Tipping

Here's the dilemma:

You go to a restaurant. The overall service is terrible. Your food was late or the potatoes in your rappie pie were undercooked. The dishes were poorly washed. The washroom was a disaster. The waiter him/herself did nothing overtly wrong. Your ruined dining experience was not directly attributable to gross waiter negligence.

Should you still tip the customary 15-20%? (And when did it become 20%?)

There are two schools of thought:

1) Yes. The waiter wasn't to blame. She's not the boss of the chef. She's not the manager who can't staff adequately or hire bus boys who can properly clean forks.

2) You tip on the overall experience. The overall experience was sub par. That should be reflected in the tip.

My heart says #1. The game theorist in me says #2. The game theorist in me has talked my heart into adopting the second school for purely humanitarian reasons. In short, you sometimes have to be cruel to be kind. My reasoning works like this. Many restaurants share the tips. The waiter keeps the bulk but she has to share with the bus boy, the chefs, etc. A good chef makes the waiter look good and she gets more tips. A bad chef makes the waiter look bad and she gets less tips.

One doesn't always know that's the case, however. It would seem crass and maybe a little disturbing to your date if you marched up to your food server at St-Hubert and asked what she was going to do with her tip. Assuming the waiter gets to keep 100% of the tips, you might well end up tipping the person out of a job. If the service is poor you're not going to go back. Others will follow. The restaurant won't last long in business. Poor tips provide an important signal to the waiter that customers are unsatisfied and her place of employment won't be in business long. Poor tips signal she should start looking for another job or chew ass with the staff in the back of the house. Many of us are non-confrontational but if someone tried to take $5 out of your hand, I'd wager even the most laid back of us would pipe up quick.

Arguing for the first school is waiting tables is a hard job. The hourly wage is low (usually minimum or even a wage below minimum). I agree. I've served the public (for several years at a gas station and for a few years at a Second Cup as a "certified coffee agent"). At the gas station I never got tips (although I got punched in the face once by an irate customer). At the Second Cup (a Canadian version of Starbucks) we had a tip cup and received minimal (albeit not unappreciated) tips. Usually you'd get enough to cover your after work Harvey's late night drive through run.

So, anyone who thinks I don't have an appreciation for being on your feet for eight straight hours, serving the public, put that idea to rest.

And don't get me wrong. I like tipping. I wish, in fact, we could lower wages for a host of services and make a person's take home pay contingent upon service and performance. Wouldn't it be great if at the end of a phone call with a customer service person you were given an option like "press pound if you were satisfied with the service and the agent should receive a 15% bonus for the billable time handling your call."

At the end of the day, the waiter/customer relationship is one of the few experiences consumers have where we have a major lever of control over the quality of the service. If we eliminated tipping, it is doubtful we'd walk out the door of Swiss Chalet with 15% more in our pockets. Gratuities would be automatically added or wait staff would get a bump in pay and menu prices would rise accordingly. And the diner would ultimately lose the lever of control.

The Econtalk podcast had an interesting take on tipping as an act of kindness and how it might have negative unintended consequences. They hypothesized a social movement to raise the wages of Wal-Mart employees by providing a means by which customers could tip. Tipping then might effectively raise the wage of a Wal-Mart employee from $10 to $15. That's a $30K a year job. That sounds great but think of the more skilled people who are working for $30K a year. Many of them might decide "why should I work at this data entry job at Rogers for $28K when I could work at Wal-Mart for more money?" People with more skills and experience would start to poach down. No doubt Wal-Mart would hire them over less skilled workers currently making $10 an hour at Wal-Mart.

A waiter job is not for everyone. Bad waiters quickly make poor tips and don't choose to remain long in that line of work. A waiter job is probably one of the few jobs that immediately and directly rewards those with EQ type skills. If any dork could walk off the street and know he/she is going to get 15% of a table's extensive food and drink bill, guaranteed, those with superior EQs would find that skill has less effect on their daily take home.

Anyway, things to think about when you take your lady fair (or your hunka hunka) out for a nice dinner this Saturday. Hopefully the service will be swell and not cause you to decide whether or not to tip your server.

-- Karl "I'm not cheap" Mamer