by Doug Collins

The Free Press

Although most food servers would not behave so brazenly, this incident highlights the dependence of this country's servers on tips. For most servers, tips can more than double their minimum wage earnings, allowing them to actually pay rent. Waitering, therefore, is a very attractive job for many. (About 17,000 people are legally employed as food servers in King County; the number of illegals is anybody's guess.)

At the same time, the U.S. tipping system has some very negative consequences.

Most servers are genuinely kind - they cry at sad movies and like to kiss babies. But tipping encourages servers to act kind rather than actually be kind. Out of necessity, a successful American server embodies the service economy and its lavish attention to the desires of those with money to spend. The paste-on smile, hard to maintain, can often fade if the customer orders only inexpensive items, or lingers after dinner without ordering a chocolate mousse.

Another negative effect of tipping is that it adds extra work to the job of waitering. The server is, in effect, a table-to-table salesperson working for an uncertain commission. The more you sell to the customer, the happier the boss will be, and (hopefully) the higher your tip will be.

Servers, therefore, are often given training in "suggestive selling." According to a Diners Club training pamphlet, furnished to the Free Press by a Seattle waitress who received it at her restaurant, servers should try to "upsell" customers.

Through tipping, servers are enlsted as footsoldiers in the battle for corporate profits.

One simple tactic: suggest imported beers rather than domestic brands - no matter if they taste the same. The pamphlet gives ideas for upselling customers at every stage of the meal; for example, "If a guest has a preference for seafood, suggest a higher-priced item: 'The king crab legs were flown in fresh from Alaska today.'"

Diners Club does not print this training material out of altruism. A division of Citicorp, Diners Club provides charge cards, chiefly for use by traveling businesspeople. When a cardholder makes a purchase at a participating restaurant, the restaurant pays a 4 percent commission to Diners Club. So if

restaurant customers generally spend more, Diners Club will generally earn more. Through tipping, servers are enlisted as foot-soldiers in the battle for corporate profits.

The way tips are collected and distributed can also adversely affect the work environment. In many U.S. restaurants, servers are put into competition with one another, each controlling a fiefdom of tables, and each vying for more customers and therefore more tips. Notes one local waitress, "Because of the comp-etition, the waiter often fight and say bad things behind each others' backs. But I think the bosses like the competition in order to keep the waiters on their toes."

Distribution of tips is also a touchy issue. Often, servers turn over a small percentage of their tips to share with bussers or other staff, but servers keep the lion's share. In some cases, the servers may even earn more than highly skilled cooks. These inequalities can cause resentment.

Although our tipping system has these bad effects, it is as ingrained in our culture as the hamburger and the handgun. Alternative forms of tipping can, however, go a long way to alleviate some of the workplace problems our current tipping system creates.

For instance, instead of operating on voluntary tipping, restaurants can charge a standard 15 percent service fee, with no extra tip expected. This provides a much more secure income for the servers and eliminates the necessity of the paste-on smile.

Furthermore, at the end of the day, this service fee can be split equally among all the restaurant employees, thus reducing competition, resentment and the pressure on individuals to sell. The profit motive still exists, but becomes a group goal rather than an individual struggle.

Does this sound naive? Decades ago, Western European countries used the same voluntary tipping system that is currently used in the U.S. But whether through legislative action or trade organization pressure, most of western Europe now operates on some form of automatic tipping system.

If you have gripes about your workplace, send them to Doug Collins c/o The Washington Free Press, 1463 E. Republican, Suite 178, Seattle 98112. Please include your phone number. Your identity will be kept confidential in any published report, unless you request otherwise.

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Contents on this page were published in the July/August, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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