on tipping
sunday, april 22, 2001
i went on a trip with my fellow college journalists the other week. during our trip we had a complete meltdown over .. tipping. an hour of hollering off the top of our lungs at each other over tipping etiquette made it a pretty unforgettable trip to say the least. in honor of this war of ours, i put forth the idea to have a "tipping vs. not tipping" duel in the opinions pages of our last issue this spring. somebody took me up on it, and the past half hour we've been hammering away at our keyboards, sneak peeking at the others arguments and quickly running back to address it.. below is my finished little piece. hee. let's see if we have room for it in the paper.
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Walking into a restaurant knowing that you only have a $70 allowance and no steady job doesn�t excuse stiffing a waiter who you admit gave you decent service. Eating expensive food is not a constitutional right -- it�s a service that you buy. If you know you only have $53 to spend on a meal, you don�t walk into a place where you KNOW you are supposed to tip for service and spend it all on your food, you order something a few dollars cheaper or don�t go there at all.
Why should the waiter who was doing his job suffer for your poor planning? Why should he HAVE to expect to catch a �bad� one every now and then? You are the one walking into HIS work place and getting the service � why should he expect you, a stranger off the street, to redefine the conditions he works under?
And hey: not all of us have the privilege of having a wide variety of jobs to choose from. Saying that it�s the waiters� fault for having �chosen� a $2/hr job is ridiculous. If you don�t believe in tipping for the service you get, then you go to a place where you don�t have to, or you order your meal to go. If you DECIDE to sit down and be served, you have also DECIDED to be expected to tip! Your choice � NOT the waiters!
Do you really think if people just stopped tipping altogether, waiters would spontaneously thank you for finally giving them incentive to stand up against their employers and demand more pay? That you are in fact doing them a favor, and that you are really taking a stand FOR waiters to get better pay?
Well. Say the revolution happens. Waiters and waitresses across the nation march on Washington and demand to at least make minimum wage in exchange for no tip. Corporate America listens and makes it so. Would you be happy to pay $65 instead of $53 for that same meal because tip would be instantly included to make it possible for this increased salary? Or would restaurants happily pay the increased wages out of their own pockets while you still got that extra drink and freshly wiped off table? And how many would be able to stay a waiter after their usual pay went from bad but with the possibility of a good tip night here and there, to permanently bad minimum wage?
You can be against tipping as a way of practice all you want. For now, you aren�t making any difference to �help� waiters by not tipping except forcing them to work extra to make up for what they lost on giving you free service when they could have helped somebody willing to pay for it. And after a waiter encounters a �bad� customer several times a night for a few weeks, it�s not just him losing out on the money. It also means he has to explain to the manager why people won�t tip him � he must be giving bad service, and why would the manager want a bad waiter on the staff?
Tip or don�t tip. Just don�t expect the waiter to thank you when you decide not to.
peace.
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read the finished piece, and counter-piece here!
