The subtitle in the print edition of the New York Times states “Restaurant owners have been able to avoid paying servers a living wage.”
The op-ed and subsequent editorial “Stirring Up the Restaurant World” totally miss the point.
Tipping is an incentive system. It encourages servers to do their best for patrons.
If tipping were eliminated, there would be the following results:
1) Prices would have to jump about 15% to 18%, so the customers would pay the same. (The margin of profits – when they indeed exist – in restaurants is small.)
2) Servers in many if not most cases would earn less. Servers at our restaurants average about $40,000 a year from a combinations of their modest hourly pay and tips. That amounts to $20 an hour. For many, it is a part time job. It often pays tuition for college students; serves as a second job during peak hours for homemakers.
3) The quality of service would plummet. When visiting restaurants we can almost immediately tell if tips are pooled (shared among the employees) or retained by the person who is the actual server to a given table. When the former, all servers are helpful. When the latter, all but the designated server are ‘deaf and dumb’ to customer entreaties.
During communism in Russia and tipping was frowned upon, poor service at restaurants was legendary.
Waiters do not have an easy lot. But most enjoy the communication with customers. And they are pleased to be able to earn good money working part or full time.
Our experience has been that union representatives never suggest the substitution of higher wages for tipping. Rather, they concentrate on raising the hourly wage, as they do for other workers. They are representing the desire of their members who are servers.
Salespersons work on commissions. Why shouldn’t servers? Incentives are the essence of Capitalism.
