The Tipping Swindle

I hate the practice of tipping. Don't get me wrong, I tip every time I eat out, and I try to tip generously. I mostly eat alone when I do eat out, so I appreciate the friendly service I generally receive. But I find the idea of tipping the server as a normal part of their pay to be demeaning to them and nothing short of a swindle for the customer.

The debate over tipping can be acrimonious at times, and I can quite understand. Waiters and waitresses have plenty of stories about being stiffed by the customer after they work hard to ensure that the customer's time eating out is a pleasant experience, and anyone who has eaten out has an inevitable story about a bad experience with a server. But that's precisely the point. Food servers of all stripes work hard, let's be clear about that. They don't deserve the uncertainty that comes with a tipped minimum wage, and they certainly don't deserve to depend on the good graces of the customer for a large part of their take-home pay.

You may not know it, but while the federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 the minimum wage for tipped employees, including food servers, is just $2.13. It has remained at $2.13 since 1991, when it was raised a mere four cents. Of course, if the employee doesn't make enough between the tipped minimum wage and tips from customers to equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25, the employer is required to make up the difference, but let's be honest here. How many of us really think that restaurant managers dutifully pull out a calculator each week to make sure their employees are actually making that requirement? Why in the world would we permit such a system, little better than indentured servitude, where servers need to rely on customers to make up the majority of their wages, especially when tips can depend on factors out of the server's control (the food wasn't right) and irrelevant to the job (the customer didn't have any small bills to leave, and certainly didn't want to leave a ten dollar tip for a meal). In no other industry is this expected, and it is insulting to do this to waiters and waitresses who work just as hard as anyone making the federal minimum wage in retail, if not harder.

Further, this is a swindle for customers, who are forced to subsidize a restaurant industry that is simply unwilling to pay their workers a decent wage, by and large, and who have stubbornly resisted efforts to bring the tipped minimum wage in line with the regular federal minimum wage. Tips should be for great service, not because we feel guilty about the fact that the server is working for a poverty rate. Tips should be a truly optional extra, not a standard add-on to the cost of a meal, a social obligation. It should be up to the restaurant, not the customer, to make sure that the server is paid a decent wage. Everyone who goes out to eat helps to subsidize the restaurant industry's labor practices, and this is especially disgusting when it occurs in larger, highly-profitable restaurant chains. It could certainly be argued that raising the tipped minimum wage would lead to higher menu prices, and I'm fine with that. I would rather pay slightly-higher prices for restaurant food if it means knowing that the staff are better-paid, and I would further argue that the idea that we should be fine with paying servers an absurdly low wage in exchange for lower lunch prices is immoral.

No longer should servers have to depend on the caprice of their customers for the majority of their wages, and no longer should customers be forced to provide an artificial subsidy to the restaurant industry. It is an obscenity that in a society with so much wealth, we demand an entire class of workers accept a low rate of pay in exchange for the promise of tips that would bring their pay in line with what they should have been making from the beginning. It's time to end the practice of tipping as a standard part of a meal, and bring the minimum wage of tipped employees in line with the federal minimum wage.