| | TippingTipping of people for services rendered is a practice that varies with culture and local custom. It exists in some countries and not in others. Also, the amount of a tip for different services will vary from - ohhhh, about 5% to a high of 25%, with 15% for resturant service a common benchmark used by many people in the United States, though this can be different from one city to another.
Personally, I resent the practice of tipping, because employers have taken what was once a reward to an employee for extra special service and turned it into an excuse to cut wages to below that which is a living wage and imposed the burden of picking up the difference on the customer. This makes the one performing the service dependent on the generosity of the customer. That is a condition reminicent of slavery.
Nevertheless, tipping is a fact of life, and refusing to tip as a matter of principal will not change that fact, or change the way the hospitality industry does business. It only hurts the individual. In fact, it may even cost them money, because the IRS will tipically look at the server's total food and beverage sales and base their estimate of taxable tip income on a percent of that total. That percent has generally been 8% in recent years, which means that if you don't leave a tip for your $25 dinner, the IRS will assume that you left a $2 tip and tax the server accordingly. Your servers are also expected to tip their support staff - cooks, table bussers, dishwashers, etc. - a percent of their sales total. Those tips come out of the tips the customers leave. If you stiff the server, s/he is still expected to tip the support people who made your meal possible.
And that's not all. In the extremely unlikely event that your little crusade of not tipping catches on and everyone stops tipping, the industry would be forced to pay a decent wage to its employees. Good for the employee; bad for you. The cost of doing that will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars when applied to the countless service industry workers across the nation. And just what do you suppose the industry will do to recover those added expenses? They will have no choice but to increase the price of your dinner and your drink; free shuttle buses from your hotel to the airport will become a thing of the past; you will be forced to pay a still higher price for a taxi cab; bell hops to help with your luggage may not be available in order to help lower the cost of a room. In the end, you will be the ultimate victum of your ill conceived plot to get higher hourly wages for service industry workers. And it will cost you a lot more than the 15/20% tip you stiffed your server for.
So don't be a cheapskate -- tip the server, the taxi driver, the shuttle bus driver, the porter, and anyone else who performs a service for you. Vary the amount you leave according to the service you receive, but don't walk away and leave nothing. They work hard under some trying circumstances and deserve your consideration, and you will save money in the long run.
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| | Posted 5/13/2007 8:28 PM - 7 comments
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