I think so! +10 google merit badges for you.
I really like this passage:
We would periodically hear guests express anger about not being able to choose the amount of their tip. Their refrain was, It’s not about money … I always tip more than 20 percent. These people were angry even though they had spent less than they otherwise would have, because they had been robbed of their perceived power over their server.
Considering the amount of harassment of waitresses I saw during the brief time I worked in a restaurant 80% does seem pretty low. And a lot of that harassment came from the management, so even if promised anonymity I wouldn’t be surprised if some women were simply afraid to answer. The waitress I knew who was beaten up in the back room by an ex-boyfriend didn’t want to go to the cops because she knew the male managers wanted her to keep it quiet. The waitress who was called a lesbian by a manager in front of customers knew she shouldn’t have to put up with that, but knew she’d have a hard time getting another job if she complained.
Just as bad was the manager who believed almost any woman who came in to dine alone needed his company. When some of the customers couldn’t avoid being harassed the waitresses had no chance.
I have to wonder if the “angry” customers actually gave evidence of this, or if this was an assumed motivation assigned to these people because of the biases of the owner.
In a society that does tip, I would not be comfortable with a non-tipping establishment. It’s not so much about power over another person as it would be the removal of the ability to choose what’s considered an option in society at large. An enforced removal of a freedom if you will. I know what a shit job waiting tables can be, and treat servers with the politeness I would want someone else to give my own family (both my sister and mother worked in restaurants), but I would still want the option of assigning a larger tip to someone who seems to be having a rough day at work, or someone who provided exceptional service.
Like it or not, this is you wanting to have power over your server. Power used to be kind is still power. And if you tip some people more then you are necessarily tipping other people less.
So leave an extra $5/10/20 on the table.
In fact, tip in cash rather than on the credit card bill whenever possible. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that unscrupulous management has more control over how much (or little) is given to the server when it’s part of a credit card charge.
That seems weird to me. You don’t have that kind of control with your mechanic, nurse, fast food worker, receptionist at an office, or any of a billion other service jobs out there.
Your “freedom of will” is still an exercise in power. In your case, to give more, but you are one customer among an endless stream. Wouldn’t you want those loves ones in that shit job to not have to flirt, smile, and endure abuse to get a living wage?
**Edited for early morning typos/autocorrect.
Perhaps, but to assign it to some sort of malicious “power hungry control over your server” is not an honest discussion. What one person sees as “power over your server” others could argue is “not having the power of choice what to do with your own resources removed from you”. In a tipping situation, the “power” is generally with the consumer since it is technically an optional practice (though it could be argued that it has evolved into something other than that in modern times). Saying that I have no choice over the matter removes the “optional/discretionary” part of the traditional formula.
I know that it may be a semantic issue, but it would be a bit refreshing to go to a restaurant where tips are not allowed, where the base price of the meal is increased over the average by 20%, and the policy is “no tipping allowed because we actually pay our servers a decent wage (20% of our sales plus a base)”. I would not like a place that calculated it separately after the fact, and just added it to the bill. Since the amount of a tip is generally up to the consumer, either accept that I’m tipping, and let me determine the amount (since it’s technically optional), or get rid of tipping completely.
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