Perhaps you’ve noticed. We have reached a tipping point in the country over tipping.
To tip or not to tip has led to Shakespearean soliloquies by customers explaining why they refuse to tip for certain things.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers were grateful for those who seemingly risked their safety so we could get groceries, order dinner or anything that made our lives feel normal. A nice tip was the least we could do to show gratitude.
But now that we are out about and back to normal, the custom of tipping for just about everything has somehow remained; and customers are upset.
A new study from Pew Research shows most American adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, and there’s no real consensus about how tipping should work.
Try this on for size: Tipping is a Legacy of Slavery
This opinion by Michelle Alexander always stuck with me.
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Kinda blows that whole “To Insure[sic] Prompt Service” myth out of the water, doesn’t it?
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The thing that made me want to eliminate tipping is the abuse servers have to suffer in order to justify it. I was front of house for 18 years, and in that time I’ve seen servers sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, regular assaulted, food thrown at them and I’ve even heard customers flat out say they base their tipping decisions on the race of their server. The attitude among servers is that you can either tolerate being treated like a second class citizen, or you can go to bed hungry that night.
I mean so are roads but we still use them. This is hardly an argument against anything, much less tipping.
Roads? What are you smoking?
Think less “road outside my house” and more “concept of modern roads” - those roads were built by Roman slaves, bud.
If you think I’m painting with too broad a brush here, that’s good! That’s literally the point of my above comment. If you’re reductionist enough to equate tipping and slavery, then pretty much everything can be directly linked to slavery.
People just forget there were slaves in places other than America.
The actual argument this person would be making, if they were intellectually honest, is that tipping comes from purchasing prompter service and is more akin to “premium” models of transactions than how we use it today. Today, tipping is a hidden cost of services, and people don’t like that.
That discussion should be had, but it’s never the discussion people want to have, for some reason.
Tipping in the US is literally “a legacy of slavery and racism and took off in the post-Civil War era. Almost immediately, the idea was challenged by reformers who argued that tipping was exploitative and allowed companies to take advantage of workers by getting away with paying them low or no wages at all.”
It is very relevant, within the context of the US, to point how tipping in America is a legacy of slavery and racism and that, while the country has progressed and pushed for reforms, this subversive practice has continued to this day and is in fact seemingly increasing.
The fact that complaints often come from customers doesn’t change the fact that the practice is exploitative towards workers and has its origins in the post-Civil War era and the abolishment of slavery.
Ok but that’s not how markets work. Tipped employees don’t make less money than non-tipped. If they did, they wouldn’t do that job.
So like, the base premise for this idea this person is trying to correct us demonstrably flawed and predates any modern understanding of economics.
Tipping is just hiding the true price of the labor. The labor still costs what it costs, it’s just servers gamble that the variance works out in their favor. It clearly does, or people wouldn’t choose to be servers instead of other jobs.
So like if the core premise is flawed, I sort of think it’s a bad idea to promote the idea.
I’m all for raising prices and ensuring the servers make their income, I just think the prices will be higher than people expect and that the ensuing sticker shock will upset people.
That may be true in part, especially with modern laws regarding minimum wages and reforms that have occurred.
Even with that being true, it’s still exploitative of workers. It allows a business to extract value from a workers labor without compensating them appropriately for that labor. Essentially having their customers subsidize their business.
People are already upset about tipping in its current form. If a business can’t afford to pay a living wage without tips to subsidize their workers pay then that business should fail.
There’s a reason the National Restaurant Association has spent decades fighting increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the sub-minimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters. It’s not because they’re concerned the workers aren’t getting paid enough.
Every worker deserves a livable wage (not minimum) for their labor. A tip, or gratuity, should shouldn’t subsidize labor costs but should serve as a bonus or a sign of gratitude for exceptional labor.
This doesn’t actually happen though. Consumers still pay the additional cost. The cost is just hidden.
I know many states have their own laws around minimum wage, but we’re looking at the whole so we’ll use the federal wage guidelines.
Ok, so the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr, or $2.13/hr for tipped employees as long as they make at least $5.12/hr in tips to meet the minimum wage requirement.
So we have Pat, who is a server in a restaurant. The restaurant pays minimum wage ($2.13 + tips). Pat makes the national median in tips ($100/day). Assuming an 8 hour day that is $100/8 = $12.50/hour + $2.13 minimum = $14.63/hour.
The restaurant is right in the middle of the road on cost at $15/per person. Pat has a 5 table section, for an average we’ll assume Pat has one person at each table each hour the entire shift or $15 x 5 tables x 8 hours. This is $600.00 earned for the restaurant.
Most restaurant business operators prefer the food costs to be between 28 and 35 percent of the menu price. So of that $600.00, $390.00 is income after food costs. But there’s still payroll to account for. In the tipping model, $17.04 of that is payroll. That leaves $362.96. Let’s just say $62.96 is other expenses, that leaves $300.00 in income for the business. $300 dollars earned of the labor of a server they paid $17.04 to.
If they paid Pat what they make with tips $14.63*8 = $117.04 then we’re looking at $390 after food costs minus $117.04 + $62.96 leaves us with $210.00 in income. In this scenario the server is paid a fair wage for their labor (or at least the same in the tipping model) the business didn’t have to raise their prices because they’re still profiting, and the customer could still tip if they appreciated the service.
The cost isn’t hidden, it’s manufactured by businesses that don’t want to lose out on profit by paying their employees a fair wage instead of having customers subsidize them.
In case you were wondering the math if Pat got no tips works out to $390.00 revenue - $66.00 payroll - $62.96 other expenses = $261.04 income for the business.
doesn’t “any modern understanding of economics” predict that, in this case, non-tipped employees would quit their jobs and get tipped jobs instead?
Do you think that there is more competition for roles in, say, food service as a server or food service as a cashier?
That answers your question.
Problem is if this scenario is flipped and tipped workers make less money, service quality degrades. That can be disastrous for a restaurant
I get that you’re trying to do a reductio ad absurdum but your post really falls flat on its face.
The Roman Empire no longer exists in any shape or form.
The United States of America is a surviving institution that has continuity to its darker history as it pertains to slavery.
The problem is not simply that slavery is causing some sort of moral taint; it’s that there are still institutions today that continue to have advantages that stem from the unjust practice of slavery in the US.