How much do you tip at restaurants? In the first place, do you leave tips? Tipping is gratuity that servers receive from diners as reflecting the servers’ performance toward the guests. There is a debate going on that tipping at restaurants should be kept or abolished.

No, Because It Results in Declines in Business

The argument that is against banning tips is about “consumer satisfaction” (Dizik, 2018, para.3). A franchise restaurant, Joe’s Crab Shack abolished the tipping system for a certain period of time at one out of 13 stores. As a result, the ratings of the stores of the restaurant dropped and this had something to do with its 3% revenue loss (Dizik, 2018, para.7). The correlation occurring here is that removing tipping has a negative impact on restaurants explicitly. Waiters usually work hard treating the customers better because of tips that become extra money other than their wages for the servers. Banning tips surely take away waiters’ incentive that affects restaurants in a bad way such as declining online ratings and decreasing the revenue.

Yes, Because It Fosters Discrimination

The reason why people are opposed to the tipping norm is that this leads to racial discrimination. Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration (2006) shows that “black diners appear to tip less than white diners by about 3%” (as cited in Lentz, 2018, para.13). This study gives waiters an unfavourable impact that they have the preference to serve the guests by their race. Servers will provide dishes to black people slower and not behave to those people as loyal as they do to Caucasians.

What’s The Point to Leave Tips?

As a person from a country that does not have the tipping culture and living in Canada where tipping is necessary, I don’t quite get used to this norm. I strongly believe that there should not be the tipping system at restaurants. Customers don’t need to pay extra money (tips). They already pay for what they want to eat or drink at restaurants. The number of tips they are preferred to leave will boost as the class of the restaurants they go to goes up, that means the diners will be more likely to lose their money. Additionally, customer services such as being friendly and smiling at customers all the time, and providing quicker service are not something servers deserve to be paid for by diners. These servers’ duties are taken for granted and I certainly don’t get why customers’ additional money is being contributed to their work. In other words, why should servers receive extra pay when they are already completing their task? Let’s take an example of chefs cooking at restaurants. What they are responsible for is to cook dishes for the diners, and the chefs don’t receive tips. However, servers’ duties are to carry the food to the diners and make them feel satisfied and they are being paid more. Waiters get paid their wages properly from their employers, so the waiters don’t need to receive tips.

Conclusion

To conclude, I clearly state that tipping should be removed from restaurants because consumers don’t have to leave tips for servers’ performance because that is only their job. I assume this debate will go on for a while since it is a controversial topic and pretty hard to get rid of the tipping system in restaurants in the future.

References

Ciskal, D. (2017, March 31). Tipping in Canada. Vancouver Extended Stay. Retrieved from: https://vancouverextendedstay.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_9591.jpg

Dizik, A. (2018, May 1). Banning Tips Can Be a Risky Restaurant Tactic. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.niagarac.on.ca/docview/2032682729?pq-origsite=summon

Lentz, C. (2018, March 26). Why restaurants need to eliminate tipping now. Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.thisisinsider.com/why-restaurants-should-eliminate-tipping-2018-3