Excerpt from the article:
Schenker says that after his years in the service industry, he has watched tipping evolve into a major part of his pay.
“If there is some means of tipping that’s available to you, that should signal to you that workers there aren’t being paid enough,” says Schenker. “Tipping is sort of an acknowledgment of that fact.”
To Schenker, customers who don’t tip are not understanding that businesses treat tips as a baked-in part of workers’ wages.
“They subsidize lower prices by paying employees less,” he says. “If you aren’t tipping, you are taking advantage of that labor.”
He was so close… Especially for someone who says himself does not make much money.
It lets the owner continue to pay employees ahit wages because they don’t leave to get higher paying jobs elsewhere. It is an end run around their obligation to pay a fair wage by tugging at the heartstrings of people who buy into tipping as a solution to underpayment workers.
Servers deserve tips as long as they have the shitty exemption to minimum wage, but someone working the register at a convenience store or even a batista at a coffee shop doesn’t.
Do you tip underpaid janitors, cooks, delivery drivers, child care workers, cashiers at grocery stores, or fast food workers?
Yes, I tip baristi, delivery drivers, and fast food workers. And daycare teaxhers, and my garbage-pickers too.
So you say that you tip people you interact with, but not janitors, cooks, or workers at grocery stores.
Do you see how tipping is not a solution to low wages in general even if you think it helps the people you see and interact with?
A cogent point, but nobody is saying tipping is, or should be, a solution to low wages. Tipping in the restaurant industry is an evolved, organic things that fills a specific niche. I don’t think copy-pasting that onto other industries will help workers there; but I also don’t think copy-pasting the compensation system of other industries onto restaurants will help servers. I think it can only hurt us.
The man being interviewed in the article is literally making this exact argument.
Having read the article, no, he isn’t. He’s saying that a tip interface is a sign that the employee is being underpaid, but multiple interviewees (the barista and the economist) note that tipping is an incentive that doesn’t fix the underpayment issue.