On Tipping

I was going to write about something else tonight, but this one percolated to the top of my list.

I have what I consider to be a pretty reasonable philosophy on tipping. 99.9% of the time I leave a tip, and most of the time its reasonable or pretty good. But there are those 0.1% of times that I’ll leave no tip. (No, I won’t leave 1 cent, thats just cruel.)

But, lets backup here, for perspective. I tip service personnel from a perspective of having worked in the service industry. I’ve worked as a waiter, I’ve done more things than you’d like to know with telephones, I’ve “cooked” fast food, and I’ve made lattes. These jobs are hard. They’re not a walk in the park, I get that. But which job out of list this paid the most? Fiddling with telephones. (Err. Sometimes examples don’t work out.) Which job out of this list paid the second most? Being a food server. I’ve waited tables at Chili’s and Denny’s, but mostly at Chili’s. I made good money there. I used to keep track of my tips on a daily basis, and calculate my hourly rate. Of course it varied, but I usually took home $14 to $16 an hour and I did make $22 and hour at times. This was back in 2001 and 2002, and included the $2.13 an hour the restaurant paid me.

I was in Las Vegas for CES in January. I went with my cousin, an employee at Amazon, and for half of the trip we were joined by two of his coworkers. We developed a bit of a pattern where I’d arrive for a meal when they were already halfway through the meal. (They’d get together, decide where to eat, then we’d text each other..)

One evening we went to this BBQ restaurant, and I arrived my usual 35 minutes after the rest of them. (Hey the strip in Vegas is a huge place designed to get you lost and walk farther than you ever thought possible!) I arrived to a mostly quiet restaurant, but instead of ordering when I sat down, my dinner mates strongly suggested against ordering as the service had been exceptionally poor. I myself witnessed empty drinks that needed refilled, slow turn arounds on taking care of the bill, and all sorts of other stuff. I pretty strongly advocated not tipping the server. She had not earned a tip, if anything she had demonstrated that she should not be tipped.

We got into a discussion on tipping, my dinner mates pretty much insisted on tipping no matter what the service, as they too had worked as a server at some point, insisting that servers don’t make much money. I found this laughable as most servers I’ve known tend to do pretty well, although it doesn’t show up on their taxes as such, since servers often underreport their tips. (Cash is wonderfully fungible, and all you have to do to throw the IRS off is keep a diary of “tips”.)

Here’s the thing: if I get reasonable service I give a reasonable tip, if I get great service I give a great tip, if I get poor service I give a poor tip, if I get next to no service, I don’t tip. I’ll adjust for how busy the restaurant is and the type of restaurant I’m at. I don’t expect a five star service at an greasy spoon, and I don’t expect to have the server at my beck and call if the restaurant is crazy busy. But I do expect service to the best of the server’s ability. That is the social contract we have entered into for tipping, and I follow it.

Being a food server is one of those awesome jobs that you get consistent feedback on how you’re doing, but if patrons don’t tip based on service tips mean nothing except another bit of the paycheck, instead of an encouragement to provide the best service possible.