Kind of disappointing how many people haven’t read through this. I know it’s a long haul of a read but it’s damned compelling and Jay does a thorough analysis of what he thought was going on vs. what it turned out actually was going on, where he goofed up, etc.
As a former waiter (though from a state where thanks to crappy laws, it is usually better to be kitchen staff from a pay perspective), I was kind of skeptical of the tipping system to begin with but held onto it because of worries about restaurants not paying enough. Not skeptical of tipping where waiters rely on it because duh.
At any rate, tip your waiter. Work for a system in which your waiter can concentrate on being a good waiter rather than trying to get you to bump your bill up so they can make up for shitty tables. \m/
I think it would be better if he just called it a no-tipping restaurant, rolled the 18% into the cost of the menu items and put a message on the menus saying “You don’t need to tip our staff as our menu prices include your tip which will be evenly distributed between everyone. Simple. Fair. Easy.”
Also places that include a mandatory tip (surcharges are only acceptable on public holidays IMO) should be told they’re jerks. In Japan they often do this so cheapos don’t occupy vital restaurant space to hang with their friends without buying anything, but at least they have the decency to give you an otoshi (a small appetiser) for your 300 yen.
I read the article, but honestly I thought the author was a bit of a d-bag. YMMV. Porter lost me in a couple places, the first when he talked about eliminating the side business between the server and the customer and the side business between the server and the cook, and again when he started rambling about tipping being used as a method of sexual control over the server.
In regards to the first case, it has been many years (30+) since I worked in a restaurant but as I recall my experiences the management wanted to encourage that feeling of interaction between the server and the customer so that customers would be more likely to come back. Along with that if the idea of a good type managed to wheedle something special out of a cook that also made the customer feel special and likely to return.
In regards to the second I can only speak for myself but the last thing I am interested in while in a restaurant is trying to make it with the waitress. She is touching my food for christ’s sake. Maybe I am attempting to exercise control by trying to insure 3 things, a) that my order is correct, b) that it arrives at the table at a temperature above lukewarm, and c) that they server keep my coffee cup filled. Other than that I don’t want any interaction with them. I don’t want flirting, I don’t want small talk, I just want competence. Unfortunately that is a rarer and rarer thing these days, but when i encounter it I type pretty well. When I don’t I don’t completely stiff them but I am nowhere near as generous. If that is controlling the dynamic wel color me guilty.
Not in my experience in eating out in the USA. Also, your sales personnel if super nice, but has an astonishing rate of incompetents among them. I still wonder how anyone could get a job a book store without being able spell.
My personal experience is that service is no worse in other countries, especially the eastern, Non-European Union ones I have visited.
My eastern European friends pointed out to me that I was a generally better behaved American than most they had met, and that might have had something to do with it.
I don’t know where winkybear went, but your mentioning of Eastern Europe reminded me, that the perceived unfriendliness of staff might get misinterpreted as bad service.
Germans - even our waiters - are much more likely to be matter-of-fact than Americans and Russians even more so. Exchanging smiles and pleasantries are not necessarily expected to the same degree, up to the point that smiling at a customer gets interpreted as sucking up (from the staff’s point of view) or even mocking ( from the customers’ point of view.) It is’t of course, as Americans aren’t “lying about being friendly or helpul”.
I’ve always had competent service overseas, especially in France, but I’ve never been pointlessly fawned over, grovelled to and “flirted” with like I have been in the US. Always makes me feel icky.
That fake “niceness” is certainly creepy if you are not used to it. I’d rather have a rude waiter. Or almost. Plus these days you can whistleblow about rude staff on TripAdvisor and the like, which should be an incentive to improve attitudes (in my neck of the woods, rude waiters are not that hard to come by, specially older ones that have been doing that for a living since the dawn of time. Sometimes funny too).
None of those occupations have the level of customer interaction that waiting tables does except maybe retail clerk, if the place is nice enough. And they usually make commissions, if the place is nice enough.
The whole article resounds with a burned out restauranteur vibe. He has a pointlessly negative perspective about tipping. That it’s all about harsh judgements and meting out punishment for bad service but I think the opposite is true. People far more frequently over-tip than under-tip and the reason is that it’s a meaningful way to express their gratitude. A simple personal expression of goodwill to the person who served their food. People like eating out and a pleasant server can add to the experience. It’s a social event where even the server participates. The enforced 18% tip strips away the personal element and makes it even more of an anonymous business transaction. No one likes to have a sanctimonious policy forced on them with the assumption that they are all a bunch of ungrateful cheapskates. The restaurant’s reviews on Yelp provide a somewhat different perspective on the author’s brilliant alternative to standard tipping procedure. He may be a bit premature if he has already started rehearsing his TED talk. I think the XKCD diagram says it best. http://xkcd.com/1098/
I’m not sure there really is this advancement going on. If anything it’s the reverse. Fancy restaurants tend to have young and attractive people waiting tables and cheap diners and waffle-shops tend to have old ladies waiting tables (probably not much tip off of $2.99 breakfasts).
Those are the owner’s costs of doing business, and are no interest or concern of mine…
Actually, it’s educational for the consumer to know what percentage of the cost goes to actually paying for the service rather than surcharges that have zero to do with it. Don’t know if ti’s still the case, but when I lived in Germany it was nice to know from the stickers on all the pumps that 95% of the price was actually tax. Kept the bitching to the operators down.
Recent studies have shown that worrying about money/income reduces your ability to focus on other things. In this situation, I would suggest that when a waiter is constantly worrying that if their service isn’t up to a random person’s expectation then they won’t make a decent wage that day, then they’re being distracted by that fear and don’t have as much attention to focus on doing their job right. Everyone in the service industry is worried that if their work isn’t good enough, someone will ask for a supervisor, write up a negative review, or bag the restaurant to their friends. My Dad lives in the USA and his first method of getting good service is to smile and be friendly to the staff, even at Subway and other places where it’s a flat price. He always gets good serivce because he’s a nice guy, you can see people just relax and respond in kind.
Yes, I don’t. UK regulations say that you have to display the price including VAT (our sales tax). In mixed trade and public shops you’ll see both prices.
To decide whether to buy X, I should only have to ask myself if it is worth £Y. Not £Y+Z%. Especially if Z is a tricky fraction.
I see your post here less as an argument against the gratuity charge and more against the custom in the USA to pretend that taxes, gratuity and so on are not part of the price. This is a structural problem, really. And I understand the writer’s decision, as he expressed himself quite eloquently in his series. I recommend going back to reading it again as I don’t think he really is in disagreement with you. I also get the feeling he believes himself that he was the first in modern America to implement the model that he did, so I don’t find it arrogant on his part.
My own personal experience is that tipping will soon go the way of haggling, as it makes us think after the fact about sums, devoting time and cognitive power to valuation and mathematics when we have our heads filled with other stuff.
Well, it’s not that much different in Germany, but the discretionary tip there is often just a courtesy rounding up to the next increment, sort of a way of saying “keep the change”. When paying with a card, then it becomes a convenience more for the customer, little more than a way of saying “thank you”.
Interesting that so many people believe the original article, me included, even though it’s completely false. Read the reviews. The service sucked at The Linkery
