Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips | Hacker News Reader

Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips

jayporter.com

90 pointsmerrick33 comments

This is a very interesting but dangerous post: It's interesting because obviously the author has put a lot of thought into the topic and has done some research. However, for me, it clearly shows the danger of ideology, in fact it's a great example of it. "To be ideological is to preconceive reality." and we have a good example of that here: The author has strong opinions about sexuality and our approaches to it, there's nothing wrong with this, it's a prior. But then he starts using bits of "proofs", examples from music and literature, and the tipping experiment to bolster these claims.

Take the claim "The meme of sleeping with our waitress is important to Americans." This may or may not be true (why Americans are singled out is an interesting questions). He then cites a song, a sex and the City episode and a bartender's essay to back this up.

The later part of the post is devoted to an analysis of how our monogamous human sexuality evolved, based on text lifted off from a single book. And towards the end he switches to the notion of the waitress as a "sexual worker".

Now for the interesting part. Although his non-tipping restaurant experiment did NOT provide any proof for his theory he still views it as if it did on hypothetical grounds.

For a much better treatment of some of these ideas, consider: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolu...

Just as rape is not really about sex but about exerting power over someone, here also it is not so much about sleeping with the waitress but about having power over her. I think that was the main point of the article, which he chose to bolster using non-rigorous examples.

The meme of sleeping with our waitress is important to Americans.

I didn't get that either. Could it be a generational or regional thing? Of course I can think of a few occasions where a waiter or waitress is so unusually attractive as to be worthy of comment, but I've never known anyone that had a thing about hooking up with waitresses in general.

...oh, Sex at Dawn. Should have seen that coming.

I don't fully get this. It's the nth article about non technical topics I come across where the first comments start with ripping the content and the author apart. Always in such a subtle but mental and aggressive way. The other article which comes to mind was the post about the 10 simple things which make you happier from yesterday.

It seems to reflect how narrow minded this community outside of technical problems and business models actually is.

Hold on. It's reasonable to critique an article on the basis of the evidence given (or the lack thereof.) That is what the parent commenter is doing.

It is a big theme in HN, but why not give all ideas the same treatment? What is your thesis, your pitch, and have you made your case? What are the holes, where do you need work?

How do you evaluate ideas, if not by critique?

My problem is how he just blithely includes all American men in describing this mindset. I don't know if this is to assuage the author's guilt about thinking this way in the past or what. I mean, clearly the dynamic in question does exist, no question (Hooters). But some of us are able to get laid in spite of, not because of, the size of our wallets.

Anyway. I like the idea that because servers are no longer "performing" for tips, their behavior and appearance is more truly representative. Not to mention cutting off at the knees this gross rich losers who obsess over who they can buy and impress with their money.

All American men?

"“This isn’t about money,” the man would say. He’d be the one person in a thousand, or in ten thousand, who’d get angry about our fixed service charge"

Maybe not all American men.

I enjoyed the discussion here on HN regarding the 2nd article in this series:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6126926

This time around the early comments all seem to be negative.

I've now read the 5 published articles and have been really impressed with the this guy's insights. They have greatly aligned with what I've noticed, as someone who was born and raised in a non-tipping culture (I'm Australian) and who has come to live in the US two years ago (at the age of 34).

Back in Australia I had tipped in restaurants on occasion, to reward amazing service, excellent dining experiences and to be honest as a form of flirtation.

Coming to the US where you "have" to tip I noticed a real difference in the experience. Overly attentive servers, forced friendliness, expectations from both sides.... just different.

Trying to explain these things to my American friends was difficult. But I think these articles have really summed it up well.

I found the series of articles as a whole to be an enlightening account from the perspective of a restaurateur who tried new things in San Diego.

This was Part of 5 of a series that begins here:

http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

Prior to this aside from being a patron of restaurants my only knowledge of the restaurant biz was based on Setting the Table which Fred Wilson blogged about here:

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/01/setting_the_tab.html

This reminds me of an Amtrak ride along the CA coast, where the 50yo man next to me enjoyed sparring w/ the young female stewardess/whatever over the course of several hours, until the climax: he offered to take her into a bathroom and put her on a diaper changing table. I don't believe she was thrilled to hear the proposal.

There are men like that. So what? Long-winded article w/ poor quality of evidence and thinking.

In New Zealand, there is typically no tipping (it reflects excellent service, instead of expected), it's already built into the price - not even listed as a fixed service charge percentage.

Perhaps the complaints have more to do with seeing something listed on the bill that you didn't order. If it was removed entirely instead of being presented as a tax, that might change the response.

But then the prices of the food would be more expensive to compensate, which is arguably the reason that the tipping culture has been created in the first place.

> I’m proposing that tipping allows us to assign women a role where any sexuality they display can be attributed not to their desires but instead to their greed for money. In doing so, we both dehumanize and desexualize women, in large numbers.

Sorry, but as merely a "guy's opinion", this is pretty worthless. Maybe if he brought in some quotes from actual women working as waitresses, it would be more convincing and he could make a case.

But it's just far, far too simplistic. Maybe some guys look at waitresses that way... but that doesn't mean all of them do, or even a majority do. Lots of people disrespect lots of service workers, period. And why stop with women? What about hunky bartenders hired for their biceps or handsome faces, to attract a nice female clientele? Are they dehumanized as well?

This blog posts starts out with some interesting observations, but quickly veers into drawing unwarranted universal conclusions, making waaaay too many assumptions.

I tip more than 20% because the server minimum wage in Massachusetts is $2.63/hour. It is that simple. You would be surprised the number of people who think that a server is getting $8/hour with tips added on top.

I'm a heterosexual male in the age range that this guy is remarking on but I tip male servers and older women the same as I tip younger women. He is stereotyping. No doubt there are some who see tipping as a sexual power trip but probably in no higher percentage than any other endeavor.

Just because you're being altruistic doesn't mean everyone else is.

>No doubt there are some who see tipping as a sexual power trip but probably in no higher percentage than any other endeavor.

I don't follow you. In what other aspect of everyday life is someone forced to converse with you, meet your every whim, and then afterwards you get to decide how much money they take home?

Have you read the previous articles?

"He’d be the one person in a thousand, or in ten thousand, who’d get angry about our fixed service charge."

He's not stereotyping much.

You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to.

I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service".

The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.

> and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service".

Isn't this a crazy sentiment though? It's like we've all been trained to pity waiters and unless we're handing them money directly we're worried they might go home empty handed. How did we get to this point?

Yeah it is a crazy sentiment.

If we weren't crazy on this part we would refuse paying anything not on the bill. Like we do in grocery store.

FYI: The "just add it to the item price" was covered in Part 4. Its linked at the bottom of the article, or here it is directly: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

To your point - yes, adding on an extra 18% doesn't make much sense when they could have simply incorporated that into their menu prices. You will never be certain how the money is divvied up, regardless of whether you are paying additional tips or not...

That being said, patrons are accustomed to paying an additional fee when dining out; so rather than simply raise prices (which I'm sure would elicit grumbling and/or loss of patronage), they maintained the expectation of paying an additional amount for the service they've received.

Yes they can do that without much resistance from their customers, but imagine some other business* smuggling hidden fees into your bill - you will feel offended and cheated. This marks restaurants as an unusual business.

* I was going to call telcos an example, but then I don't know whether they don't already do that in the US. Or indeed anywhere. Which is a bit scary if you ask me.

P. S. Why were those persons angry? Maybe you didn't make it clear that you collect fixed "service" fees? You should write it somewhere in the menu, or else it's a rip off.

On the contrary, in some states a “service charge” has to be shared among the employees. By separating the charge they are relinquishing the possibility of doing anything else.

You struggle to understand that the margins in food service are amazingly thin?

If you like this sort of analysis, try The Last Psychiatrist.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com

I still find the entire idea of tipping to be super silly. Those people are being paid to do their jobs,and you leave them tips if they do them well? Why? I understand that in the US waiters are paid less because they also get tips,but that entire system is wrong(in my personal opinion) - you are going to a restaurant, you should be paying exactly what it says in the menu, not more,not less.

The system of tipping in the US is used to skirt around minimum wage laws and to push the cost of labor onto the customer, which makes eating out at restaurants seem deceptively cheaper than in other countries.

And the servers are often happy with this arrangement, because unlike a higher wage, the cash tips are rarely correctly reported as income and thus perceived as tax-free. Other than the damage to rule-of-law and personal integrity, everyone wins!

The cost of labor is always pushed into the client. The only difference is that tips aren't added to the price, or fixed.

These articles are repetitive, overly wordy, patronizing, pretend-smart and filled with straw men and other logical fallacies, and finally simply not that interesting.

My wife gets angry if I don't tip 20%, so a place with a built in tip that is less is a bonus for me.

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