I was reading about an incident today about a person who had a very bad experience at a particular restaurant ranging from bad food to receiving horrible service. In the end when the bill came, they decided to give them less than a 10 percent tip. When the employees tallied up the total, they realized that the tip was less than 10 percent and so they then approached the customers with an angry attitude and tried to imply that the tip must be at least 10 percent of the total price and that they couldn’t leave without paying that amount. The end result, the customers then decided to not tip them at all and the employees yelled at them to never come back.
I personally never understood these attempts from restaurants that try and force their customers to pay tips regardless of the quality of experience that they have received as if tips are like some kind of mandatory restaurant dining tax. I think the most common argument that I hear from people who feel that everyone should always tip 10 percent regardless of their experience is because people such as the waiters and waitresses at a restaurant make very little money and so tips are suppose to be a way for them to generate a livable income. I personally don’t think that is a valid reason as by that logic virtually every convenience store clerk or fast food restaurant employee should also receive a 10 percent tip.
For myself, I personally see tips as a way for you to tell the business that you enjoyed the service and that paying them more than you are suppose to is a way to encourage them to maintain their great offering and at the same time to hopefully encourage the business to grow and expand into something better. It’s kind of like that you vote with your dollar saying where if you keep buying things from a certain vendor or provider, you are basically supporting their beliefs and operation standards to maintain a presence in your community.
In a sense, I guess I see tips more as an investment to the community. For example, if there is this great small restaurant that provides better service than some kind of large franchise, in my mind providing that extra 10 percent will help them grow their business so that hopefully more people could enjoy it. On the other hand, if a particular restaurant provided me with bad service or that I was simply being served in an assembly line type of fashion, not providing a 10 percent tip is a way for me to say that you didn’t really go out of your way to try and provide me with the best experience, so in return I shouldn’t go out of my way to pay you more as I will also treat you like a vending machine and expect to pay no more or less than what was advertised. You can usually find places that will give you the bare bone minimums at a fast and cheap price, but a lot of times the places that provide the best often struggle financially to compete with others to stay in business and so in my mind the tip is meant to partially help them tackle that obstacle.
In the end though, I think tips in general should be viewed as a form of voting for a company and its practices as opposed to some form of obligatory fee that is placed upon customers to accommodate low wage employees in a business.