Tipping Is Not Just a City in China

The only person to ever say that to me (this post's title, I mean) was a young man behind a counter in a dance club in downtown Austin. He said it and pointed to a plastic jar on the counter as he took my roughly $5 cover - no band was playing, just dance music. To quote Joyce, my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

That is all I will say about that in this post.

What I will talk more about is tipping at restaurants. It's something that is expected in the USA, and a rule of thumb is to add 15% to your bill for adequate service. 20% is easier to calculate and, for the places where I generally eat, usually only means maybe another dollar, so I take that route and proudly boast that I am a good tipper. But I think this custom is problematic for two reasons.

The first is simply the fairness between restaurants of different priciness. A waiter serving, and a cook cooking, $10 hamburgers work about as hard as those cooking and serving $25 steaks. Maybe not quite, and you could argue that you expect better, more formal service at pricier restaurants. But not two and a half times as good and formal. There are a couple of very good Vietnamese restaurants in town that I frequent where I can get a delicious, filling meal for about $6. By my usual method I owe them $1.20 for tip. The service is as good, if not better, than at a certain Tex-Mex joint in town where I typically spend $10-15, and leave $2-3 for tip. So I punish the Vietnamese for keeping their prices low. (This, after My Lai.)

So I decided a while back that good service of a well-cooked meal deserves at least two of my hard-earned dollars. If it's just me or I'm with one other person, I pay more - economics of scale kind of thing. I of course pay more if the bill is more, but in my heart I think it's lame.

The other drawback of our tipping system is broader, and involves our cultural ideas of the role food servers play in our lives and how they should be compensated for it.

In many places in Europe and, I'm told, in Australia, tipping is not customary. It's been my experience that in most places you can leave the change you get or whatever, but it's genuinely not expected, and if you leave more than $1 US or so they will think you left it by mistake.

Now, in the USA, waiters can be paid less than minimum wage - $2.13 per hour - because tipping is expected (and, for parties of six or more, often required).

(Side note: as I understand it, when the minimum wage was $4.25 per hour, the waiter's minimum wage was 50% of this, and this lower wage was not increased when the minimum wage went up to $5.15 per hour in the 1990s. This is not my fight, but that's bullshit.)

But the point is, our laws depend on our tipping convention (or at least our waiters' getting paid does). If tipping were not socially compulsory, restaurant owners would have to pay their waitstaff more money, so they would charge more for food. It would likely cost the consumer no more or less to eat; it would simply change the path of much of the money. The upside to our method is that it arguably improves service - we have a choice to modify our waiters' pay, so they refill our drinks faster in hopes of getting the extra cash for it.

But our way has a bad indentured-servantry smell to it. I feel like a boss cutting a paycheck after every meal. I judge your service to be adequate, yours to be sub-par, yours to be exquisite.

Thank you, yes sir, most righteously decided, sir. Come back and see us.

Your groveling disgusts me, lickspittle.

And so on. I don't believe this to be the capitalist ideal. The money-for-goods-or-services transaction should be an exchange between two free and willing entities, and the money should be so much as to compensate for the good or service. End, if I may quote Hedberg, of transaction. Why the need for the good or service provider to praise the money provider for his generosity? Why is the customer always right? Certainly it is a result of the customer's greater freedom in choosing business partners - there will always be someone else who will grovel more for the money. But I don't want groveling, and I don't want the person serving me my food to feel inferior to me. All I want is a Cobb salad.

In Scotland, the service isn't rude. I was never told to take my stupid fish and chips and shove them up my arse as they were laid before me. But I was never asked for a tip, either - it was never assumed that the transaction wasn't just fair pay for good food. If I were to receive bad service in a place where tipping wasn't expected, I suppose I would express my disappointment by not eating at that restaurant anymore. So by removing tipping, bad service becomes pernicious to the restaurant as a whole, more than to the waiter as an individual. This may be a reason why restaurant owners prefer tipping. I, for one, believe an employer's success should be intimately tied to that of his employees' - the stronger this tie, the better the working environment, and the more satisfactory the working experience for all those involved.

Finally, if tipping improves service so much, why don't we tip librarians? Dentists? Plumbers? Why isn't everyone paid a pauper's wage and made to dance a jig for the rest of his salary? Relying on tipping is another way for those with money to gain special treatment. It emphasizes the benefits of status, and engenders competition where it isn't useful. Just ask a black man trying to hail a cab.

I mean, I hear it's difficult.