On Tipping

Ever since Chewie linked to the Numa Numa article on Waiter Rant I've been reading my way through the archives of the blog, and have become something of a fan. This guy is witty, eloquent and can out-sarc the sarciest among us. I was reading his rants about tipping just today, though, and it got me thinking about tipping in USA, and what a con job it is.

This is the way it works. Tipping over here in completely optional, but convention dictates that you leave a 15% tip for 'normal' service. Bad service means 10%, good is 20% and if you're feeling really generous, you tip 25%. Waiters (and by this word I mean 'waitpersons', because I'm not going to say watierslashwaitress every time I want to talk about these people) get paid something like $3 per hour, and for the rest of their wages they have to depend upon tips. In comparison, minimum wage for untipped jobs is $5.15 an hour.

Can you count the number of things that are wrong with this system?

We tip waiters depending on the service we get - but that may or may not be something they are responsible for. Your food may be cooked wrong, or might take too long to prepare - that's the cook's fault. Your plates may not be cleared away quickly after you have eaten - that's the bus person's fault. Maybe the hostess was rude to you when you came in. But since we can't refuse to pay for the food, the only avenue we as customers have for voicing our dissatisfaction is through the tip - which penalises mostly the waiter. (Waiters tip a percentage of their earnings to buspersons and hostesses.)

Then there's the con job that the waiters and the food industry are perpetrating on us by telling us that the convention is to tip in percentages of the bill. There is just no logic that justifies this practice. The percentage system works well enough when you order normal-priced food in restaurants - the tip is automatically higher depending on the "class" of the restaurant because the "classier" ones will overcharge you for the food in proportion to their "classiness". But what if you order one of those crazily priced items - like wine, for example? Most classy restaurants have wines in the range of $30-$40 per bottle to $800-$1000 per bottle. So if I eat $100 worth of food and order a $1000 wine, I have to leave a tip bigger than what my overpriced food cost? And for what? It's not like the waiter worked harder to pour me my $1000 glass of wine than he would for a $30 glass! And yet you find supercilious waiters, like the guy who writes the Waiter Rant blog, who would consider you an insect for leaving a perfectly reasonable $30-40 tip on that bill. Their logic is - if you can afford to blow 1000 bucks on wine, you can afford to tip us $200 - but that's just greed masquerading as righteous claim on another person's wealth.

Part of the con is the myth of how difficult it is to be a waiter. Now, sommeliers are a different breed, I acknowledge that; they really need to know their snobbish wine stuff. I'll also acknowledge that yes, it gets very rushed sometimes, and yes, it's pretty hard to keep all the customers' orders sorted out in your head, and yes, the platters of food that must be carried just so tend to get heavy enough to strain anyone's wrist. But really, a waiter's job is just manual labour with more opportunities for sneering. So consider this quote from this NYT article:

"I'd say waiting tables is one of the most stressful jobs you can have, short of being a firefighter or an inner-city police officer," said Bruce Griffin Henderson.

Oh I'll say, Mr. Bruce Griffin Henderson. Mr. Bruce Griffin Henderson must be some sort of stoned-out hippie musician if he thinks a waiter has it bad. Oh wait, he is.

In addition to the con job is the threat: watch us mess with you, your table and your food if you don't tip us well. Waiter Rant-er himself says this many times: I don't know why you would be rude to someone who's going to handle your food, for heaven's sake! He tells tales of how he refuses bad tippers good tables and reservations at popular times... we can only conjecture as to the untold tales of ways in which he messes with customers' food out of spite. This makes tipping look even worse: it's nothing more and nothing less than protection money. And damn, we ought to know better than to support such a racket.

So what's my solution? Impose a mandatory 10% - or 15% - service charge on all bills, like they do in every other country in the world. If the service sucks, we'll have it out with the restaurant, and refuse to pay the service charge (I've done this in Singapore). Waiters are happy - they can no longer be undertipped. Customers are happy - at least the non-cheapo ones are. There should be one exception to the 15% service charge, though, and that would be for items whose price differs by an order of magnitude from the rest of the menu items. When customers order these, they may choose to tip or not... I'm sure the markup on that wine will more than cover any hurt waiter's feelings. Point is, let the restaurant manage the whole let's-feed-the-waiter business. That should never have fallen into the customer's realm.

Of course, this scenario is the stuff of dreams and fantasies. In the meantime, I sleep peacefully at night knowing that I, at least, am not a sucker enough to order the $800 wine, ever.

Tags:

• rants