The Tips Ain’t It!

The custom of tipping service employees as payment accompanied by the low wages should be replaced with an adequate income for all, not based off uncontrollable identities. You can be an 18 year old black male working your hardest and are the best employee the company has got, but your coworker who is a 25 year old white woman who perhaps is very beautiful, but terrible at her job is leaving her shifts with more money. A situation like this is the outcome of what a customer believes or thinks about the identity of the employee which isn’t controllable for that worker.

Going out to restaurants and using other tip collecting occupations, we caught on to the common system of good work earns a 15-30% tip and poor work results in 0-10% tip. To start, the insane inconsistency of that system is undeniable as not all believe in the same % of the bill is what an employee deserves. Also, such percentages would not serve equality as an employee doesn’t get to decide how much or what the customer is buying. One employee may get five tables all with bills in ranges $10-$20 and receive all great percentage tips of 30% which totals to a possible $15-$30 in tips whereas another employee gets an equal five tables with bills being generally around $30-$40, but only receiving tips of 20% which totals a possible $30-$40. The better server is receiving the worse tips by the fact of getting smaller bills.

Customers who are the tip givers are also a huge factor into this system needing a replacement. Statistics show certain customer beliefs and identities highly affect their tipping decisions. Democrats, women, teens, and southerners being the worst tippers of all. The best tippers being men, republicans, northeasterners, and gay men. Staff members don’t control who they provide their service to as it is a job and they are picked randomly. Employees of restaurants and hair cutteries have been asked which customers tipped the worst and these are popular among the choices. Once again following a scenario; one employee could be providing their services to all women and teens when another could be servicing men and republicans. Customers are uncontrollable and it affects these subminimum wages as do their job. In conclusion, some tip well, others poorly.

Integrating some sort of flat rate that is efficient to these employees would be the proper way to handle such poor fairness in the tipping game. Employees wouldn’t make great living if they only received hourly pay, but it would be much easier for them to receive that minimum wage pay while still receiving tips. Service employees would still be making a fair amount of income even with the poor tipping system in place today. Setting the minimum wage for these service employees to what it is nationwide will much better the lives of the staff and make them go to work knowing they will still be getting their fair income with the enjoyment of getting tips, too.

The Tipping System is Immoral

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