HERE’S A TIP
The #tipthebillchallenge reminds us why gratuities are a social necessity,
Bad tips happen mostly in secret, when no one is looking at the quick decisions made on a debit machine, or calculating what percentage a rounded-up tip actually is. Good tips can happen with a hashtag.
The recent “#tipthebillchallenge” circulating on social media encourages diners to tip 100 per cent of the cost of their meal, instead of 15, which for some people is the target, and for others, the bare-minimum. Eighteen to 20 per cent feels normal to me. More if someone is biking Thai food to your place in a whiteout.
Although it seems likely and logical that people with more money tip more, especially considering the celebrity tipping stories that have superstars floating hundos down on their coffee tabs, I’ve noticed that older people — maybe remembering a time when 15 per cent was just fine — tend to leave marginal tips, while 30- and 40-somethings, who might be more aware of or affected by the social impetus to tip well, go higher.
The #tipthebillchallenge predates a recent story on food website Eater about bad tippers, who seem to know they should tip, but don’t.
The Eater story generated an unusual consensus on Twitter (especially among people who have worked in the service industry, where low compensation is justified by the tips they’re assumed to be receiving) that tipping well is a requirement of eating out. (The same article described Reddit, correctly, as a site where “anti-tipping sentiment has naturally found a home.”)
Like other good-deedery that captures the collective imagination for a minute, the wrong people might benefit from other people’s largesse — the “#tipthebillchallenge” encourages restaurant patrons to tip the full cost of the bill, which is great for restaurant staff, but might suggest to already bad tippers that they’re somehow off the hook.
If someone else might be tipping 100 per cent, tipping nothing might seem, somehow, reasonable.
The problems and privileges of tipping accumulate: it is an arbitrary practice and makes for optional and unpredictable compensation that workers are supposed to rely on, and is a natural forum for harassment and discrimination. And, while it undermines professionalism and more typical hourly wages, it can reward better efforts of someone in a service position, which is what people who are optimistic about the generally exploitative gig economy call “hustle.”
One of my favourite lines about human behaviour comes from Revolutionary Road, the Richard Yates classic about suburban ennui: “Money’s always a good reason,” the truth-telling character, just sprung from a mental institution, says. “But it’s hardly ever the real reason.”
Tipping, very well or very badly, has nothing much to do with money. Tipping scenarios are usually opted into — restaurants with table service; hotels; cabs; manicures; deliveries — to provide some convenience or ease a nicer, faster, smoother way through the grit of life in a city. Dollars aren’t the difference between 10 and 20 per cent, but they are a valve.
Money on its own is just paper and theory; it’s only made meaningful, and powerful, when it’s used to reward — sincerely, or performatively, or both — or to punish. Withholding a tip is just withholding and, as a value held by anyone and any relationship, withholding is a dark one. It establishes a dynamic of the tipper wielding some minor ephemeral power over the tipee, when what a tip is meant to do is offer appreciation and to confirm our social graces, which are essential to life together, in restaurants or otherwise.
Social graces are how we’re supposed to treat each other. Grace is how we treat each other when we’re choosing who we want to be. Tipping allows for both.