Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
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Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#2You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to.
I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service".
The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#3You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to. I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service". The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
P. S. Why were those persons angry? Maybe you didn't make it clear that you collect fixed "service" fees? You should write it somewhere in the menu, or else it's a rip off.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#4You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to. I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service". The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
To your point - yes, adding on an extra 18% doesn't make much sense when they could have simply incorporated that into their menu prices. You will never be certain how the money is divvied up, regardless of whether you are paying additional tips or not...
That being said, patrons are accustomed to paying an additional fee when dining out; so rather than simply raise prices (which I'm sure would elicit grumbling and/or loss of patronage), they maintained the expectation of paying an additional amount for the service they've received.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#5My wife gets angry if I don't tip 20%, so a place with a built in tip that is less is a bonus for me.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#6You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to. I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service". The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
To your point - yes, adding on an extra 18% doesn't make much sense when they could have simply incorporated that into their menu prices. You will never be certain how the money is divvied up, regardless of whether you are paying additional tips or not... That being said, patrons are accustomed to paying an additional fee when dining out; so rather than simply raise prices (which I'm sure would elicit grumbling and/o…
Yes they can do that without much resistance from their customers, but imagine some other business* smuggling hidden fees into your bill - you will feel offended and cheated. This marks restaurants as an unusual business.
* I was going to call telcos an example, but then I don't know whether they don't already do that in the US. Or indeed anywhere. Which is a bit scary if you ask me.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#7This is a very interesting but dangerous post: It's interesting because obviously the author has put a lot of thought into the topic and has done some research. However, for me, it clearly shows the danger of ideology, in fact it's a great example of it. "To be ideological is to preconceive reality." and we have a good example of that here: The author has strong opinions about sexuality and our approaches to it, there's nothing wrong with this, it's a prior. But then he starts using bits of "proofs", examples from music and literature, and the tipping experiment to bolster these claims.
Take the claim "The meme of sleeping with our waitress is important to Americans." This may or may not be true (why Americans are singled out is an interesting questions). He then cites a song, a sex and the City episode and a bartender's essay to back this up.
The later part of the post is devoted to an analysis of how our monogamous human sexuality evolved, based on text lifted off from a single book. And towards the end he switches to the notion of the waitress as a "sexual worker".
Now for the interesting part. Although his non-tipping restaurant experiment did NOT provide any proof for his theory he still views it as if it did on hypothetical grounds.
For a much better treatment of some of these ideas, consider: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolu...
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#8I tip more than 20% because the server minimum wage in Massachusetts is $2.63/hour. It is that simple. You would be surprised the number of people who think that a server is getting $8/hour with tips added on top.
I'm a heterosexual male in the age range that this guy is remarking on but I tip male servers and older women the same as I tip younger women. He is stereotyping. No doubt there are some who see tipping as a sexual power trip but probably in no higher percentage than any other endeavor.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#9You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to. I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service". The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
On the contrary, in some states a “service charge” has to be shared among the employees. By separating the charge they are relinquishing the possibility of doing anything else.
Re: Observations From a Tipless Restaurant, Part 5: Sex, Power and Tips
#10You never know where those fixed-service-percentage money go to. I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service". The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
> and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service".
Isn't this a crazy sentiment though? It's like we've all been trained to pity waiters and unless we're handing them money directly we're worried they might go home empty handed. How did we get to this point?