Is it finally time to end tipping terror?

January 11, 2008

The argument in favor of tipping at restaurants is always an emotional appeal to support poor waitresses that make a pitiful $0.50 per hour slave wage, or whatever. One of my friends actually tried to convince me that if restaurants paid their employees more they would all go out of business — think of all the poor waitresses that would lose their livelihood! Bull shit.

I just don’t understand how it ever became appropriate for the server’s wage to be mostly dependent on the goodwill of strangers, but never the restaurant owner’s profit. Can you imagine a restaurant with a fixed price for service and a voluntary tip for food? The time exhausted by workers is every bit as much a legitimate cost as the raw materials on your plate. They only accept such terrible conditions because they’ve been brainwashed by society to shift their anger from restaurant owners to restaurant customers.

I’m not opposed to tipping in principle — rewarding better service with money is a great idea — but today it’s no longer a voluntary performance bonus, it’s a tax. We no longer tip for service, we tip to avoid getting spit in our meal the next time we visit. It’s blackmail. Tipping has become a mandatory part of dinning out.

From an economic standpoint, tipping is also discriminatory. Coupons allow a store to sell the same product for different prices to different customers based on the amount of effort they are willing to exert to get a better deal. Similarly, by keeping menu prices low, restaurants can appeal to the masses then use a ridiculous percentage based calculation to force customers who spend more on food to spend more on service — even if the service they receive is exactly the same.

I’m not sure I understand the logic behind requiring a customer who orders a $30 plate to pay twice as much service tax as a customer who orders a $15 plate. If anything they should eliminate the extra charge for those who order a sufficiently large bill, just like retail stores offer free shipping with orders above a certain threshold. I would even find a flat fee on every bill, or a flat fee on every plate, far more acceptable.