Tipping effectively encourages service workers to bias themselves towards upscale clientele.
I remember a number of my peers in high school and college working service sector who developed some nasty racist tendencies that boiled down to "Older rich white people tip me better". Incidentally, they also hated religious people (the Sunday Morning shift was consistently the least desirable) for the same reasons.
The folks with the money have - in my experience - been the ones who drop the biggest tips. But that tends to be as a means of impressing one another. So it depends a lot on the venue and the audience, etc.
I delivered pizzas in a working class community that also had a petty bourgeoisie element. The poor folk would dig through the couch to make sure you got $2-3 for bringing dinner to their door. Rich folk would hand over a $20 for an $18.50 order and tell you to keep the change. The class awareness was solid, but discrimination against customers based on race was common. Coworkers were annoyed when taking calls in Spanish/Spanglish and bias against black customers for "not tipping" was mentioned daily. 17yo me learned a lot at that awful job.
ah yeah i think that sort of behavior is probably more common in higher scale establishments. i can't speak to that bc that's not where my experience is.
I used to work at a restaurant that had a prominent local realtor as a regular. Older white lady, her face was on billboards in the entire metro area (1+ million people) and she would come in, demand to be seated in the unused party room. They'd have the person in the nearest section cover her, splitting their attention between their normal tables and the one isolated patron (plus one dining partner sometimes), which often led to reduced tips from other tables as you were busy with her and their service suffered.
"Baristas serving you overpriced coffee" don't profit from the coffee being overpriced, you do profit directly from charging rent however.
That said, tips being percentages does mean that the barista serving expensive coffee makes more in tips than a barista serving cheaper coffee.
Not the barista's fault of course, just the whole Tipping system being irrational and stupid.
Tipping effectively encourages service workers to bias themselves towards upscale clientele.
I remember a number of my peers in high school and college working service sector who developed some nasty racist tendencies that boiled down to "Older rich white people tip me better". Incidentally, they also hated religious people (the Sunday Morning shift was consistently the least desirable) for the same reasons.
that's weird bc in my experience old white people with money are the least likely to tip you as a service worker
YMMV.
The folks with the money have - in my experience - been the ones who drop the biggest tips. But that tends to be as a means of impressing one another. So it depends a lot on the venue and the audience, etc.
I delivered pizzas in a working class community that also had a petty bourgeoisie element. The poor folk would dig through the couch to make sure you got $2-3 for bringing dinner to their door. Rich folk would hand over a $20 for an $18.50 order and tell you to keep the change. The class awareness was solid, but discrimination against customers based on race was common. Coworkers were annoyed when taking calls in Spanish/Spanglish and bias against black customers for "not tipping" was mentioned daily. 17yo me learned a lot at that awful job.
ah yeah i think that sort of behavior is probably more common in higher scale establishments. i can't speak to that bc that's not where my experience is.
I used to work at a restaurant that had a prominent local realtor as a regular. Older white lady, her face was on billboards in the entire metro area (1+ million people) and she would come in, demand to be seated in the unused party room. They'd have the person in the nearest section cover her, splitting their attention between their normal tables and the one isolated patron (plus one dining partner sometimes), which often led to reduced tips from other tables as you were busy with her and their service suffered.
She always, always , tipped 1 (one) dollar.
What zero understanding of who gets that revenue and who sets that price does to a mfer :lenin-rage: