In many places including Washington state servers are actually paid minimum wage of a bit over $16 an hour. We also have pervasive tip requests. I have gone to a restaurant where ordering and drinks was self serve, the employee makes you a hot sandwich which you take to go and the robot which takes your order requests a default 20% tip.
It’s highly unlikely that a POS terminal software directs tip money directly to the software company. Hopefully tips are shared by staff. Pessemistically they could be stolen by the company. In either case it doesn’t match the normal expectation of tipped service.
Maybe Square is the odd one out, but a quick trip around Google search says yes it’s generally the default. It can be turned off but why would a business owner do that?
In many places including Washington state servers are actually paid minimum wage of a bit over $16 an hour. We also have pervasive tip requests. I have gone to a restaurant where ordering and drinks was self serve, the employee makes you a hot sandwich which you take to go and the robot which takes your order requests a default 20% tip.
If that’s a tablet that comes with the software pre-installed they ask for tips by default because it makes more money for the software company.
It’s highly unlikely that a POS terminal software directs tip money directly to the software company. Hopefully tips are shared by staff. Pessemistically they could be stolen by the company. In either case it doesn’t match the normal expectation of tipped service.
Those terminals take a percentage of everything that goes through them.
They don’t collect tips for the terminal holder
They don’t differentiate. They take a percentage of the whole transaction. Thus it’s profitable for them to default to a tip screen.
Unless something changed recently, Square doesn’t enable tips by default. It didn’t the last time I set one up at least in the fall.
Maybe Square is the odd one out, but a quick trip around Google search says yes it’s generally the default. It can be turned off but why would a business owner do that?