Do tips make for better service? | Hacker News Reader

Do tips make for better service?

economist.com

20 pointspavanyara62 comments

There is another aspect of tipping that rarely gets discussed: they are a way to compensate for being a bad guest.

I have heard from many servers that they will happily put up with a "bad table" if they know they are going to be tipped well at the end.

So not to excuse bad behavior, but if you know you have been a difficult table, tipping process gives you a formal opportunity to atone.

That just sounds like a microcosm of society in general. If you have money to throw around, odds are you can get away with more.

I'll throw out I don't try to be a bad guess but occasionally very rarely my kids and I end up going to a place like IHOP or something and I often try and tip extra to compensate for being a "bad table" not because I was bad but events outside my control made the table bad and I want to make it better to the waiter.

I had to do this recently because of a now-ex-friend. He crashed an Omakase dinner six courses in, loudly demanded a menu and when he was refused tried to order a beer. The wait staff managed to get rid of him. As a party we tipped 100% and stopped returning his calls.

How do they know how well they're going to be tipped at the end?

They don't know. But a culture of tipping leads the average server to have faith that such things will balance out in the end.

Had a relevant interaction just yesterday. Made it to a place about 5 minutes before closing without realizing it myself. But once inside, it was clear they were getting ready to lock up.

They insisted they were happy to make my order, and I insisted the meal was worth about 3x what they charged.

I don't think so. Almost every time I have seen good service it is either a function of the person (actually cares about doing their job) or the culture of the establishment. I tip generously because in the US wait staff generally get way below minimum wage so you want to make them whole.

If you do frequent a place then I think consistently good tipping is a factor but your attitude is probably just as important. At the end of this year I got some extra $100 bills that I gave to bartenders and servers that I have seen many times over the year and wanted to show a little extra appreciation.

It's not about service it's about appreciating the people serving you.

>I tip generously because in the US wait staff generally get way below minimum wage so you want to make them whole.

Ironically, if you didn't tip then they would be made whole by the employer as they would be responsible for making up the difference.

Or else they might experience poverty and/or overwork.

their employer wants you to think that - more money for them

Just curious how you cogitate it?

social pressure makes customers pay more money, same goes for prices that seem lower than they are (prices on menus); less taxes

How do you personally handle tipping, in a restaurant where you know the owner is paying $tiny/hr?

What are the cognitive steps you go through to derive your tipping behaviour in each instance?

The employer should. But wage theft in the US costs workers around a billion dollars a year, and low paid workers suffer the most.

So I personally wouldn’t rely on that mechanism to ensure staff got paid properly.

When I worked in food service 20 years ago, it was common practice to fire anyone who asked management to make up the difference regularly.

>I tip generously because in the US wait staff generally get way below minimum wage so you want to make them whole.

There are 16 states that follow the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13/hour. The other states have either set higher tipped minimum wages or set the tipped minimum wage the same as the minimum wage. (In California, the tipped minimum wage is $13/hour if you have 25 or fewer employees and $14/hour if you have 26 or more employees.)

https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/federal-state-t...

> For all its drawbacks, Americans are keenest to retain the practice: in a survey 60% of them said they preferred tipping to a modest service charge.

I would imagine people working for tips make up the majority of this number, because they understand how much better tips are for them than the alternative which is paltry wages. It's people who don't work for tips (especially those who mistakenly believe people don't like working for tips) who would seek to abolish the tipped wage.

Plus no one pays taxes on cash tips regardless of what the tax authorities say.

i just realized that i get tips. when i complete a project at work, i usually get a small bonus

If tips do improve service why aren't they for example used with judges, police officers, immigration and toll, tax officers and so on? Should everyone be ready to give bit to this poor people so they can provide more personal and better service?

I suppose once you are improving the service of a government official we call it a bribe

Just anecdotes, but I've lived in the US pretty much my entire life, and I don't think I've ever had truly bad service here. Maybe five times ever it's been subpar enough to tip 15% instead of my usual 20%, but certainly never worse than that.

Meanwhile, in the few months I've cumulatively spent in Europe, outside of Italy, almost all service was dramatically worse than this, and on quite a few occasions so bad I could probably make pretty good comedy sketches out of them. The only real exceptions have been family-run places and very expensive ones.

In Italy on the other hand service has been as good as or even better than back home.

Sounds like you are comparing the experiences of an American eating out in America with the experiences of an American dining in foreign countries.

Some of your experiences were negative, and others positive. But none of your foreign data used a native diner, so, it’s difficult to correlate the results with the topic of this discussion, which is about the effect of tipping on service.

There’s a very substantial cultural difference between the US and Europe when it comes to service expectations. Trying to rate European service against US expectations is always going to result in disappointment.

Personally I hate it when servers loiter around, or intrude during a meal. Outside of ordering my food, and having it arrive on the table, I don’t even want to know the wait staff are there. Some conversation and pointers on the menu are always nice, if I’ve asked, and having empty dishes vanish without any fuss is also good. But beyond that, I’ll indicate if I want wait staff attendance, hate it when they try to preempt me.

Expectations/norms are different across the world, even across Europe, so poor service to you might be seen as excellent service to a local. Everyone warned me before I went to Paris about rude and inattentive waiters. All the service mostly seemed normal to me though.

More than a country vs country thing, though, I've noticed poorer service in super touristy areas that vacationers might tend to gravitate towards (even in my home city). The worst experience I had in Paris was near the Eiffel Tower. I can venture a few guesses as to why, entitled vacationers making demands that suck up more than their fair share of the waiter's time, unfamiliarity with the local cuisine leading to misunderstandings, pressure from managers to turn tables over too frequently, etc.

But again, this is all anecdotal. :)

As a British person I can't even get a glass of water from US waiters!

But what do you want from service? It's probably vastly different from what Europeans want from service. European service isn't 'bad' it's just not what you're used to. US service seems 'bad' to Europeans - it's intrusive, nosey, and rude to us.

> As a British person I can't even get a glass of water from US waiters!

Really? I'm curious what the breakdown is there. In most US restaurants you'll be asked almost immediately what you'd like to drink and then they typically keep it filled.

It’s a joke - they never understand the pronunciation ‘water’ it baffles them - you have to put on an American accent and say ‘warder’ and then they understand.

Different places have different definitions of good service. For me good service is a server that is there quickly to take my order, brings food at when it's ready (bringing all dishes at the same time unless requested otherwise), realizes when I'm looking to pay the bill, and otherwise is nowhere near the table. Being able to answer questions about items in the menu is also good, though I don't often need this. In my (very limited) experience in the US, I found that servers talk too much (making suggestions or even small talk), they keep showing up asking if I need anything, refilling my glass unprompted, and felt generally phony in their demeanor. I found it very awkward and would not define it as "good".

That said, I have occasionally had bad service in Europe, usually in the form of it being very difficult to flag a waiter when I need something.

> they keep showing up asking if I need anything, refilling my glass unprompted

Generally in the US these kinds of things are “mandated” by management or corporate offices, especially in retail stores and chain restaurants.

When I worked in retail I HATED bothering people who seemed like they were fine browsing without any help. But of course one time someone complained because they weren’t greeted within 3 seconds and didn’t receive white glove service, so at the door greetings and constant check ins became the standard practice even when most people don’t care.

When I visited Taiwan service was universally excellent, far beyond what I am accustomed to in the US. Tipping is also not a thing. A friend of mine tried to leave a tip and the barista chased us two blocks down the road to return his “lost” cash.

Same here in Japan: generally phenomenal service, no tipping. Even the convenience store staff and McDonald's drive-thru staff are exceptional.

I've lived in Asia long enough that I hate eating out in the States when I return, with the silly expectation of tacking an extra 15% onto my bill just for the staff to do their job.

I actually dislike a lot of service in the US, not because it is slow or anything, but because it often makes me feel really uncomfortable.

European* idea of good service: take my order, serve me good food, accept my payment, otherwise leave me alone to talk with my friends. (*: can vary highly from one country to another.)

American idea of good service: promptly bring me water, promptly ask what I'd like to drink, serve drink quickly, promptly take my order, promptly serve my food, continuously check in to see if everything is ok, expect a tip.

Cultures are just a natural insult to each other. There is no real way to say, please check in on me more often to a European (their pay doesn't depend on it, they might humor you, but probably not). There is really no way to say, please leave me alone, without being insulting or not taken seriously.

Any idea of good service is heavily biased by norms of what service means in the first place. Some people will grow up with one sense of norm and immediately take to the other when experiencing it. Generally though, people growing up with one set of norms finds the other set obnoxious.

I mean, I had to literally get up and find our waitress in Slovenia because we’d been sitting there ready to go for 20 minutes. She was sitting inside. I’ll take being bugged occasionally anytime.

Not to mention in Europe you need to conserve you drink like it’s the last water in the world.

In the Netherlands we had to find the hostess chatting in the back just to be seated.

Then after waiting like 10 minutes we had to find her chatting in the back again to ask for menus.

The answer given to the headline question in the article is... "The evidence is mixed—and the practice varies widely across the world"

"Tipping also passes a chunk of risk from managers to servers, especially when between 20% and 60% of a waiter’s income may be in tips, as is often the case in America"

That number seems low, or at least in my outdated experience, it's low. I spent most of the 90s working in restaurants and tips were probably 150% of my income. I was paid very little per hour, and made quite a bit in tips. I then had to claim tips, which was always a smaller number than I actually made. I was paid $3 something an hour, made like $50 an hour in tips, and claimed like $20 in tips. Maybe that's not how it works now?

I assume they mean 60% of total earnings, not 60% of base wages. Tips can't end up being more than 100% of total earnings.

They can be more than 100% of claimed income though.

Yes. In which case "150%" would be 60%. (150/(150+100) to save the readers the math)

What do you mean that tips were 150% of your income? If you made $50/hr, and $47 of that came from tips, then tips were 94% of your income, and the wage was 6%.

It means he claimed $20 in income from tips, and pocketed the extra $30 in tips. You two are just using different definitions of "income".

Sounds like we have tax cheat on our hands

I'd be willing to bet that everyone who works for cash cheats their taxes.

But not as much as millionaires do.

I have always wondered. Can you ask a receipt for a tip you pay in cash and then collect those and send to IRS? Like proper good citizen should?

No idea. I don't live in the States.

I imagine no one would ever give a receipt for a tip though.

They actually have something like this in other countries. I can't recall exactly how it works, but it's something like store sells younsomething, you get the receipt, and then it's somehow incentived so that people send their receipts into the government, so people actually do it and then you have a second party that basically reports sales to the government.

Odds are good that every person I've ever tipped is a tax cheat.

Depends on which state...some allow sub-minimum wage if getting tips and some require minimum wage no matter what. So someone in OR or WA will get $14/hr + tips.

> tips were probably 150% of my income

That makes you an entrepreneur.

But unlike other entrepreneurs, you don’t get to deduct the costs involved with turning up to the market.

If tips are a social default then how can they make better service? For them to serve as an incentive, there has to be an expectation that the top percentage will vary.

My experience is that tips certainly make for better repeat service. "Oh hey it's that nice lady comes in every week or two and always tips" gets a little extra something pretty regularly.

Maybe a bit off-topic but, I feel like variable, merit-based compensation makes for a better service. I work in finance, although not in the US, end of the year bonuses more often than not effectively doubles your total comp, even for software engineers. Your bonus is, of course, very much tied to your performance reviews.

This has created a certain type of "carrot-chasing" culture. Granted, sometimes it can be toxic and is not for everyone, but most of my co-workers are extremely hard-working, focused and willing to go out of their way to help you

Commissions for salespeople — the most studied example of "merit-based" compensation — don’t work. They’re _expected_, but they don’t produce the results expected.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-paying-sales-people-bad-b...

The other reality is that what you think is merit-based is…not. There are lots of studies showing that there’s substantial bias in pay against women and racialized minorities.

https://archive.md/pMrre

The cumulative effect of tipping shouldn't be ignored either. Individual tips may not incentivize a server to do a better job, but the cumulative effect of tipping makes restaurant server a fairly well-paying entry-level job that attracts a very wide talent pool.

He tried handing punters a playing card

Dunno why the author had to denigrate the diners like that.

Tips make for better customers.

That's rubbish. I'm the same customer in the US where wait staff are severly underpaid where I treat the staff with respect and gratitude where tips are expected as I am when I travel abroad with the same respect and gratitude to the staff where tips are not expected.

Making of a better customer is as simple as not being an asshole.

I think GP was making the statement that, holding literally everything else equal, a customer who tips is strictly better than one who does not.

That said, I really prefer the model that tips are rare and employees negotiate with their boss for a real salary.

> Perhaps they like to feel, as they step out for a meal, that they are in control.

TL;DR: Tips are a power-trip for the plebs. A subtle way to make you feel important, and perhaps suppress social dissent.

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