> But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult.
I have had more than a few conversations with tipped service workers. Some are even friends of mine. While a lot of what you say is true (the manipulation of shifts and spotting/monopolizing desirable customers) it really fails to capture what most folks tell me about these jobs.
They like tips. The ones that hustle and build up a bank of "regulars" do quite well. It takes a lot of work, and if you hustle on your shifts you usually get more tables assigned to you or drinks poured per hour, etc. This means even more pay.
A slow unskilled bartender is making far less money than a highly skilled efficient experienced bartender with a stable of regulars taking up half the bar stool seats every slow night. It is a night and day difference in total pay rates - all to do with skill. This can be two bartenders behind the same bar on the same nights. The unskilled bartender is not going to be known in these closely knit industry circles as good talent, and will likely never get the opportunity for a position at the top-tier establishments known for good tippers. Those positions are highly competitive.
While we can pontificate about how businesses "should" reward the top tier employees, it isn't happening. In this area of work these are often the only types of jobs available that offer significantly more hourly pay by working harder or being better at your job than your peers. Tilting at windmills only goes so far - sometimes you take the only options available to you to immediately improve your lot in life.
And yes, some of that is "manipulation" of your work environment - just like how we call it "managing upwards" in our white collar world. Same thing.
They like money. Service workers tend to like tips (which provide variable income) over stable higher wages mostly I think because the latter is one they just haven't experienced. Instead they get a choice between low wages and tips or low wages without tips. Hardly a choice.
Also, tips do not always go to the harder working employees. With tip request spreading far and wide, I often see them in places where there is little work even involved. If I buy a bottle of water from a take-out fast food place I'm expected to tip, but the same bottle of water from a convenience store I'm not expected to tip? Who was working harder here exactly?
I think the case of tips "regulars" does definitely make more sense then in a lot of other situations as the customers can make a good evaluation of their service. But even then a simple per-drink bonus or commission would serve this purpose without shifting the decision and responsibility to customers. The faster and more skilled bartender would naturally receive more orders because they are serving faster and because the patons prefer their drinks.
In part it's buying yourself a place without waiting.
I know a bartender who runs the entire bar area (the actual bar plus maybe eight four-top tables) at a nearby restaurant during lunch. I can text him at 10:30 and say I'd like a table for 2-4 people at lunch at 11:45, and there will be one waiting for me. He just brings one menu to the table, with our drinks (I'll have water, my wife will have Diet Coke, he already knows this) and we usually spend about ten seconds looking at the menu before we order.
We're both busy professionals, so getting us in and out in thirty minutes matters. And he does.
I'm directly paying the guy who provides service to me for a much higher level of service. I'm sure his manager would like a cut of that, but it's the price they have to pay to retain high-skill servers.
Sure. That might work, but the worker has zero control of implementing such a policy. They do have control over doing things that increase their tips. You work in the frameworks available to you, not some idealized version of the world.
We are arguing exactly against those frameworks, while your argument, while true, is only repeating that one can do well within that framework. I'm european and I find annoying the fake smiles, the fake chitchat and the deep cleavage I will get from a tips-motivated worker. Basically this softcore prostitution is the only way letting them get some bread on the table, within that framework you refuse to change. The manager definitely sees the unskilled bartender and could raise the pay of the skilled one any time, and if they don't notice the difference I believe the bar has bigger problems anyway. So no, it's not the only framework available, and the way it's slowly reaching nowadays europe because that "capitalism means individualism" is just garbage to me. We've always lived in tribes, only today's social media is spreading those lies for pure political power.
I have had more than a few conversations with tipped service workers. Some are even friends of mine. While a lot of what you say is true (the manipulation of shifts and spotting/monopolizing desirable customers) it really fails to capture what most folks tell me about these jobs.
They like tips. The ones that hustle and build up a bank of "regulars" do quite well. It takes a lot of work, and if you hustle on your shifts you usually get more tables assigned to you or drinks poured per hour, etc. This means even more pay.
A slow unskilled bartender is making far less money than a highly skilled efficient experienced bartender with a stable of regulars taking up half the bar stool seats every slow night. It is a night and day difference in total pay rates - all to do with skill. This can be two bartenders behind the same bar on the same nights. The unskilled bartender is not going to be known in these closely knit industry circles as good talent, and will likely never get the opportunity for a position at the top-tier establishments known for good tippers. Those positions are highly competitive.
While we can pontificate about how businesses "should" reward the top tier employees, it isn't happening. In this area of work these are often the only types of jobs available that offer significantly more hourly pay by working harder or being better at your job than your peers. Tilting at windmills only goes so far - sometimes you take the only options available to you to immediately improve your lot in life.
And yes, some of that is "manipulation" of your work environment - just like how we call it "managing upwards" in our white collar world. Same thing.