I've visited quite a few 10% "service" restaurants and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service".
The whole scheme is ridiculous: If you pay 18% for service, what are you paying the rest of 100% for? It doesn't make much sense. Just name your final price.
Isn't this a crazy sentiment though? It's like we've all been trained to pity waiters and unless we're handing them money directly we're worried they might go home empty handed. How did we get to this point?
If we weren't crazy on this part we would refuse paying anything not on the bill. Like we do in grocery store.
That being said, patrons are accustomed to paying an additional fee when dining out; so rather than simply raise prices (which I'm sure would elicit grumbling and/or loss of patronage), they maintained the expectation of paying an additional amount for the service they've received.
* I was going to call telcos an example, but then I don't know whether they don't already do that in the US. Or indeed anywhere. Which is a bit scary if you ask me.
Take the claim "The meme of sleeping with our waitress is important to Americans." This may or may not be true (why Americans are singled out is an interesting questions). He then cites a song, a sex and the City episode and a bartender's essay to back this up.
The later part of the post is devoted to an analysis of how our monogamous human sexuality evolved, based on text lifted off from a single book. And towards the end he switches to the notion of the waitress as a "sexual worker".
Now for the interesting part. Although his non-tipping restaurant experiment did NOT provide any proof for his theory he still views it as if it did on hypothetical grounds.
For a much better treatment of some of these ideas, consider: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolu...
I didn't get that either. Could it be a generational or regional thing? Of course I can think of a few occasions where a waiter or waitress is so unusually attractive as to be worthy of comment, but I've never known anyone that had a thing about hooking up with waitresses in general.
...oh, Sex at Dawn. Should have seen that coming.
It seems to reflect how narrow minded this community outside of technical problems and business models actually is.
It is a big theme in HN, but why not give all ideas the same treatment? What is your thesis, your pitch, and have you made your case? What are the holes, where do you need work?
How do you evaluate ideas, if not by critique?
Anyway. I like the idea that because servers are no longer "performing" for tips, their behavior and appearance is more truly representative. Not to mention cutting off at the knees this gross rich losers who obsess over who they can buy and impress with their money.
"“This isn’t about money,” the man would say. He’d be the one person in a thousand, or in ten thousand, who’d get angry about our fixed service charge"
Maybe not all American men.
I'm a heterosexual male in the age range that this guy is remarking on but I tip male servers and older women the same as I tip younger women. He is stereotyping. No doubt there are some who see tipping as a sexual power trip but probably in no higher percentage than any other endeavor.
>No doubt there are some who see tipping as a sexual power trip but probably in no higher percentage than any other endeavor.
I don't follow you. In what other aspect of everyday life is someone forced to converse with you, meet your every whim, and then afterwards you get to decide how much money they take home?
He's not stereotyping much.
Perhaps the complaints have more to do with seeing something listed on the bill that you didn't order. If it was removed entirely instead of being presented as a tax, that might change the response.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6126926
This time around the early comments all seem to be negative.
I've now read the 5 published articles and have been really impressed with the this guy's insights. They have greatly aligned with what I've noticed, as someone who was born and raised in a non-tipping culture (I'm Australian) and who has come to live in the US two years ago (at the age of 34).
Back in Australia I had tipped in restaurants on occasion, to reward amazing service, excellent dining experiences and to be honest as a form of flirtation.
Coming to the US where you "have" to tip I noticed a real difference in the experience. Overly attentive servers, forced friendliness, expectations from both sides.... just different.
Trying to explain these things to my American friends was difficult. But I think these articles have really summed it up well.
This was Part of 5 of a series that begins here:
http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...
Prior to this aside from being a patron of restaurants my only knowledge of the restaurant biz was based on Setting the Table which Fred Wilson blogged about here:
There are men like that. So what? Long-winded article w/ poor quality of evidence and thinking.
Sorry, but as merely a "guy's opinion", this is pretty worthless. Maybe if he brought in some quotes from actual women working as waitresses, it would be more convincing and he could make a case.
But it's just far, far too simplistic. Maybe some guys look at waitresses that way... but that doesn't mean all of them do, or even a majority do. Lots of people disrespect lots of service workers, period. And why stop with women? What about hunky bartenders hired for their biceps or handsome faces, to attract a nice female clientele? Are they dehumanized as well?
This blog posts starts out with some interesting observations, but quickly veers into drawing unwarranted universal conclusions, making waaaay too many assumptions.
