COMMENTARY: The culture of tipping needs to change
Tipping, the customary act of giving money to a service employee in addition to the basic services they provide, has been around since at least the 1500s starting in Europe during the medieval era when lords would tip members of the serf class for going above and beyond their duties. What started out as a simple exchange of providing an extra amount of money to a worker for performing a task that goes beyond the specifications of the original task has morphed into a social obligation where you as the customer are expected to tip a server regardless of if the actual service was excellent or not for that worker to survive and make a living.
The idea of tipping itself is not something that should be banned or made illegal in any way. If a worker goes out of their way to provide additional services that are not usually required of them or are just more attentive then by all means provide a tip. The problem with American tipping culture is how business owners use society’s automatic urge to tip to underpay their workers.
In America, the federal minimum wage pay is around $7.25 with the lowest employers can pay a worker being $2.13 (U.S Department of Labor). What allows a business to pay workers this smaller amount is the understanding of tips make up the remainder of those lost wages (U.S Department of Labor). Currently, there are only seven states in the United States that pay tipped workers the full minimum wage or more, Texas is one of those states that pay tipped workers the minimum cash wage of $2.13.
This is not some sort of hidden conspiracy by business owners to cheat the working class out of getting a fair wage. Instead, this type of practice is a well-known fact here in America. Business owners have been granted a free pass over the years to underpay their workers while expecting customers to cover the rest of a worker’s wage.
This is one of the reasons why society should be against modern tipping culture. Americans are strangely okay with this Stockholm-type situation that has been allowed to fester in this country. This system needs an overhaul and has needed one for a long time. Service workers, or any workers for that matter, still can be tipped and I would encourage anyone to tip as readily as possible but when businesses exploit this to avoid paying someone a fair wage is when a line must be drawn.
In principle, if a business profits by exploiting their workforce, then they should not be allowed to continue doing business, anyone who comes to work and puts in their time and effort should be paid a living wage. Tipped workers deal with a magnitude of difficulties while dealing with the public which can almost always include harassment, long hours and little to no health benefits or rights.
Servers in America are typically in the age range of early to late twenties with over 68% being female with 32% being male. A survey found that around 71% of women working in the service industry have reported being harassed with the highest being sexually harassed, the same survey compared the percentage of tipped versus non-tipped workers prevalence of being sexually harassed and found that 76% of tipped workers reported some form of sexual harassment compared to the 52% of non-tipped workers who reported sexual harassment.
What this shows is that tipped workers are very much at the mercy of customers when it comes to earning tips and forces servers, especially women to tolerate these types of behaviors as it could decide the difference between getting a higher tip or not. The deciding factor of a worker possibly getting a tip to pay for things like bills, groceries and rent by having to go along with a customer’s harassment is something society must fight against if we really care about those in the restaurant industry.
Tipping is also unequal in how factors like race can play into how much money a customer may leave behind. A study conducted by Cornell University found that both white and black customers tipped black servers less than they would their white counterparts with the study attributing this to a customer’s preference towards their own racial group.
Tipping also encourages employers to underpay staff and can lead to wage theft. A study conducted by One Fair Wage found that over 35% of tipped workers experienced some form of wage theft last year. Tipped workers already deal with a myriad of problems like customers harassing workers, long hours and lack of rights or healthcare benefits adding on to that being wage theft practiced by business owners or managers.
When a worker does not receive the needed tips to make up the rest of their minimum wage a manager or the business owner is required to pay the difference to make up for those lost tips but there are many cases where managers do not follow this law.
A small number of restaurant owners have tried over the years to implement a no-tip system for their employees with varying degrees of success. Danny Meyer is one of those examples after eliminating gratuity in his restaurants a significant amount of his front-of-house staff left with the estimation being around 30%-40%.
America will have a challenging time trying to live in a world where everyone is paid a fair wage. With restaurants, we have become accustomed to expecting high-quality food to be served at a lower price range while also feeling good about ourselves for tipping the server what we consider a good tip to help them make a living.
The reality of this is that society has created this situation where even if we want to make changes to the system for the betterment of those living in vulnerable conditions. Americans want to pay less for everything while also enjoying things that they would normally not be able to enjoy due to not having the money to do so.
Businesses have exploited this selfish kind of thinking by using the fear of price hikes to stop any form of meaningful change from happening in this country. A question we must ask ourselves is whether we are truly okay with knowing that the server at our favorite restaurant is making ends meet due to the generosity of strangers. Are we okay with the fact that these workers face numerous difficulties from angry customers who are never punished for their harassment, long hours and dealing with management who will do anything to save money? Has society become so complacent that we feel it is just better to turn a blind eye to the mistreatment of these workers than to try and rectify the system that keeps them there in the first place?
