Tipping waiters is a simple and well-intentioned gesture, but it is often a source of workplace conflict. "Sometimes it's difficult to distribute among colleagues and, ep, I've seen cases where it doesn't always reach the workers," says José Ruiz, who has been serving in restaurants in the Barcelona metropolitan area for more than 20 years. Now the disuse of cash has gone a step further in practice: more and more restaurants offer the possibility of paying this kind of gift with a bank card. And the novelty has not been harmless. Workers, clients and unions talk about some confusion when it comes to managing digital gratifications.
From the Spanish Hospitality Association, which groups the thousands of bars and restaurants in the country, they recognize that since the outbreak of the pandemic, less is paid in cash - its use has fallen 13 points between 2019 and 2022, to to 59% of transactions, according to data from the European Central Bank – and this is killing tips. "There are fewer and fewer of them left", say the organization. That's why some restaurants have incorporated dataphones and apps that allow you to charge this supplement.
"Do you want to pay without a tip, with 7% or with 10%?", reads the dataphone of certain restaurants in Barcelona and Madrid, as this newspaper has been able to verify.
"Seeing it in writing can impact the customer more and make him feel pressured, but he should know that tipping in Spain is always voluntary; they can never demand that he pay it", underlines Enrique García, spokesperson for the OCU user association. "This is a free relationship between the client and the worker and the company cannot participate in it", add from Hostaleria d'Espanya.
Businesses are looking for strategies to manage these digital tradeoffs, with a significant time investment. "When a customer wants to give a tip and pays by card, we charge it all together, then we write down what needs to be deducted from that bill and when the cash register is done at the end of the day, we take it out in cash and keep it in the tip jar always. After 15 days, the workers divide it up, and all the restaurants I know do the same," comments Lluïsa Muñoz, owner of the Japanese food and pastry establishment Sushi and Cake, in Sant Cugat del Vallès. Despite the effort they have put in, they have not been able to avoid the decline of the tip.
At the bar in Ripollet (Vallès Occidental) where Raúl González works, they started this same method, but abandoned it because it was complicated. "It was a mess - says the employee -; sometimes we forgot to write the tip on each bill, so we changed it to a Bizum number, but it didn't work, people didn't trust it."
Unions also note a certain risk that digital tipping contributes to devaluing wages. "Voluntary supplements cannot replace the wages agreed in decent collective agreements; this is the way to improve the conditions of restaurant workers", insists Paco Galván, manager of Hospitality at CC.OO. Catalonia In his opinion, tipping by card makes it difficult to track this money, which must always reach the worker in full.
The interprovincial hospitality agreement in Barcelona, Tarragona and Girona - renewed at the end of 2022 and from which CC.OO was separated. because he considered it insufficient – marks a gross annual salary of 21,650 euros for an intermediate category.
"In the hospitality industry, the conditions are tough, for many workers the tip is an incentive, but it is disappearing, even if it is possible to pay by card", says Igor Abascal, head of Catering and Hospitality at the UGT Catalunya. The credit card is eating it up.
