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3 lady friends of mine go out to eat at 3AM on a chilly December night just a few days ago and despite being total snobs, they accept their options to be very limited and go into a Denny’s. I wasn’t with them. This is how one of the girls recounted the story to me today:

They waited to be seated, which for some snobby reason annoyed her. Their waitress was young and pregnant, and obviously, working the night shift at Denny’s – not in the best of finances. She delivered what they deemed to be crappy service, so they stiffed her on the tip. The girl telling the story said she left 1 penny, “and I dug deep to find the dirtiest penny I could too”.

After laughing profusely, I explained that they were going to hell.

She objected, citing the poor service. I retorted by explaining “Ya, but in those cases then you’re only supposed to leave 10% if you’re really angry about it”. She quickly disposed of that doctrine asking what she would be paying for if not quick service. Not that she was smart enough to have ever heard this, but the word TIP, is often considered an acronym for To Insure Promptness (and by “often considered” I mean I heard someone say that once and thought it was clever even though is has no historical truth). But still, I said; she is an unfortunate soul who is your age or younger and pregnant – she needs the money. “So what?” was the response. “That ain’t my fault. I didn’t force that bitch to open up her legs for some guy that can’t take care of her financially”.
Hm. Sound logic. What can I say back?

The only thing really TO say is the harsh truth: that waitering = begging while performing a meaningless task. And sitting down to eat in a restaurant in America is submitting to a commitment to donate to this beggars coffer. Agreeing to be served is like agreeing to have the bum in the city squeegee your car window while you wait at a red light. You are not legally required to pay them anything, but you are an asshole if you don’t. The reason: because you 1) know they are only performing the task under the expectation that you’ll pay them a small something and 2) know the person needs that money they will get from you, because if they didn’t, they would have a more meaningful profession. It’s no different with a waiter at a restaurant.

So if you don’t want to pay the minimum, then don’t accept the service. Doesn’t matter if it’s crappy. In fact, you should expect it to be. These are not talented people and their task requires no skill.
The quality of service never negatively affects the final price with charity. It can only add to what you decide to give. If you are turned off by the benefactor of your charity case, then it is your responsibility to ask for better service or to leave the restaurant.

You willingly follow these rules for the pre-mentioned reasons: because, yes, these people are begging, but at least they are doing so after performing some small task that requires no talent, even if they do it badly.

No one is arguing that their job is important to society. Indeed even the laziest or most elderly among us would think you were retarded if you claimed that filling their drinking glass and walking their plate of food from kitchen to table was worth more than a 50 cent delivery charge at most. For the price we pay waiters to carry a plate of steak and eggs 15 feet to our restaurant table, we could have paid Fed Ex to deliver it to our doorstep. Twice.

But we don’t mind paying for a vastly overpriced useful service because we know its a hand out. That’s not how the public consciously thinks of this profession because there is so much of it and we are uncomfortable calling non-homeless people beggars, even when that is exactly their profession. If you are a “server” in a restaurant, you are a bum. So, accepting this, you must also be as gracious as your patrons under this dictum and have low expectations of the result you will get, only to be occasionally rewarded with above average tiding.

So should you be ashamed if you are a waiter? No. That’s not the point.

The claims of personal responsibility go both ways.

To the patron: yes, no one forced this person serving you to take on this lowly line of work, but ethics require that if you accept their service, you pay them even for sub par performance.

To the server: yes, it is expected that you will receive additional money in a ratio to the customers final bill, but if the sum is not to your liking then that is tough luck, and if you get stiffed on occasion then that is also the risk you assume in taking such a job.

If both sides can be honest about their roles in society many of these unspoken rules would be more obvious to both sides. They aren’t because waitering is romanticized and tipping is encouraged in places far beyond all reasonable means. These two things combined cause confusion, frustration and stinginess all around by distorting the purpose for tipping and the role of tip receiver. When there is a tip can at every ice cream parlor, coffee house and gay brothel – surely the concept has been lost in our culture.

Other civilizations have failed to foster such an infantile sense of entitlement and in some other cultures or situations, giving a tip is not expected and offering one would be considered condescending or demeaning. And as well it should be.