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Why You Should be More Like Mr Pink and Stop Tipping Waiting Staff
Tipping is nothing more than a subsidy that allows restaurants to pay low wages
“I don’t tip because society says I have to.” So starts the “I don’t tip” scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, where a group of murderous gangsters have a philosophical debate about tipping over breakfast. The gangsters are outraged by Mr Pinks’s bold confession that he refuses to tip. Mr White argues waiting staff have a tough job, and tips make up an essential part of their livelihood. Mr Pink doesn’t budge, and when you think about it, he makes a great point. Tipping has become a social obligation, but when you tip a server, you merely subsidise a restaurant that is paying its staff low wages.
Because stripping away any social expectation, that’s why tipping has become so important. Waiting staff get paid low wages. The only way they can survive is if people tip them for service. So ingrained has this idea of tipping at restaurants become you would be viewed as some kind of social vagrant if you didn’t tip, but why? Who made the rule? It works out very nicely for restaurants that can justify paying waiting staff such low wages, but tipping does far more harm than good.
