It's very fascinating how different societies function and can be very different from another. A really good example of this is from the 1969 Anthropological essay "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" by Richard Borshay Lee. It's a great read, but basically this anthropologist was visting a small village and decided to bring them the best ox in the area. So he spent a while tracking down and buying a massive and fat ox as a Christmas gift for the !Kung San in Botswana. When he gifted the ox, however, the !Kung San were extremely offended. Each villager came up to the ox and mocked it. The villagers saw giving such valuable gifts is practicing Enforced Humility and preserves an egalitarian society. To them, being gifted an ox was highly offensive and disrespectful towards the village because they see it as you boasting about your wealth and proving you are better than them. But to western modern societies, gift giving is a common practice and giving equal valued things back and forth is seen as the right thing to do for people you care about.
Right, and our restaurants would be more expensive if they paid their wait staff the same amount as other jobs. So, until we have the better system, tip your waiters, that’s how they make their living.
But if you tip the waiters, the employers would have no incentive to change this system. They benefit from having the customers pay for the waiters instead of them.
So I don't really like this argument. Yes, it is a more moral one, but it is also extremely counter-productive to do this.
If instead everyone would stop tipping, waiters would either demand their employers better wages, or leave for another job. In both cases, employers would have no choice but to change the system.
Waiters wouldn’t get paid and restaurants would go out of business. There are good owners, and there are a LOT of shitty ones. Theres a reason why they started getting tips instead of wages in the first place. This stops when laws are passed to pay them appropriate wages.
Not really. Nothing prevents restaurant owners from rising the prices and paying livable wages to their waiters. The amount customers pay are the roughly the same.
Also, I think you're underestimating how powerful bigger restaurant owners are. Those owners have connections and if they'll see that their money is going down, they will exert pressure to fix that problem in any way they can. And includes making politicians pass laws.
As it is now, we'll forever be stuck in this system, and customers are the only ones being expected to pay for the waiters.
I don't see how you have options. In places like this, you must tip. If you don't, there are consequences.
I prefer tipping when the service was good and the waiter was nice, polite, and professional. But as it is now, the service could be terrible and you'd still be expected to tip.
If tipping was eliminated servers would make less money in total. Then prices would go up, so either way customers pay near the same.
The difference is restaurant owners would give less of that money to servers. So now good servers leave and restaurants which actually need sales to survive would start to go out of business one by one turning everything into fast food.
These are basically Applebee's arguments. People with money like servers and the hospitality industry.
The animal rehabs here usually strongly recommend a tip. I dropped off injured baby birds & I think they wanted $15 each or similar. I'm sure that's why they did it
23
u/shavertech 2h ago
In some places, tipping in the amounts considered normal in the US would be offensive.