First of all, I would like to say that I am a consistent tipper, tipping around 15% every time I go out to a restaurant, and I go out to eat at least once a day. So I’m not cheap, but I have some very negative opinions about tipping, as you’re about to find out.

Not that long ago, I went out to get a massage at a local spa. It’s not something I often do, because it is kind of expensive, but it was a special occasion, so I decided to go for it. I chose a package that included a foot massage and full body massage for $80.

Well, the massage was great, and one of the best I had ever had. However, when I went to pay for it, I came across something that pretty well put all the tension right back inside me. The cost including GST was $84, and I clicked OK when I saw that price on the debit machine, but on the next screen, it said TIP, asking me how much I wanted to tip in either dollars or percent. What? I couldn’t believe it. I asked the cashier if they were really serious about expecting tips there.

“Aren’t you already making enough money by charging me $80 for a 90 minute massage package?” I asked her.

She answered, “Well, it’s just like at a restaurant. People usually pay around 15 or 20%”

I was so annoyed, but I went ahead and paid an additional 15%, which brought my total to $96. I also vowed to myself that I wouldn’t get a massage again for a long, long time.

For many years, I have been wondering about the tipping system in this country. I know it’s been around for a long time, and there are other countries that have a tipping system (not nearly as bad as here and the United States, though), but that just makes me wonder even more: why has such a stupid, disorganized, and confusing way of paying people money been around for so long?

Tipping is basically the customer paying part of the employees salary

When you think about it, nothing about tipping makes any sense to the customer. Even though the restaurant or other business is in place to serve or provide a service to the customer, the customer is the big loser when it comes to tipping. The winners are:

  • The employee can get extra money for nothing except doing her job the way she is supposed to do it
  • The employer can pay less money to the employee because the customer is paying part of the salary

If that sounds like something that makes sense to you, and like a good setup for customer-to-business money exchange, then I have to wonder what kind of brain you have. A system that makes it standard for a customer to pay part of the employees salary, while the employer exploits that fact, is a seriously messed up system in need of a fix.

Have you ever worked at a restaurant?

When the big debate about tipping comes up, you will always hear some people ask, “Have you ever worked at a restaurant?” in an attempt to dodge the real issue. When someone asks that question, that person has usually worked at a restaurant before or knows somebody who has, and they think that it is hard work, so they deserve to get tips. Well, you know what? Cleaning toilets all day is hard work, too, and much dirtier than working at a restaurant. Do they get tips? Nope. How about cashiers at supermarkets? McDonald’s and Tim Hortons employees? I could come up with a lot of different jobs that are difficult. Why do some people deserve tips and not others? Should everybody get tips?

Actually, I’ve gotten pretty tired of hearing from people who work at restaurants about how much they need their tips. Topping their list of reasons are:

  • They don’t make enough money without tips, and it’s expensive to live in this city
  • They work really hard, so they deserve to get tips.

So you’re carrying food and drinks to people’s tables, taking orders, and socializing with the customers. Yeah, it sounds like it can be hard at times, but isn’t that what you’re getting paid to do in the first place? If it were easy, it wouldn’t be called work.

My girlfriend used to work at the first-class Marriott Hotel restaurant in Nagoya, Japan. Well, in case you haven’t heard, there is no tipping system in Japan, so she didn’t get any tips, and she was required to walk around the whole restaurant non-stop (they don’t get assigned tables there) for $10/hour. This is the normal way of working in Japan, and the level of service is exceptional, despite the fact that nobody gets tips.

Who is going to complain about getting tips?

If you are a person who is working at a restaurant or in an industry in which you are a receiver of some tips, then your opinion about the tipping system probably doesn’t have much value, especially if you’re an advocate of it. Of course, you are not going to say anything bad about getting extra money. I work as a Web Developer, and I don’t get any tips for my kind of work, of course, but if I did get something extra from a customer, I sure wouldn’t be complaining about it. I wouldn’t be saying, “Hey, I got an extra 20% for that job; I’m so pissed off!” Because of that bias, it should be obvious that, when it comes to debates about tipping, the opinions of an independent, disinterested person should carry quite a lot more weight than those of a person who relies on tips as part of their income.

TIPS are for service?

I have found a number of explanations for what TIPS is actually supposed to stand for. Some of them are:

  • To Insure Proper Service
  • To Insure Prompt Service
  • To Improve Professional Service

Well, whatever the original meaning, I always thought tips were supposed to be a reward for really good service, and I think that’s what most people think today. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way in practice. In Vancouver, it seems that service doesn’t have to be very good in order for the employees to get the same amount of tips over and over. Even I feel like I always have to tip at a restaurant as some sort of social or moral rule, even when the service is just so-so.

But wait a minute: I thought the high prices that we pay at restaurants were supposed to cover the cost of service. Isn’t that why I pay $5.95 for a bowl of edamame (boiled green soybeans) when I could have gotten a whole bag of it at a supermarket for around $3? Isn’t that why a steak dinner costs $30, and a pint of beer can sometimes cost more than $7? What are we paying these prices for if it isn’t for the service?

The tipping system makes prices misleading

Tipping is another way in which a business can mislead customers into thinking something is cheaper than it actually is. Come on, let’s face it: even though tipping is “supposed” to be given as a reward for good service, most people are going to tip anyway, regardless of service (unless it’s super bad, but then some people will still tip a little). Service is usually acceptable enough almost anywhere to get the 15%,  so the restaurant is, more often than not, going to get it. That means that the restaurant is misleading customers about their prices, kind of in the same way that cell phone companies mislead customers by not including the $6.95 system access fee in the package price. It’s a form of deception, pure and simple.

Tipping makes things much more complicated

For most things in this world, simpler is usually better, and tipping makes things a lot more complicated than they need to be. For one thing, how are you supposed to know who and who not to tip? Some websites try to give you some insight into how to handle a variety of tipping situations, such as how to tip your maid, gardener, UPS delivery person, apartment building handyman, hairstylist, garbage collector, and pretty well everyone else. One website, Tipping Etiquette Guide, has such a large list of people whom you are supposedly supposed to tip and so many details about how to do it, you might wonder if you should take a college course to learn about it.

Another way it makes things more complicated is when you are required to do mathematics to figure out out how much tip you owe on your bill at the end of the night. This is often after hours of drinking when you just want to go home and go to bed. Then it gets many times more complicated when your server decides to put everybody on the same bill (seems to be the default in this city), and then you have to work out on paper who had what, how much tax they owe, and then how much tip to pay. I get a kick out of a server who puts everything on one bill and then includes the mandatory tip for large size groups, but then you have to break it all down and work it out yourself anyway.

If only things could be more simple

Almost every day, when I see the way our tipping customs have gotten out of control and should never have been there to begin with, I like to imagine how things would be in this country without it. Can you imagine going to a restaurant, enjoying your night, and then just paying your bill at the end of the night for the things you purchased? What a concept! Imagine going to a spa, enjoying your massage, and then paying the bill without being confused by a prompt to pay an extra 15-20%. How about going to Starbucks and not having a tips container stuck in your face trying to make you feel that paying more than 2 dollars for a coffee wasn’t enough, and that you should give the employees some extra money, too. There are enough panhandlers in this city already without having to see coffee shops using the same tactics.

Much simpler and better would be not having to worry about if, how, when, and how much you should pay someone extra money from your own pocket, even though he is already getting paid for doing that job. Simpler would be adding the 15% tip that people seem to need so badly to the cost of the product, instead of having the customers work it out themselves and pretend that it was because you worked so hard. Wouldn’t that be a lot better?

Conclusion

Now you know some of my thoughts about the tipping system; hopefully, I was able to make a good case against it. I’m pretty sure most of you will agree with this article, as you have sometimes thought about these things yourself, but some of you will also be a little annoyed by it (for reasons already mentioned).

In conclusion, I would just like to say that, even though I don’t like the tipping system that is embedded in our culture and have no doubt that it needs to go, I still have the highest respect for anyone who works in the restaurant field and does a good job at it. They probably do need to be paid more money, but it shouldn’t be from the customer’s pocket–the employer should pay for his employee. As for my experience at the spa, which motivated me to write this article in the first place, that’s something that I can’t have any respect for. A place that is already charging a fortune for a service should not be pressuring people into giving tips at the cash register. That’s just plain wrong.