Tipping: Why cabbies and not pilots?
After an abnormally cheerful take-off announcement and a smooth landing on an early morning flight from Knoxville to Chicago, I couldn’t help but wonder: why do we tip certain professions and not others? Why hairdressers and not auto mechanics? Why appliance delivery and not UPS? Why tour guides, bellhops, valet parking, bathroom attendants, and not grocery baggers, librarians, bank tellers, or movie store clerks? Why taxi drivers and waiters but not pilots and flight attendants?
In most cases the answer is tradition. Commercial flight was initially considered high-class travel; the ticket price included full service. Now, with relatively cheap airfare and many regional pilots making less than the average New York City doorman ($32,000), it’s just a matter of outdated etiquette. I can only speak for myself, but a successful landing should receive more gratitude than a successful taxi trip.
Why not get rid of tipping altogether and just pay everyone a living wage? The obvious answer is service incentive, but Michael Lynn of Cornell says the correlation between quality service and tip size is very small. According to Lynn’s research, tip sizes are based on things like the weather (higher tips on sunny days), flowers in the waitress’s hair (+17%), and smiley faces on the bill (+18% if you’re a woman, -9% if you’re a man) [source]. Most people know waiters make less than minimum wage and tip even the poorest service. Perhaps my European friends from non-tipping countries are right when they call the practice an artifact of a culture that doesn’t pay its waitstaff a living wage.
If we’re going to use it at all, the tipping system needs an update. Let’s go the capitalistic way. Reward anyone who goes above and beyond his/her job description whether tipping is expected or not. Sometimes genuine appreciation or a note of recognition to the employer is a better reward than dropping a few bills. Tip pennies for miserable service. Refrain from tipping just because the impression is given that a tip is expected. For example, those annoying tip lines on credit card receipts at pizza pickup windows and Starbucks (My translation dictionary says “Barista” is Italian for “bartender” but I say it means “glorified fast food employee”).
Carry this mentality into other spending by buying from companies you want to see flourish or sending political donations. Tip street performers and artists if they contribute to your commute or improve the scenery.
After all this, if you can’t resist feeling bad for some lazy waiter or waitress and want to tip regardless of service, move to Europe where you won’t ruin the whole system for the rest of us. Stay hard-hearted and ignore flowers in the hair and smiley faces on the receipts.
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Oh, I’ll tell you who gets tipped and almost never deserves it:
Cows
Tipping is not about the service, it’s about protecting yourself.
There is an airline and a whole lot of infrastructure that prevents a pilot from deciding to make a detour to Boise on the way to New York. What is there between you and the cabbie who decides to dump your ass in the middle of gang territory, or the waiter or waitress deciding not to spit in your coffee or soup. Nothing. Only good feeling.
The tip makes the one doing the service feel good about rendering that service and protects you from reprisals for being a git. In French it’s called L’hiule delicat, — the delicate oil. We can’t always be pleasant or cheerful, but we can always throw a few bucks towards the one who is doing us a service.
Generally, tips paid in advance are about protection or privilege (baggage handlers, maitre d’s, valets). But you pay both a cab driver and waitress after service is rendered when protection is no longer needed. In other situations protection doesn’t even factor (tour guides). If you’re tipping just to keep these service renderers feeling good so they don’t spit in your soup, someone should let them know because many of them are working really hard to earn that extra amount through superior service.
I’m for abolished all tips given for protection as cultural practice. It amounts to extortion. Many countries don’t tip their taxi drivers and they aren’t dropping their customers in random places.
Good read and a few interesting points. I have an insider’s view on the tipping issue, so I thought I’d throw my thoughts out there.
Michael Lynn knows his stuff. Getting tips as a pizza delivery driver can sometimes come down to who answers the door (she tips, he doesn’t, etc.), the type of day they’ve had, or even whether or not they remember that pizza delivery is a tipped profession. Oddly, there appears to be a mild inverse correlation between speed of service and gratuity. Pizzas delivered in 45 minutes seem to be worth more than pizzas delivered in 20. Unfortunately, there is no way to “science” this theory. Given the already random nature of the business, there are simply too many variables you cannot control for.
I’ve been tipped $5 on a $15 order and I’ve been stiffed on $100 orders. We make significantly more money in bad weather. These pity tips have led me to refer to rain as “Liquid gold”. I imagine this and lower tips for restaurant servers are related phenomena. People have to walk through the rain to go to a restaurant, we save them from that.
I would like to throw my support behind abolishing tips and raising wages for formerly tipped employees. This would increase prices but, as someone who tips, that is fine with me as I would still be paying the same amount.
People who never tip delivery drivers or restaurant servers are *ABUSING THE SYSTEM*. If nobody tipped, nobody would be willing to do these jobs. People who continue to use these services yet never tip are relying on those who do to pick up their slack.