I was originally thinking about delivery (isn’t it basically the same effort to deliver 1 or 2 pizzas?). Shouldn’t delivery tipping be based on distance/effort rather than cost of food?
The same goes for restaurants, of course. If I go with a friend and we have the same meal but I have three glasses of wine, and she has three cokes, I am expected to tip more, but the server’s effort is the same for each of us.
Was it always like this or did it change with time?
Note: I’m only trying to understand this aspect of Us tipping culture. I know that tipping isn’t the norm everywhere.
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I waited tables for about 8 years. There’s a few reasons.
The first is that it’s a carve out for restaurant owners. Restaurants are a high overhead business with a relatively low chance of turning a serious profit. Most restaurants and bars close within a year of opening. They require a lot of staff to function at capacity. Having to pay all of those employees a living wage would be fairly untenable for a lot of restaurants. So most states allow for servers to be paid well below the minimum wage (just over 2 dollars an hour usually) with the assumption that tips will make up the difference. It is also depressingly common for kitchen staff to be made up of undocumented immigrants who can also be paid less, or ex cons who will settle for any kind of income that allows them to fulfill their parole conditions. Tipping 20% helps ensure that everybody is getting enough income that they won’t starve, and back of house staff are usually paid out at the end of the night based on a percentage of each server’s total tips. In the event that tips do not make up the difference between the ~2$ an hour and minimum wage, restaurants are legally obligated to pay the difference in a paycheck. However, these labor laws are seldom enforced and a lot of restaurants don’t bother.
The second is to incentivize upselling. Servers are salespeople, although good servers are subtle about it. A good server can get you to buy an appetizer, drinks, entrees, and dessert without you even thinking about it. From your perspective as a customer, a server’s “effort” might mean going the extra mile to provide a welcoming and attentive experience. But from the perspective of their employer, “effort” means getting big bills and selling every person who comes in as much food as possible. Tying tips to cost makes every server’s income dependent on this kind of effort. When a restaurant is extremely busy and a server is managing multiple tables, their ability to put in the other kind of effort drops quite a bit. So a server giving mediocre rushed service to ten tables is theoretically able to make the same money as they would giving their full attention to two.
The last is to even things out over time. There were nights I would work 8 hours and go home with 20 bucks in tips. There were (much rarer) nights when I would work 5 and go home with 300. Restaurant traffic is extremely fickle. Bad weather can cause a restaurant to be completely dead. Most restaurants remain open all throughout the week despite the fact that 90% of their money is made on Friday and Saturday nights, which means that the new staff working mostly on weekday afternoons are likely getting screwed. Many customers are not tipping 20% to begin with. At least a few times a week I would get a table that left no tip at all. My service could be no different from how I treated high tippers, but a lot of it is based on luck. Lots of people have never been educated about tipping culture at all, and some are just vindictive or rude. Tying tips to cost helps smooth over a lot of the unevenness, and makes sure that when the restaurant is doing well, so are its employees. Managers usually plan shifts so that every server gets a couple busy shifts each week and a couple of slower ones. But there’s never any guarantees either way.
Is it a good system? Probably not. But if servers were paid a guaranteed wage like they are in other countries, there would be far fewer restaurants in the US. There are other more labor-friendly ways that governments could subsidize restaurants, but the system works just well enough that there’s little real effort to change it. Restaurant work is considered temporary and noncommittal by most people who engage in it. Its scheduling flexibility and low barrier of entry make it a great “side gig” or “in-between job” for people making more income elsewhere or pursuing education. Because its looseness is part of the appeal, it’s difficult to organize servers to negotiate for better pay.
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