What surprises me of the visceral reaction of those who say "why doesn't the restaurant just pay better?" is that by that logic you'd still be paying essentially the same price. It wouldn't actually be cheaper if you were charged for food + good service separately, so why are you getting so inflamed about it?
I'm the kind of person who "reacts to the inefficiency of The System"[0], but I also have a bone to pick with a lot of the worthless, inauthentic symbolic "rituals" that most people perform unquestioningly. it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly.
with tipping, it is simultaneously vaguely some "meritocratic" dimension to the waiter's job, but then it's also basically just a tax, but then it's also a social ritual in which people can boast or be shamed for their ignorance or largesse. I don't like it at all.
All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it.
[0] I'd also say this is putting it mildly, almost like a euphemism. It is a way of exploitation that happens to benefit a visible minority of waiters so that the overall impression for those not in the know is one of neutrality. It is definitely a pro-employer law, that dukes the clients against the employees.
> All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it.
I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure that social "rituals" are really inherently something to be worn down just because many of us find them hard to navigate.
Social rituals are a side effect of existing in a society with other people and so they never really go away, they just change into other things. As such it's not really a good idea to solve the problem of such rituals by trying to eradicate them, when what we really should be doing is getting better at living in a world with social rituals that pop up and go away. Plasticity should be the goal, and while streamlining rituals can certainly work with that goal, streamlining should not be the goal itself.
> it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly.
A thousand times this! I've had a lot of personal trouble with the long and drawn out experience of learning that the right answer to "How are you?" is to _lie_ and just say "Good, and you?", regardless of how I really feel.
> ...you'd still be paying essentially the same price
Which is exactly the goal. It's not about paying less money, it's about eliminating a confusing, unnecessarily-complicated system. If it were just restaurants it wouldn't be too bad, but I'm still not clear exactly how much/when to tip other service workers (hotel cleaners, cab drivers, whatever). People shouldn't have to do a bunch of research[0] to try to figure this stuff out.
And I grew up in the US. I have friends in NYC who moved here fairly recently, and of course it's much more confusing for them. We should ensure every worker is getting paid decently, and have tips be a truly optional thing for exceptional service, which I think was the original intention.
I'm the kind of person who generally over tips (not that I care about a few extra dollars) and the whole tipping thing is just an annoyance to me. I would rather pay the price on the menu and be done with it. Not to mention it would force the kind of cheapskates/assholes who purposefully give a bad tip to do so. I eat out fairly often, and on the rare occasion where I get bad service/food/whatever management has always offered to comp dessert/drinks/appetizer or something.
Additionally, there is a weird social/emotional aspect to it. I don't want to be "that guy" by accidentally leaving a shitty tip. When I vacation in by place like Germany where tips aren't as much of a thing, I still wind up leaving a larger than normal tip, to the point that a waiter once followed me out of a restaurant to tell me it was too much, because I just feel weird about it. I don't like the societal pressure of it all.
It makes me angry because it's disrespectful to the worker, and sets them up as some sort of quasi-independent contractor. It also makes me angry because it conceals the actual price of the meal, but that makes me less angry because eating at a restaurant is a luxury anyway.
I always tip 20-25%; my anger isn't that servers need to be paid, it's that they're not allowed to depend on it.
i'm one of those guys - i would love for the servers to get my money; i just very strongly dislike being the one who gives it to them directly. i have settled for leaving a 20% tip regardless of service, which at least feels a bit more like i'm paying a service charge rather than tipping.
