Valets and barbers earn minimum wage. Waitresses don’t.
Men get paid, women get gifts.
It seems to me that the biggest beneficiary of a tipping system is the restaurant owner, since he or she essentially gets to advertise the food at 80-90% of its actual price to the consumer. Note that even Porter still didn’t advertise the true price of the food, but rather broke it out cosmetically into a menu price + a service charge.
That’s also what they do in Japan, where tipping is not the norm in restaurants.
Lots of men work for tips. There are a ton of male bartenders out there. They get tips for serving drinks promptly and generally being upbeat and friendly.
I think tipping is ridiculous, though I tip generously. It doesn’t make sense for an employee to negotiate for his/her salary with the customers rather than the employer. But the article in the OP is way off base.
To be clear, women get more than men for the same work. This is sexism against women. Understood.
Its good to see you finally coming around and toeing the line.
I’d stick around, but I need to go scrape up the $10 cover-charge for “Ladies Night” Happy Hour.
Around here, barbers (and hair stylists) are independent contractors. They rent chair space from the shop (rent is usually a percentage of each customer’s bill) and their income depends on how many customers they have. They also get tipped.
It seems to me that tipping is limited to jobs that used to be servants’ jobs (bringing food to your table, cleaning your bedroom, driving you around, combing your hair…) rather than being related to class or gender.
Where is your “here”?
Here is St. Louis. This is a listing for a barber shop "chair rental."
If customers preferred to be served by men, or white people, would it be a problem?
The waitresses who get the most tips also get the most gropes, pinches and propositions. It evens out.
OK. Putting those together . . . it looks like tipping is a way to display largesse, and that can be an ego boost. I’m old enough to remember when “going out” was a big deal and an ordinary family would only do it a few times a year. People who went out often were showing that they were well off.
I don’t remember if it was spelled out in the posts, but he’d have to do that to help customers compare prices to other restaurants. Otherwise they’d feel that they were being forced to do math in order to compare, at best. And even if they bothered with the math and did it correctly, they’d still feel like the price was higher, even if it wasn’t.
Everyone seems to agree that his comments on sexuality were the most weakly supported. Especially if you compare it to tipping in other situations. I’m willing to declare claim three a bust.
What about claim two? Do you think that it’s harder for a manager to convince mediocre servers that they need to step it up if the tips are telling them they’re doing all right? He says that studies show that people don’t significantly reduce tips for bad or mediocre service. I tend to agree with that part. Do you? Do you think it encourages middling service?
I have no great attachment to the current tipping system in restaurants, and would be fine with another system.
But if Jay Porter is right, why bother with this “service charge” nonsense at all? Why not just pay the entire staff a decent wage, and charge the customers the appropriate prices for their food?
Why pretend that a steak dinner costs $30 and that a $6 “service fee” is something separate? Why not just charge $36? It’s all coming out of the customer’s pocket one way or another anyway!
Waitresses. There are no waiters? Only women serve food?
Or are you trying to say that a female server gets half the wage of a male server?
Well, here in San Jose your waitstaff is just as likely to be male (and yes, since it is a public facing position, being attractive is a help, of course). So, unless he hires all his waitstaff by the “lap-test” he’s full of shit.
Because a significant number of people will go somewhere else, feeling that $36 is too much, when it’s $30 at the other place. Then they’ll tip $7 at the other place, to show they’re not cheap. It’s not logical, but it’s the way people are.
As long as tipping is the norm, a non-tipping restaurant will have to show prices that way to make the comparison clear.
I remember when I visited NZ for 7 weeks, back in 1985. No tipping was the rule, and the result was that only the most expensive restaurants had waitstaff. Everything else was self-serve. Sorry, but I like going to my favorite diners, where the food is cheap, the service is good, and the coffe is hot. Self-serves are fine, too, but not exclusively.
I somewhat skimmed through the first 5 parts of his observations, and while I can agree that sexism probably plays a part into tipping culture, his evidence seems flimsy. He might only remember men freaking out about not being able to leave tips. There might have been women who freaked out as well, and he just didn’t remember, or they didn’t freak out as loudly, or they didn’t make a scene at the restaurant but then complained to all their friends about how ridiculous it was that they couldn’t leave tips.
I’m a little bothered when people try to make it sound like women are all feminazis and trying to make men hate themselves, but I’ll try to let your second sentence go.
But it’s pretty simple: you’re not a bad guy if you treat your waitress with respect, don’t make her feel uncomfortable with your flirting, tip her decently if she does her job well, or talk with the manager if she doesn’t do her job well, and don’t make ridiculous demands. Treat your waitress basically like you would treat your waiter. Don’t penalize her if she’s not super perky and friendly and doesn’t have a lot of makeup on her face, just like you wouldn’t penalize a waiter for the same.
I agree, I tip because it’s the custom, but I’d be thrilled if it went away. It would make things easier.
But is there any connection between tips and good service? I don’t think there is. Let’s say a waitress served a table and sees that one of the customers left a 25% tip. That tip could be at that amount for any number of reasons:
[ul]
[li]The customer usually leaves 15%, but thought the waitress was excellent so he left a 25% tip[/li][li]The customer always leaves a 25% tip no matter what[/li][li]The customer is usually extremely generous and leaves a 40% tip, but was disappointed with the service and only left the 25% tip [/li][li]He meant to leave a much smaller tip, but miscalculated, or accidentally put too many dollars on the table[/li][li]He didn’t care about the service one way or the other, but thought she was really cute so gave her 25% [/li][/ul]
There’s probably other things I’m missing. Wait staff can’t really tell how good their service is based on the tips, because there’s so many things that affect tip amounts. I don’t know why service is worse in other countries, but I don’t think it just comes down to the tips.
“Here” is probably the US. I’ve known a few haircutters in my time and this was how it worked almost everywhere.