Passionate About Tips

I would like you to place yourself in your favorite restaurant with your partner or good friend. You have just finished your meal, and now your bill has been dropped off. Take a second to think about how you feel at this point. Do you feel nervous that you now have to evaluate the performance of your server; in order to give a tip? Do you feel like you have to tip well to impress your partner or friend? Do you feel like the server did a poor job and you feel that they don’t deserve a tip? Do you feel compelled to leave one because it is the social norm? Or do you just feel that your server is hot, so you need to leave a good tip?

The point I am trying to make here is that there is really no standard in how to tip, or that you should tip at all, it has just became the social norm to do so. I am a strong believer that you should not have to tip for service.

Let’s look at the origin of the word tip. TIP stands for “To Insure Promptness” or “To Insure Performance”. It was a gesture that was offered at the beginning of the service to “buy” a higher level of service; however it was not guaranteed. In today’s society it is now the “social norm” to leave a tip for service, however it does not appear to be based on performance, more so it is an expectation.

Let me give you an example. Last October I was in Montreal on business, my wife and I went to Schwartz’s for dinner with our daughter. During our meal we could hear our server talking about how he hates people, and he just wants to go home. He ignored us for most the meal, and then put the bill on the table. It took us several minutes to figure out that we had to go to the front to pay and that it was cash only, which was never mentioned or posted. My wife paid for our meals, which also used up the cash we had on us. Given that our servers performance was substandard, we didn’t feel bad not leaving a tip. We put our coats on and left. No sooner than we got out of the shop, our server came out the door saying:...