Why Tip? The history of tipping in America

they normally would get more tips, yes. The business pays the same low hourly wage no matter what, busy, slow, closed with the wait staff doing side work. BTW a common complaint of waitstaff is that too many people are on the clock, thus no one gets enough tables to make much per hour in tips. It is a constant tension between the owner/managers who pay little for waiters thus often want many waiters around in case it gets busy, and waiters who don't want to go to work without a reasonable chance that they can make good money. Also, because tips are so important waitresses are constantly stressed about which hours they work, which tables they have, and how many tables they have.

It's not that we have a tipping tradition because the wages are low. The wages are low because we have a tipping tradition. And, frankly, I like it. I pay one entity (the restaurant or the bar) for the goods (the food and the drinks), and I pay another entity (the waitron, busboy, etc.) for the service. Frankly, I find it a lot more awkward tipping in situations where it's not the norm -- it feels patronizing.

I mean, you wouldn't want baksheesh gone from the Arab world, would you?

People at grad school with my husband used to work as wait staff, and do really well - better than I was doing as a senior lab tech - but that was in a city with good restaurants and some population with good bank accounts.

On the other hand, I've frequented many kinds of restaurants, from apparent gourmet paradises to many diners and "holes in the wall", which are my favorites when they're good. When one's whole meal costs under six dollare (a trick doable with biscuits and gravy and coffee or eggs and coffee at some places), leaving 20% is, ah, dinky.

Especially back in what I called north north - some restaurants had relatively few customers and had trouble keeping staff - a pretty good mexican restaurant on highway 101, which is a major highway - with a mother and two sons handling everything, one son the main cook, if he was around, the mother the second cook and hostess, the surly (what? quite young teen) bringing menus and water and bussing. I always way over tipped re percentages, but it was tough for them to keep open.



On another subject, re chefs making good money. Some do, some don't, from my reading. I've read a few books by chefs/restaurant owners and remember talk of resentment between the line cooks and the wait staff re money earned.
No links though.

If that's how it actually works across the wide range of eateries available in the US, I can understand your point of view. It's very different to what we're used to in OZ , but I understand where you're coming from. I just worry about the wages of waiting staff in less well-off establishments, with less well-off diners who can afford to tip.

I meant [ican't[/i] afford to tip, in that last sentence. The little hamster critter told me I couldn't edit my post. (To slow, I suspect!)

All I know is when my husband was managing restaurants this never happened - the tips always went to the servers - a portion was given to bussers and bartendar, but the restaurant would never keep the money - I would have to imagaine that is illegal.

To be competitive - since all restaurants are like this, it would put them at a competitive disadvantage as they would need to raise the prices of items on the menu. Either way the customers will pay for it - through the price of the menu items (if there is no tipping) or through the expected additional cost of tipping.

They are in a sense because they will get more in tips. Waitstaff prefer a busy day. One other thing though - I know that my husband had let people go home early when the restaurant was not busy to save on costs.

Yeah - if you work in a place like Friendlys (this is a ice cream/low priced type of place), or a Dennys where the bill ends up being significantly lower - you end up getting lower tips as a result. I guess my one thought on that is - typically higher priced restaurants will look for experienced waitstaff (thus warranting the higher tips and resulting pay) or those that are better at being a server - I would imagine that restaurants with on average higher menu items are more sought after for waitstaff and therefore these restaurants will fire any waitstaff (or I know with my husband - decrease hours/give bad hours/days/tables) to those that are not as good at their job - again understandably if you are a better performer you should be rewarded as such.

Many restaurants are suffering huge drops in traffic, so they are simply going out of business. A good manager/owner knows when to cut hours when business is slow to non-existent to open for business another day. Not many have the flexibility to take such actions.

There are several restaurants we frequent where they have lower paid staff who makes sure our water glass and coffee mugs are filled. That alone is worth a bigger tip.

On the other hand, Denny's is never going out of business. That new frou-frou Thai-Italian fusion place on the corner probably will...