Who hasn’t experienced the awkwardness of grabbing a quick treat only to have the screen flipped around inquiring about a tip? Whether you cave to silent pressure, press “no tip” in haste or happily accept the opportunity to bless someone’s day, you’ve likely felt the impact of tipping fatigue as both the patron and the server. Which is why it’s more infuriating when you consider how it all started.
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The culture of tipping emerged in the mid-1800s after wealthy Americans who’d learned about the medieval “master-serf” custom of leaving servants extra money for doing a great job decided, while traveling in Europe, to adopt it. In the light of an aristocratic fantasy that was more of a social flex than an act of generosity, they brought the practice back to the United States, and America’s tipping culture was born. Well, sort of…
The Origins of Tipping in America
At first, TIME Magazine reported, many people opposed tipping. To comparatively “poor” people, paying for their food and adding a tip felt “condescending” and “classist,” the outlet reported. An anti-tipping movement became so widespread that it crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Europeans rejected tipping, which is still largely absent from their restaurant culture today.
But back in America, that movement was “squashed,” according to Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United).
This movement began in the mid 1800s, when America was living high on the hog, profiting from, you guessed it — slavery. According to Statista, about 3.2 million enslaved people were brought to America or descended from the transatlantic slave trade.
After the Civil War, slavery was abolished in law, but not in practice. Formerly enslaved people were pushed into a narrow set of jobs. According to TIME, those who did not become sharecroppers were restricted to service positions like “servants, waiters, barbers and railroad porters.” Those working in restaurants and as railroad porters found that their jobs didn’t actually pay them a wage — like slavery. They left that to the customers, tying these workers’ survival to whatever customers decided to leave behind.
By 1926, the practice was particularly popular in Southern states, and every law against it had been repealed or struck down. Restaurant owners recognized the financial upside of “subsidizing” pay with customers’ money. And that’s how modern-day tipping culture came to be. It has largely been that way since the New Deal era.
Tipping, Race, and Economic Inequality
Today, research shows that tipped workers are more likely to be people of color who face higher poverty rates. Black workers are especially overrepresented in lower-paying service jobs. The Economic Policy Institute reports that tipped workers are more likely to live in poverty than non-tipped workers, even if they work all year, and they are at greater risk of wage theft and unstable pay.
Federal labor data shows that wage gaps by race still exist among restaurant servers. Black women servers earn much less than white men in the same jobs, showing how race and gender affect tip-based work. States that allow the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 usually have higher poverty rates among tipped workers than states that require employers to pay the full minimum wage before tips.
Modern Tipping Fatigue
A recent study found that 34 percent of diners usually tip 20 percent, while 19 percent tip less than 10 percent, with the rest choosing amounts in between, according to couponcabin.com. Tipping is now expected in self-serve kiosks, takeout orders with automatic gratuity, and screens asking for tips as high as 70 percent. The fatigue is real, and so is the lasting impact of a system built on inequality.
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