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Don’t Leave a Tip
Tipping in restaurants has always been a complicated issue. I usually leave around 20 percent, which is more than the 15 percent expected, but my feeling is, in Obama’s America everyone needs a little more help.
And there are tip jars in almost every coffee shop and take-out place, and what I usually do is just dump the change into it. But it’s a complicated and awkward business no matter how you slice it.
Word now comes from Danny Meyer, one of the most successful (deservedly so) and celebrated restauranteurs in America, that he’s going to eliminate the practice in his restaurants, beginning with the high-end Modern in the Museum of Modern Art. From Eater NY:
Starting in late November, sharp-eyed guests sitting down for dinner will notice four new things over the course of their meal. First, many prices on the menu will be markedly higher than they previously had been. Second, menus will carry a note informing diners of the new policy. Third, the only supplemental charge on the itemized bill will be for sales tax. And fourth, there will be no space on the guest check for leaving a tip — just a line for the diner’s signature.
His reasoning is pretty compelling:
The American system of tipping is awkward for all parties involved: restaurant patrons are expected to have the expertise to motivate and properly remunerate service professionals; servers are expected to please up to 1,000 different employers (for most of us, one boss is enough!); and restaurateurs surrender their use of compensation as an appropriate tool to reward merit and promote excellence … Imagine, if to prompt better service from your shoe salesman, you had to tip on the cost of your shoes, factoring in your perception of his shoe knowledge and the number of trips he took to the stockroom in search of your size. As a customer, isn’t it less complicated that the service he performs is included in the price of your shoes?
What I like the most about this policy is that there will be no little space on the bill for something extra. It’s a No Tipping Period policy. No guilt. No disingenuous little empty space.
Not everyone agrees. From France (of course) comes another way to look at tipping. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry isn’t thrilled with the French policy of service compris. He likes the Tipping Culture:
I come from France. Worse, I come from Paris. Here, waiters are almost universally dour, unkind, frequently forget or mess up your orders, and generally scowly. No, tourists, it’s not just you. I mean, they probably turn it up to 11 for the tourists, but it’s already a 10 for the rest of us. Smiling doesn’t help. Being nice doesn’t help.
Service, for Parisians, is one of the small inconveniences of life. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it will wear you down.
And so when I first had a meal at an American restaurant, where the waitress was friendly and peppy, quick with the order, and inquisitive about how everything was, I felt like I had landed on a different planet. And it wasn’t a fluke! It happened over, and over, and over again.
I went back to my home country, and it was like telling them that in America, whiskey comes out of the tap.
It does, at my house. But back to the subject at hand:
… when I see Americans — predominantly, let’s face it, elite, liberal Americans — who want to destroy one of the nicest things about their country, and one of the nicest things in my life, I get positively angry. I am talking, of course, about the movement against tipping, seen here recently in The Economist (The Economist! Not Pravda! The Economist!), and also in Vox (of course).
I’m no fool. I realize my waitress (or waiter) is not smiling at me out of the overflowing goodness of her heart. There’s something in it for her. But in France, tipping is basically illegal. The waiter doesn’t have any reason to be nice.
I guess I’ll be happy to see tipping disappear — it’s a nuisance — but I also see Gobry’s point. How about this for a compromise? We don’t tip waiters and waitresses, but we do tip IRS agents and congressmen? After all, they’re the ones currently delivering lousy service, right?
Published in Culture, Economics, Humor
Yes. Now you see where tipping as base income is a problem?
It’s just a small tap. For one.
This is an issue unique to Paris culture (maybe shared by NYC to an extent) and shouldn’t dissuade us from getting rid of tipping here. Tipping shouldn’t be illegal here, but it also shouldn’t be expected as part of the wage in any sane employment system. Spare me the “But what about service?”. Good service means I come back to the restaurant again and you still have a job. Bad service means your boss fires you or I don’t come back, in which case, you don’t have a job then, either. Tipping, as it currently is, is a kind of equal parts cheapskate/guilt trip/blackmail scheme. I do the 20% only because I know servers are getting a sub-minimum wage without it. It’s extortion by guilt.
Good service should be expected in any case. You’re should expect good service for whatever you’re paying good money for, no matter how the employees are paid. Price the full server wage into the meal cost. If the service is extra good, then maybe I’ll tip on top of that.
No, now I see one more reason why the IRS (and the very concept of the income tax itself) is a problem.
Only applies to servers explicitly on such a pay scale. If a server is being paid at the regular (non-tipped) min wage or above, and is classified as such, then the IRS will not auto deduct for assumed tips. So restaurants can class their staff as non-tipped when filing payroll taxes, on W2 forms, etc., without issue IF their paperwork is in order.
That is correct. Although the percentage is not as high as even 15%. I believe it may be 8%. So, they assume that if $1,000 worth of food goes through that server’s section, that they are receiving at least $80 in tips. Which is probably fine on average or in fine dining establishments, but in corner diners with a clientele cheap about tipping, it could be painful.
I think Meyer has worked it out. His employees won’t be taxed on phantom tips.
This is exactly my issue. On the one hand, I like the idea of rewarding good service. On the other, I don’t know if a smaller tip is interpreted as anything other than that I’m a cheapskate.
Sounds like my first job here in the Springs. I worked as a cocktail waitress at a private club where the members knew they were automatically on the hook for 20%. I was paid a base rate and tips were pooled and divided by the accounting office among the waitstaff. Cash tipping was allowed, and everyone fought for service to the big tippers, especially because there weren’t many. Texas oil folk don’t get rich by throwing their money around. They work for it!
It was a great job and I felt well-compensated. No one would dream of being rude to the members because, whaddya know? You’d have been fired! Our boss* was a German hotelier trained in Europe after WWII. Place ran like a dream.
*Yes, he had been conscripted by the Nazis as a youngster, but he spent most of the war in various POW camps and hiding out in Italian watermelon patches.
Am I the only one thinking of the diner scene from Reservoir Dogs?
Do barbers/hairstylists also have a lower minimum wage?
Attractive waitresses hardest hit.
You’re not the only one, but (IMHO) that was a slightly different debate.
The debate in the movie was about whether or not a person should tip.
The debate raised in the OP is about whether or not a person should be allowed to tip.
The way that my family does it is to make a point of quietly speaking with the server if service was sub-par, “Our tipping floor is usually 20%, but in your case we have to make an exception for poor service today. That’s why you’re only getting XX% today since we know your base pay and how the IRS figures things. If service is better, expect to see a larger tip next time.”
A privately-owned business instituting its own preferred compensation structure is not socialism.
IMHO.
The way I do it is to grumble and roll my eyes when they walk by and hope they hear but not really.
No, they do not. They often rent chairs in salons, buy their own products and operate as a small business.
The tipping situation here does bother me particularly as I go to the owner of a salon for the caring of the hair. Often my bill is $250 plus and I’m starting to react by leaving tips only for the shampoo girl.
I see.
So, theoretically, a server who is paid a higher base wage and is not allowed to receive tips could theoretically end up paying more in tax, since that server would be charged the full rate on all their earnings, rather than being charged a lower rate on a portion of their earnings?
Yikes – double whammy for the go-getter
Theoretically. But my guess is that the IRS didn’t pick that figure of 8% out of their hindquarters to be generous. I would bet that really is close to the average of all tips.
The solution is to tip a little on the check and tip cash directly to the server if you want to go around the socialist boss.
Fifteen years ago I lived in Australia, where bartenders and servers at the time made $15-20 an hour. As a result, most Aussies don’t tip. As a result of that, services in most pubs and restaurants was terrible. Trying to wave down your server at the end of a meal to pay, or during the meal to ask for something, was nearly impossible. Most people just basically tripped their waiter as he walked past their table sometime after they’d finished their meal.
(As an American, I always tipped, and got great service from bartenders when traveling the country for business, and across the Tasman Sea.)
In my third year in Sydney, an Outback restaurant opened not far from my house. It was always packed, and I couldn’t figure out why Aussies were so keen on Americanized “Australian” food. Finally I took my wife, an Aussie, there, and found out the appeal:
It wasn’t the food, though the servings and prices were much better than “Aussie-normal.”
It was the service. The management had brought an American in to train the servers and other staff, and the difference was like night and day. My wife couldn’t believe how many times our waitress checked in on us, nor how pleasant she was when we asked for more bread or extra napkins. Believe me, she got a good tip that night.
Privately-owned business notwithstanding, this practice probably arose from the “It’s not fair that she makes/has more than me” crowd – who are now restaurant owners. Or, from those whose schools taught them that everyone’s a winner, and that it’s the “right thing to share.” That would be like taking points away from the best in the class to give to everyone else so everyone passes the course equally. No student would stand for it – but it would be “fair” (at least in Bernie Vermont’s eyes).
People who shouldn’t be tipped:
Blackjack or Poker dealers. Fate or skill won me money not you randomly putting down the right cards.
People who aren’t tipped but should be:
Your surgeon. After all he or she just saved your life. 15% tip too rich for ya for that service?
Bagger who takes groceries out to your car. Throw the kid a buck or two. Most stores it’s illegal but give him a one or two dollar handshake. Those groceries can be heavy and it’s nice not having to take the cart back into the store.
I think the usual practice is that the owner is not tipped, but if one of the staff takes care of you, then a tip is usually given.
Most conservatives simply assume, if you disagree with them, that you are a communist. So it was fair play.
That’s unfortunately old news Barbara but I’m working hard to revive the original ways!
And if Parisians think the service here is heavenly, Japan would blow their minds.
Edit: and tipping is considered an insult over there.
Do they tip in Japan?
I am firmly in favor of tipping, and wish it were extended to more service industries.
There’s a good reason for this: It puts the decision-making for rewarding good service closest to the service itself. That’s simply economically efficient. As George Gilder says, the key to running an efficient economy is to align power and information. The people who have the most information about a transaction should be the ones who are empowered to make the decisions.
Removing tipping puts the onus for performance management onto the service manager. But that person is not observing every transaction. And his goals may not be the same as the customer’s. A waiter who serves more tables than another one, whose orders don’t pile up in the kitchen, may be rewarded for his hard work, but unseen is that he does this by ignoring some patrons, by being curt and discourteous to people interrupting his work flow, etc.
Also, the manager is dealing in generalities: He may get fine reports on average for a waiter, but miss the fact that he treated a customer like dirt for some reason. Under the new regime, that customer still gets to pay a tip for his bad service, because it’s baked into the bill.
Tipping is also flexible. I have engaged in all-night bull sessions with friends in coffee shops where we’ve done nothing but drink coffee all night. But if I’m using up a booth and a waiter’s time for four hours, I’m going to tip about $10-$15 for that $1.70 cup of coffee. And once waiters know that I do that, guess what? They keep serving us coffee all night, any time we show up. Happily.
Take the ability to tip away, and just how much service do you think we’re going to get? And even if they are forced to serve us, do you think that experience is going to be more or less pleasant than if they were directly rewarded for putting up with us?
The other thing I like about tipping is that it rewards people individually for their own individual effort. I hate places where the tips go into a pool to be divvied among all the wait staff equally. That’s just micro-socialism – punishing the best waitstaff and giving some of their hard-won good will to those who don’t deserve it in the name of ‘fairness’.