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.
I’ve never worked a tip-driven job, but when talking with people who do, I’ve never met anyone working a tip-driven job who wanted tips to be gone or blamed the employer for it. It’s starting to feel to me like the people who are against tipping culture tend to be people who have never experienced it from the inside.
I don’t disagree that it’s an awkward setup, I don’t love the idea of it either. But I’ll take my cues from the people I’ve met who know better about it than I do. And it seems they seem to tend to agree with you.
I relied upon tips for ten years, and this is as clear as day to me: Tipping makes the customer a scapegoat.
This is a clear cut case of the (intentionally) adversarial relationship created between customer and employee being used to shield the root cause - the low paying employer.
If work were compensated appropriately, tipping would not be necessary. In order to get to that, we need the workers to assess blame appropriately.
Unfortunately, unless the workers are able to do that, they will continue to incorrectly blame customers for their inability to earn a living wage.
If you want to see this adversarial relationship in action - visit the forums where DoorDash drivers and customers discuss the issue.
The only way a customer can help to force the employers hand is to stop tipping - which will negatively impact those who rely upon tips before they turn on their low-paying employers. Only then will things change without a federal law mandating a thriving wage.
What job were you doing? I’m realizing I may have confirmation bias, because all the people I asked about it were in the restaurant / bar service industry, so my conclusions probably only apply there.
You mentioned DoorDash, and I’m realizing I never asked anybody who works for one of those “sharing economy” monsters. I can totally believe that for them, it’s more likely to be a wage escaping scheme, since wage escaping is, well, kinda their business model in the first place. Am I assuming right that you were working for one of those?
Thanks for that, it’s definitely helping me getting a fuller picture.