What would it take for not tipping to become socially acceptable in North America?

[themapleleaf]

@elbows

Unfortunately I believe you are tilting at windmills my friend. Almost impossible to turn a train off a track. The truth, you don’t want to hear is, that by a large majority, all three parties involved in tipping appreciate the benefits it brings them.

The difference in quality of service when everybody is getting their $ regardless if you get the good waiter or the bad waiter, will drive good servers away. You’re wildly underestimating how hot people will be to paying an auto grat on what they perceive to be, poor service. People like being able to punish poor servers. And owners like that poor tips winnow out shitty servers quite successfully and to their benefit. In North American people are in part, paying to be fawned over/doted on, and that takes motivation.

I’ll bet that 150 years ago, lobbying for women’s rights would have seemed like tilting at windmills, or gay rights 60 years ago.

I see your point. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t need or want anyone to fawn over me. “Adequate” service is all I would require. I don’t even consider certain things done by waiters: greeting me with “Good evening, I’m X, I’ll be your server today”, giving me a smile that’s not heartfelt, constantly checking on me, trying to upsell me!!!, to be “excellent service”, but rather needless fluff. As for punishing poor servers, you can also do that by telling them off (if you don’t intend to eat there again, at any rate), threatening to speak to their manager, actually speaking to the manager, or leaving poor reviews. If you really feel up to it, that is.

@TriPolar

Why do you want to stop the rest of us from tipping? Of course waitstaff should get paid a decent amount of money…so you don’t have to feel guilty about breaking the social contract, but I don’t understand why you care if I want to tip people anyway

I didn’t mean to say that I wish no one would ever tip under any circumstances. If you like the advantages you perceive tipping gives you, I don’t wish to forbid you to do so; the problem I have is that those of us who don’t want to participate in it are compelled to do so anyway because otherwise we are resented as cheapskates and are guilted by the argument that due to lower tipped minimum wages, we are cheating tipped employees by doing so. The only thing I am unequivocally against is that expectation; I want a system where no tip will ever be expected, even if the server did an excellent job. Anything more than that is pure YMMV. I did say that I would prefer a situation where tipping is forbidden to one where it is socially expected, but I also said that I wouldn’t forbid the custom by law if a less drastic solution could be found. That said, if I owned a restaurant or any other business in the service industry, it would be strictly non-tipping and I wouldn’t want any customers who would want to undermine my authority as the owner and try to tip anyway.