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RE: "Stiffed? I GOT STIFFED!" (Nevermind the Steem-pocalypse, here's "Guy's Waiter Blog" Chapter 4!)

in #food8 years ago

The term TIPS means To Insure Proper Service.

Being from Austrlaia offering any sort of extra tip was until very recently the highest form of insult. It was strictly never done and when done provoked an angry response.

The idea is the employee will do their job well and their is not need to bribe for additional customer care. In America TIPS works in just cultural ways. The Boss gets to pay his people less than minimum wages. This means the employee must ensure by good service that the customer makes up the extra money as TIPS to try and reach a living wage.

This caters to the owner since he is not paying a lot of money to staff who are not serving tables when those tables are empty. Plus he gets to ensure his staff are being monitored while they do their jobs. Simply he is paying 50% of the staff wages and the customer is supervising the server to ensure they are doing a good job.

In Australia and other countries this plague of TIPPING is starting to spread with TIPS jars being left on counter-tops. Simply this is the height of begging and should be outlawed but it is not.

However overseas people probably have no idea how important TIPS are to AMERICAN SERVERS for the reasons outlined above. If those Europeans were just visiting they are possibly clueless, if they have traveled on the mainland before then they are scum . . .

TIPPING is a bad idea culturally but it caters to American egos so locally it is understood, but like many cultural practices it should not be exported unless America is trying to further lower its image even more on the world stage.

With the economic downturn many areas of America simply refused to follow TIPS rules locally. Thus managers lost many good servers, in response some places automatically add 15 % or 18 % into the mandatory food bill.

Thus customers can then elect to pay even more TIPS when they attend to their check.

The reason many local areas declined was in the modern age of The Great Depression, the follow-on from the 2007-2009 Economic Recession people simply could no longer afford to " give " extra money away. Even if this was not truly a gift but what servers relied upon to pay their own bills . . .

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Well said mostly, and I'm glad you actually understand the difference in America that most do not. I hope that you and other readers will understand and appreciate that aside from over 25 years as a server/bartender, I also have over 50 blog posts to share here, and have had all of these types of discussion many times over. I will treat the topic very fairly from both perspectives. And much to the surprise of many past readers, it turns out that I am always right, haha! No "customer" has the equivalent of a PhD in this topic like I do ;) but everyone's entitled to their opinions. I'm going to make sure that more people have an honestly educated opinion is all.
I'll note two things about your excellent and very fair initial response (which I've already detailed elsewhere, and will also eventually share here, on Steemit - please keep in mind that this is ALL from an as-yet unpublished book, btw). Snopes, Wikipedia, and many other sources will tell you that "TIP" or "TIPS" stands for anything is a complete misnomer - see http://www.chowhound.com/post/tips-insure-proper-prompt-service-552584 - as just one example. The supposed anacronymn post-dates the entymology of the word, a documented fact. Just google TIPS misnomer for example. (The anacronymn's actual origin is probably some cheap but creative arsehole looking for an excuse not to tip.) If this anacromymn story were true however, the word would be TEP or TEPS, because the word that would actually go there is Ensure btw, not Insure - also detailed in the link I shared.
Secondly, my emploter does not pay 50% of my salary - that's very laughable to everyone in this industry (in America). I will also be sharing here photos and scans of my honest-to-God paychecks - they are all ZERO. In America, if you don't tip a server, they/we pay the restaurant real money out of our pockets to pay the bussers, hosts, bartenders, etc the hourly wages that the restaurant does not. I will also document this fo ryou. I'm not complaining and don't want to hear the tired old "if you don't like it get another job" routine (I know you won't say that @crok I'm saying it pre-emptively) but I an going to make people aware that this really is how it works, so that they can make a better informed decsion about their tipping, moving forward. Thanks for the great comment!

The term TIPS comes from two World War Two veterans who authenticate that is around the time the term come into popular usage, with people transiting from away their local areas.

My local servers in Florida make US$ 4.50/hr with the extra coming from their table tips. Since I do a few cruises people began not tipping the ship staff so most cruises today build in the tips as per the package price.

Another modern factor is that people are expected to pay their tips upon boarding prior to receiving the staff services : )

I only mention these tiny things as additional knowledge for yourself as you publish your books. I myself self publish my Ebooks and pay nothing and receive 70% only upon payment.

Lastly I had an internet friend who was a server in Western Canada, he was in fact quite wealthy from his job, it seems (according to him) servers /waiters are paid extremely well since service staff is almost impossible to attract into the industry.

He would say he made enough from serving to even afford his own solo apartment whereas his friends with better sounding jobs cold never afford their own places...

Just some more info : )

Awesome info - Have I been misled by my multiple sources? Can you offer any documentation of the WW2 story? Adam here puts the custom of tipping back to 1920's prohibition era, for instance...

Weird it deleted by text. Are my multiple sources wrong then? IE, can you give me a source on the WW2 story for instance? Adam here puts the custom of tipping in America beginning in the 1920's Prohibition era, for instance.

Ah no I just offer my lowly opinion since your the one completing your service industry doctorate I was just offering one tiny opinion was all simply as info; cannot prove it . . .

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