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Comment by dorfsmay | Hacker News Reader

Tipping is about the perception of social class and giving the buyer the perception of having power over others, by giving them a mini power-trip.

In no other circumstances is a unilateral and after the fact negotiation acceptable. Would YOU work for a variable salary with no clear criteria on what affect it, no guarantee of salary regardless of your skills an effort and for which studies have shown that the colour of your skin, your sex and the mood and social background of the customer has more effect on your salary than anything else?

If the service and the food is good, I tip 15% and go back for more and talk about it to everybody I know. If the service or the food is bad, I tip 15%, never go back, and let everybody I know, know about it.

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The problem is that two equilibria exist. The equilibrium of a tipping culture is reinforced by high-performing wait staff. If one restaurant or one city adopts a no-tipping policy, the well-tipped will move, the poorly-tipped will stay, and quality will suffer. The other problem is that the tipping culture has created many extrinsically motivated workers. Cultures without tipping require people who intrinsically perform well, but years of living under the carrot and stick of tipping has produced transactional workers.

The no-tipping equilibrium perpetuates because most customers don't like the math and decision-making required after every meal. And most workers don't like being put into a Skinner box. And finally, the best wait staff in no-tipping cultures don't realize how much they're subsidizing the worst wait staff.

We as a society simply fell into the worse equilibrium. The only solution is a national edict, but this likely won't happen because there isn't the political will, and the beneficiaries of the current system know who they are and what they'd lose.

To avoid the math for the customers, restaurant can simply advertise price before service (like all restaurants), and add a compulsory service charge (say 15%).

In terms of incentive, what about firing the low-performers, like in other industries.

You are implying that tipping as an incentive works, I disagree, in my experience people tip based on the overall experience and a large part of that is taste which the wait staff has no influence over. What about a bonus for everybody, based on the profit made that month?

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