The Oppression of Tipping
So, tipping at restaurants. By now, everyone has been exposed to the modern zeitgeist on tipping at restaurants. This is one of those social customs that has crept up on the populace without anyone realizing what happened. All of a sudden, certain tipping amounts have achieved status as the new normal. Throughout most of my life, a gratuity was always seen as a discretionary amount left at the table after a meal in a restaurant. As bizarre as it may seem now, 5% was not unusual in the 70’s and those really big spenders would even leave the princely amount of 10%.
Today, the absolute minimum has crept up to 15% while many electronic pay devices give you the freedom to add 18, 20 or even 25% to the total bill if you happen to be on drugs.
It’s not as if we should do away with the idea of tipping; it represents a gracious way of showing approval for a conferred service. It’s the expectation of a gratuity that has gone wildly out of control. As most people know, the culture of tipping is most rampant in Western nations, notably in the US and Canada. In Europe, no such social expectations are demanded upon restaurant diners, although that is likely to change as American values get adopted worldwide. In Japan, tipping is not expected and is in fact considered insulting to servers there.
Ironically, according to foodwoolf.com the practice of tipping had roots in the taverns of 17th century England when aristocrats left a few coins for servers “to insure promptness”, hence TIP. Apparently, it was less a gesture of largesse as it was a means to show off their wealth and class. When this custom first came to the US, it was considered the ‘vilest of imported vices”. Nevertheless, Americans adopted this custom and to this day, gratuities are not only present at all restaurants; at some they are mandatory. Thus, tipping has evolved from being a not so subtle bribe to becoming a not so subtle mandatory tax. There is often no relation between the minimum acceptable tip and the service.
Today, tipping culture has spread to include virtually all service industries. Besides your food server, you are expected to tip your barber, your manicurist, the doorman, the garbage people, the mailman, the golf caddy, the pizza delivery guy, the tour guide, the bellman, the hotel maid, the lap dancer, the parking attendant, etc etc, etc.
Again, nothing wrong with a small consideration for services offered, but the expectations are wildly out of kilter. As the attached image shows, the expectations are that the value of the gratuity is expected to be a function of the value of the food served. This makes no sense at all since it takes just as much effort to place a plate of fries at a table as it does to place a plate of foie gras. It takes as much effort to pour from a pitcher of water as it does to pour from a bottle of Chateau Lafitte. Yet we are pressured to pay a gratuity based on the value of the food product.
This makes as much sense as paying a tip amount based on the value of the car that you bring to a parking valet. Should we pay a percentage of a KIA’s value versus the value of a Mercedes? Of course there are those that sniff that if you’re not willing to pay the expected gratuity, then you should not be dining out. In fact, this is likely to happen as costs escalate and people get discouraged from paying a significant excess over services received. This is of course, the Marie Antoinette attitude and eventually, only the very well-heeled will be able to afford to dine out.
It’s going to be tough to put the genie back in the bottle as they say, but at some point the threshold of resistance will be reached. Once you get to the 25 to 30% level on gratuities, the food had better be damned good.