

Abolish Tipping: It's bad for servers, customers and restaurants - changdizzle
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/abolish_tipping_it_s_bad_for_servers_customers_and_restaurants.html?fb_ref=sm_fb_share_chunky

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n3rdy
_But restaurateurs, giddy at the prospect of passing labor costs directly to
customers,_

They don't already do this when they charge you? If they had to pay their
servers more, wouldn't they need to charge more to make up for the difference?

 _Tipping does not incentivize hard work._

Maybe not when tips are pooled they don't. They sure incentivized me to work
hard, and to develop a pleasing personality. I had a seriously teenager
attitude problem when I was younger and working at grocery stores and whatnot,
and had the classic "us vs. them" mentality when it came to customers. When I
started delivering pizzas that changed. The harder I worked, the more
personable I was, the more money I would bring in each night in tips. Not
immediately, but imagine the surprise when you see someone actually requested
you by name to deliver their food just because they felt that their food
arrived faster when you did it, and enjoyed the short interaction enough.

 _The factors that correlate most strongly to tip size have virtually nothing
to do with the quality of service. Credit card tips are larger than cash tips.
Large parties with sizable bills leave disproportionately small tips. We tip
servers more if they tell us their names, touch us on the arm, or draw smiley
faces on our checks. Quality of service has a laughably small impact on tip
size._

I would assume a server who takes care to do all those things is also taking
care to provide a quality service. So in one side of the authors mouth they
are saying that servers who go the extra mile get extra tips, and on the other
side, they say servers who go the extra mile don't? Which is it?

 _Racism racism studies say this ethnic group tips less racism racism..._

My personal experience was different classes of people tipped differently.
Ironically, bigger houses typically tipped less. Drunk people either didn't
tip at all, or in some cases, would tip multiple times, making up the
difference for the non-tipping inebriated and then some. College students
we're terrible tippers too. Doctors were probably the worst tippers of all.
Ethnic group has little to do with it, but why let that get in the way of an
opportunity to race bait?

IMO tipping is the best opportunity for someone in high school or college.
It's one of the few options you have where you can get real-time feedback on
the quality of your service. It's one of the few options where you can make
beyond the minimum wage. If it weren't for overtime pay laws, it would be one
of the only options someone had to get themselves out of a financial jam. I
recall one week where I had put in too many hours, I was only focused on
bringing home tips so that I could fix my car, but after 40 hours I was forced
to go home. Imagine how frustrating it is to be killing it on a weekend and
having to stop abruptly because the employer would have been legally obligated
to pay you time and a half whether you wanted it or not.

Working for tips was a good experience for me and it was actually a natural
stepping stone to eventually working freelance full time. When you experience
the correlation of hard work to income, the transition is smoother than going
from "paid no matter how hard you work" to not getting paid if you slack.

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codva
"Working" class people are much more likely to have at some point tried to
survive on a tip based job. So it's not surprising that they would be better
tippers than more wealthy individuals whose only exposure to tips is being
expected to provide them.

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brianherbert
There's no tipping in South Korea (and many other places). You will get
excellent service, if not better. Nobody leaves a restaurant or cafe feeling
confused and staff never feels cheated. Taxi drivers still get you to your
destination without any additional tip incentive.

Besides, if I've paid for something already, why should I give an additional,
mostly arbitrary amount?

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cafard
"We tip servers more if they tell us their names, touch us on the arm, or draw
smiley faces on our checks."

We? I tip 20%, rounding slightly up. I have never worked as a waiter, but I
did several turns as a busboy, getting a cut from the waiters' tips. I'm not
out to impress waitresses, I'm not out to make a statement that affects
somebody's main source of income; this is financial. (I once tipped damned
near 50%, but that was after I took four fourth grade boys to lunch on one's
birthday, and they left a very messy table; that wasn't a reward, but an
apology.)

"Quality of service has a laughably small impact on tip size."

Quite. See above. I'm not going to penalize the wait staff for what might be
the faults of the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I had beers on a couple of occasions at a hotel bar in
Boston. There the "gratuity" was included in the charge, and that was fine
with me.

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psychotik
There's opportunity here. Exec, Über, Lyft etc get rid of tipping for
cleaning, taxis and I love it. I am happy to know total cost upfront. Matter
of time before this is extended to food service.

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marcooda
No formal rules around Tipping in Australia, but some places of service
(cafes, restaurants, etc.) have tip jars as a "donation or gift" rather than
the norm.

You work in hospitality, you get a minimum wage, usually $10-$30/hr depending
on your position/experience etc. and usually the tips are evenly dispersed to
all staff who worked that shift as one customer may tip $20, compared to $2
tips or $0 from other customers. Kinda see it as a end-of-shift bonus if you
get $20 worth of tips to take as cash in hand.

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stonith
Anecdotal, but I've found the quality of restaurant service in Australia is
far below that of the US - there is little incentive for servers to do
anything but the absolute minimum. I do think this is because there isn't a
tipping culture here.

I frequently eat with someone who orders something like a hamburger with no
butter on the roll, and maybe 30% of the time he will receive butter on it
anyway, because the servers don't pay much attention. When we holidayed in the
US, this didn't happen a single time, and we attributed that to the fact that
if a server messes up an order like that, they're risking their tip.

~~~
jordanthoms
I've noticed this also coming from New Zealand to the US - there is a distinct
difference in restaurant service here, and also in people's expectations for
service.

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dreen
Couldn't agree more, I always hated tipping even when I worked as a waiter.

