Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
Based on the research quoted earlier in this thread, I have come to the conclusion that you were a slender white woman in your thirties with large breasts during your serving days.
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I have waited a long time for someone to accuse me of being slender! Though not even close to long enough to have been in my 30s 20 years ago.
I never got automatic hot tips. I am very tall, and was very athletic, so much more likely to be considered intimidating than hot. I am also an introvert, not an extrovert, so flirting for increased tips was never going to happen.
Unfortunately, that research isn't actually linked, though it was done by the same Cornell researcher. I'm going to look it up to see how the research was done. The justification by the restaurant owner writing the article that tipping doesn't lead to better service isn't supported by his quoted research.
I just read the first quoted study, out of curiosity, and I don't think the Linkery owner actually read it. It doesn't say that at all. It confirms that tipping is associated with perceived better service, and further that the incentive is increased by the incentive to increase sales. All it says is that some people increase 1% per 1 point better service rating out of 5, and some people increase 2% per 1 point better service. That it is varied does not mean that it is not an incentive.
I am curious about the discrimination argument as well and plan to read up on that. I did just as well in Oakland/ Emeryville with a clientele comprised of many more "likely bad tippers" than the other locations, like in KC. The studies seem to deal exclusively one sided. They either study the tippers or the tipped, and with extremely low sample sizes. I would like to see more information about how a study can quantify service and tip motivations in order to really assess the potential for discrimination. While I was a server, the only ones who complained about discrimination were the white men, but that may have just been they were more likely to be vocal about it.
I would also be concerned with a large scale shift to a non-tipping culture where salaries for servers start in a comparable place, but as sales and prices change with time, the salary stagnates and doesn't keep pace and it is just another minimum wage shitty job where there is no incentive for sales and personalized service.
I say that having lived in New Zealand where tipping is not required, and service is still quite good in most places. Employees are well compensated and seem pretty happy. The business environments are different though, and the social structure of flat tax and socialized medicine are very different, so I'm just not sure is correlates well.
This is an interesting time to have this discussion.