4 ms·

Mildly tangential, but I'm always surprised when people express so much anger about being expected to tip in restaurants (in America, at least). Not people who

by mwfunk 13y ago

Mildly tangential, but I'm always surprised when people express so much anger about being expected to tip in restaurants (in America, at least). Not people who come from other places where the conventions are different, but people who have lived here their whole lives. I'm not surprised (and empathize with) people who are reacting to the inefficiency of The System ("why don't restaurants just charge more and pay their employees reasonable wages?"). This is correct, but as others have pointed out, in the US at least we seem to be stuck at a suboptimal local maximum in this area. It would be impractical (and maybe catastrophic) for any one restaurant to suddenly adopt this policy, so that's not going to happen anytime soon. Rather, I'm always amazed at the portion of people who have a visceral reaction to tipping due to what appears to be just plain lack of empathy. These aren't the people who are saying, "why doesn't the restaurant just pay better?". That totally makes sense. These aren't the people who tip less (or not at all) when they've had a really bad experience with the server. That makes sense too. Specifically, I'm talking about the people who deep down inside just always have a reflexively negative reaction to directly giving their money to the person who just served them. These are the people who feel happy about themselves when they say things like, "my tips start at 0% and go up from there", or who seem to put way, way, way too much mental energy into grading the level of service that they've received and coming up with a number that reflects that level of service each and every time they go to a restaurant. If anyone posting is that kind of person, please just shut up and start being a better person already. I encounter these people all the time in SV. These aren't poor people for whom the tip is ever a meaningful amount of cash. These are people making many times the annual income of their servers, getting continually worked up over a few dollars, supposedly because of "the principle of the thing". These are always people who have never worked in a restaurant, and are almost always people who never even had a job until after they got out of college. If anyone posting here is posting for this reason, please just get over it and find more constructive things to get worked up over. Ideally something that doesn't directly impact the income of people making way the hell less money than they do.

mpyne 13y ago
What surprises me of the visceral reaction of those who say "why doesn't the restaurant just pay better?" is that by that logic you'd still be paying essentially the same price. It wouldn't actually be cheaper if you were charged for food + good service separately, so why are you getting so inflamed about it?
- RodericDay 13y ago
  I'm the kind of person who "reacts to the inefficiency of The System"[0], but I also have a bone to pick with a lot of the worthless, inauthentic symbolic "rituals" that most people perform unquestioningly. it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly. with tipping, it is simultaneously vaguely some "meritocratic" dimension to the waiter's job, but then it's also basically just a tax, but then it's also a social ritual in which people can boast or be shamed for their ignorance or largesse. I don't like it at all. All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it. [0] I'd also say this is putting it mildly, almost like a euphemism. It is a way of exploitation that happens to benefit a visible minority of waiters so that the overall impression for those not in the know is one of neutrality. It is definitely a pro-employer law, that dukes the clients against the employees.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it. I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure that social "rituals" are really inherently something to be worn down just because many of us find them hard to navigate. Social rituals are a side effect of existing in a society with other people and so they never really go away, they just change into other things. As such it's not really a good idea to solve the problem of such rituals by trying to eradicate them, when what we really should be doing is getting better at living in a world with social rituals that pop up and go away. Plasticity should be the goal, and while streamlining rituals can certainly work with that goal, streamlining should not be the goal itself.
  - arantius 13y ago
    > it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly. A thousand times this! I've had a lot of personal trouble with the long and drawn out experience of learning that the right answer to "How are you?" is to _lie_ and just say "Good, and you?", regardless of how I really feel.
selmnoo 13y ago
Huh? It's bewildering for me to read this. I'm on the other side on this issue (I don't agree with the norm of American-style mandatory tipping). What you describe as the reaction of people against tipping is the reaction I usually see out of people who are for tipping. When I voice my opinion against tipping, I immediately get inflamed reactions, I get called "cheap", I get told I'm a "terrible person", etc. etc. People on the other side in my opinion are usually more well-tempered. To be clear, I am only against the culture of quasi-mandatory tipping. I'm all for all workers being well-paid. The problem with tipping, as Porter describes, is it inevitably promotes racism and sexism. If you have waiter friends, maybe they've told you about "Canadians"? As it turns out, black families usually don't tip (or tip very little), and white males usually tip a lot. What ends up happening is waiters fight to get the tables with white males, and adjust their service for each (better service for while males, poor service for black families). See http://www.fusionmagazine.org/racism-in-restaurants-2/ http://www.fusionmagazine.org/racism-in-restaurants-2/ for more. Instead of having a culture of mandatory tipping, just going with fixed service charge for dining in makes a lot more sense.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >As it turns out, black families usually don't tip (or tip very little), and white males usually tip a lot. What ends up happening is waiters fight to get the tables with white males, and adjust their service for each (better service for while males, poor service for black families). And that creates a feedback loop. It is absolutely true that black people generally tip less, and that waitstaff generally seat them badly and give terrible service. Even black waitstaff get caught up in it with experience. Tipping is the problem here.

by mwfunk 13y ago

mpyne 13y ago

What surprises me of the visceral reaction of those who say "why doesn't the restaurant just pay better?" is that by that logic you'd still be paying essentially the same price. It wouldn't actually be cheaper if you were charged for food + good service separately, so why are you getting so inflamed about it?

RodericDay 13y ago
I'm the kind of person who "reacts to the inefficiency of The System"[0], but I also have a bone to pick with a lot of the worthless, inauthentic symbolic "rituals" that most people perform unquestioningly. it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly. with tipping, it is simultaneously vaguely some "meritocratic" dimension to the waiter's job, but then it's also basically just a tax, but then it's also a social ritual in which people can boast or be shamed for their ignorance or largesse. I don't like it at all. All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it. [0] I'd also say this is putting it mildly, almost like a euphemism. It is a way of exploitation that happens to benefit a visible minority of waiters so that the overall impression for those not in the know is one of neutrality. It is definitely a pro-employer law, that dukes the clients against the employees.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it. I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure that social "rituals" are really inherently something to be worn down just because many of us find them hard to navigate. Social rituals are a side effect of existing in a society with other people and so they never really go away, they just change into other things. As such it's not really a good idea to solve the problem of such rituals by trying to eradicate them, when what we really should be doing is getting better at living in a world with social rituals that pop up and go away. Plasticity should be the goal, and while streamlining rituals can certainly work with that goal, streamlining should not be the goal itself.
- arantius 13y ago
  > it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly. A thousand times this! I've had a lot of personal trouble with the long and drawn out experience of learning that the right answer to "How are you?" is to _lie_ and just say "Good, and you?", regardless of how I really feel.

selmnoo 13y ago

Huh? It's bewildering for me to read this. I'm on the other side on this issue (I don't agree with the norm of American-style mandatory tipping). What you describe as the reaction of people against tipping is the reaction I usually see out of people who are for tipping. When I voice my opinion against tipping, I immediately get inflamed reactions, I get called "cheap", I get told I'm a "terrible person", etc. etc. People on the other side in my opinion are usually more well-tempered. To be clear, I am only against the culture of quasi-mandatory tipping. I'm all for all workers being well-paid. The problem with tipping, as Porter describes, is it inevitably promotes racism and sexism. If you have waiter friends, maybe they've told you about "Canadians"? As it turns out, black families usually don't tip (or tip very little), and white males usually tip a lot. What ends up happening is waiters fight to get the tables with white males, and adjust their service for each (better service for while males, poor service for black families). See http://www.fusionmagazine.org/racism-in-restaurants-2/ http://www.fusionmagazine.org/racism-in-restaurants-2/ for more. Instead of having a culture of mandatory tipping, just going with fixed service charge for dining in makes a lot more sense.

pessimizer 13y ago
>As it turns out, black families usually don't tip (or tip very little), and white males usually tip a lot. What ends up happening is waiters fight to get the tables with white males, and adjust their service for each (better service for while males, poor service for black families). And that creates a feedback loop. It is absolutely true that black people generally tip less, and that waitstaff generally seat them badly and give terrible service. Even black waitstaff get caught up in it with experience. Tipping is the problem here.