Why Tipping Should (And May) Be Made Illegal
jayporter.com
jayporter.com
There will always be some behavior deemed socially undesirable. The real question that should be asked is where is the line between good social protection and an undue infringement upon personal freedom? At the extremes, it's very very clear, but as you get towards the middle, everything blurs and it's in the eye of the beholder.
I can never, and would never attempt to, justify providing inferior service to people based on their origin or appearance (or other identifiable factor), prohibition is a blunt instrument. Education and socialization with diverse communities is another option, although slower and much more difficult.
Where I live they tried to cut down on the number of plastic bags used by instituting a $0.05 fee for each one. It's not a tax, it's just a recommendation by the city to retailers that they charge that much for bags, nobody had to do it, but a lot did and for the most part it worked.
If your city went "tip-free", by the same token, with clear advertising and an explanation of the implications made through the media, that would be as good as making it illegal: It'd make it old-fashioned.
For tipping, flat-rate minimum tip (like for larger parties, and also described in one of the articles), for instance could level the field. If I want to tip more, I can just leave the cash on the table...
My belief is that that will mean you rarely get tips higher than the minimum. Tips are supposed to be--by definition--voluntary, and in some sense a reward for service. As such, it offends me when a minimum tip is added (note: pre-adding it is different that merely showing off to the side what certain percentages of the bill are as a helpful arithmetic guide.) In keeping with that feeling, I never tip higher than the minimum if it's pre-added, even though in almost all cases the tip I would have given would have been (sometimes significantly) higher.
Tipping is so arbitrary. The line for who "can be tipped" is different for everyone: waiters, cabbies, hair dressers, hotel maids... you get the idea.
Why does one low skill profession get a tip (wait staff) and others do not (fast food). They both require just as much (little) skill. I don't get it. I mean seriously, the Sonic car hop walks food from the kitchen to your car and the waiter walks food from the kitchen to your table. Is it because the car hop doesn't have the added task of taking your order?
I'd rather no one received a tip just so everyone dealt with the same rules.
I know the look on the face when they hear my order and decide I'm not worth their time. It pits my interests against theirs, instead of aligning them as tipping is supposed to do.
Tipping makes me their employer willy-nilly. I didn't pick them, I can't fire them (at least not without considerable difficulty). But I have to pay them, although we have no agreement as to details. Its a crazy system.
P. S. I am the "adult white male" as in the article.
Also, as a brown male, reading the article made it pretty clear why I receive markedly poorer service when I'm with my family (also brown), vs. when I'm eating out with my white friends. Being reminded of racism in this way is, well... pretty stressful.
This essay was also posted on Reddit, and I saw similar responses from African American folks there: even though a lot of them tip pretty generously, they can sense that servers don't look forward to being at their table providing service, as if they're anticipating a bad tip.
Likewise sometimes I am in my car and someone looks over at me. I think "wow if I was a girl I would think they are looking at me because of that!" (Because I tend to check out girls!)
My point is although there is no question you are subject to the actions you (and others describe) but it also could be the case that it happens for other reasons that have nothing to do with skin color. Make sense?
Lastly, while I am white, I am of a religion that has a percentage of the population that is biased against us. But for some reason I haven't really experienced that bad treatment that I can link to my religion. I think this is because my last name doesn't scream the religion as some others do.
One more thing. I'm married to a physician and I dated a physician. And when we are together people always assume I am the doctor or also a doctor. And they always seem to defer to me rather than my wife (or in the past girlfriend). My wife also has been treated by nurses without respect something they don't do to the male doctors.
I think that is a bit of a stretch. There is concrete evidence that explains this happens a lot, and it's clear that racism [1] and sexism [2] are a key part of it.
And -- not as scientific here -- but there's intuition I have gathered that's backed up with 10 years of extensive dining out in various arrangements and settings, and anecdotes from my server friends about the politics in restaurants.
[1] http://tippingresearch.com/uploads/Business_Considerations_T...
[2] http://tippingresearch.com/uploads/ServerAppearance1-3-08.pd...
I was saying that there are times that it happens that have nothing to do with skin color and would happen (maybe the waiter is having a bad day who knows) to anyone.
Like the man in the car next to me (assuming he is not gay) if I was a hot girl I would automatically assume it's because I'm a hot girl. Of course this is not the same as saying that men don't look at a girl in the car next to them!
Of course that's a possibility -- servers have bad days, sure, but these isolated incidents don't negate the need to solve the bigger problems of wage disparity in restaurants (cooks being paid half what servers earn -- close to minimum wage in some instances, no matter that they went through culinary school and incurred huge debt), the problems of racism and sexism, etc. I feel non-tipping is the easy and obvious solution here.
Also, the actual act of tipping is uncomfortable. I have to write an amount that I feel adequately compensates the person for their effort and time. I really have no idea what that number should be. 15-20% is completely arbitrary. If I feel the service was bad, I now have to do a passive-aggressive low tip. And you know they are just going to think you tipped low because you're cheap, not because their service was bad.
I'm not defending tipping I'm just curious how you feel about it in other cases.
What prejudice? As the article says, if you look like the profile of a "bad tipper", you get shitty service. If you don't order alcohol/desserts/appetizers, shitty service. Split a large portion to not waste food? Shitty service.
It's a shitty system.
I agree that the first part happens. Not sure I agree with the second.
Even a small negative externality is reason enough to ditch a system that offers no benefit.
The most important bit of research he relates has nothing to do with the servers, but with the customers - an individual customer will tip about the same regardless of service. This means that the incentive for waitstaff is not to serve everyone better in hopes of better tips, but to compete for the perceived highest value customers (white business men) and provide them with the best service. I don't have links to studies but this confirms what I've heard from friends in the restaurant industry - the strategy is to serve those with the highest expected tip better.
At this point the disconnect should be obvious. A customer who tips well but doesn't fall into the "expected good tipper" category will not get good service so how is the system "incentivizing good service" in a general sense?
Except it only incentivizes good services for white men without accents who drink and dress well. That doesn't seem like such a great benefit.
Seems like the equivalent of a software system that only works on weekday afternoons, except in March where it works every other Sunday too (maybe).
Possibly, but I don't think that is generally true. I eat at a (pretty damn touristy) place two or three times a month and the owner behind the counter is always overjoyed to see me and throws in extra stuff for free all the time. Now, in that particular case it isn't tip motivate, but he absolutely appreciates the regular reliable business. I think that regular reliable business is most important to many small restaurants, which is why you see so many of them offering punch/stamp cards to regulars. If you frequent small locations, it becomes clear pretty quickly that the business owners really do love regulars.
If preferring repeat customers was actually bad for business, the business owner would be well within their rights to forbid tipping at their business and instead pay their staff the proper minimum wage. I suspect this isn't ever actually the case; either repeat business makes up a significant chunk of your business and is more valuable for its reliability, or your business is so touristy that the occasional regular getting better service has no significant impact. Maybe there is some sort of middle-ground between those two, but I suspect it is elusive.
Finally, in the video linked elsewhere in this thread, Bruce McAdams talks about the effects tipping has on turnover among waitstaff (it increases it). This is probably detrimental to serving repeat business better.
Edit: For that matter, what if you're a repeat customer that tips lower than average? Now the interests of the owner and the waitstaff are at odds. The owner wants you to come back and spend more, but the waitstaff will treat you (relatively) poorly.
Server turnover in practice is unlikely to hurt repeat business unless we are talking about unprecedented amounts of turnover on the period of days or weeks. A churn period of several months or more is unlikely to dramatically harm repeat traffic. Certainly I have never stopped visiting a bar because my preferred bartender left.
Furthermore, presumably if a repeat customer repeatedly gets poor service, then that customer does not care about the quality of service. I get fucking awful service from the coffee shop I usually spend my Saturday mornings in (perhaps because I only take my coffee black, or perhaps because I refuse to tip baristas...), but I don't care because I don't need frequent coffee refills and I mostly like them for their decor.
tl;dr: If tipping really is bad for business, then the business owners would be fighting it. They're not stupid, knowing their customers and maintaining a customer base is their livelihood.
Is that based on things said in this one article or did the article point to actual research attesting to that fact? (I didn't read the entire multi part article so I'd like to know if you've identified where that fact came from).
Now, they will not necessarily get a bigger tip or even necessarily get a tip if they do a wonderful job, but it does make some people.
It's absurd that we have tipping at all. Why is this custom rampant in some countries, and totally unknown in others?
They meant black people (read racial slur here) are cheap and don't tip. They didn't mean people from the Great White North.
"So now we have a restaurant industry where African-Americans are demeaned as “Canadians”, in reference to another group which is considered by US servers to be low tippers."
"So now we have a restaurant industry where African-Americans are demeaned as “Canadians”, in reference to another group which is considered by US servers to be low tippers."
Me, I tip based on services rendered. Do a perfunctory job and get around 7%. Be reasonably attentive and get 10%. Treat me like you want me to come back and get 15%. Screw things up and take too long to even bring me the check and get nothing.
I could honestly not care at all what persuasion the waitstaff happens to be. I'm looking for food service and that transcends pretty much all the rest of the nonsense. Do that right and profit from it. Don't and, well, torment someone else in your next line of work.
The real problem is the low wages that waiters and waitresses get so they are forced to rely on tips to live.
Is that how american people phrase things? (On the bright side I now know that my native language isn't alone having very deep rooted problems when you try to be equally friendly -- its a lot easier to equally offend everyone...)
Pooling seems like a decent compromise, though as the author states, letting the employer control the tip jar...
I live in Europe and I always thought the tipping system in the USA is a bit backward. Mind you - we DO tip over-here, there's just no unwritten X% rule, and tipping is not mandatory. Service is always included and people are able to live from what they are paid by their employer. I do tip depending on the service (which sometimes means no tipping at all). Also in a lot of places, all tips are collected centrally and then evenly split at the end of a night without intervention from the employer (I worked in pubs as a student).
We are often surprised to see the corruption in other countries, and yet to them paying a government official "To Insure Promptness" is completely normal.
Same thing here: it seems normal to pay someone -who is employed by someone else- to do some various tasks.
In the case of tipping, it has been pointed out that a demonstrated willingness to tip results in the server putting your interests above those of the other customers in the restaurant. How is this any different than bribing in effect?
Yes this is the case, in majority of cases the word bribe only applies to officials of public trust, which most of the time means government.
>In the case of tipping, it has been pointed out that a demonstrated willingness to tip results in the server putting your interests above those of the other customers in the restaurant. How is this any different than bribing in effect?
What you are describing is a tip as opposed to a bribe above and is normal as opposed to being a crime. The biggest distinguishers are:
1. The is person already getting paid to do what you are paying them to 2. They are non-govermentment / public trust
If both are true, it is a tip, not a bribe.
Reward hard-working waitstaff
Leave a large tip for a cute member of the waitstaff and get their phone #
Arguments against tipping:
Kitchen staff isn't rewarded, front of the house is
Staff will be lazier and less attentive without tips
It is not uncommon for the night's tips to be shared amongst all of the employees at the restaurant.
I don't enjoy fighting for the bartenders attention with the attractive person on the other end of the bar; tipping is how I level that playing field.
If you're rude to the owner, you're toast. "The customer is always right" does not apply. Maybe you're wrong, and they'll tell you to your face. "White wine? With your steak, sir?" can be absolutely dripping with disdain.
I think it's better that way. They can be more honest and not have to pretend they actually like you. The way they treat customers they don't know might border on hostile, but they will go to great lengths to accommodate their regulars.
Too lazy to read? Watch this 20 min TEDx talk which was linked to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOk2C4n4eMQ
In a tipout system, what started as one enterprise (a restaurant selling its food & hospitality to its guests), has now spawned two completely new, concurrent businesses: the business of the server selling the perception of extra attention to the guest for tips; and the business of the kitchen workers selling favors to the servers for tipout. These additional, parasitic businesses are not focused on improving the quality of the original enterprise. Instead, these secondary businesses are focused on maximizing income using short term, and proven effective, means. ...
Over the last couple years, another alternative has started to emerge — the lawful tip pool. In this model, the business is permitted by the law of the land to distribute its tips among every member of its team, including kitchen workers. In the Ninth District (the western US), one court decision (Cumbie v. Woody Woo) has paved the way for this, but the US Department of Labor has attempted to nullify that decision by issuing new regulations. It’s not clear that the Labor department is actually allowed to trump the court, and the matter is not yet clearly resolved.
Back in 2006, however, it was still definitely illegal for a tip pool to include back-of-house workers. The only legal way that tip revenue could be distributed among the whole team was for it to not be tip revenue. Instead, it had to be an amount charged by the business for its service. In other words, a service charge.
Disclosures:
I worked in the service industry for years while also holding an engineering internship and getting a EE degree. There were many people who were not my regulars that made me feel special on days where there wasn't much else to.
Buying a phone number? This seems weird.