IT PROMOTES DISCRIMINATION

A group of middle-aged women generally doesn’t tip well. A group of young men from Bay Street generally does. A French tourist generally doesn’t tip. A Texan tourist does. Servers learn the demographics of tipping and one of the hidden consequences of tipping is that it leads to clandestine discrimination among wait staff. Server discrimination is something that Canadians in border areas know all too well. “As a server, you dread the Canadians,” Syracuse, N.Y. waitress Bethany Wyatt told Syracuse.com in 2015. With Canadian tourists consistently tipping less than their American counterparts, some restaurants in Vermont have even instituted policies of tacking on mandatory gratuities if the server finds any reason to suspect they’re facing a table full of Canucks. Meanwhile, diners are discriminating right back at servers. A 2008 study by Michael Lynn even found that in the United States, black servers were generally tipped less than white servers — even when they were being tipped by black clientele.