Tipping
Observations of America: Tipping
This is the latest in my Observations of America series of blogs. I have previously covered Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, and America’s looming (ballooning) obesity epidemic.
In this piece I launch into the unsavoury, but some would say lucrative world of tipping.
There are many great things about America. The friendly people, the National Parks, the breakfasts. However, and I’m going to say this quietly, one of America’s un-greatest things is tipping. Tipping surely ranks as one of America’s worst ideas, second only to guns (more about them another day).
Where did this hideous concept come from? Well, once again we get to blame the English. Yes, the same lunatics that gave us separate male/female changing sheds and food that makes Frenchmen laugh out loud, also gave us tipping.
Apparently it started in Tudor times. Not satisfied with silly costumes and rotten teeth, the Poms started slipping coins into the sweaty bosoms of buxom waitresses in order to speed up the time to pass out drunk in the swill filled gutter. Americans visiting Europe thought this looked like a jolly fine idea, particularly as a way of showing off how rich they were. And, despite a couple of attempts in the early 1900s to knock tipping on the head, the practice has persisted like teenager’s acne.
When visiting America, no sooner have you sweated your way through customs, “no Sir I’m not Mexican, I just like big hats“, it doesn’t take long before you have to make your first handout. And before you know it, your satisfying wad of dollar bills has evaporated like knickers at a naughty party.
By the time you get to dinner, you think you are well prepared, but once that Texan sized steak has settled lovingly into your colon, your brain is a little fuzzy. This is of course when they deliver your ‘check’ and are required to undertake a series of complicated calculations. Armed with your pocket abacus you spend the next 20 minutes wrestling with percentages and a full written assessment of your waiter/tress’s performance.
Eventually you leave and slump into bed with an overwhelming feeling that America is rich primarily because everybody keeps asking you for more money.
Now, before you start tweeting at me about how tipping is part of the American service industry’s wage structure, yes I am aware that the minimum wage in the USA is $7.25, while its £7.50 in Britain and $15.75 in New Zealand.
But wait, there’s more! In many part of America there’s a thing called the ‘tipped minimum wage’. If you have a job that receives more than $30 per month in tips, your minimum wages is $2.13. Yes, you read that correctly, $2.13! Now to be fair, this doesn’t apply to all states (tip from me – don’t move to Texas, Kansa or Kentucky), but the fact that it exists anywhere in the US is as scandalous as Bill Clinton’s trousers.
The upshot of all this its that for American service workers tipping is the majority of their wages and without it they would simply shrivel up and die like a pasty faced child at a beach party. But, what about the dishwashers, the cleaners, the delivery people? They don’t receive tips – their $7.25 doesn’t go far (although you can buy a dozen doughnuts in Walmart for $3.00).
You see, the truth of the matter is that tipping suits employers. From their perspective what a great system. Why pay staff yourself when you can get customers to do it?
And we wonder why the gap between rich and poor is growing faster than bacteria in a long drop.
So what’s the lesson for us in New Zealand? It’s simple. Don’t tip. If tipping takes hold here, it will let employers off the hook – you are simply encouraging employers to pass the buck.
Richard Alexander Bain
self confessed tight arse