We Americans hand out approximately $750,000,000 annually in tips, or three quarters of a billion dollars, according to the United States Department of Commerce. Of this amount about $450,000 goes to restaurant employees. The rest greases the open palms of hotel “ gimme” boy taxi drivers, beauticians, barbers, parking-lot attendants, bartenders, and a host of others who expect gratuities from the public for their services.
In spite of these magnanimous figures, however, tipping is generally an unpopular and disliked custom in the United States, and it always has been. As far bank as 1896, the secretary of the journeyman Barbers International Union of America condemned tipping as “humiliating and degrading”. In 1905 the Anti-Tipping Society of America had 100,000 members ,the majority of them salesmen. Within the next few years anti-tipping laws were passed in Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington. This legislation was short-lived, however, for in 1919 the Iowa law was repealed as unconstitutional and the states soon followed suit.
Today, of course, We’re all aware of how widespread the practice of tipping is and how many categories of workers it covers. It has become mainly a “pressure” custom. And while we go along with it outwardly, the majority of us actually feel that it is wrong in principle. According to survey on the subject, 65.1% of the persons queried definitely disapprove of tipping, only 22.2% approve, 12% are undecided.
A laborer should be worthy of his hire, no matter what his field. He shouldn’t have to depend on the gratuities of the public. Yet , the United States Chamber of Commerce reports that there are 1,800,000 persons who depend on tips for the major part of their income.
Tipping itself has a servile aspect. One does not tip an equal. Even the way tipping is usually handled is undignified payment. Either the coin is slipped under the edge of the plate, out of sight , or into the servitor’s hand quickly, almost stealthily , as if the transaction weren’t quite above board. In the words of Edward Corsi, Industrial Commissioner of New York, who conducted hearings several months ago on proposed minimum wage laws that would affect his state’s 250,000 restaurant workers: “Tipping is unworthy of labor in the twentieth century. It makes a servant out the worker. It is a disgraceful thing that the worker has to depend on tips for a living.”
This dependency on tips puts the worker in an unfair position. He has grown to expect them as his earnings, and not as token of appreciation for extra service he has given. He is on often filled with resentment when he isn’t tipped, or not tipped highly enough because, to him, those gratuities are important as bread-and-butter money . Of course, there are a few servitors who , after the essentials are paid for, can well afford a shiny new Cadillac Some headwaiters for instance, who work in expensive nightclubs which dot the country from east to west , have reported yearly incomes of $ 35,000 . At least six in New York earn $ 50,000. These naturally are the exception .
The customer, on the other hand, is placed in an uncomfortable position, as well as what he thinks is an unfair one. The uncomfortable feeling comes usually from not knowing exactly how much he should tip. Practically everyone above the age of fifteen has read the “etiquette rules” of how much to tip and when. But if these rules were printed in books or magazines four or five years ago, he can be sure that they’re substandard for today’s tipping. Prices have gone up and if the customer doesn’t know it, or acts as if he doesn’t , he’ll receive bullet glances which denounce him as subhuman. For instance, ten or fifteen cents to a train porter for carrying one bag used to be acceptable. The present price is twenty-five. Ten percent of the restaurant check was a standard rule a few years back. Today, it is fifteen, and in the so-called better place , more. As one waiter put it: “When I work in a swanky hotel I count on at least twenty per cent.”
Because there are so many variations to the rules, a customer is often in a quandary as to whether the “rule” holds good in this particular situation. Take the case of a woman going into a beauty shop. She is armed with the “social knowledge that she’ll be expected to tip the operator fifteen per cent of her total bill However, by the time she’s had a haircut, shampoo, set, and manicure, not operator but four have waited on her. If, for instance, her bill is $ 6.00 won’t the required 90 cents tip, divided four ways, look stingy, look stingy, and not be what each expected
The term “tip” originated in a London coffee house in Fleet Street where Samuel Johnson and his cronies frequently visited during the eighteen century. On the table was a bowl with the words, “Two insure Promptitude,” printed around it. The phrase was later shortened to “Tip” taking the first letter of each of the three words
Today, a person is expected to leave a tip even though the service has been slow and indifferent. The unfairness of the tipping racket, as far as the customer is concerned, hinges on the feeling that he is being pressured into carrying part of the employer’s burden. If he pays a good price for his haircut, The unfairness of the tipping racket, as far as the customer is concerned, hinges on the feeling that he is being pressured into carrying part of the employer’s burden. If he pays a good price for his haircut, why should he tip the barber? Isn’t it up to the employer to provide a decent wage for him? Or, when he stays in a hotel and pays that bill, why should he give the maid extra money for coming in clean his room? Isn’t her salary a definite duty of hotel management?
It seems to him that tipping is the employers’ way out responsibility. They pass the buck of their workers’ salaries on to the customer.
Most of us continue to tip, even though we dislike the practice, for one or all three of the following reasons: (1) Conscience. WE recognize the injustice of worker’s meager wage and feel that must add to his take-home pay. (2) Social pressure. (3) Moral weakness. WE lack the courage of our convictions that the principle of tipping, as it is being used today, is inherently wrong for our democratic way of life.
It is with a kind of mental relief that passengers ride the airlines, where no tipping is allowed. Many supermarkets which hire boys to carry bags or boxes of purchased groceries out to the car for the customer have signs requesting no tipping. A few (too few!) restaurants in various parts of country have similar signs. To the customer, such signs are like a beautiful oasis in a “gimme” desert.
In some foreign countries such as Finland, a service charge is added to restaurant and hotel bills. I believe most of us would prefer this system to our present one.
The tipping racket can be stopped only when three groups-employers, workers and customers-decide that it is an archaic and unfair practice and proceed to do something about it.
{Wakeford, 1954: 127-129}
We Americans hand out approximately $750,000,000 annually in tips, or three quarters of a billion dollars, according to the United States Department of Commerce. Of this amount about $450,000 goes to restaurant employees. The rest greases the open palms of hotel “ gimme” boy taxi drivers, beauticians, barbers, parking-lot attendants, bartenders, and a host of others who expect gratuities from the public for their services.
In spite of these magnanimous figures, however, tipping is generally an unpopular and disliked custom in the United States, and it always has been. As far bank as 1896, the secretary of the journeyman Barbers International Union of America condemned tipping as “humiliating and degrading”. In 1905 the Anti-Tipping Society of America had 100,000 members ,the majority of them salesmen. Within the next few years anti-tipping laws were passed in Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington. This legislation was short-lived, however, for in 1919 the Iowa law was repealed as unconstitutional and the states soon followed suit.
Today, of course, We’re all aware of how widespread the practice of tipping is and how many categories of workers it covers. It has become mainly a “pressure” custom. And while we go along with it outwardly, the majority of us actually feel that it is wrong in principle. According to survey on the subject, 65.1% of the persons queried definitely disapprove of tipping, only 22.2% approve, 12% are undecided.
A laborer should be worthy of his hire, no matter what his field. He shouldn’t have to depend on the gratuities of the public. Yet , the United States Chamber of Commerce reports that there are 1,800,000 persons who depend on tips for the major part of their income.
Tipping itself has a servile aspect. One does not tip an equal. Even the way tipping is usually handled is undignified payment. Either the coin is slipped under the edge of the plate, out of sight , or into the servitor’s hand quickly, almost stealthily , as if the transaction weren’t quite above board. In the words of Edward Corsi, Industrial Commissioner of New York, who conducted hearings several months ago on proposed minimum wage laws that would affect his state’s 250,000 restaurant workers: “Tipping is unworthy of labor in the twentieth century. It makes a servant out the worker. It is a disgraceful thing that the worker has to depend on tips for a living.”
This dependency on tips puts the worker in an unfair position. He has grown to expect them as his earnings, and not as token of appreciation for extra service he has given. He is on often filled with resentment when he isn’t tipped, or not tipped highly enough because, to him, those gratuities are important as bread-and-butter money . Of course, there are a few servitors who , after the essentials are paid for, can well afford a shiny new Cadillac Some headwaiters for instance, who work in expensive nightclubs which dot the country from east to west , have reported yearly incomes of $ 35,000 . At least six in New York earn $ 50,000. These naturally are the exception .
The customer, on the other hand, is placed in an uncomfortable position, as well as what he thinks is an unfair one. The uncomfortable feeling comes usually from not knowing exactly how much he should tip. Practically everyone above the age of fifteen has read the “etiquette rules” of how much to tip and when. But if these rules were printed in books or magazines four or five years ago, he can be sure that they’re substandard for today’s tipping. Prices have gone up and if the customer doesn’t know it, or acts as if he doesn’t , he’ll receive bullet glances which denounce him as subhuman. For instance, ten or fifteen cents to a train porter for carrying one bag used to be acceptable. The present price is twenty-five. Ten percent of the restaurant check was a standard rule a few years back. Today, it is fifteen, and in the so-called better place , more. As one waiter put it: “When I work in a swanky hotel I count on at least twenty per cent.”
Because there are so many variations to the rules, a customer is often in a quandary as to whether the “rule” holds good in this particular situation. Take the case of a woman going into a beauty shop. She is armed with the “social knowledge that she’ll be expected to tip the operator fifteen per cent of her total bill However, by the time she’s had a haircut, shampoo, set, and manicure, not operator but four have waited on her. If, for instance, her bill is $ 6.00 won’t the required 90 cents tip, divided four ways, look stingy, look stingy, and not be what each expected
The term “tip” originated in a London coffee house in Fleet Street where Samuel Johnson and his cronies frequently visited during the eighteen century. On the table was a bowl with the words, “Two insure Promptitude,” printed around it. The phrase was later shortened to “Tip” taking the first letter of each of the three words
Today, a person is expected to leave a tip even though the service has been slow and indifferent. The unfairness of the tipping racket, as far as the customer is concerned, hinges on the feeling that he is being pressured into carrying part of the employer’s burden. If he pays a good price for his haircut, The unfairness of the tipping racket, as far as the customer is concerned, hinges on the feeling that he is being pressured into carrying part of the employer’s burden. If he pays a good price for his haircut, why should he tip the barber? Isn’t it up to the employer to provide a decent wage for him? Or, when he stays in a hotel and pays that bill, why should he give the maid extra money for coming in clean his room? Isn’t her salary a definite duty of hotel management?
It seems to him that tipping is the employers’ way out responsibility. They pass the buck of their workers’ salaries on to the customer.
Most of us continue to tip, even though we dislike the practice, for one or all three of the following reasons: (1) Conscience. WE recognize the injustice of worker’s meager wage and feel that must add to his take-home pay. (2) Social pressure. (3) Moral weakness. WE lack the courage of our convictions that the principle of tipping, as it is being used today, is inherently wrong for our democratic way of life.
It is with a kind of mental relief that passengers ride the airlines, where no tipping is allowed. Many supermarkets which hire boys to carry bags or boxes of purchased groceries out to the car for the customer have signs requesting no tipping. A few (too few!) restaurants in various parts of country have similar signs. To the customer, such signs are like a beautiful oasis in a “gimme” desert.
In some foreign countries such as Finland, a service charge is added to restaurant and hotel bills. I believe most of us would prefer this system to our present one.
The tipping racket can be stopped only when three groups-employers, workers and customers-decide that it is an archaic and unfair practice and proceed to do something about it.
{Wakeford, 1954: 127-129}
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