Essay Example on Tipping Etiquette: Customary or Non-Customary?

Introduction

Gratuity in the modern day has been considered an etiquette practice whereby a service provider is usually offered some extra cash that is non-refundable to the issuer, after the provision of excellent service. Gratuity may be customary or non-customary, according to Watcher, who discusses the importance of tipping service providers. Some locations or countries declare tipping in restaurants, and other sectors customary as it is believed that tipping usually leads to the best services that a service provider can give as it creates a personal connection between the two parties involved in tipping. The personal connection, according to Watcher, leads to motivating of the service provider leading to the excellent serving of customers, or rather clients, in restaurants (Wachter). Mandatory tipping has been however added in some locations in the United States of America where a service fee is usually included in the total amount that a client owes a restaurant. The latter has its advantages and disadvantages as it will be seen in this paper. Gratuity should be made essential in restaurants, and this paper aims to prove why this is paramount.

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Benefits of Gratuity

As mentioned earlier, gratuity creates a personal connection between a waiter, or waitress, and the people they are serving. A tip creates this connection by appealing to the service providers that one appreciates the services they are getting from them and in return, offer something back. Many service providers get basic salaries that are only able to sustain their needs and those of their families, and therefore, a majority of them depend on tipping as a way of survival in the contemporary World. If it were not for the hard work that a majority of waiters and waitresses put in in restaurants, the services provided in restaurants would not be so enjoyable. As a result, gratuity is crucial to motivate them to continue providing services to the best of their comprehension to ensure maximum satisfaction of their clients (Scribner). However, over tipping should be avoided at all stances as the service providers might be depending on the tipping and might fail to provide excellent services to a customer who fails to tip them, especially in locations where tipping is not mandatory.

The second reason why tipping is essential is that it acts as a welfare improvement mechanism and can be described as an efficient way of sharing risks. This is an advantage, especially to the owners of the restaurant. Making gratuity essential effectively reduces the risks of the owner of restaurants as people will always be back for excellent services. Highly motivated service providers lead to a highly motivated workforce that will always provide services that are satisfying and of quality (Wiles). As a result, satisfied consumers will always be back for more, a scenario realized through the gratuity system. The owners would, therefore, invest more resources on the restaurants to ensure that their clients are always satisfied without the fear and risk for failure. In light of this, an effective system of sharing risks is established as a result of gratuity. However, the owners of restaurants should not be dependent on gratuity to manage their risks, but rather develop strategies that complement the gratuity system in the reduction of risks.

Gratuity acts as a reward system to the waiters and waitresses that work hard. According to Watcher, in the United States of America, it is estimated that over forty billion dollars are rewarded to service providers as tips during diners (Scribner). The restaurants in this region employ over two and a half million who are dependent on the service providing jobs, hoe salaries, as mentioned earlier, is almost unable to satisfy all their needs. It is researched that a bulk of these service providers are dependent on these tips as a basis of their income. Therefore, the latte depends on providing good services to their clients to ensure that they are tipped, to supplement their salaries. Due to these reasons, in some countries, gratuity has been made mandatory - an example of such a location in the United Kingdom. Mandatory gratuity can be defined as a fee that is usually incorporated in a client's bill without the client being asked of the amount that they would be willing to offer to service providers CITATION Dav14 \l 2057 (Infante). It is usually fixed and applicable to all customer's regardless of class, age, or gender. Mandatory tipping is efficient in rewarding good service providers in comparison to the normal gratuity system.

Why Tip?

Tipping is usually done for several reasons. For instance, rich people tip to show off. A majority of extroverted people and outgoing people are more likely to tip, especially in the westernized countries. As a result, social pressures are created to those surrounding people who usually offer tips, leading to more gratuity offered to service providers. This conclusion was arrived at because research by Lynn proved that quality service provision is not always dependent on tips. In light of this, tipping can be explained, therefore, to be associated with self-pride, cultural values and characteristics found in a particular population of people. The second reason as to why people offer a gratuity to service providers in a restaurant is to get effective future services. Once a client tips of a waiter or waitress, the latter and the former gets a personal connection to the person offering the tip, meaning that they will be forever thanking or rather in debt to the tip issuer (Scribner). In addition to this, if the client comes back for more services at the restaurant in future, the waiter or waitress would offer more quality services to the client in the hope of getting more tips or to 'repay' the tips that they were offered the last time. Gratuity should, therefore, be made essential to ensure that future services are improved, which means that the restaurant business would experience intensive growth.

Most researches show that a majority of people tip as a sense of duty. Most people have the fervent desire of offering gratuity as a way of helping others as they feel that it is their responsibility to give back to society. These type of people are those that are fortunate enough to be rich and feel like helping people out in society. This type of gratuity is offered to service providers to boost their incomes, as stated before. In addition to this, people offer tips to avoid disapproval from service providers. It is a common trend in the modern world for people to offer a gratuity to service providers of restaurants and therefore, failing to adhere to this trend might lead to disapproval of a person by the waiters and waitresses (Wachter). As a result, the former might tend to get fewer quality services even in the future, since gratuity has been initially explained to lead to the future provision of quality services. However, despite these reasons and benefits of gratuity discussed, the system has been associated with some setbacks that have made people champion for its abolishment, as discussed below.

Gratuity Criticisms

As there are restaurants that exercise mandatory gratuity, other restaurants forbid their service providers from ever accepting gratitude from their customers. Discrimination is one factor that has made many restaurants ban tipping. Female service providers mostly experience discrimination in terms of tipping as compared to male service providers. Research by Infante, in his article "why tipping should be stopped," shows that less attractive women were getting much fewer tips than those women who were attractive (Infante). As a result of this, discrimination occurs at the place of work which is against the States' Laws that advocate for equity regardless of the race, religion, or even backgrounds. Due to this reason, human rights activists have fought for banning of gratuity as it leads to inequity that is established through discrimination.

Inconsistency of gratuities is the other reason as to why tipping has been heavily criticized recently (Lentz). One of the benefits of gratuities is that it boosts the salaries of the service providers, which is not that much. Despite the fewer amounts of salaries received by service providers, a majority of the owners of restaurants reduce the salaries of their workers as they conclude that they will be offered money as tips that are aimed at boosting their incomes. As a result, low wages are given to service providers of restaurants despite their large number in the workforce of the nation. Tipping has also been criticized as a result of bribery and corruption (Wachter). Critics have discussed that waiters and waitresses are usually given bribes inform of tips to receive better treatment than others in restaurants. In a restaurant, people should be served equally regardless of their ability to tip or bribe. As a result, many countries and restaurants have banned the service providers from receiving tips, ensuring that a corruption-free restaurant is achieved. Despite these critics, tipping has numerous benefits as seen previously, hence advocating for the gratuity system.

Conclusion

Lastly, it is indeed essential to ensure that the gratuity system is introduced in restaurants. The latter is so due to the benefits that this system yields as it has been seen in the essay. Motivation and quality services provision have been associated with tipping and therefor, to ensure that a motivated high performing workforce is obtained, gratuity should be made basic. Furthermore, mandatory gratuity is significant since it will ensure that fair tips are given to all service providers in a restaurant, despite their age, color, or race. This would effectively reduce the issue of discrimination, which has been discussed to cause criticism when it comes to gratuity offers. Bribery and corruption would also be reduced effectively. In eliminating all these negative impacts of gratuity, all the benefits of this system could be advantageous to service providers who earn fewer amounts of money compared to other workers in the general workforce. Strict laws should be adopted to ensure that restaurants owners do not cut the salaries of service providers in the name of gratuity offering, which is meant to raise the incomes of waiters and waitresses.

Works Cited

Infante, Dave. Why You Should Stop Tipping Your Server. October 2014. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/why-you-should-stop-tipping-reasons-not-to-tip. July 2019.

Lentz, Cheyenne. Why Restaurants Need to Eliminate Tipping Now. April 2018. https://www.insider.com/why-restaurants-should-eliminate-tipping-2018-3. July 2019.

Scribner, Herb. Here's how much Americans tip at restaurants on average (plus seven other dining trends for 2018). January 2018. https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900007299/heres-how-much-americans-tip-at-restaurants-on-average-plus-7-other-dining-trends-for-2018.html. July 2019.

Wachter, Paul. Why Tip? October 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12tipping-t.html. July 2019.

Wiles, Russ. How much to tip? Well, it depends. Four tips to make it less taxing. June 2015. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/06/14/much-tip-depends/71137254/. July 2019.