Saving Money by Tipping Servers Less Is a Life Hack, According to CNBC

Apparently, being stingy is a “life hack”

Your daily cringe comes courtesy of CNBC, with a video that promises a “tipping trick” that could save you money, but only delivers a smug man in a plaid shirt telling you to stiff your server. The “clever” advice from reporter Zack Guzman is to tip on the pre-tax amount on a restaurant bill. This way, you can snottily tell your server that you scraped together an acceptable tip while pocketing a couple extra quarters. In even the most charitable interpretation, it’s a shady shifting of the goalposts from the human embodiment of the words “well, technically” — but realistically, it’s a comfortably middle-class dude suggesting that you tip low-wage workers less.

The content mines over at CNBC must be pretty barren if some web producer thought that the advice to “tip less” could be repackaged as some kind of clever “life hack,” but that isn’t even the only problem with the video. Guzman claims that the “trick” will save you over $400 a year, but that’s a totally arbitrary number that would vary wildly depending on how much you eat out. He also recommends “double the tax” as a good tipping strategy, ignoring the fact that sales taxes vary wildly across the country, and is as low as zero percent (i.e. absolutely nothing) in some states.

The video is actually a couple of months old, but has only just received attention courtesy of the Twitter outrage mill, which in this case, has vastly superior advice to put forward: just tip the right amount.

And in other news...

• About a week ago, Burger King announced it would use Impossible Foods’ uncannily meat-like veggie patty in a new Whopper — now, a notable meat industry lobbyist is praising the burger, calling it a “wake-up call” for the beef industry. [Guardian]
• Also at Burger King: The company has apologized for an ad it released in New Zealand showing people awkwardly eating burgers with chopsticks. The commercial was widely criticized as racist. [People]
• Do you like your McNuggets or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with a side of a weakened immune system? A new study suggests that a preservative in those foods and many more (especially frozen foods and crackers) might open consumers up to catching the flu. [Quartz]
• Chuck E. Cheese may not be as much of a fading-away, dated bastion of ’80s and ’90s nostalgia as you thought — the company is planning to go public for the second time, but will be ditching its animatronic animal “performers” in the process. [Bloomberg]
• The Los Angeles Times looked carefully at the various geographies within Game of Thrones and used them to create a wine-pairing guide for any viewing parties you might be planning. [LA Times]
• Food & Wine has dropped its annual list of the country’s best new chefs, with Washington, D.C.’s Kwame Onwuachi getting top billing. [Food & Wine]
• Trader Joe’s is now selling $1 cans of wine, and suggesting that you sneak it into places where wine is unacceptable. [The Takeout]
• The next celebrity-branded whiskey will come to you courtesy of Bob Dylan, who’s opening a distillery in Nashville. [Page 6]
• Oat milk “droughts” may be a thing of the past with a new factory for the non-dairy liquid opening in New Jersey. [Crains NY]
• Naw, a whole bunch of Great British Bake Off contestants reunited and baked cakes for fellow alumna Martha Collison’s wedding last weekend. [Buzzfeed]

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