Past The Tipping Point

Earls - a restaurant chain in western Canada - is experimenting with mandatory tipping. That is, the tip (16%) is just added to your bill automatically.

This seems like a weird half-way point. If you're going to get rid of tipping, why not just drop the concept altogether, pay a living wage, and wrap that in the prices? In other words, make it just like most goods and services. It's kind of odd how we have a selection of services for which we tip, and most that we don't. Generally we tip for services where we are in close proximity to the server (serving, hair styling, taxi drivers.) I guess it's important that we reward good service in such areas, though there are plenty of times we rely heavily on someone we don't work directly with, and thus don't tip (chefs, car mechanics, bus drivers.) And then there's the fact that some restaurants pool the tips and distribute among all staff, so any message you send with your tip will be lost on your server.

Because of that arbitrary distinction, I was surprised that most media folks discussing the manditory tip seemed incredulous that there was no incentive for servers to do a good job. Sure, you could say that tips provide a little more incentive, but everyday we rely on countless people who have no incentive to do a good job, other than a desire to keep their job. And of course, these media folk themselves fall into that category too.

So I'd just as soon get rid of tips altogether and pay proportionatly higher prices, assuming that the employees end up with the same amount of money under the new system. If you must send a message about your appreciation or disapproval, you'd have to do it by, you know, talking to the server.