Why tip? People say that it gives the waiter an economic incentive to do his job better. Because of this incentive, the meal will get to the table faster and the experience is generally more enjoyable.
Makes sense, no?
A waitress who takes your food 10 meters from the bench to your table deserves a tip, yet a man who spent weeks dealing with clients and sorting out technical issues for a large engineering project doesn’t? If tipping is to reward hard work and good service, then the engineer has done a hell of a lot more of both than the waitress. Why don’t we tip doctors? Why don’t we tip the mailman, bus driver, and dry cleaner?
The answer is because it tipping is nothing more than a tradition. It’s so locked in as tradition, that instead of tipping existing as a form of authentic personal charity, many people will take out their cell phones to calculate exactly how much 14% of the bill is. People who are short on money still feel obligated to tip, because the waiter would be insulted if he wasn’t paid extra. Countries like England, Japan, and Australia have no custom of tipping. In Switzerland, tipping is expected, but not more than 1.5% of the bill. In some countries, offering a tip would be considered condescending or demeaning.
Tipping became standard when a few rich people started doing it. It spread throughout the upperclass as a “socially responsible” thing to do and made people feel good for helping out the poor. This idea turned into an etiquette (read: required rules of society). The middle class inevitably emulated the rich, and the poor inevitably emulated the middle class.
Some take the stance that you should tip to get waiters up to minimum wage—but before you do this, you have to ask yourself why they are paid below minimum wage. Employers are allowed to pay waiters below minimum wage because tips make up a significant percentage of their income.
By tipping waiters to get them up to minimum wage, you are perpetuating the very system you seek to defeat. The more that you tip, the further restaurant workers’ real wages will fall. All you’re doing is increasing the restaurant owners’ profits by eliminating one of his highest costs and throwing away good money. It’s the employer’s job to pay his employees for their services, not the customer’s.
2 Comments
As someone who has worked in the food service industry for 20 years now I have to put my two cents in here. But first, I am very curious what prompted you to post this in the first place. Have you ever worked in the food service industry? Have you ever even worked in a customer service field? If you have you will know that people in general are sometimes very hard to please, especially when it comes to their dining out experience. Being a server in a nice establishment is a very stressful job if you care about your performance and your customers experience. There is so much more involved than carrying food a few meters to your customers table. In the restaurant where I work everything is made from scratch and the menu is very eclectic. The wine list has about 150 different kinds of wine and we carry at least 50 different beers. Then there are several different liquors as well. We not only have to be knowledgeable about all of these products, we have to be able to discern our customers likes and dislikes, allergies, and preferences and be able to recommend foods, wines, beers and liquors that they will enjoy and that will complement each other. There are also many “rules” involved in the proper way to serve food, clear dishes, serve wine and basically care for the table. When a customer has a problem we have to know how to handle it efficiently and make that customer happy as quickly as possible. We also have to put up with people talking down to us, treating us like we are idiots or looking down their noses at us as “just the help”. It is not a glorious job nor is it an easy one. We usually have to put up with not only bad attitudes from guests but also bad attitudes from the kitchen and other staff as well, and we have to do it with a smile on our face and a friendly demeanor. I would challenge anyone who thinks it is an easy job to try it for a bit and see for yourself.
Now having said that, yes it is true servers only make $2.13 an hour. We depend on tips to bring our pay up to at least minimum wage. While it is the case that it is generally a business owners responsibility to pay his employees, we are there for our customers and to do everything within our power to ensure they have a wonderful experience. Why should it not be partly their responsibility to make sure that we are compensated for everything that we do for them? I have gone above and beyond my job description several times to make a customer happy. Would I do that if I came to work that day knowing I was only going to be paid $8.00 an hour no matter what I did? Would I have gone in the back and made fresh squeezed lemonade for that customer or would I have told them “I’m sorry we don’t have lemonade”. I honestly would not want to go and eat at a restaurant where the servers weren’t working for tips. And believe me, as a server I am a good tipper and I reap the rewards of being such when I go to my favorite places. At the same time, I have left very crappy tips for very crappy service but I also left a note explaining to that server exactly why they got a crappy tip.
Now to address the comment about Switzerland, and other European countries and Canada do it as well, tipping a lower percentage, it is solely because the servers there are paid a higher hourly wage. If you seek to implement that here, I have no problem with servers making a higher hourly and being tipped less. But one thing you have not taken into account on the business owners part, not only do they not have to pay that hourly wage, if the servers income depends on how high their check average is they are going to have more incentive to try to up sell their customers. If I am making in tips 15 to 20 percent of the customers check then of course I want to try to make their check as high as possible. I am going to try harder to talk them into the more expensive bottle of wine, or talk them into getting the salad or appetizer that they may not have wanted initially. When I do my dessert presentation I am going to try my hardest to describe them in a way that is irresistible. The bottom line is we live in a capitalist society. A restaurant is a business and profit is the goal. What would be your alternative to tipping and how would it affect not only the quality of service received but the restaurants profit margin?
Oh and another thing, we don’t tip doctor’s and other such professionals because theirs is a field where we really hope they are always doing their best because there is a little more at stake than whether or not you are enjoying your steak.