Thanks for doing that because I had no idea this was happening. I've banned the account now and flagkilled the 30+ comments they posted today.
I just wish they would use bigger models. These ones always write stuff that makes no sense. Like it says "the same principle applies to mobile games" then describes a different principle
There's some bots on HN who write much more coherently and get a decent # of upvotes. I was only able to catch one because the comment started with something along the lines of "Here's a smart response for a technical audience about _____"
lmao, got a link?
Any idea what the endgoal of such bots is?
Karmafarming and then astroturfing?
Astroturfing seems to be the goal. I notice sometimes there are threads in which numerous of these bots converge to promote some dubious product being shilled.
Do you check everyone's hn account history?
No, I check account history when the text is obviously LLM-generated. I mostly point it out because if I don't make it abundantly clear how obvious the spambot is by its behaviour, I will get people telling me that it could totally be a human and that I'm making a false accusation.
Might be because while it's not high quality, it is ultimately a constructive comment. So this might be a case of https://xkcd.com/810/
I suppose 15 years ago it would not have been possible to predict how fucking irritating these comments could be. I would rather have the old spambots back at this point. Please, spambots, go back to trying to sell me penis enlargement pills, I beg of you.
Now this is a definite human comment, shoehorned in xkcd links are a huge human tell.
Thanks. I upvoted one of its comments yesterday; i.e., it fooled me.
I've got a local cafe that pre-selects a $3 tip on a $5 purchase.
I try to 'punish' for these and tip less than I would normally.
At an airport once the coffee stand had a girl behind the counter that would just hand you an empty disposable cup. She didn’t even handle cash, it was card only using a self checkout POS system. And it still asked for a tip with the default of 20%.
There should be a way to specify a negative tip.
If you really want to make a deal out of it, you hand it back to the server and ask them to select 0 for you. Mention that you don't think the service deserves a tip, and that you resent being asked.
If enough of us start doing this, it has a chance of applying some back pressure, although unfortunately that force acts through the poorly-paid checkout operator who doesn't directly have the option to influence decisions.
The server isn't the one who configured the UI, and probably needs the money. You're punishing the wrong person.
> it's that calculating a custom amount requires more effort than just tapping accept.
0% is easy to calculate.
Exactly this. Why are you tipping if you’re standing up?