Tipping; or, Why Eating Out is Not a Right

I’ve worked in restaurants for almost a decade. And if you know me, you know I absolutely hate it.

I hate getting large parties. I hate getting one-tops (that’s a single diner for those of you who have never suffered as I have). And I hate people who don’t tip.

I hate people who don’t tip so much that I have been driven to madness and must write this post explaining why, or else I might actually explode from all my pent up rage.

And buckle up buttercups, because this is an angsty blog post that will chronicle my experience of working in restaurants, which is soured by the fact that, at the time of writing this post, I’m currently back at a restaurant I vowed to never return to as I make ends meet while searching for my career job.

(PS to any recruiter or creative director reading this, please hire me! I’m a good writer and not normally this negative, I promise!)

Overview

Because I’m poor :(

Before we dive in, I figure it’s only apt to give some context.

Context #1: Full transparency, I’m writing this by the seat of my pants. This is a piece of structured stream-of-consciousness that will, of course, be edited for mistakes. But overall, this is all coming straight from the dome.

Context #2: I’m going to look at arguments that people make when they refuse to tip, and tell you why they’re complete BS. Only in very few instances in America should you not tip when dining out at a sit-down restaurant.

Context #3: I’ve been in restaurants since I was in high school. Almost a decade at this point. I’ve been a dishwasher, a delivery driver, a host, a server, and an assistant manager, so trust me when I say I know what I’m talking about.

With that said, let’s begin.

Anti-Tipping Arguments

Argument #1: It’s not my job to pay for an employee’s wages.

This is by far the most common argument I hear in defense of non-tippers. The idea is that the restaurant who employs the servers should be paying them a higher wage. And guess what, I agree. But there are a couple things to consider.

First, the people who tend to make this argument are also the same people who get pissy when they find out McDonalds pays around $15/hr. And they tend to say things like “why should people flipping burgers get paid so much,” while shoveling down a Big Mac. So clearly, they’re already annoyed when places do pay their workers well for jobs they consider “lower value.”

Second, wishing for something, unfortunately does not make it so. I wish it wasn’t legal to pay servers (where I live, and in many places across the US) $2.13 an hour, but it is. But the problem is, non-tippers don’t even really wish servers got paid more, they just wish they didn’t have to front the cost. And this leads us to the third thing to consider.

The majority of Americans lack class consciousness. It’s just the truth. So, when people go out to eat and run servers ragged by asking for yet another ramekin of ranch as if the five I’ve ALREADY given you wasn’t enough, it’s the closest they’ll ever get to having a servant or butler. And you wouldn’t tip a servant or butler, would you? Of course not, so these people don’t feel responsible, and in fact, feel insulted when asked to do so.

So, what ends up happening are one of two things. The first is that people just don’t feel obligated to tip, like, at all. It’s not their problem, they’ve already paid for their food, so why pay extra on top of that?

And the second is this weird, stick-it-to-the-man attitude that isn’t helping anyone. This type of non-tipper thinks, “Man, this restaurant should pay their servers better! So, to show them that they should, I’m not going to tip the server. That’ll do the job.”

Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not what you’re doing and you’re actually kind of dumb for even thinking that! You’re going to stick-it-to-the-man by… being a patron to this Man, paying for the food to this Man, and then just fucking over the Man’s staff? This is actually stupid. You’re not sticking anything to anyone, and you’re just giving the Man more business so he can perpetuate an awful system. Way to go.

Argument #2: Tipping is already arbitrary, so why tip servers?

Leave it to royalty-free images to contain a $2 bill

The idea with this argument is that we don’t tip people in other industries, like retail workers, teachers, or construction workers, so why should we tip servers? This argument is often a strawman and it has a few moving parts. The premise is that serving is hard work → hard work means you should get tipped → doctors, teachers, and other professions work hard too → they don’t get tipped → servers don’t work that hard → therefore they shouldn’t get tips.

I spent the better part of an hour trying to re-learn symbolic logic to prove this, but it was both very annoying and also pretty pointless considering that it would require you, dear reader, to know how to read symbolic logic, which dare I say isn’t likely.

But this line of thinking is missing one key feature: Servers don’t make any fuckin’ money without tips.

It’s not like doctors are charging 20% gratuity after open heart surgery because they’re not making enough. They’re doing it because insurance in this country is a fucking joke.

In all seriousness, this is just a stupid way to look at tipping vs non-tipping because people are just willfully ignoring the glaring truth that servers are not paid enough money by their employers. Again, SERVERS ARE NOT PAID ENOUGH MONEY BY THEIR EMPLOYERS. Should they be getting paid more? Absolutely. But since America has some weird fetish for individualism and never wanting to rely on anyone else ever, restaurants push the onus of being able to make a living onto the servers and how much abuse from customers they can stomach. And this hyper-individualism works in the opposite direction from customers, where they’re offended that servers feel “entitled” to a tip, and that they ought to work hard and all but lick your fuckin’ boot to hopefully get a crumpled, ass-sweat-drenched single dollar bill.

And this brings me back to argument #2. You don’t tip your lawyer because he’s already making a lot of money. You don’t tip your mechanic, regardless of how hard they work, because they’re already making a lot of money (at least the shop is) from your $90 oil change that costs a fraction if you do it yourself. We don’t tip these other “hard workers” because they’re not making $2.13/hour.

But all my whining brings us to the next argument.

Argument #3: Well if you don’t like relying on tips, get a different job.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen this stupid fuckin’ combination of words written sloppily by someone who’s just inhaled a platter of Applebee’s Jalapeno Poppers in some FaceBook or TikTok comment section with their greasy, nubby thumbs, I’d be able to tip a server enough to where they’re set for life.

I’ll start by saying this: serving can be a career. There are people (brave, selfless people) who can and do make their ends meet via serving or bartending or any other form of front of house hospitality. These people have lives, houses, kids, cars, all of it, and a good amount of them like the profession because there’s something new every day, it provides them a lot of flexibility, and because in one day, depending on the restaurant and/or volume, you can make upwards of $400-500 in only 6 or so hours.

But (and it’s a big but – a RuPaul’s Drag Race reference I fear I can’t find video proof of), many people serving in restaurants do so with second jobs, obligations, or both. I, for instance, have worked in restaurants from 2015 until now. Through high school, through college, through portfolio school. When, during this time, would I have a job that could afford me flexibility? Could I work a 9-to-5 when I had to be in AP Lit at 7:20am? I don’t think so.

And this statement is made even more infuriating when one such as myself is in the process of trying to “get another job.” In portfolio school, I worked two jobs for a few months. I would substitute teach (and I hate kids, so you know I was strapped for cash) Monday-Friday starting at 7am, then go to class straight after, often until 10pm. And then Friday-Sunday, I was working nights at some shitty pizza place along one of the most trashy, touristy streets in Denver.

And all of this suffering was endured precisely so I could get a different job. And guess what? The market sucks, we’re diving head-first into a recession, and I’ve had to go back to restaurant work, so please, tell me I didn’t do everything in my power to get “a different job.”

So, what do we do about tipping?

Well, dare I say I have a modest proposal: mandatory service work. I’m only half joking, and if you’ve ever worked in service or retail you’ll know this suggestion gets tossed around in the back after a particularly annoying encounter, but truly think of it. If we were able to force every able-bodied person into service work for only 6 months, I swear in a generation we’d live in Utopia. People would be more understanding and less apt to blow up when their Blooming Onion takes a few minutes longer than usual.

We could also do automatic gratuity. Restaurants who want to keep their workers already do this. A lot of time there are stipulations like only on parties of 6 or more, or only when the bill hits a certain monetary threshold. But fuck it, just throw it on every check. We live in a society (a revolutionary concept, I know) where tipping is the norm. We’re not Europe, not in Asia, not in literally any other place in the entire world. We’re in the USA baby, and tipping is the just what we do. You go out to eat under the expectation that you ought to tip, so let’s just go ahead and throw it on the bill – it’s just another expense in the dining experience.

And guess what? If you don’t want to be forced to pay a tip, I have a solution: cook your own damn food. Crazy, I know, but it’s been known to happen, and more often than not, it’s significantly cheaper! You could also go to McDonalds. Or Burger King. Or Subway. Or Wendys. Or Panda Express. Or Zaxbys. Or literally so many places where tipping isn’t something you do.

You don’t have a right to go out to eat, take up a server's time and money (because yes, when you sit at a table for hours and don’t tip, you’re keeping the server from making more money), and then not leave a single cent. Everyone, however, has a right to have a dignified job that pays enough to live. So either we do automatic gratuity, or restaurants pay their workers fairly. And in a world where profits are key and capitalism is king… automatic gratuity it is.