As the ongoing battle over tipping restaurant servers and bartenders rages on, people keep raising persuasive points as to why the entire tipping system doesn’t work and should be abolished. College Humor just posted their take on this serious topic yesterday, in the latest video from comedian Adam Conover’s ongoing Adam Ruins Everything series, which has previously covered non-food related topics such as purebred dogs and why engagement rings are a scam.
Here are some of the points Conover raises:
- Servers in America rely on tips to make a living. Therefore, if you don’t do it, you’re an asshole, and you’re basically saying your server doesn’t deserve to eat that night. WTF?
- However, tipping often cheats servers while inconveniencing customers and making everyone who participates in the dining experience miserable. How is this a good thing?
- Other jobs require a basic minimum wage (not the “tipped minimum wage” that servers and bartenders get, which is currently federally mandated at $2.13/hr) that employers must pay employees that is considered fair. So why does the responsibility fall on customers to make sure restaurant employees get paid fairly? Why can’t restaurants behave like other employers, and just make the food a little more expensive to compensate? That’s how every other business works.
- Tipping only developed in the last 100 or so years, and was previously considered “an undemocratic form of bribery.” Ouch.
- If you’re a server, and you think that offering better service means you’ll get a bigger tip, think again. A Cornell University study found that tipping basically happens at random, regardless of service. The results of the study included the finding that excellent servers, on average, only got tipped 1% more than average or below-average servers.
Conover argues that simply paying servers and bartenders a regular wage would solve a ton of problems, both for those employees and for customers. In his view, everyone would win.
[via College Humor]
RELATED: Check Out “The Tipping Point,” A Short Film About The Lowest Federal Minimum Wage