As someone who gets tips at their job I hear the conversations my co-workers have. If someone doesn’t leave a good tip they bad mouth them I’ve even heard about customers being followed to their car and questioned. It seems the repeating theme is “Well if they can’t afford to tip maybe they should stay home”. I realized a bit ago that tipping is bullshit. It’s so my boss doesn’t pay me a living wage and that cost gets past through to the customers without that being explained to them. Which is fraud but that’s another thought. I realized I was so focus on the percentage I should be entitled to I didn’t step back and look at the system in play. I get it- without tips I couldn’t survive, but then I thought of something. I flipped it.
As servers it is expected for us to get tips because we went above and beyond but isn’t that like a customer expecting a discount because they were a good customer? If you switch the verbiage around from “Well if they can’t afford to eat out stay home” to “Well if I don’t get my discount I won’t be able to eat here” (which you could say that’s your problem but couldn’t they say that to us about making a livable wage) or “Well if I don’t get my discount I can’t help pay for your wage” It’s a very similar thing
Good customers keep the place running.
Good customers promote other good customers to come in. Bad customers promote bad customers to come in. If we judge a persons worth and what they should be paid by their effort why wouldn’t a discount be given? Or it could go either way.
For example,
Lucy drinks just two glasses of wine and cleans up after herself by putting everything on the plate- she gets 5% off
Fred is a drunk slob kabob and spills red wine all over the white tablecloth. He’s rude and insulting – Fred has to tip 30%
It seems this mutual dependency could have been sway either way. I had to tell this to my co-worker when a debate was getting heated but I noticed that America being one of the youngest countries in the world seems to think their business model is the only way to survive. They seem to forget other countries not only don’t have tipping but their servers actually live pretty well.
I feel like the rich just want the poor to fight each other for their own piece of the pie.