I was cruising a variety of “server” blogs and read articles and reader comments about AfricanAmericans and tipping. Almost all of the servers who took the time to write noted that Black people were generally rude to servers and usually didn’t tip. As I read, I got a bit heated since I’m a great tipper, but in thinking back on dinners with friends I recall a few who would either try to find a reason not to tip, or who would leave the table before the tip was due.
I had a good girlfriend in New York who is well educated and an excellent friend. I refuse to go out to eat with her since she NEVER tips the waitstaff, and I could no longer afford to make up her tips all the time. We would go to restaurants where the average entree ran about $18 to $30 bucks, so with appetizer and drinks, dinner usually ran over $100 for the two of us. The tip had to be at least $20 and depending on the level of service I’d want to go higher, but since I was paying the tip alone going out to eat with “J” was breaking my bank.
I also remember treating a guy who was like a brother to me to dinner and leaving a good tip on the table. I busted this guy actually going back to take the tip. He defended himself by saying the waiter didn’t earn the tip, and that he was going to return it to me. I was horrified and I made sure to put the cash into the waiters hand. I never went out to eat with him again.
I mention these two stories and wonder how many other good people (in everything except tipping) out there are like this.
My parents always tipped well, so I don’t consider cheap/non-tipping behavior to be a generational thing.
I’m really interested in your answers here. I’ve been polling friends on my blog and most of the AA’s who responded to my question seem to share similar experiences to mine and we don’t understand this.
I despise the concept of tipping and I wish more restaurant owners would discourage the practice. I’d much rather pay a higher bill and have a waiter receive a higher wage than worry about performing mental gymnastics after eating a good meal.
Alright here’s how it was explained to me when the topic came up as part of a discussion at a bar, after work, with a group of friends of various skin tone.
Incidentally I am reserving judgment one way or the other and simply reporting one interpretation on the theme.
Ahem.
Since they arrived here generation after generation after generation of African-Americans have spent their working years in the service-providing field, The lucky ones that is, many had it much, much worse off.
From shoe-shine boy, to door man, to housekeeper to restaurant wait staff, AA’s filled these slots tending to the needs of the white establishment who viewed this as the way things was: blacks are the servers, whites are the servees and that’s that. African Americans received little in the way of recognition for what they provided and there wasn’t much in the way of acknowledgement of appreciation let alone some type of monetary display of gratitude.
Fast forward through the centuries, times change -mostly for the better, and many a situation arises where whites are serving blacks.
Well their collective response is: pardon us if we don’t laud your actions by heaping financial reward (again I’m not saying one way or the other whether this is right or wrong, justified or whatever) when my parents, grand-parents, great grand-parents did the same and never got diddly squat. So if the prevailing notion out there is that we’re not the greatest of tippers…meh, we’ve been called worse.
I was a waitress in a family-style Mexican restaurant (entrees were less than 10 bucks) outside of Raleigh, NC for 5 years during the 90s. In my experience, blacks were less likely to tip well. But then again, women dining together, for wont of a better word “rednecks”, people from India (who were by far the worst offenders in this category in my restaurant) and families who came in on Sunday after church were also terrible tippers.
I was a pretty good waitress (made enough to support myself and pay for state college during this time) so my tips did balance out - but I would never have waited tables for minimum wage, it is really really hard work. It I had been willing to work for only minimum wage, there were a ton of nice retail jobs available. I don’t know any restaurant would be able to pay a server what we made up for in tips - the cost would be passed on to the consumer and everything would be terribly expensive. The only reason I put up with the stress, the hurty feet, the angry people (hungry people are very cranky), sweat, hard work because I could make so much money in a short period of time and still go to school.
I am very happy to have a corporate job and no longer have my livlihood dependent on the vagaries of strangers!
I waited tables during and after college, and I have found the “Black people are bad tippers” stereotype to be just that; a stereotype.
I have been over and undertipped by so many various races/genders/age groups that is was hard to keep track of it all over those many years.
It also depends on what kind of a restaurant you’re talking about…typically getting “stiffed” on a tip at a higher-end restaurant is nonexistent for the most part. Hell, the last restaurant I worked at had a prix fixe menu only, and a 20% gratuity was included in the price of your meal, as well as your valet cost.
I have been shafted on tips by African Americans to be sure (oops…I think I just made a bad pun!), but I have also been treated poorly by self-important white businessmen, grumpy old people, high school kids out on prom dates, bitchy women that are impossible to please…
And as for the poster that mentioned hating the tipping business…well, waitstaff only make $2.13/hr, and calculating 15-20% on your bill’s total isn’t THAT hard…plus there’s no way restaurant owners could afford to pay waitstaff an hourly rate that would correlate to what they currently earn in tips right now.
I was a waitress in Connecticut and in South Carolina. I’d never heard of the AA = poor tipping assumption until I moved to South Carolina and applied for a job at Ruby Tuesday. During my first day of training, the other waitresses were talking about how they switched tables around when they saw black people come in, because they were such poor tippers. The manager was nodding sympathetically.
I was horrified, and I never went back. I did work at another restaurant in South Carolina, and I can’t say I remember getting poor tips from one race more than another.
I have no info regarding African Americans tipping, because I live in one of the whitest states around, but I will say this:
For some reason none of us at my restaurant can comprehend, French-Canadians don’t tip well. We know that in Quebec, they use a similar system to the US, a tip of 15% is considered average, and goes up from there for good service, down from there for bad service, and yet…we average between 5% and 10% from them.
I was told (here, I think) that it may be a tax issue, because the total federal and provincial tax in Quebec adds up to almost exactly 15%, so if they are used to just using the tax as the exact amount for tip, it would be under. Well, the total tax here (state plus a 1% local tax) is 11% or 12%. So they are still under that amount.
Maybe it’s confusion about exchange rates (which have been nearly equal the past few years anyway,) or they just get better service in Quebec, but it does baffle us.
I’m not sure why this thread is in Cafe Society. I will note that Cecil has written on What is the origin of tipping?, so this could have been posted in Comments on Cecil’s Column. I also note that one of the more brilliant of the SDSAB has written on Should the tip be based on before tax or after tax bill? so it could have been posted in Comments on Staff Reports…
As it stands, I’m moving it to IMHO, since it’s requesting opinions about tipping and demographics.
There weren’t enough black people who ever entered the restaurant where I waited tables for me to know if that particular stereotype is true, but I can tell you that slightly intoxicated men are the best tippers in the world.
I’ve heard that stereotype applied to Asians as well. I was discussing this with a friend of mine who’s black, and we agreed that both of us tend to overtip as a result of such stereotypes.
Not tipping servers because your ancestors suffered is such a bizarre line of reasoning. The person who is currently serving your table didn’t do diddlysquat to your ancestors. What is cheating them out of a tip going to achieve beyond them being pissed off and you have a few extra dollars in your pocket?
A friend, an Scott visiting me in the USA, was amazed to see me leave a 20% tip. Then he got a worried look and asked me what the standard tiip was in American restaurants, and I said it used to be 15% but was tending more toward 20% now. For years he’s been leaving 8% tips. By eerie coincidence, a couple days after he went home our town newspaper ran a big item on the front page, above the fold, about how 25% tips were the new norm, complete with a huge color picture of a young waitress working. I had to scan and email the whole thing to him, of course.
Another friend, an Englishman who had already lived in the states about 40 years, would still tip 10% when it was his turn at lunch. He’d also give the other kind of “tip” in person, some brief useful advice about striving for better education or greeting the day with a smile, that sort of thing. I never saw anybody hit him. And, I allways went back after saying our goodbyes and left another 10% on the table, or tracked down the waitstaff if the table’d been cleared already.
Both these guys were nearly as white as people get. Or red, if it had been at all sunny out.
I’ve been hearing this for awhile, but the only people that seem to be saying it are waiters. People that I’ve talked to that are actually leaving the tips (including on this board) seem very content to keep the standard tip at 15%.
Fifteen percent is all you’re getting from me for standard good service. Well 16.5%, since sales tax in NYC is 8.25% and we usually just double the tax, rounding up to the next dollar. You’ll get 20% if you go over and beyond.
I’m going to stick with that too because, as inflation causes the cost of food, meal and overhead to go up, so too will your tip based on those prices/tax amonts, even at the current rates.
I think it is the waiters who are pushing this propaganda. All of my friends of all races do this (or a little more).