Day 15, Tipping (not a city in China)

[sparr]

Let's talk about tipping food service wait staff professionals. These are people you would typically call "waiter" or "waitress". I am going to systematically address every argument I have heard in favor of commonly advocated American tipping practices.

Before I start, I need to tell you that I give my waitress a larger tip than her average, on average. I tip more than most people in my party, most of the time. I am not a cheapskate. *I* am not the problem.

First, let's address the concept of exaggerated tipping "standards". Regardless of how you care to calculate your tip, people who advocate consistent tipping of almost any sort tend to suggest amounts that are higher than average. Ask your closest waiter friend how much they make in tips from an average customer. You can safely assume that almost anyone who tries to tell you how to tip will tell you to tip more than that. They are trying to make you, a possibly rational, likely generous, potential tipper, subsidize everyone else who tips poorly or not at all. My leanings toward socialism notwithstanding, I refuse to accept that I should subsidize another person's poor tipping. Anyone who says you should tip 20% is perpetuating this particular problem, since you can easily work out, or just poll your friends to find out, that most servers get an average tip closer to 10%. I am disinclined to listen to the arguments of people who do this, because they are starting out with a dishonest principle.

Next, I have to establish that I tip for service. My bellboy gets a tip based on how carefully and quickly he delivers my luggage to my room. My masseuse gets a tip based on how good the massage was. My pizza delivery guy gets a tip based on how well he follows my special instructions and whether he set the boxes on their sides or crushed them. And my waitress gets a tip based on how well she remembers my order, how often she lets my drink sit empty in the middle of my meal, how personable she is, and other factors related to how well she does her job (you know, that metric that dictates how much people get paid in a healthy free market).

A good waitress at Waffle House deserves a bigger tip than a bad waiter at Maggiano's. Tipping more or less is how you, as a customer, exert influence over the long term quality of service. Servers who get bigger tips will be encouraged to seek out more difficult tasks (hosting larger parties, etc). Servers who get smaller tips will be encouraged to improve or seek another line of work. If you give more money to worse servers, you are providing the wrong sort of feedback, and you are the reason the rest of us keep getting shitty service at expensive[1] restaurants!

Next, I send a big "fuck that noise" to percentage-based tipping. If you say a waiter analyzes his income based on percentages, I call shenanigans. For the same amount of work, a person who brings home $200 one day and $100 the next is going to make the obvious conclusion about which day was "better". If you think they will be happier on the $100 day because they got higher-percentage tips that day (despite getting a lot less of them) then I think you're deluded, and would be happy to take that extra $100 from the first day off your hands.

If you think that I should tip a certain way because "that's just the way it is", let me debunk that on as many levels as I can. First, "American style" tipping is specific to our country and a select few others. The vast majority of people in the world today don't use a percentage tipping system, or even "mandatory" (read: expected) tipping at all. Second, our system is relatively new. People who are alive today can remember when there was nothing like "the 15% rule" (or is it 18% or 20% these days? that's an even newer revision). If this isn't how we tipped 50 years ago, it's probably not how we will be tipping 50 years from now, and I enjoy being ahead of the curve. Third, I refuse to do ANYTHING just because it's how "everyone" else does it. Something something jump off a bridge something something? Fourth, not even everyone in America does it that way. I'm an obvious example of that, but the better example is everyone who doesn't tip, or who tips based on breast size or monetary need (bigger tips for the waitress with 4 kids to feed).

Now, many arguments can be made that the subjective level of service you receive at a more expensive restaurant is greater. As a whole, and based on thousands of experiences, I reject that notion based on my previous definition of "service". I do not typically see any better service in expensive restaurants than elsewhere. Ignoring that, I explicitly state that I neither want nor need the additional bits that make up that higher level of service. I do not need a waiter with a degree in food service. I do not need a waiter who is trained to suggest wines, or discuss culinary history with me. If I need those things, I will seek out the service of someone whose job title is not a synonym for "person who takes my order and brings me food and drink".

Another issue is that some wait staff are required to perform non-tip-generating duties. They may have to fold napkins, roll silverware, prep menus, or even do random bits of labor. That this is allowed to take place is a flaw in the design of our minimum wage statute[2], which you are welcome to address your thoughts on to your local legislator.

In closing, and to repeat myself, I need to tell you that I give my waitress a larger tip than her average, on average. I tip more than most people in my party, most of the time. I am not a cheapskate. *I* am not the problem. Despite having included this paragraph TWICE, at both ends of this post, I expect some replies will STILL call me cheap or insinuate that I do not tip well or often or enough.

[1] For the sake of this post, I am discussing the typical range of restaurant prices encountered by my friends (particularly of the LJ variety) on a regular basis. "cheap" is somewhere around $4 entrees and $6 meals, at places like Waffle House or Denny's. "expensive" is $20 entrees and $30+ meals, at places like Maggiano's and Ruth's Chris.
[2] Georgia has, afaik, the lowest state minimum wage in the country. It is one of a handful of states that do not improve on the federal laws in this regard. Almost every server in the country is earning more than $2.13 as their base wage.

Comments

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

It is not my problem how they know. They could ask me. They could have different lines, or sections, or some sort of colored flag (yes, I have been to restaurants with "I want alcohol" flags to be displayed or not on tables, which indicates the bartender should visit your table before/after the waiter). I'd be happy to tell them how *I* prefer to be treated, but since they deal with a lot more customers than I do I somewhat expect them to have evolved their business model based on more data than I have alone.

To your question, yes I really really want that, if it saves us a significant amount of money (and, based on common arguments on this subject, a "bare bones" waiter can cost $20+ less than a "highly skilled" waiter for a party of 6).

We obviously value different things in a waiter. I don't want advice on wine. I don't want a discourse on culinary history. I DO want someone who can read their own writing, pronounce words in whatever language the menu is in (and preferably in English as well) correctly, keep my drink filled, and follow simple instructions. The number of waiters at expensive restaurants that can't even manage HALF of that list is astounding, and people who tip them more than their competent counterparts are why they still have a job. Whatever training bad waiters are getting, it isn't making them better WAITERS. It might make them better sommeliers, or better chefs, or better napkin origamists, but those are all things that I am not looking for when someone says to me "Hi, my name is ___ and I'm your waiter for the evening".

ServSafe is a third party proprietary thing that doesn't anything to do with licensing. That's between the restaurant and their insurance company. See above re alcohol flags.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I am going to ask something, and I'm not asking it in a patronizing way, but so I can avoid mansplaining something to you. I'm going to respond, but how I do so will change according to the answer. The question is 'Have you ever worked in the food hospitality industry? If so, in what position?'

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I'd say no. Fast food register monkey doesn't seem to count. I have, however, worked for tips in other industries.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Ok. The first thing to understand is that the job of the waiter is not to provide 'good service'. That can (and probably should) be part of it. The job of a waiter (valet, doorman, bartender, chef, busboy, etc), is to get people to come back.

Now, consider the amount of stuff out there for foodies. The Food Network just launched a second network, The Cooking Channel. Of the top 25 bestsellers on Amazon, 5 are foodie books (*not* cookbooks, but food related things, by the likes of Michael Pollan).

By *default*, the best way to get the highest percentage of returning butts in the seats is to cater to the people who are jacking up the food culture books to the top of Amazon's bestsellers, as they are a majority of people, regardless what you want or need. If you're going to tip them 15%, on a food only bill, and someone else is going to tip them 20% for providing a good recommendation that suited the food well, on a bill that includes a bottle of wine, then simply put, next week they want that guy back. Heck, even if the guy only tips 15%, his meal had the wine, and his tip will be bigger.

A waiter trains in wines, tastes the food, licenses to serve alcohol, gets ServSafe qualifications, studies the history of food so that they can simply earn more money. All of these services and skills that you have no interest in get learned because for the *average* mindset of the customers, this is what gets them better wages. Legally, as a tipped employee, they can be paid as little as $2 an hour. There is very little 'extra cost' to the house to have the 3-year waiter who took a wine class at the CIA two months ago and a guy who started last month and spends his non-working hours stoned in his friend's apartment.

I am serving a table of 4. They want a wine with dinner, and order something off the low end of the scale because they don't know much about wines. If I know what they've ordered, and how it tastes, I can say, "That wine is a fairly light, fruity wine. Since you've ordered the schnitzel, can I suggest ($german_wine), which is bolder and pairs better with the heavier flavours." If they take me up on that, they're likelier to tip better (even if the suggestion was crap, it *looks* like I'm interested in their experience), and if the wine costs an extra $10, that's an extra $1.50 to $2 in my pocket at the end of service.

If I can do that with 4 tables in an hour, over the course of a 6 hour shift, that's an extra $36-$48 in a night. $180-240 a week, and over $9000 a year; because I have that training in wine, and can sound knowledgeable.

*that* is what tipping is about to waitstaff, and the end result is a waiter, a good one, is going to be looking for those opportunities to increase their tips. Alcohol is *such* an easy way to upsell that of *course* they're going to get certified, licensed, and get some knowledge crammed into their head. They're doing it because when they have that knowledge, they earn *thousands* more a year. They can control that part of the exchange - the cheesecake is always going to cost $6.50, but the glass of wine someone has with it is in the waiter's hands.

(continued, as apparently I can only make a 4300 character comment)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Likewise, the *house* wants that person to get their sales up, and encourages licensing, knowledge, etc...getting more money is the point of the transaction on the other side.

Now, if *nothing* extra that the house or waiter does is going to change the way you tip a whit, then they don't need to concern themselves with you. Even if you tip less (and I'm not saying you do) because you resent that the waiter is trained in food, tastes, and wine, and you didn't 'need' that, the cumulative effect of this is they get $1 or $2 less from you. Compare that to what a waiter who really hustles and upsells can do with all the other customers.

Conversely, a waiter who works on upselling, who trains outside of work in wine, who pays attention to food and external media is likelier to be a better waiter. Perhaps not for you.

The waiter isn't there to save you money; they in fact want exactly the opposite thing. It's a badly paying job that rewards sales; a tip, in a lot of ways, to a waiter, is more like a commission. Regardless what you value in a waiter, what gets rewarded is managing to get return customers who tip well. That's the actual job of a waiter.

When you don't return, all you're doing is freeing the table and their time for the guy who orders two bottles of riesling and tips 20%, even when the waiter is short. From a house perspective, they are simply a better customer, worth keeping, than you.

Is that fair? Maybe not, on your half of the equation. But that's where the real capitalism lies.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I am a returning customer at over half of the places I have tipped in the last 6 months. I tip well. I have figured out which waiters are good at the job they do for me (for which they get paid $10+/hr), and which are good at the job they do for the house (for which they get paid $2.13/hr), and which are neither.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

You cannot extrapolate from the Amazon bestseller list to the public at large. Biasing your sample to only people who purchase (and, ostensibly, read) books is even worse than polls that only include people who respond to telephone surveys.
Unless you can otherwise justify your "majority" argument, this renders the rest of your points significantly more less than universal than you put them forward.

That said, your example includes you performing a greater service for your customers, which falls into my suggested tipping scheme. It lends no support to your position that unused skills are worth tipping for.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

you are, however, ignoring what I'm trying to tell you about the actual industry, and how a successful waiter works *from the industry side*. You keep going on about yourself as a customer, instead of trying to understand that even if they don't use the skills with you, they still frequently try to get the skills.

If I don't ask for the wine list, I'm not tipping for unused skills, either. They just lie fallow. BUT your initial rant read: "I do not need a waiter who is trained to suggest wines, or discuss culinary history with me. If I need those things, I will seek out the service of someone whose job title is not a synonym for "person who takes my order and brings me food and drink"."

Stop holding onto your argument like a hungry dog, and try and see the reason why that's an illogical statement to make in this discussion. You are going all over the place to support yourself, including contradicting yourself and ignoring what I'm trying to tell you about the side of the table we don't sit down on.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

Err, I'm not contradicting myself. I am just arguing against different people. In certain threads, I am willing to defer argument on particular points in order to address the deepest point on which we disagree. The "asking for a less skilled waiter" scenario is simply a continuation of the roof-tarring analogy (which wasn't mine to begin with). I am not actually advocating that strategy, I am advocating tipping based on services rendered. The less skilled waiter supposition only applies to the scenario in which I am expected to tip whatever waiter I get based on the skills he has instead of on the skills he uses for me.
I know that most people can't follow discussions with this many branches. If you would like, we can continue this from a smaller kernel in another thread.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

thanks for the patronizing tone, but I'm not having problems following the conversation. There aren't many branches; this is based on a particularly offensive thing you wrote that indicated you don't actually understand the industry and the parts tips play in it.

So let me put it simply for *you*.

The tip is based on the amount of the bill. Whether 15% or 30%, the tip is still based solely on the bill.

You don't tip for services. You might tip a higher percentage if the services were helpful, but you don't tip a waiter an extra dollar for a tour of the wine list the way you tip the bellboy an extra dollar for putting the box marked fragile on top.

The bill can be increased (which you complain of), by waiters who have the skills you 'don't need'. Indeed you've noticed that for a 6-top the bill can be $20 higher for the table when the waiter does that, even if you resent it.

From an industry point of view, that's the work of a good waiter. In point if you overspend despite your planned ideas, then even if the service was crap, that's still the sign of a good waiter internally.

Good waiters have whatever skills they have, regardless of what services they provide, to any particular table.

From their point of view, this isn't about your needs. This is about theirs. You are in their workplace. This is about them making money by shaking it out of your little pockets, willingly or not.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I disagree with every point in your post that is not tautology.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I'm curious to know what items you think are not tautologies...

I spent last week spending about 40 hours (class time and study time) training at a bartending school (I've worked kitchen, waitressed and worked counter service; my first job when I was 13 was as a fry cook. I have worked in tipping and non-tipping workplaces). During the bartending class we were not only trained to upsell to create a larger bill, we were tested on it during both the written and practical exams.

I'm telling you a truth about the other side of the industry, the side that you admit you don't really know much about. That you don't want it to be true, as a customer, still is not the point.

edit: or, to be clearer, since I believe them all to be tautologies, you need to at least tell me which ones you believe are not, rather than just handwaving and stating you disagree with all the non-tautologies, and not giving me any clue what you're going on about.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

My tips are not based on the amount of the bill. The lack of tip from someone who doesn't tip is not based on the amount of the bill. The tip from someone who only tips pretty girls is not based on the amount of the bill. The tip from someone who just made a big win in a nearby casino is not based on the amount of the bill. The tip from someone who fell for your [hypothetical] sob story is not based on the amount of the bill. People tip based on factors that have nothing to do with the amount of the bill often enough that attempting to just dismiss them from consideration is myopic. I addressed this point in my original post.

I do tip for services. I tip waiters in the same way that I tip bellboys and masseurs and tour guides and cab drivers. If the waiter gets my order right, bigger tip. If they make constructive suggestions about my order, bigger tip. If they are willing to rearrange tables for my party, bigger tip. If they forget to bring me my food, much smaller tip. If they leave my drink empty, smaller tip. Most people I know practice this sort of tip adjustment, to some degree. I just practice it in full.

The $20 increase was the hypothetical cost of the larger "mandatory" tip for a more experienced waiter. That was only part of a particular chain of hypotheticals, not relevant to the discussion outside that chain. I was not referring to the ability of a good waiter to upsell.

I really don't see how any of your insight into the industry has any bearing on the topic at hand here. You can elaborate in as much detail and to any degree of accuracy you wish on what sort of tips they want, expect, or even need. I am concerned with the practical effects of poorly thought out tipping practices from the point of view of the consumer. The restaurant wants all of their waiters to sell more food (duh) and get bigger tips. I don't care what the restaurant wants[1]. I want good waiters to get bigger tips and bad waiters to get shit tips so that the employment version of natural selection will produce a higher ratio of good servers (who keep their high-paying jobs) to bad servers (who seek another line of work because their tips suck).

[1] google "best buy demon customers" for a great example of consumer interest running counter to corporate interest in a way that influences consumer behavior.