Why Tipping Should (And May) Be Made Illegal

http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant-part-6-why-tipping-should-and-may-be-made-illegal/

by signed0 • 13 years ago

60 88 13 years ago

jayporter.com

astrodust3• 13 years ago

The slight against "Canadians" is probably that the customary tip is 12% to 15% in Canada, and for whatever reason Americans tend to prefer 20% to 30% for the same thing.

It's absurd that we have tipping at all. Why is this custom rampant in some countries, and totally unknown in others?

mhurron• 13 years ago

The article clearly laid out what they were talking about when they said 'Canadians.'

They meant black people (read racial slur here) are cheap and don't tip. They didn't mean people from the Great White North.

RogerL• 13 years ago

The point was that both groups do not tip as well as other groups. 'Canadian' is substituted for black just to avoid having to say what they really think. IOW, the server would say the same thing if it was a table of Canadians.

arbutus• 13 years ago

It's referring to both. It says in the article that Canadians are also thought of as leaving low tips, and it's presumably easier to get away with calling black people Canadian than the other way around.

taway2012• 13 years ago

No, they did (last phrase of quote below).

"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."

TwiztidK• 13 years ago

I assumed that they were saying that Canadians didn't tip well and waitstaff used that as a euphemism for anyone they don't expect to tip well. That's just the way I read it, I could be wrong.

sharkbot• 13 years ago

Actually, the article specifically mentions Canadians as poor 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."

asdasf3• 13 years ago

The reason is that servers get paid still up here, so there is no reason for tips. We tip anyways because we do everything that they do in the US, regardless of whether or not it is appropriate. It is becoming an issue now where servers up here are expecting higher and higher tips because they hear about tips servers in the US get. When you are getting paid a normal wage and bitching about getting a 22% tip on top of that, something is wrong.

pixie_• 13 years ago

I got the feeling my server was offended when I didn't order wine or a dessert last friday when I went out to a nice restaurant. F- tipping, it makes both sides of the table into jerks.

CapitalistCartr• 13 years ago

I get that often; I'm a vegetarian, which results in me often ordering a cheaper meal, and I usually drink water, unless the tea is decent. I order their tea if it isn't nasty. So the impression for the staff is that I'm cheap, which is far from the truth; I'm an exceptionally generous tipper.

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.

joonix3• 13 years ago

I don't drink and nor large groups of friends I have, we're all used to this. As soon as a table demonstrates it's not ordering alcohol, waiters basically disappear for the night or give us attitude. Tipping is stressful for everyone. It's nonsense and broken. Non-tipping systems work just fine everywhere else.

larrys5• 13 years ago

Why is it stressful for the customer? For what reason?

bluedino3• 13 years ago

Arguments for tipping:

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

sukuriant2• 13 years ago

Counter argument against the anti-tipping one:

It is not uncommon for the night's tips to be shared amongst all of the employees at the restaurant.

a_c_s• 13 years ago

Counter argument: Waitstaff in Europe offer significantly poorer service than those in the USA

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

Many places practice some degree of tip pooling which often gets split out to the kitchen staff as well.

adeaver• 13 years ago

In a lot of places (in the US) this is illegal. Plus it screws the waitstaff so is bad practice.

Fuzzwah• 13 years ago

Way to attempt to get the obvious crux of the article while completely missing the point that it is way more complex than people think. Seriously, read the 6 parts and get your head around the depth of the topic.

Too lazy to read? Watch this 20 min TEDx talk which was linked to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOk2C4n4eMQ

bluedino3• 13 years ago

Read it a while back. I'm fine with the tipping situation in the US.

desas• 13 years ago

Leave a large tip for a cute member of the waitstaff and get their phone #

Buying a phone number? This seems weird.

mross462• 13 years ago

My argument for tipping: Make somebody who is working feel special if they are making you feel special.

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.

koenigdavidmj• 13 years ago

We have better ways of achieving social change that making the undesired behaviour illegal.

msluyter• 13 years ago

If you haven't read the previous 5 articles in the series, I highly recommend them. Fascinating and eye opening stuff.

nohuck132• 13 years ago

TL;DR: the tipping system has a negative externality- some customers receive worse service because they "look" like bad tippers, according to the prejudices of the waitstaff (e.g. by being black). This negative externality is so harmful, we'd actually do less harm overall by just getting rid of tipping.

I agree that the first part happens. Not sure I agree with the second.

AlexandrB4• 13 years ago

What are the positive effects, if any, of the tipping system then?

Even a small negative externality is reason enough to ditch a system that offers no benefit.

larrys5• 13 years ago

"ditch a system that offers no benefit"

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).

nohuck132• 13 years ago

There's a benefit in incentivizing good service (assuming it leads to better service, which my anecdotal experience at tipping vs service charge restaurants makes me think it does). We tend to marginalize things like this when big societal issues like racism come up, but it's definitely part of the equation.

dnskw• 13 years ago

If a waiter/waitress does a good job they will be more likely to get a better tip. If a waiter/waitress does a bad job they will get smaller / no tip.

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.

btilly2• 13 years ago

I've always wondered. In what legal sense is a tip different from a bribe?

jlgreco6• 13 years ago

You don't usually hand the traffic cop a hundred after he lets you off with a warning...

voidlogic2• 13 years ago

Are you serious? A bribe goes to a public official and is designed to encourage the official to put your interests above the public's interests (or more cynically, "realize" your interests happen to be aligned with the public interest ;) ). Wheras; a tip is a reward for someone doing well at serving you in regards to something they are already supposed to do for you- and they are usually a private party.

btilly2• 13 years ago

Public officials are frequent recipients of bribes, but there are many classic examples of bribes that went to other parties. For instance the Pakistan cricket spot-fixing scandal of 2010 involved athletes taking bribes from bookmakers to underperform.

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?

Frozenlock• 13 years ago

Legally they are not the same, but culturally...

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.

squozzer• 13 years ago

Having worked a little in the industry, tips should be abolished. Generally people tip the same unless the service was terrible (not necessarily slowness, but demeanor). For the most part, the amount of the tip is outside the server's (or pizza delivery person's) control.

Pooling seems like a decent compromise, though as the author states, letting the employer control the tip jar...

howeyc• 13 years ago

I remember travelling to countries where tipping is a no-no, what a breath of fresh air.

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.

sim0nk• 13 years ago

Sometimes a worker will ensure the job is well done in order to receive a better tip. For example - a wait staff may be more attentive knowing that they will receive an appropriate tip - however if they disregard their customers they accept that the tip will be little to non-existent.

rjbwork• 13 years ago

Sonic car hops make $2.25/hr just like waiters, difference being they are almost always reimbursed to min wage since nobody tips.

fnbaptiste• 13 years ago

It annoys me that I feel I have to tip. If I'm not ordering alcohol it's pretty much certain I'm gonna get bad service, but I still have to tip. And even if I decide to tip less because the bad service, I'm just furthering the idea that people who aren't drinking will tip less. And it annoys me that no matter how bad the service is there's still social pressure to tip the usual or I'm a cheapskate.

sologoub2• 13 years ago

While this article brings up some disturbing points that I was completely oblivious to, discussions like "<something> should be illegal" make me cringe.

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.

astrodust3• 13 years ago

If not illegal, then why not policy? There's ways of carrot-and-sticking this to the correct course without having to make it outright illegal.

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.

sologoub2• 13 years ago

I agree, some incentive/penalty would be better than blanket prohibition. Santa Monica I believe actually requires a $0.10 charge per bag. But that is very different from saying "you must bring a re-usable bag."

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...

jtc3312• 13 years ago

Perhaps the better question is whether or not it's legitimate for government to attempt to change social mores like that. As a corollary does a "behavior modification" style policy actually change how people feel? Or just how they act? And if it only changes how they act, have we really accomplished the desired end?

aet3• 13 years ago

How can service members see the upside of any sales without tips? Bar has a big night and does $20K? Sorry, here is your $20/hr instead of your $500 in tips. Can any bartenders comment?

joonix3• 13 years ago

There's no reason why the customer should bear that burden rather than the owner. The owner can figure out how to implement a profit sharing/incentivization scheme just like every other business! If I work at an Apple store and we sell 5,000 iPhones in a day and still make the same hourly wage, should I be mad at the customers for not tipping?

aet3• 13 years ago

I think a "profit sharing" system for a restaurant would be pretty complicated. Plus tipping to me is somewhat like a price discrimination system. Cheap skates don't tip or pay the minimum, people that can afford tip more, drunks tip the most. So the same service is being provided at different prices. If you throw that out the window, you might never get those dollars back.

koffiezet• 13 years ago

Because on a slow night, they will still get $20/hr...

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).

aet3• 13 years ago

The thing is, the establishment can't afford $20 on a slow night.

uslic001• 13 years ago

I used to be a waiter on Mackinac Island Michigan. We always hated getting Canadian or European customers as they rarely tipped anything. We also hated getting a table of old ladies for the same reason. There were very few blacks visiting the island so I can't comment about how they tip as a group. The manager of the restaurant definitely used table assignments to reward some waiters and punish other waiters. The waiters had to share a percentage of their tips with the bartenders but otherwise tips were not shared between waiters. Tipping has many drawbacks but I doubt waiters in the US would want it eliminated given how much money they can make when they get a good tipper who drinks a lot of alcohol. That makes up for a lot of bad tippers.

DonGateley• 13 years ago

Like so many things in an ideal world he's right. However you can't get there from here. Far too many employers in tipping services discount the employees pay to where the tips make the take home approach a living wage. Getting those employers to increase the cost of their services to cover lost tips with extra wages is not the least bit realistic.

wkearney99• 13 years ago

Bullshit, all around. If you want to pay your employees more then fine, integrate that into your pricing structure. But do not try and play political correctness games with your customers, because you'll lose.

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.

youngtaff• 13 years ago

Oh and what he proposes instead is a service charge - screw that I've paid for my food, surely the cost of serving me is included in that?

The real problem is the low wages that waiters and waitresses get so they are forced to rely on tips to live.

marssaxman• 13 years ago

I think the service charge is a bridge idea. In the long run it'd be simpler to pay servers reasonable wages and roll the price into the cost of the meal, but that's a big step; in the short run it would be much easier to switch from "optional, customer-calculated tip" to "mandatory, restaurant-calculated service charge".

serverhorror• 13 years ago

OT: Wtf "black customers" Kind of discriminating... (I get it's not about black people but still keeps the mindset going where non-caucasian are thought of as lesser persons)

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...)

Why Tipping Should (And May) Be Made Illegal

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