Today I chose not to tip for what I think is the very first time here in America. I went out with a few friends to get some food, and it was a less than satisfying experience. The douche who took our orders was really not with it, the food he brought was way below average and then he screwed up the credit card payments at the end, charging my friend's card double and my card nothing. And he didn't know how to fix the problem so one of his colleagues had to do it for him.
I have of course realised the obvious: when you pay for a tip, you are not actually paying for the service. A tip has NOTHING to do with service. It is a percentage of the bill. I could go out for just a drink and spend $4.50 for a glass of wine (leaving $1 tip; even though that's slightly over %20, it's considered a little bit rude to only leave coins). Alternatively, I could go out for lunch with a drink, and spend $15 (leaving a $2.50-$3.00 tip). Or I could go out for a three course meal at a fancy restaurant and spend $80 (leaving a tip of roughly $15). On all three occasions I could get exactly the same friendly and efficient service, yet would have to leave wildly different tips. The fact that the waiter might bring out more plates or uncork an extra bottle of wine is kind of irrelevant - this is no extra burden on his part, it's just his job. This system of tipping based on a fixed percentage of a bill is really absurd when you take it to an extreme level - imagine Donald Trump taking his entire staff out for dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in New York, and after meals and drinks, ending up with a bill for $50,000. That's a $10,000 tip right there. Now, you might say Donald Trump could afford it. Of course he could. But would the server really deserve an extra $10,000, just because he had the luck to serve Donald Trump?
The fact is, people in the food and service industry are paid less than the minimum wage: tips for them are necessary to make up for the stupid (and somewhat immoral) payment scheme that this country allows. So I would be happy to pay a tip, but only if tipping were genuinely based on service. I would really feel like I was saying thank you. And if tipping were really for the service, then I could choose to leave $1, $5, $10, anything I wanted, depending on whether the host made my experience pleasant or miserable. This would be great! Power to the customer, which is how it should be! Businesses would improve the quality of service if this were the case, because they would otherwise lose their customers and get no tips. But, as I have written, tipping has nothing to do with service, so I am never happy to leave a tip, even if I've gotten great service. I'm always just irritated.
Sometimes, I also have to wonder who the heck I'm tipping. About a week ago I went to the aforementioned place for lunch, had my order taken my one waitress, my drink brought to me by another waitress, my food brought to me by yet another person, and then my bill brought to me by the original waitress! The original waitress barely did anything, yet I bet it was her that the tip went to.
And I bet that the guy who gave me crap service today has stored my face in his memory, and will take revenge by giving me crappy service if he ever sees me again. And if that's the case, I will again give him nothing extra. This is war!
UPDATE: Here's a link to a story, revealing just how messed up this whole system of tipping is.
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