The Tipping Point

"Tipping is an interesting behavior because tips are voluntary payments given after services have been rendered. Consumers rarely pay more than necessary for goods and services. Tipping represents a multibillion-dollar exception to this general rule. It is an exception that raises questions about why people tip."

Many restaurants have now started levying an “automatic gratituity” on every in house order. In staid, statist Europe, that’s par for the course. In America, you see it on cruise ships, in tony establishments run by celebrity chefs such as Thomas Keller, and in less luxe setting when parties of six or more are involved. But for a lone diner, grabbing lunch? Really ?

Of course an “automatic gratuity” is an impossible proposition. “Gratuity” has roots in the Latin word gratutus, which means voluntary. A gratuity, or tip, is a gift or reward given freely, without compulsion. There’s nothing automatic about it.
 Except of course that there is, even when it’s not described as such.

Then there's the business side of tipping: Restaurant patrons in the United States fork over approximately $16 billion in tips a year. Many restaurants introduce this new policy because they want to ensure that their waiters earn at least $7.50 per hour. The automatic 15 percent tip is supposed to help the restaurant achieve that goal, but there’s obviously another way to generate the necessary revenue — it could simply raise prices. Of course an automatic gratuity isn’t legally enforceable — if you don’t want to pay it, you don’t have to. But apparently the restaurateurs believes the bulk of its customers are likelier to comply with a fake mandatory increase of 15 percent than an unavoidable price increase of 10 percent! Which says something, no doubt, about how compulsory the average person now considers the once-voluntary act of tipping.



But is it any wonder we feel this way?
 There’s a tip jar on every retail counter these days. We give our spare change to baristas, pedicurists, dog groomers, massage therapists, grocery baggers — no wonder the homeless go hungry. The 20 percent tip, once the exclusive domain of the generous spendthrift, is now presented as the expected amount, even when the service is merely OK. According to The New York Post, the average New Yorker doles out over $ 3300 in tip per year.

These days, the idea of not tipping is almost as impossible to comprehend as the idea of paying for news. Who does that? Crazy people? Criminals? There isn’t any law against not tipping. Not yet anyway.



Things were much different a century ago. Between 1909 and 1926,six US states actually passed laws that made tipping illegal. Indeed many restaurants posted “Tipping is not American!” signs in their dining rooms. In a republic where the waiter was the political and moral equal of the millionaire factory owner, each endowed with the same essential rights and freedoms, tipping was seen as “a hangover of Old World flunkeyism” as one New York Times editorial opined. It divided a classless society into servant and served.
 But even when the practice was illegal in six states, it never fell out of favor, perhaps because it also helped servants achieve a level of prosperity few had ever achieved. A 1907 article from the Times reported that many of the city’s top waiters had earned enough money to become homeowners and landlords. One even bought a racehorse with his tips.



Michael Lynn, a professor at Cornell, has studied tipping for decades. “There is a rather weak relationship between the size of the tip and the level or quality of service one receives from their waiter or waitress," he concluded in a 1996 study.

Also the amount left as a tip by diners is influenced more by bill size and the fear of disappointing the server than by good service. Four years later, he determined that we tip better when a server crouches to take our order or lightly touches our shoulder. In May 2010, he confirmed what our wives have always asserted till today without proof that we tip better when a server has large breasts.
His results indicated that waitresses with larger bra sizes received higher tips — as did women with blonde hair and slender bodies. He referred to the popularity of Hooters and other similar “breastaurants” that openly capitalize on men’s affinity for “attractive” — and in particular, busty — servers. Ugly people are not a protected class, legally,” Lynn said. “It is not in fact illegal to hire only attractive waitresses.”

It now seems clear from all this research that :

1) Restaurant tips are poor measures of customer satisfaction with service and that they provide weak incentives for delivering good service.

2) Nonverbal server behaviors that communicate liking for the customer, such as lightly touching the customer and crouching next to the table when interacting with the customer, substantially increase the tips restaurant servers receive. Also it helps if you have big breasts!

3) Tipping is more prevalent in countries whose populations are achievement-oriented, status-seeking, extroverted, neurotic and tenderhearted.

And the rate of tipping keeps going up even if quality of service does not. Here are the latest guidelines from Emily Post no less:

Wait service (sit down)	15-20% pre-tax
Bartender	$1 per drink or 15-20% or tab
Restroom Attendant	$0.50-$3, depending on service
Valet	$2-$5
Skycap	$2 first bag, $1 per additional bag
Doorman	$1-$2 for carrying luggage $1-$2 for hailing cab $1-$4 beyond the call of duty
Bellhop	$2 first bag, $1 per additional bag
Housekeeper	$2-$5 per day, left daily
Concierge	$5 for tickets or reservations, $10 if hard to get; no need to tip for answering questions
Taxi driver	15% plus an extra $1-$2 if helped with bags