What’s more American than tipping? That infuriating system that makes a $50 meal cost at least $60, where you end up paying the employee instead of their employer, where you put down a dollar extra for every drink you buy? Before actually moving here, when I was just visiting, I railed against it and definitely skimped on tips. I mean, why the hell was I paying a server to do their job? That taught America, didn’t it! (It didn’t). Now I live here and though the system is absurd, not tipping the server is a case of punching down, of punishing the person whose hourly rate could be as low as $2.13. It’s an archaic system, with a bang of aristocracy and superiority off of it, and it undermines sincerity and monetizes friendliness. And yet, for all that, nobody wants to get rid of it.
The unwritten but widely accepted rule is to tip 20% when the meal is over $25 and 30% when it is under. For a bartender, add a dollar a drink (though, to be fair, keep the tips flowing and you might well get your fifth or sixth drink free). The tip is supposed to reward excellent service but really, even if the service is shit, you’re supposed to tip 10% and go to a manager if the service was so bad it didn’t merit 10%.
Right.
Eh, why am I doing this?
Well, though your server is likely to be getting around $6 an hour (€5.41), under federal law, the minimum wage for tipped employees like bartenders and waitresses is just $2.13 per hour so your generous tips will help make up for their low pay. Their take-home pay is notoriously unreliable; on a quiet day they could work at a loss (i.e. have spent more getting to work than they make). Even if a server makes an absolute killing of a night on tips, they’re probably tipping out 20% to the busser (person who brings out the food and cleans the tables, taking plates etc. to kitchen for washing) and 5% to the bar staff who pulled the drinks. Servers get no benefits like health insurance and you’d want to be making quare tips to have the price of an MRI or the simplest of tests at a doctor’s visit.
Everything is tipped in America; throw your change into a tip jar when you get your coffee, tip the coat check, tip a dollar a drink, tip when you collect the takeaway, tip the Lyft or Uber driver, tip on top of the price of getting your eyebrows done, tip the hairdresser. It’s really only right and fair that we share the wealth but the tipping system has many shortcomings. First of all, the onus for ensuring the employee takes home a decent wage falls on the customer instead of the employer. It monetizes kindness; am I a ‘regular’ who gets on well with the staff or is this a tip-based transaction? What I really don’t like though about the tipping system is that a country founded on republican values embraces a system that’s remnant of aristocracy, whereby flattery and attentiveness of those wealthier and richer than the server dictate the server’s take-home pay. In addition to that, a New Yorker article on the topic noted,
“The system perpetuates sexual misconduct, because service workers feel compelled to tolerate inappropriate behavior from customers who hold financial power over them”
New Yorker, 24 February 2018
Another study carried out shows that a female server can expect to hike her tips by an average of seventeen per cent if she wears a flower in her hair. It also found that people of colour are tipped less. So, we’re agreed, it’s a shit system. Gotcha, so let’s scrap it, right?
Well, no. Though there are countless things wrong with it, though it is a system that leaves people without benefits, dependable income or income to pay for benefits, though a server does not know on a given day if they’ll come home with $20 or $200, there’s little appetite for scrapping it! Servers and bar people must be gamblers at heart because you’ll find few who would support a minimum wage in place of tipping. After all, maybe tonight’s the night that pays the rent or buys that new coat or clears the credit card. In 2016, a restaurateur in New York set his prices higher so that employees could be paid a living wage and provided with benefits (health insurance, matching 401(k)s, paid parental leave etc.) but after a year and a half had to return to the tipping. Further afield,
“Efforts to eliminate tipping have generally failed. Voters in Maine and Washington, D.C., passed ballot measures to phase out tipping. Both decisions were overturned after protest and confusion”.
New York Times, 24 October 2019.
I mean, how it’s more confusing to pay the amount on the bill is perplexing to me but y’know…. America. Even though they were saving on tipping, diners were alienated because they felt they were being ‘done’ with the higher prices. They missed showing their appreciation with tips – though I’m not sure I buy that, it smells of a power structure to me. Either way, losing tipping meant losing business.
So yeah, an income system that depends on whim and offers little or no security, that allows for employees to be paid as little as $2.13 and adds 20% to the price of any meal is overwhelmingly popular and going nowhere. So though I’m normally advocating action and addressing inequities, we just have to ride this one out. I’m all for those who want to get rid of the tipping system and replace it with benefits and security but for now, if your protest against it is holding back on the tip, the only one affected by your protest is the person most in need of the tip, the server.
If you can afford to eat out, you can afford to tip.
Tip your server, you’re in America now.
doireann.ie 