Yesterday I took a little walk and wound up in a coffee shop, thinking a cup of coffee and a cookie would be nice, even if I was sure it would be overpriced. That's just the way it goes. The place was nice, kind of old-fashioned looking, lots of that prerequisite for downtown hipster dining--exposed brick. Two young ladies behind the counter were chatting idly. I asked for a cup of coffee and a certain type of cookie. I was handed the cookie on a plate and the self-serve coffee cart was pointed out to me.
I got a cup of coffee--and I mean a "cup." As in, a small traditional coffee cup barely capable of containing one generous slosh of coffee. I sat down, ate the cookie, drank the coffee. As I rose to leave, I noticed a sign on another cart by the wall that read, "Please help us by clearing your own dishes."
Feeling rebellious, I left without doing so. My reasoning was that I had added a tip to the debit card screen--there were instructions there to guide me: 20%=GREAT service. 15% GOOD service, 10% adequate service, or something like that. The amount wasn't actually calculated for me. At the time, I thought, well, I'll go with 15%, which is my default tip anyway. So, I tipped about a dollar for basically being handed a cookie and told where the coffee was, and then asked to clean up after myself.
I don't care. I understand that the two young ladies were probably being underpaid and tipping is more or less built into this particular economy. It's just that it doesn't really make sense.
I didn't plan this, but it so happens that later I was looking at Google maps and I saw the coffeeshop and decided to read the reviews. The usual. A handful of effusive, breathless 5-star descriptions, a bunch of 4-star, a handful of 1 or 2 star, these being cases where the customer asked for a Big Mac and was told they would have to go to McDonalds, and other stuff like that.
I decided to write a review. I was very generous, but I did mention the tip business. This is just because I feel the tide turning on this and I wanted to raise the volume a little bit. Food industry workers need to be paid more. This is obvious by the number of help wanted signs you see everywhere. But, workers should be able to make a living without relying on something as random as customer tipping, where they are penalized when business is slow, or penalized when the kitchen is slow and customers get upset--all these things, and more, are unfair.
Am I wrong here? Of course I am.
Nope! I have major issues with tipping cashiers, though I sometimes do it anyway, especially if I’m paying by credit card and they have my name. Here’s the thing: why NOT tip the McD’s worker, the guy at Kinko’s who helps with the copy machine, the clerk at Macy’s who brings me a different size in the dressing room? It literally makes no sense to reserve tips for restaurant workers and hairstylists. Just charge the right price to begin with so you can pay everyone minimum+ wage!
ReplyDeleteMy current gig, which I call a gap job except I've no idea what I'll do next, includes being tipped. I think the app encourages the customer to do so and about 80% of them do. And because they're ordering food delivered and misspending their precious money anyway they often tip pretty well. As in 50%, 100%. If it weren't for this so-called tipping, I wouldn't make enough to justify doing the work. Which just goes to the question of why tipping is built into the service economy in the first place. I don't have an answer. Without it, service people become surly and inefficient. With it, restaurants are riven with the politics of who plays better than others. I'm just glad I rarely have to actually interact.
ReplyDeleteIt is a surprisingly complicated issue, in the same way unionization is, I suppose. I think when the recipients of the tipping economy are surly and inefficient anyway is when it gets annoying.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies if any of you were required to help train Googles AI by selecting certain pictures to prove you're not a robot. I specifically set the blog to NOT ask that but it's doing it anyway.