Living here is starting to look like a blockbuster awesome decision, despite the winter hellscape that was the past two months, because at least we aren’t assholes:
Speaking of Alaska, when you factor in both categories, the three best states are Alaska, Colorado, and Illinois. As we’ve mentioned, Alaska’s tip % is the highest, and Illinois has the highest statewide percentage of people who tip (61.1%), possibly because they’re scared if they don’t tip, they might be forced to eat more deep-dish pizza. Colorado does well in both categories, and Denver has the highest average tip percentage of any city in America, at 16.8%. It would be simplistic to say that this last fact is because it’s hard to do long division after your eighth bong hit and you tend to err on the side of generosity, but it’s a working theory.
People who don’t tip make me crazy but the people who really make me crazy are the ones that don’t tip and then have a whole sanctimonious speech pre-loaded about WHY they don’t tip. It usually goes something like BLAH BLAH HARD WORK BLAH COFFEE USED TO COST FIVE CENTS BLAH BLAH KIDS TODAY BLAH, and not one of the people making it looks like they’ve ever waited tables even once.
A.
i had to educate my danish epal on tipping when he hit america. unlike in DK, we need to tip, they are screwed by the man here.
I probably overtip in a lot of cases because I look at my servers and usually I see the faces of people like my students: young, under crushing debt, working this as one of three jobs, trying to survive.
I remember trying to leave a $10 tip on about a $12 meal for one of my students who ended up waiting on me. She refused the cash and pushed it back at me. I took the cash back, folded it up and then added a $12 tip to the credit card receipt.
I’ll admit I was a lousy tipper until I started working in restaurants (in the kitchen washing dishes — never did any work on the floor, though later I worked in hotels and drove a taxi)…but that was partly because I didn’t know about the $2.01 (now a whopping $2.13) an hour.
That changed me pretty much overnight. I try to tip pretty good (at least 20 percent, usually a little more), in part under the assumption that some folks are assholes, but some honest-to-god don’t know…e.g. a former supervisor of mine…a supervisor who was not 19 years old and just starting out.
I also remember hearing an interview with a chef who always tips well, even if the service isn’t so good. His reasoning — everyone can have a bad day. Hell. Yes.
I’ve done my time in restaurants so I’m a 20% minimum tipper. Server has to be overtly rude and insulting for me not to tip. Only happened once or twice.
You walk into a restaurant (unless it’s one that pays a decent wage and prohibits tipping), and you are signing on to an implicit contract, the terms of which are: 1. We will cook and serve you a meal 2. You’ll pay for the food and drink 3. We will pay a substantially sub-minimum wage to your server 4. You’ll pay by tipping the rest of his/her compensation.
You don’t get out of that contract by whining, ‘I don’t like to tip’
Always 20% or rounded up, because waiting tables is hard work and the public can sometimes be quite nasty. I worked in retail many years ago which probably helped up my compassion for wait staff.
I tip, and I tip well. Usually over 20%. But I still find every argument in favor of the practice to be pseudo-logical and based on guilt.
I’ve had jobs that were hard to do, for which I was paid a sub-living wage. They were not, however, on the list of ‘things we have arbitrarily decided should be paid for at higher than asking price,’ and my crap wage did not improve. My current job is incredibly hard, and I have to deal with angry/surly/impatient/annoying people and everyone’s special requests and juggle 100 things in my head and move like the wind because there are real consequences if I’m not quick and right and pleasant every single time. The system that says I get a higher wage with no possibility of more and others get a lower wage with (possibly not enough) more: that’s the problem.
This is the first time in our nation’s history where an enormous segment of the population has been or is an employee in the service industry. It would do much better for people with passionate opinions on this matter to get together to change the law than to continue making the same tired arguments to convince people to tip more. If racism, sexism and homophobia have taught us anything, it’s that people are dicks and they won’t change unless you make them.
Know what is very interesting about that map? The two poorest states in the nation (NM and MS) are also in the top 10, tip-wise. Why that is, I don’t know. Maybe everyone knows someone in the industry?