The great tip off

Or why waitresses make more than columnists

A recent trip to Italy revealed to me some large cultural differences between North America and Europe.

Here, when someone wants to steal your things, they generally wait until you’re out and then break into your house to rob you. How impersonal.

In Europe the preferred method of thievery appears to be the delicate art of pickpocketing. I know this because my son and I were targeted by a pair of pickpockets in the Naples train station. One distracted us with an overly complicated explanation of how to use the self-serve ticket kiosk while another bumped up against me — only to be foiled by the Velcro flap on my back pocket.

Given that pickpocketing requires skills that must presumably be learned through long years of tuition and practice, this difference in cross-continental larceny raises some interesting questions. Are European thieves more invested in their craft? Or does the Canadian weather simply make pickpocketing a one-season activity, and hence not worth the effort?

While you ponder those puzzlers, here’s another difference between Canada and Europe. No one tips in real Italian restaurants.

Unlike pickpocketing, however, this trend seems entirely worthy of cultural appropriation.

Tipping is one of the great conundrums of modern life. Why do you tip the waitress and bellhop, but not the mechanic or florist? Who decides? And how much is appropriate?

Tipping is often justified as the means to supplement a wage rate that’s too low to live on. But I tip my barber, who owns her own shop. If her wages are insufficient, she can simply raise her prices. But I tip anyway, because it’s a cultural convention.

And if tips are really a way for the public to express their displeasure with subpar wage rates, then we should be in the midst of a massive shift away from the practice of tipping, given that Ontario recently hiked its minimum wage by over 20 per cent, with more increases to come.

While prices have gone up noticeably in most restaurants, however, I’ve seen no equivalent change in the expectations of tipping.

Curiously enough, New York state is currently looking at raising the minimum wage with the express intent of eliminating the practice of tipping.

“This is a question of fairness,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said in a recent news release. He wants to “ensure that no workers are more susceptible to exploitation because they rely on tips to survive.”

In New York, as in Ontario, minimum wages are lower in certain jobs that earn lots in tips, such as bars and restaurants. And because the majority of workers in these establishments are women, Cuomo argues they have to put up with bad behaviour and sexual harassment because they rely on tips to make their living and can’t complain about their customers.

In the obligatory public letter from celebrities, a bunch of famous actresses (Jane Fonda, Natalie Portman, Lily Tomlin etc.) have demanded an end to New York’s lower minimum wage for tipped workers because “relying on tips creates a more permissive work environment where customers feel entitled to abuse women in exchange for ‘service’.”

Now, I’m all for getting rid of tipping, but casting it as part of the never-ending gender war has zero chance of success. Tips are a matter of economics, not sexual politics.

One owner of a popular Kitchener pub told me every single member of his wait staff makes over $40 an hour, tips included — this despite the $12.20 minimum wage for liquor servers. And he’s seen no evidence of tips declining in the face of the minimum wage hikes or rising restaurant prices.

Toronto-based restaurant consultant Paul Hewitt agrees. “I don’t think the minimum wage (hike) is going to have any impact at all on tipping,” he says in an interview. “If restaurants were to do away with tipping, they’d have to bump up their prices even more. And then they’d have to charge HST on top of that.”

Hewitt says it’s not unusual for downtown Toronto servers to make $75,000 to $100,000 annually. And very little of their tip income is apparent at tax time. It’s standard practice for many waiters and waitresses to declare only 10 per cent of their total income as tips regardless of what they really earn.

All this suggests the minimum wage rate would have to be tripled or quadrupled to make up for the abolition of tips. Whether or not that this would have any impact on female empowerment, it’s clearly a non-starter for economic reasons.

In fact, the biggest problem facing most waiters and waitresses is likely the Canada Revenue Agency’s recent crackdown on undeclared tips.

Earlier this year, the CRA swooped down on a chain of restaurants in P.E.I. and demanded the servers provide proof they had paid taxes on all tips earned. A similar operation in St. Catharines a few years ago revealed $1.7 million in undeclared tips from 145 servers at four restaurants.

With the stakes this high, it looks like tipping is here to stay. And if so, perhaps it’s time to start a new cultural convention.

Don’t forget to tip your local newspaper columnist! We appreciate your business!