Wayne, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
I am going to start tipping based on an estimate of the number of checks
a waiter presents per hour divided into my estimate of what his services are
worth per hour without regard to the amount of the bill.Of course the way it works now we tip as a percentage of the bill, paying a kind of flat tax unrelated to labor effort. Was it really that hard to cover over the $100 bottle of wine?
Let’s assume everyone behaves that way. In essence we would tipping on the basis of how many plates are carried and not how much value is on the plate. The end result would be better service in poor restaurants and worse service in more expensive restaurants. People who patronize lower-price restaurants, or order lower-price entrees, would pay more in percentage terms in the form of tips. To some extent the price of food in these restaurants would fall to compensate and waiter wages in the restaurants would fall too. Waiters in the fancy restaurants would become more like fixed-price servants and in fact this already has happened in some fancy resorts.
If I wanted to defend Wayne’s view, I would invoke the following claim: maybe we tip the fancy waiters to feel fancy ourselves but could there be a greater potency of tipping at lower price ranges, where waiter quality is harder to monitor? Note also that more people eat in the lower price ranges, so shifting your tipping convention in that direction might bring a greater positive externality for society as a whole.
I’ve found that if you plan on eating somewhere more than once, tipping well makes them remember you, and gets you better service on return visits. I don’t understand people who don’t tip well, unless the service is very sub-par.
Essentially then, performance-related pay as opposed to prestige-related pay. If you can overcome the obstacle that tipping is more-often-than-not regarded as a top-up to what the waiter should’ve been paid in the first place, then performance-related pay is a fairer and more appropriate solution. There are issues of not everyone behaving how you would want them to behave (5 star service, $0 tip) but that is inherent in any voluntary system.
One problem is where tips are shared between other waiting staff, and/or back of house staff. The group is then rewarded for the actions of an individual, again creating a tension. Arguably the price/prestige-related mechanism is fairer in this case, since you can assume that more expensive food requires more skilled chefs.
A more reliable approach is to ensure that all restaurant staff are paid an appropriate wage for their responsibilities, such that customers are under no obligation to feel they have to top it up. Performance management would then redress any situation where an employee is slacking. If a customer was then so pleased with the experience that they – in the knowledge that everyone’s being paid a decent rate – still wanted to tip, then everyone’s happy. The dichotomy is how to convince the customer that this is actually happening fairly, and how to convince the restaurant to raise prices proportionally in order to cover the decrease in tips. One way of breaking out would be to have an organisation restaurants can voluntarily apply to which ‘certifies’ (providing logos, statements etc. which can be used on publicity materials/menus) that a fair performance-related employment scheme is in operation and explains that the cost of the food/drink (without tip) is both financially and morally sufficient.
If Wayne also decides to factor in the number of people who are actually involved in his service at different qualities of restaurant, he might find that tipping by percentage is a pretty good estimate, and much easier decision to make. High end restaurants have much more staff per customer, and turn their tables much more slowly. They also offer much better service than the 15 year old gum chewer who says ‘Hi, my name is Kaytlynn, and I’ll be your server today.’
There’s also the usual argument that tipping well is a subsidy to the arts, and encourages starving artists to persevere (and make ends meet waiting tables) rather than give up and get a regular, better-paying job…
The bar is also lower in cheaper restaurants — good service is easier, and the same percentage tip is given for lesser service. For example, if I give bad service a 10% tip, mediocre service a 15% tip and good service a 20% tip, then I will give 15% or 20% to a waiter in a cheap restaurant even though he only served me food and filled my coffee – and he had a frown on his face. But if in a fancy restaurant the waiter only came over once, giving me food and filling my glass with a frown on his face, I might consider that very shabby service. If I wanted to reward service, that would certainly be 10% at best.
If you feel an irresistible urge to pay waiters by the hour, you had better face up to running a restaurant.
If you feel compelled to pay a percentage on top of the bill to the waiter, hadn’t you better work out who you really wish to give away your money to? (If it is starving artists, OK, but is this the best route for the money?)
If you want to signal social status and resources, yeah giving waiters presents of some of your money may be a cost-effective way to do it (as compared to what alternatives?).
If you want to reward people who have given you good service, and induce them to give you good service in the future; then you tip well for goodc service and pointedly do not tip for poor service. That is rational consumer behaviour.
This plan seems to hinge on waiters in better restaurants being less likely to spit in you food, should you ever return.
I wonder about how much information tips send, especially to the owner, about the quality of service the customers get.
An idea that came to me one insomnia-plagued night was to use the last digit of the tip amount to provide an explicit rating. This is easy to do if you pay with a credit card. Make the last digit a “1″ for lousy service, and a “9″ for super-duper outstanding. So tip $5.04, or $10.09, instead of $5.00 or $10.00. Don’t use “0″ at all, because it’s ambiguous.
That would take a lot of noise out and give the owner a clearer picture of what was going on.
Okay… I will introduce you to my tipping scheme. Maybe 6 years ago or so I realized that me and everyone I knew pretty much tipped the same amount regardless of service- ~20%, maybe a little less. I also realized that this was insane, because we’re talking about a TIP! A tip is given for good service. So, I dramatically increased the variance of my tipping. To compensate, I increased the average to a little over 20%. Now, I tip nothing for horrible service, all the way up to 35% for great service.
Now the key is to connect the tip, in the server’s mind, to the quality of their service. So, I began to write comments on my receipt. Often, I leave letter grades as well. I figure this will indelibly connect everything in their mind. I will not bother with this procedure for decidedly average servers.
I really have no idea if this affects anything at all, but I feel it is the appropriate thing to do. Certainly when I get a really good server, they are happy to see me again. I also do take into account the size of the bill and amount of work required, to some extent. Higher percentage for lower bills on average, etc.
If I wanted to spend my time worrying about the appropriate hourly rate for various types of restaurant employees, with the right skill levels for the type of restaurant, who will appeal to the target demographic in terms of appearance and demeanour, and how to motivate them and measure their performance…then I’d open a goddamn restaurant.
Since I haven’t done that, take it as a signal that I don’t want to worry about any of those things. I want the restaurant management to do their jobs and to take care of that and to build it in to their prices. I just want to answer one question – “Is the food and service worth the price?” Yes, I hate tipping. Life’s too short to have to do other people’s jobs for them!
I wouldn’t presume to link up what I, personally, give the wait staff, with their future performance, becuase I am ~~rationally~~ aware that I’m one of thousands of people they’ll see in a week, and so my leverage as some kind of Pavlovian trainer of good waiter behavior is basically nil
Geoff,
If you are going to a bar three times a week, and the waiters treat you as though they don’t notice how frequently you are there–despite the “thousands” they serve, then then they think you are a jackass.
There are a lot of bars and restaurants in this town, and thousands of servers. Some of them I know, most of them I don’t. I always treat them politely, and they always treat me well in return. I tip because I like going out and appreciate what people do to make that happen. I don’t have any illusions about being a big shot or being “memorable.” And like I said, the service I’ve had as a whole has been really good.
I would counter Wayne with the fact that being a salesperson is part of the job.
My mother raised my brothers and I for several years on tips from Denny’s. I have a lot of respect for servers and generally tip accordingly. I am a bit of a service snob though. Shitty service gets shitty tips.
I enjoy eating out and do so as often as I can afford to. I patronize everything from the greasy-spoons and chains, to relatively classy places. Being in Chicago, I have a lot of options. One thing I’ve noted, that is frustrating, is that in most places (particularly the less-expensive eateries), a servers value to the establishment is in no way proportional to the servers value to the diner. I’ve seen excellent servers fired because they aren’t turning tables fast enough and pressuring their customers to leave. And I’ve seen dreadful servers keep their employment because they’ve made the experience of the diner so unpleasant that they pay up and leave quickly.
It’s a losing scenario for these places, because they can’t retain the servers that will keep picky, regular, high-spending clientele coming back. And I feel sorry for the crappy servers who are encouraged into thinking they’re good servers. The quality of their tips is poor, and they blame nasty diners instead of their poor service or attitude. It’s a whole big thing.
I eat at sit-down restaurants at least once a week and I find that the only time I’ve ever been tempted to leave a low tip is when the server seems genuinely clueless as to the poor quality of the service.
This has happened maybe twice in the past year, and I can only hope that these servers have responded rationally to their lower-than-expected wages and found jobs at which they are actually capable. The noise of people leaving lousy tips for anything less than world-class service doesn’t help – how is a server to respond to an incentive if he can’t even tell if it’s an incentive?
Ryan,
Your policy is more reasonable, but the weird fact is that the
new norm of 18-20% rather than the previous 15% first emerged in
the most expensive restaurants in the most expensive cities in
recent years, then to spread elsewhere, a process not yet fully
completed.
Waitstaff are in most cases expected to give a proportion of their tips to everyone from the hostess to the busboy. In more expensive restaurants, there is a higher staff-to-customer ratio, and the waiter accordingly keeps a much smaller percentage of the tips received. This system would produce disincentives for the best waiters to work at the best restaurants, as they’d end up with lower compensation, although perhaps this would in turn induce owners of the best restaurants to attract higher-quality waitstaff by paying above minimum wage.
I read several comments and haven’t seen my tipping idea, but maybe it’s in there.
Advanced tipping, that is give 1/2 your tip up front.
If you’ll pay 30% for excellent service (as I see many of you will) and can reasonably estimate your bill before starting (I imagine everyone can do that), why not give your waiter 15% up front and tell him it’s half if thing go as well as you hope it will. Then leave a tip to match the quality of the service actually received at the end of the meal.
Some people complain that they are discriminated against in restaurants because they belong to group of notoriously low tippers.
Well set yourself our from the group. 15% upfront will defiantly ensure that your waiter doesn’t forget about you.
I eat out almost never, only for coffee when I need access to WIFI when the home system is down.
I tip the amount I figure the waitress loses by my occupying her counter seat, so it’s usually many times the bill; so without consideration of the labor involved.
Wm. Kerrigan’s suggested response to “I’ll be your server today” places: “How long have you been a server, honey?”
Geoff,
I generally tip significantly more than you- this makes me a boor? I understand my tipping is not the norm, but it is not even remotely similar to wearing black at a funeral. I have never had anyone tell me they were offended by my tipping. You mindlessly tip 15-20% because you can’t be bothered to do anything else. I tip according to the service provided, and I tip more than you. This is both logical and accepted by every person I know.
I could not care less if I am indelibly branded as a jackass or even if the waiter spits in my food (as long as I don’t find out about it). In any case, I think it is highly unlikely that I will be branded a jackass when I write “fantastic service, thank you, A+” and leave a 35% tip. Likewise, when I write “where were you for an hour?” and leave a 10% tip, I think the person will understand the problem. The fact that it is unusual and that 15-20% is the (stupid) norm only increases the impact I will have on the server.
Eating out in Europe is so much easier. The service charge (tip) and all taxes are included in the price of the meal.
If we think tipping is a good thing, then perhaps we could have the price of the help included in the meal and a custom of tipping for truly good service.
I hate buying a meal for $10 and end up paying $15 once I include tax and tip.
I always thought that you tipped on food but not on wine at nice restaurants . . .
The question is:
Should the restaurant just pay the server a fair wage, raise prices accordingly, and customers accept the service they receive?
Or should the tip system stay in place and servers get paid according to performance?
I worked off tips for a while and, often, much of the problems that are often attributed to the server are the result of something else. This is not to absolve a server of their own shortcomings, but things such as bad, undercooked, or cold food is often out of the server’s hands. Generally, I tip over-and-above, because that is basically the server’s salary and if everyone gives an extra 1/2-percent, it’s essentially meaningless to the patron but adds up for the server. And, I usually visit restaurants/bars in which I feel that the server has more invested in me than a tip and is willing to actually talk and meet my needs. As a result, I have no problem tipping more.
However, I take issue with the idea that more expensive means better quality. This is the case some of the time, but certainly price is NOT wholly indicative of the amount of work and quality that goes into a meal. I’d rather eat at a family-owned joint where my server is invested in the experience but may not be as polished than a Morton’s where I feel as if I’m dealing with a robot.
“Why has the _percentage_ [as opposed to the absolute amount] risen over time?”
Cultural shift, maybe, but economic theory would predict that the % would drift up over time. If the percentage stayed the same, then waiters would always end up with earnings that only tracked the inflation rate of restaurant food. But, since wages grow (or have historically) faster than inflation, so too must the percentage tip or waiters will not have wages that keep up with typical wage growth.
Ok, I’ll bite. I’m struggling here. As someone who has been on both sides of the issue (and I’ll have you know that waiting tables is a great way to make some extra scratch while working on your Master’s degree), people really make tipping more confusing than it ought to be. The convention is 15%, now pushing into 20% for service, flat. Look at your wallet. If you can afford to buy a $10 appetizer, a $15 entree, and a dessert and coffee, you’re looking at, say, $32. Tax, then add the percentage. Done. If you don’t have that much money on hand, don’t kid yourself (or insult your server) by rationalizing things away that would merit a lower tip.
If you want to make an economics model out of this, then I would suggest calculating the effect of getting a verbal compliment and subpar tip (~10%) assuming all service standards practiced in the restaurant setting of choice, and see the economic consequences of never-forgotten-faces or a pot of hot coffee dropped. Slashed tires?
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