I choose to make it less complex. The way I see it, the bill at an eating/drinking establishment is simply for the food and drink that I’ve consumed. The social contract is that I directly pay the person who brought my food or drink to me for their service. (This includes wait staff, bartenders, delivery drivers, etc.)
Not tipping is not some high-minded protest against an unfair system. It’s just stiffing someone who provided a service for you, and that’s a dick move.
The arrangements prefer to be referred to as “undocumented.” You realize that due to mandated distortions in pricing that the cash-only economy is relatively large?
How is that less complex then paying a single, stated amount?
So do you tip a rate based on # of dishes ordered, amount of time you were in the restaurant, distance delivery driver had to drive, etc. or do you still tip a % of the bill? Just curious, because if if tipping was truly just a fee-for-service as you’re describing, it doesn’t really make sense for you to tip $5 if you ordered a pasta and $10 if you ordered a steak from the same restaurant, given that the service involved is the same.
Sure, and the mafia like to be thought of as a social club and their activities to be referred to as “dispute mediation” and “waste disposal”. I think discouraging or at least not actively supporting such activities is a perfectly reasonable stand to take.
Look how hard it was to get rid of the rise of organized crime after prohibition. Look at the disaster that the war or drugs has been. It’s very difficult to stamp out rational responses to institutionalized incentives even if said incentives were unintended.
That said, I definitely do not encourage illegal activity. Be it politically popular or not.
I don’t mean it is complex for the customer, just that it is a concept that is interwoven into many layers of the restaurant economy. It impacts the relationship between customer and server, server and back of house, price sensitivity, staffing decisions, all sorts of things besides “the owner is just trying to screw over the wait staff.”
I think at really high-end restaurants, the tip is distributed among the various people who are responsible for caring for you (not just the server). Of course that’s probably less than 1% of restaurants. I’ve eaten at one such in my life.
Mom grew up during the Great Depression. Her attitude was that you have to work hard to get anything, and she expected others to do likewise. I only saw her tip a penny once, I think, but she may have done so when I wasn’t around.
It’s interesting to me that people mention talking to the manager as an alternative. If I were in that position, which would I choose? I get the tip, but the manager hears what a terrible job I’m doing—or I don’t get a tip, but the manager doesn’t realize I’m slipping up? I guess if I’m a poor worker and I’m always getting complaints from customers, one more might get me fired…losing a tip is preferable in that case. On the other hand if it’s a one off, the manager might scold me (but start watching me more) and I’d still get a tip. Hmm. To be honest if I complained to the manager and the waitress got fired I’d feel really terrible…I mean, now she has no job?
I’m drawing a blank. Is standing for the National Anthem part of a social contract? Is everyone agreeing to pay to build roads part of it? Is keeping your grass cut so you don’t drive down property values? Honestly, I’m the son of a former waitress and I bet if I said, “People should tip more,” she would probably say, “Yes, but waitresses should earn it, too.”
Going back to the list of 4 things, maybe you’re reading them joined by “and” and then thinking I mean “I have a long list and if you fail any, waitress, you get nothing for a tip.” No. My intention was to point out just a few of the myriad ways waitstaff helps diners enjoy their meals. “She may do this…or this…or that…or this…” (and more) as a way of explaining their value.
Of course.
IMO there are probably dozens of reasons why people tip. Has anybody yet mentioned that “flash the cash” aspect, where a man impresses his date by tipping big? Or the obligatory tip when a large group goes to a restaurant? I wonder if there are differences when it comes to gender, race, religion, age, economic status, occupation, and other things.
I once worked with a guy who said he routinely tips 50% for reasonable service. But if it isn’t good, he said, he starts deducting. A bunch of us went for lunch one day. The waitress took his order and left the table a few moments later. Thirty seconds passed. “Where’s the food? So slow! I’m going to have to adjust my tip. This is ridiculous…”
And here’s something from the UK:
Things most likely to mean you leave a higher tip:
If they were polite
If they had put more effort into their work than they really needed to
If they were friendly and chatty
If they smiled
If they appeared to be extremely busy but still completed my work to a high standard
If they had completed the work earlier or quicker than expected
If they looked smart and tidy
I asked something out of the ordinary of them
If they were wearing a nice uniform
If they were attractive or I fancied them
I considered starting a sister thread and calling it, “Tip or no tip?” just about which professions or services you think deserve consideration. I used to read this guy’s photography reviews—his site has ads of course. Scroll down See where he says, “Buy me a coffee?”
I read it as “why people tip.” Maybe those are reasons that people tip more, but on its own it sounds like you expect exceptional treatment to leave a tip.
In fact, I agree with (most of) the list from the UK, which is when people leave a higher tip (that #10 has got to go although I think that is the reality of it). I also remember reading that TGIFriday’s staff wear “flair” because it correlates to higher tips, and servers who squat down to your level at the table also get higher tips.
Might as well add “I voted for Trump. And your sister is fat.”, in order to complete a truly rollicksome transaction.
This ^
I tip 20% even if the service is just average. If it really blows, I might dip around 10%, but this is how they get paid.
I hate how tipping has expanded into areas where it hadn’t before, which causes confusion and resentment on my part. But I try to comply with customs and expectations once I know what to expect. The reality is, we live in a service-based economy and culture. Service-based employees are part of what is left of our “working class” and I try to support that as much as possible.
It’s also insurance against them remembering my face and pissing in my food in the future.
Nah, those aren’t relevant to the transaction. Whether you’re gonna tip is the transaction.
Strangely, in all the years I’ve offered this suggestion, no non-tippers have responded to it. Either it’s fatally flawed, or it reveals the problem with non-tippers.
I don’t think it’s fatally flawed. This board picks more nits than a troop of chimpanzees, and if there were a problem with the proposal, it’d be picked to death. That’s what we do.
Much more likely is that non-tippers know what would happen. If you tell someone, in essence, “I don’t plan to pay you for your service in the customary way, because legally I don’t have to,” the person you’re talking to is likely to give you shit service, or deny you service entirely. If they enter into the transaction with full knowledge, you get what you pay for, and don’t get what you won’t pay for.
Non-tippers want to get good service without paying for it. So they keep mum about their plans, and come up with rationalizations how they’re not cheating the wait staff thereby.
But they know how they could clear the air. They choose not to.
I agree with this in so far as dining out is taking place in the service economy. I view take-out in a more retail sense – buying a roasted chicken from a restaurant isn’t much different from buying a roasted chicken from my local grocer and I never think to tip the grocery store an extra 20% on top. Or, for that matter, any of the other retail establishments I may frequent that have suffered from the pandemic. While my local comics/game store might hurt from having to cancel their game nights this means I might consider them first when buying a book (versus buying it from Amazon) as a way of supporting them. But I don’t go in and say “Let me give you 150% of this book’s cost because Covid”. I’m not sure why I’d be expected to do so for a container of enchiladas.
I don’t mind tipping for service but that’s for service, i.e. sitting at a table or having someone deliver to me. I’m not going to tip for transactional retail purchases where I walk to a counter, hand someone $10, they hand me $10 worth of product and then I leave.
I would expect most servers to accept non-tippers as a fact of life and reply “that is certainly your right,” and continue to provide the best service they can. They might not like it, but they’ll do their job.
The BEST service is probably a slightly unrealistic expectation.
I should hope not. If I sell widgets, and you come to my shop and say, “I’d like a widget, but I won’t pay you for it,” I won’t give you a widget, even though selling widgets is my job.
Bosses are often trash, and I can certainly imagine a boss who doesn’t care about their staff who forces wait staff to work for terrible pay (which is what waiting tables without a living wage or tips is). But I can also imagine a non-trash-boss who respects their wait staff and who supports them providing sub-par service to those who don’t want to pay for service.
If I sell widgets, I’ll put the cost of the widget on my sign and hand a widget to whoever gives me that much money instead of expecting people to give me an arbitrary amount of extra money or else tell them that they’re doing it wrong and get mad about it.
Did I mention that tipping culture is jacked? It sure is. Tips are payment for service rendered, but there’s not a set price, so a non-tipper can legally get away with what they’re doing. If they’re honest about it, then the server can enter the transaction fully informed and choose what service to offer accordingly. Non-tippers use the loophole to cheat servers.
It’s not about “getting mad about it.” It’s about telling the person up-front what you’ll pay, and letting them decide what they’ll give you in response.
Right. But selling widgets isn’t a service.