The service industry is a large and ever-growing group, with over roughly 2.23 million people (according to DataUSA) in its employ. This helps to account for the fact that everyone knows someone who has worked in a McDonalds; it is just impossible not to. But, what I bet you didn’t know is that, while Mr. wanna be Spongebob is complaining about only making minimum wage flipping burgers, there are others in the service industry who do not make even close to making half that.
I am specifically referring to waiters and waitresses who only make, on average, $2.13 an hour. This amounts to an eight-hour shift, before taxes, equating to a paycheck of only $17.04. Service industry workers’ baseline pay is far below minimum wage, and tips are meant to be a supplemental income to make up the difference.
Tipping is a very flawed and outdated practice that actually holds ties to slavery. Restaurants and railway companies introduced this practice after the abolishment of slavery so they did not have to pay formerly enslaved African-Americans in their employ. There are many discrepancies with tipping that put some people at an unfair advantage. Discrimination, sexual harassment and an unsteady, uncertain income are all factors in the service industry that are rooted in the tipping process.
Tipping creates an unequal power dynamic in the server-customer relationship. The customer has the power to decide how much to tip the server (in most cases), which is where the aforementioned problems rear their head. Across the board, African-Americans are frequently tipped less than their white counterparts, while female’s tips are often correlated to their physical appearance, which both doors for all types of harassment
Arbitrariness by customers is the main cause of the guesswork when it comes to how much a server is going to make each paycheck. The neverending, looming thoughts of if you are going to make enough to pay your bills, put gas in your car and, in most cases for service industry workers, put food on the table for their family tends to have a negative impact on worker mentality. Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant knows how hostile it can be. While servers tend to be cordial to one another, at the end of the day they ultimately have to look out for themselves, as they can not rely on just their pay to support them. It is not of their choosing, but instead, society is blameworthy.
If, instead of rewarding people for serving them like we are some type of gerent, we instilled a baseline minimum wage, many of these problems would quickly disappear. The biggest obstacle stopping this from happening is that it would cause inflation of restaurant prices to compensate for this very large pay increase servers would receive. Unbeknownst to the people who pitch these fits, is that the increase in price is cheaper than the old price with a tip tacked onto it. Therefore this archaic practice shall, and probably will for quite a while, prevail.
So just be a decent human and tip your servers, please.
By Carly Olles, Contributing Writer
ollescj18@bonaventure.edu
