Do We Really Have to Tip Everyone?

[Rissask]

Interesting article for discussion. Cheapies like me like articles like this.

(Before you throw rotten tomatoes at me, we always tip servers and maids very well.)

It used to be you tipped the waiter, and the cab driver, and that was about it. If you were a high roller, you tipped the bellhop, if only because you stayed in the kind of place that employed bellhops. Perhaps men always tipped their barbers. Or perhaps it began when men started going to stylists.


But lately, the practice has spread to hitherto unknown corners of the economy. Did you know you were supposed to tip your masseuse? Also your manicurist, your tattoo artist, and your personal trainer. Not only can babysitters expect to find a little extra in their pay nowadays, but also dog walkers. And that's just the start. Tour guides. Disc jockeys. Tow-truck drivers. Deliverymen of all persuasions. Some credulous souls tip the parking attendant. And, everywhere you turn, the ubiquitous tip cup: a Starbucks invention, it is now a fixture of every falafel hut and doughnut shop, no matter how perfunctory the service. There are even reports of tip jars at drive-throughs.


Once a vanishing artifact of a gilded age, like the iceman or the lamplighter, tipping is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. Whole books are given over to the practice. Tourist guides devote page after page to educating the uninitiated in the customary tips for various trades, lest travellers disgrace themselves by failing to pay the going rates. It is unhelpful that no two of them seem to agree on what these are. Is it still proper to leave 15 per cent for your waiter, or have we somehow graduated to 20 per cent? Should you tip the pump jockey at the gas station? (Really? When was the last time you saw one?) Nearly a century ago, an era of intricate class etiquette and acute status anxiety, Emily Post set the standard. Each first-class passenger on boarding ship, she wrote, should give ten shillings to the room steward or stewardess, ten shillings to the dining-room steward, ten shillings to the deck steward, ten shillings to the lounge steward, and so on. (Or if you have eaten your meals on deck, you give 20 shillings to the deck steward, and ten to his assistant, and you give five to the bath steward. What, and have nothing left to blow on canasta?) It seems we have need of her again.


Among the many annoying qualities of this peculiar snobbish holdover is its arbitrariness. If the Starbucks barista qualifies for a tip just for pouring a half-caff foaming whatever, why not the kid who makes your Slurpee at the 7-Eleven? Why pizza drivers but not couriers? Why the shoe shiner, but not the dry cleaner? Why the hairstylist, but not the person who washes your hair? (Er, maybe that's just me again.) Why not shop clerks, or mechanics, or dentists? Why not flight attendants, if personal service is the issue? Why not? Let me suggest a reason. Maybe it's because it's beneath them.


A moment's thought reveals the essential tawdriness of the business. Equal parts begging and bribery, with a strong admixture of extortion, tipping rarely engages any of the higher sentiments. The big tipper may hope to impress his date, or the waitress, or ideally both; or he may be seeking, via a discreet C-note to the maétre d', to jump the queue, or some other preferential treatment. More usually, he does it out of fear of being thought cheap, or to avoid nasty stares. If generosity ever creeps into it, it quickly dissolves into self-congratulation.


The tippee, for his part, accepts the reward not out of gratitude, but of entitlement, if it is a large tip, or resentment, if it is not. Actually, more like resentment either way, since the big tip carries with it an implicit assertion of class superiority: There's for your pains, and see that those horses are watered. Nor is that the only unspoken agenda in the air. Everyone who's ever worked in a restaurant knows that the prettiest, most flirtatious waitresses get the biggest tips, at least from male customers, since at the back of his mind every man thinks if he throws down big he improves his chances of scoring - maybe not with her, but in some cosmic reckoning, with womankind - and at the back of her mind every waitress knows it. So toss in a whiff of prostitution, for good measure.


It isn't because waiters (or manicurists, or concierges, or . . .) are ill-paid that we tip them: if anything, they are ill-paid because of the prevalence of tipping - because both they and their employers know that part of their compensation will be defrayed by this strange, informal subsidy. In places where tipping is forbidden, or unusual, such as Australia, or Argentina, or Japan, or much of western Europe, there is no shortage of wait staff at the going wage.

More HERE.


Agree? Disagree?

[TAPPY]

I never understood tipping at places where you order right from the counter.

[Rissask]

Originally Posted by TAPPY

I never understood tipping at places where you order right from the counter.

Hallelujah, sister! Me neither....or at drive-thrus. WTF?

[UGAplaya]

I'm normally a good tipper (20%) but just because you show up for work and drop food off at my table doesn't mean you're getting a good tip. With the economy the way it is, I value my money much more than ever before. For some reason I tend to tip bar tenders better than others.. ;-) LOL

[ncmarg]

I'm cheap. I'll admit it. But why do I ( and I do BTW) leave a tip for someone that I'll never meet who is getting paid to clean my room? Am I that much of a slob? (Rhetorical question)

[DBT Fan]

Agree...in a bar here last night, a 20% tip for some sh-tty nachos and a couple of beers didn't even get an acknowledgement from the waitress...

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by Rissask

Hallelujah, sister! Me neither....or at drive-thrus. WTF?

If you look at the list of jobs for which tipping is recomended ,my opinion is, that these positions do not typically pay a living wage. At least in the US.

Which brings up this quote from the greatest American President:

"No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country"-FDR

[UGAplaya]

Originally Posted by ncmarg

I'm cheap. I'll admit it. But why do I ( and I do BTW) leave a tip for someone that I'll never meet who is getting paid to clean my room? Am I that much of a slob? (Rhetorical question)

I don't always tip the maid. If I request something extra from them or if they do something nice such as towel designs etc., then I will. Go ahead, fire away with the rotten fruit. :-)

[mooski]

in wa state... wait staff is required by law to report tips as income that is fine with me ... but if they have to shouldnt everyone have to pay taxes on tips?like ... baristas taxi... etc. I dont like the places that ADD 18% or whatever to a bill. is that incentive for anyone to give good service if they KNOW they are getting a tip?

[Rissask]

I don't mind tipping in a restaurant for good service, although it's usually closer to 15% than 20%....or tipping a maid when on vacation. For someone to make my bed and clean the tub and sink and toilet I have used, I feel they deserve some compensation for that- especially when you consider they make $4 a day on average.

It's more the idea of tipping people who traditionally don't get tipped, lately it seems to have snowballed or something.

And on vacation it seems like everyone has their hand out more than in the past, to me-like, you get a tip for driving the water taxi over to the island now? .....friends of ours just got back from Jamaica, they said that it was really bad there for people expecting a tip every time you turn around. In Cuba too we had that off the resort, in the city anyway.

Oddly, we only tip maids outside the country- it's not so much the norm to tip hotel cleaners here at home, at least I don't know of many people who do. Maybe because they make more of a living wage here, have healthcare, etc.

[Rissask]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

If you look at the list of jobs for which tipping is recomended ,my opinion is, that these positions do not typically pay a living wage. At least in the US.

Who is this entity who is reccommending you tip who? What 'list'?

There is a difference with our waitstaff up here, they are legally required to pay them an hourly wage, and each province has set minimum wages. Cradle to gravel socialism - remember?

I totally understand giving servers in the US very good tips if they aren't making much an hour, plus have no or poor healthcare, etc. Is it still like that, where they can legally pay servers less than min wage- or do you even HAVE set minimum wage there, or does it vary from state to state, or what?

[kirbyfan]

I am apalled by the level of service that is given customers these days especially in restaraunts. I bet we get good service less than 20% of the time, great service less than 5% and horrible service better than 50%.

IMO this is because waiters and waitresses have come to EXPECT 15-20%, its like they feel they just deserve it as opposed to earning it. We had horrible service just the other night and I left the waiter a $1 tip on a $60 tab. My wife asked why I left anything and the reason I did was because I didnt want the guy to think I had just forgotten, I wanted him to KNOW that I thought he SUCKED!

I refuse to tip like I used to, I am taking a stand. Oh and just a FYI, I worked as a bartender and waiter for the better part of 8 years, so ya I know how its SUPPOSED to work.

[mooski]

min wage is different in every state. I think wa is $8 ... but your right servers are not usually given a health care/ retirement pkg. I wonder if turnover is often the cause of that....

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by Rissask

Who is this entity who is reccommending you tip who? What 'list'?

There is a difference with our waitstaff up here, they are legally required to pay them an hourly wage, and each province has set minimum wages. Cradle to gravel socialism - remember?

I totally understand giving servers in the US very good tips if they aren't making much an hour, plus have no or poor healthcare, etc. Is it still like that, where they can legally pay servers less than min wage- or do you even HAVE set minimum wage there, or does it vary from state to state, or what?

I don't know the exact figure currently. In Texas servers used be paid something like $2.35 an hour. It would be very very rare for them to have health insurance or, for that matter, full time hours. Last year in Kansas it was $3.15 an hour. Sad.

[UGAplaya]

Originally Posted by kirbyfan

I am apalled by the level of service that is given customers these days especially in restaraunts. I bet we get good service less than 20% of the time, great service less than 5% and horrible service better than 50%.

IMO this is because waiters and waitresses have come to EXPECT 15-20%, its like they feel they just deserve it as opposed to earning it. We had horrible service just the other night and I left the waiter a $1 tip on a $60 tab. My wife asked why I left anything and the reason I did was because I didnt want the guy to think I had just forgotten, I wanted him to KNOW that I thought he SUCKED!

I refuse to tip like I used to, I am taking a stand. Oh and just a FYI, I worked as a bartender and waiter for the better part of 8 years, so ya I know how its SUPPOSED to work.

LOL. Great point on leaving a $1 as opposed to nothing at all. Never looked at it that way.