First of all: no, I am not racist, bigoted, or prejudiced. It is also not my intention to use this thread as a vehicle to purposely denigrate a specific ethnicity group or culture, nor is it my intention to make a sweeping generalization. Having said that, there would appear to be a rather commonly-held stereotype that a significant percentage of black restaurant customers either a) Do not tip, or b) are poor tippers.
As I stated in this thread, I delivered pizzas for 3 years while a student at the University of Cincinnati in the late 1980’s. As you might expect, customers consisted of folks from many different backgrounds & ethnicities (white, black, Indian, Asian, etc.) Due to our close proximity to Avondale, I would estimate 30% of our clientele were black.
Most customers tipped between 0.50 and $1.00. Even “poor” college students usually tipped. During the three years I worked there, I never once received a tip from a black customer. Not even a penny. I know this sounds like I’m lying, but I swear I am not.
On page two in the same thread Dan Turk and Audrey Levins shared similar experiences.
So here are my questions:
If you’re a waiter or waitress, have you observed a correlation between blacks and poor tipping (as compared to what your average tip is)?
If you believe there is a correlation between blacks and poor tipping, do you have any ideas on why this might be the case?
And again, racist or bigoted comments should not be tolerated in this thread. I have black friends and colleagues whom I respect and admire, and do not wish to denigrate their culture or ethnicity. If this thread turns into something ugly, I’ll ask the mods to close it.
Back when I delivered pizzas I delivered to folks of several backgrounds. They usually tipped about the same, with the exception of one family nobody ever wanted to drive out to deliver to. They lived out in the hills, so to speak, their place was hard to find (few street lights, if any), hard to park at, hard to walk from the “driveway” to the front door due to the abundance of metal crap in the yard, and it smelled horrible. I don’t think the color of their skin had anything to do with the squalor in which they lived. They also tipped extremely poorly ($1 on a $50 order).
Other than that (and most of my deliveries went either to a college campus or folks living near a college campus), folks pretty generally tipped appropriately or better.
I can appreciate your curiosity re your experiences, but you’re essentially asking “are black people cheapskates if they can get away with it?”, which is like asking -
“Are Asian Indians and Orthodox Jews often abusive negotiators to those outside their faith if they can get away with it?”,
"Do middle class Utah based Mormons regularly stiff people dependent on tips when they are outside of Utah?
“Do attractive, middle class American women often have a wildly inflated sense of what they are bringing to the table, and what life owes them?”
The answer to all these questions might be a “yes” quite often, but not always, and it’s bound to be contentious.
Having said this to answer your question re tips, yes in my experience, middle class and lower middle black people do, on average, stiff wait staff more often than other demographic groups, but not always. Upper middle class blacks, and those black people with mixed race groups tip the same as everyone else. It’s mostly only non-upwardly mobile black people that do this.
As someone who danced in strip clubs for over seven years, I will say yes, in my experience blacks are not very good tippers. In fact, it was so bad that I wouldn’t even go up to most black men, not because they were scary or bad or that I’m racist, just because I knew they’d want me to do flips for one buck.
And I heard this from other dancers as well. In fact, some of the black girls were even more reluctant to approach them because the guys thought they’d do even more for the buck. Heh, I knew one black girl who had a “white guy only” philosophy. Maybe not right, but that’s how it was.
In seven years there were a few exceptions, but not many.
My son actually dreads waiting on black people because they usually tip little to none.
What about the black people on the boards? How do you feel about this generalization? What percentage do you tip? If you don’t tip the standard 15% - 20%, why? What would cause you to stiff your waitperson? Also, what is your economic background – middle class? Upper class? Poverty level? Student?
I always tip at least 15%, and it’s always amusing to see the shocked looks when I do. Rookie may be right to some extent. If a waiter/waitress gives a black person subpar service because they don’t think he’ll leave a tip, then they are probably not going to get a tip.
Now I’m sure that some people can do their job without letting their assumption that they won’t get a tip show, but if you’re at the point where you’re “dreading” serving a certain group, then how much effort are you going to take to make sure they have a nice dining experience?
Astro: I appreciate your comments, and would normally agree with you, i.e. while there’s often a grain of truth behind many stereotypes, it would be in bad taste to make an issue of them. However, my (albeit limited?) experience showed an extremely strong correlation between blacks & no tipping. I’m still in bewilderment after all these years. I keep asking myself: Why? It didn’t have anything to do with the price of the pizza. (This can be easily proven, BTW.) And I treated all customers with kindness & respect regardless of ethnicity. I’m at a loss for an answer.
I’m an excellent tipper, twenty-five percent or more when I’m being waited on in a restaurant. I don’t tip at coffee shops because I only get coffee, not a triple-decaf-skinny-no foam, no whip latte.
I’ve stated before on these boards, I even tip well for bad service. I believe that if the service was bad and a poor tip was deserved, the server would probably just assume I tipped badly because I’m black.
I don’t know what it is but two of my aunts are bad tippers and one is an OK tipper (she uses an outdated tip card and I think it only calculates ten and fifteen percent). My mother is an excellent tipper, as is my brother. My husband is also a great tipper but his mother is a bad tipper. I wonder if it has something to do with this culture I keep hearing about…[sub]kidding![/sub]
Omega Glory: You make a good point, in that there could be a snowball effect, i.e. no tipping leads to bad service, which leads to no tipping, which leads to bad service, ad infinitum. But I can honestly say I treated all customers with utmost courtesy & respect, even when I knew I’d be stiffed.
That was not my experience as a waitress. My experience was that working class people tipped better than yuppies, and a higher percentage of my black customers fit into the working class category.
On a side note, I can tell you from working as a waitress is a tourist place in Europe (where I made my wages primarily in tips, as in the U.S.) that English and German customers were bad tippers. Americans were, not surprisingly, the best and therefore my favorites.
In my experience, there is almost no correlation between good service and good tips or bad service and bad tips. I heard an unscientific experiment on this on the radio some time ago that bore this out. People are either good tippers or bad tippers and the quality of the service has little effect on it.
I’ll just reiterate that this is the opposite of my experience. In life (not just in waitressing) I find that poorer people are more generous with what they have. They also seem to have more appreciation for people who have to work a crappy job to make a living.
That may be true for a lot of people. Now I only have a sample size of one here, but I know that there have been instances where a waiter’s bad service ended in them not getting a tip from my mother. Since they had no way to know that she’d originally intended to tip, they may have assumed that she stiffed them because she was black. As I said before, I always tip (I just double the tax on the bill, which is 8% in my area to find my minimum, then add on to that amount based on the service) and I encourage my family to do the same, but can’t force them of course. Maybe at least some of these people aren’t aware that tipping is standard. If you’re part of the “first generation”, so to speak, of a group that goes to the resturant, and you go with other “first generation” people, then you might not know how tipping works.
He’s a good waiter and never gives a customer “sub-par” service. But he’s almost invariably snubbed by black customers. And he’s about as far from a bigot as anyone I’ve ever known.
In my experience as a waitress (at a Johnny Rocket’s in a downtown mall), my experience correlates with the OP’s. There were two weekends a year when NO ONE wanted to work - Black Expo and Circle City Classic (historically black colleges have football games in town). Not even the black servers wanted to work.
Age and (apparent) income level of the customers had very little to do with the tip amounts on those weekends. You could bust your ass on a Saturday night (5p-10p) and come away with $40-$50, instead of the usual ~$80. Yes, young arrogant idiots were the worst (they started out by complaining about the prices, and it all went downhill from there), but bluehairs weren’t much better. You always had some surprises, though.
Well, it is a fact that several local shops will no longer deliver lunch orders to our office building because ‘the blacks don’t tip.’
Now, mind you, am only providing their feedback, which they expressly and openly shared with out security staff (because they usually accepted the orders and called the person desk to come and get it).
I’ve passed the word on to all the folks here that there were no more deliveries from x,y and z, because ‘no one tips’ the drivers.
Cliques are very black and white around here, and no one in the black clique - spare one or two - denied that they stiff the driver daily.
Look, this is anecdotal evidence, and while an accurate reflection of what goes on around here is not meant to pass judgement. It’s just an observation sans judgement.
I tip ~20% (18-23%) more if it’s deserved (I’ve left 50% tips) I tip bartenders outrageously because I usually only order soda. I tip baristas. I will stiff on a tip if the service sucks. (It’s only happened a very few times). My sister is about the same.
My parents are horrible tippers, I cannot understand why (my father claims that it’s because he’s trying to overthrow the tipping system, and refuses to listen to arguments as to why it should not be started with the person who just brought you your food rather than with the person who paid them the POS salary in the first place…this is a man who will go miles out of his way to not cross a picket line, but waitstaff are the one class of working people that he seems to have no problem with screwing. My mom will put down the number you tell her, but if left to her own devices, 8-10% tops.) Juanita Tech, maybe it is the mystical “culture” at work…strange how my parents could be in it and my siblings not.
This sort of implies I don’t tip delivery people. I tip them, too. Usually in the 2 - 3 dollar range, more if it’s a really big order, like if we have people over or something.