I can't say I've ever tipped based on service and it's a hilarious and depressing falsehood that anyone believes this is what tipping is for. We tip to compensate for the owner-biased, dysfunctional society we have the fortune to be born into.<p>That said, I rarely eat out anymore, and when I do get food I order takeout. The obsession with service when I don't really give a damn about it has basically destroyed my desire to sit down in a restaurant and pay even more to have my water occasionally refilled. The constant "thank you"s and "how's the food" and pushing menu items on me is basically the opposite of how I'd prefer to spend my time eating in a restaurant. Just bring the food and a water pitcher and leave me alone, please!
Tipping culture is just an unfortunate mess.<p>Restaurant owners love it because it hides costs from customers and allows lower pay for workers (it does do both of these things very well).<p>Workers "prefer" it because they have stockholm syndrome'd themselves into thinking that drawing a smiley face on receipts will get them higher pay (it won't.)
So, the point the point of 90% of the content is, women predominately get sexually harassed at restaurant jobs, this is correlated to tipping as it creates a power difference between the wait staff and the visitor, plus employers just makes up the difference of minimum wage and the tips earned, so overall tipping is bad.<p>To me, it sounds like a problem of restaurant visitors who use tipping(if I am to believe this article which despite data and claims, I have doubts about) to justify their perverted behavior. The problem needs to be solved by the employer ensuring proper protection at workplace and more surveillance(sometimes it is needed) to deter and gather evidence of such harassment.<p>When I(hopefully a decent human), tip a wait staff(regardless of gender or ethnicity), it is a thank you gesture for their good service, not as a pervert intent to grope them. Now if someone is perverted, they will find ways to practice their perversion, now it is the tip, next it’ll be the “bad service for which I am paying”. The fix is not where the article’s expert is looking at, it is somewhere else.
1. Why the f is this flagged?<p>2. This article is exactly why "Tipping is stupid, so I'm not going to do it" is exactly the wrong response to take with tipping. Tipping IS stupid, but given how food service is structured today, not tipping is markedly worse for the livelihoods of the people making/serving your food than doing so. Voting for local candidates who will push changes that will make tipping obsolete (mostly around fair compensation) is the only way we can get rid of it for good.
Good points but I have a questions about tipping and taxes in the US. Do one have to pay taxes for the tips?<p>I know restaurant owners in Germany sometimes are able to pay a smaller wage to waiters and compensate with tips, because they don’t have to pay taxes for the tips.
This article talks a great game. Then we get to the third to last question:<p>> <i>The other argument they like to use is that if we actually had to pay these workers a wage the industry would collapse, the system would fail, many jobs would be lost, and prices would skyrocket. But here's the thing: that all has been proven to be completely false by the seven states that have completely eliminated this system. They have higher restaurant sales per capita, higher job growth in the restaurant industry, higher job growth among tipped workers, and even higher rates of tipping than the others.</i><p>Oh, hm? I didn't know some states had actually eliminated tipping! Well, I've been keeping my head down and maybe I'm just out of the loop. I'm going to have to look this up.<p>> <i>Our concern, and why we would never want to legislate that or push for a complete elimination of tipping, is that we don’t think that the employer will do it in the way people like Danny Meyer have done it</i><p>Oh, what? But you just spent the rest of the article talking about how bad tipping is? Well there must be some synthesis here.<p>>> So kind of like how many other industries that have adopted tipping function. Like, say, coffee shops, where baristas are paid a salary at or above the minimum, and also tipped from time to time?<p>> Thats exactly right.<p>oof. So uh, despite an entire article talking about what a bad system tipping is, we're not actually talking about eliminating tipping? But instead embracing the dynamic of even more types of businesses nagging each customer for an extra donation instead of directly paying their workers competitively? Which continues enabling most of the poor dynamics the article was just bemoaning?<p>I get that the two-tiered minimum wage is horrible, and if this article was up front with that framing I wouldn't have felt so cheated. But as it stands, with friends like these...
The tipping system itself is bad, but until it is abolished (in particular, by eliminating the distinction in the minimum wage between tipped and untipped jobs, and by raising the minimum wage across the board), it is your obligation to tip well.
It sure is nice living in a sane country where I don't have to even think about this "tipping" bullshit every time I go to a restaurant or cafe or anywhere else.
Complaining about tipping on a article you have to pay to read is pretty funny. Tipping is widely preferred by the workers. That's why they don't do it in Europe ;)