Tag: Tipping

When Tipping Could Be An Insult

by Patrick Appel

Lisa Wade claims that, because the original flight attendants were white men, tipping them never caught on:

If stewards were so capable and appreciated, why not offer one’s appreciation in cash?  The answer is, in short, because tips were for Black people.  Black porters on trains and boats were tipped as a matter of course but, according to [Kathleen Barry, author of Femininity in Flight], tipping a White person would have been equivalent to an insult. A journalist, writing in 1902, captured the thinking of the time when he expressed shock and dismay that “any native-born American could consent” to accepting a tip.  ”Tips go with servility,” he said. Accepting one was equivalent to affirming “I am less than you.”

Tipping Worsens Service?

Instead of traditional tipping, Jay Porter’s restaurant “applied a straight 18% service charge to all dining-in checks, and refused to accept any further payment.” He found that “service improved, our revenue went up, and both our business and our employees made more money.” The reasons why:

• Researchers have found (pdf) that customers don’t actually vary their tips much according to service. Instead they tip mostly the same every time, according to their personal habits.

• Tipped servers, in turn, learn that service quality isn’t particularly important to their revenue. Instead they are rewarded for maximizing the number of guests they serve, even though that degrades service quality.

• Furthermore, servers in tipping environments learn to profile guests (pdf), and attend mainly to those who fit the stereotypes of good tippers. This may increase the server’s earnings, while creating negative experiences for the many restaurant customers who are women, ethnic minorities, elderly or from foreign countries.

• On the occasions when a server is punished for poor service by a customer withholding a standard tip, the server can keep that information to himself. While the customer thinks she is sending a message, that message never makes it to a manager, and the problem is never addressed.

Joyner adds:

I’m not sure if this would work as well at different price points or in different communities but the logic is unassailable.

Tipping And Tithing

You probably heard the story about the Applebee’s server who was fired for posting a receipt on which pastor Alois Bell had crossed out an added gratuity and wrote, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” Brian Palmer zooms out:

Long before Alois Bell stiffed her server on religious grounds, American waiters complained about the Sunday afternoon crowd leaving Bible quotes in lieu of cash tips. A 2012 study by Cornell University tipping expert Michael Lynn showed that Jews and people with no religion tip better than self-identified Christians. (To be fair, the overwhelming majority of Christians tip between 15 and 20 percent, just lower in the range than nonbelievers and Jews.) This phenomenon is difficult to explain, but it’s possible that Christians think their devotion to the next life exempts them from such social niceties as tipping in this one. That confidence in their ultimate salvation may also diminish their sense of financial obligation to God. Perhaps churches need to modify their appeal to something like “faith alone, plus 10 percent.”

Does Tipping Corrupt?

John Gravois makes various arguments against tipping. He flags a recent paper on tipping's relationship to bribery:

We investigated the link between tipping, an altruistic act, and bribery, an immoral act. We found a positive relationship between these two seemingly unrelated behaviors, using archival cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita gross domestic product, income inequality, and other factors. Countries that had higher rates of tipping behavior tended to have higher rates of corruption.