In the service industry there's a big difference between doing a job and doing a job /well/. Doing a job well is incentivized by tips.
One of my first jobs, I worked in a private members-only clubhouse where tipping was prohibited. The service was held to a higher standard than most restaurants open to the public. If you didn’t do your job well, you’d no longer have a job.
We were paid quite a bit higher than minimum wage, so we were fine with it. Most people are fine doing their job well for a decent hourly wage.
If you’re the kind of employee that acts out with poor service towards a customer because you’re upset with the wage your employer pays you, then you need to find a job that isn’t customer facing.
What kind of crappy attitude is that? "I know you hired me and you're paying me and I'm here to do this job, but I'm going to do it really poorly unless you pay me extra"
> really poorly
Your words, not mine. Obviously if you're consistently terrible at your job you can get fired. But what's the incentive to go above and beyond, vs "good enough"? And how are tips for a server different from an annual performance based bonus for a white collar worker? I don't hear people raging about that one.
> and how are tips for a server different from an annual performance based bonus for a white collar worker?
Because the bonus is provided by the employer, not the customer. It's done by someone who is familiar with your work over the course of an entire year and who is much more aware of all the surrounding circumstances, not someone who met you for an hour or two while you were also doing 10 other things they knew nothing about.
It's also subject to all the same labor laws and regulations as a wage. A company can't say "we're not going to give bonuses to black employees" without getting sued out of existence. Any customer can decide they aren't going to tip based on whatever reason, valid or not, that they want. Or no reason at all.
This would be better described as "tips are _intended to_ incentivize doing a job well", as I'm not clear there's a strong relationship between tipping and performance.
I've seen/had this happen. Bosses had to go to bat for their long term workers because even with raises, they wound up making less than people hired in the past month.
It's really low. I've worked in a place where people will literally throw away money equalling an hours worth of the wages of a service person into a pool of water for good luck.
Do you tip other service positions like the employee that helps you at best buy or the cashier at the grocery store? Why are they different? If people staying in one job longer is a good thing and tipping helps that why wouldn't you?
I've yet to find someone who pays tips for excellent customer service in the big mall stores. I'm sure they exist, but almost no one does it, and this is acceptable. Why?
There also never is enough staff. The staff doesn't have time to provide customer service in meaningful ways; they more or less clean, stock, cashier, and do everything instead of be dedicated sales people. They literally cannot do so unless its very high value sales where the service is the key to making a big, infrequent sale over many small ones.
Like the whole gamestop debacle-go into the store and you'll find maybe they have barely enough payroll to have more than one person in the store on non-peak days.
Also, as someone pointed out, they typically get paid commissions, but my there are lots of other places where one does get pretty good service without tips or commissions:
Actually, in stores like Nordstrom, you get a lot more service (if you want it) than at a restaurant - even when you don't want it. I avoided them for years for this reason. They have a fair number of people who spend much much more time providing these services than doing the other stuff you mentioned.
Getting back to my original question: I often get better service from grocery store workers (depending on the chain, of course), than I do from restaurant workers. Yet no one pays them a tip. Same goes for Costco employees. Often the worker at the REI store will spend an inordinate amount of time helping me. No one pays them a tip, and they don't get a commission. From my perspective, all of these people are actually providing a service to me that I actually want, when I want it. Whereas with waiters, they are typically forced upon me. It's usually the exception that I want some service that requires a waiter.
The point being: There are more ways than tips to build a culture of good service, and it's inane to think tips are needed to maintain quality.