i have travelled quite a bit, which has no impact on the fact that tipping is a part of our culture. if i go to places where tipping is not customary, i don't tip. if you want to work as a bartender and not be tipped move to Iceland
i just think it's lame that someone working as a bartender in Los Angeles - a profession where people literally live off their tips - would be unappreciative and snub their noses at people being generous. and then on top of that try to intellectualize it in some pretentious sociopolitical critique. we're not in Iceland. if you're my bartender and i'm tipping you in the upper end of the tipping scale, then yes, i would expect upper echelon service whenever possible. it's the free market at work. it's also just basic etiquette. customer takes care of you, you take care of your customers.
Good on you, traveling broadens your horizons. This is true, tipping is part of the culture. But so is super sizing your McDonalds meal, owning a gun, and religious nazis like the Westboro Baptist Church-I'm providing extremes but still. I'm living in this country and there's things I love and hate about it but that doesn't mean I can't have a strong stance or opinion on it. There's obviously things I love and hate about other countries as well.
I think where it got to me was living abroad and going to a place, not tipping, but the service was always better plus the folks there hooked it up. If I tried to tip them they would take it as an insult and I've grown to view it the way they did to a certain extent.
You're seeing it all wrong, I wasn't unappreciative or snub my nose at people just because of my overall view on it. It was my job and I knew how it worked - this was ages ago mind you. People aren't necessarily being generous - you HAVE to tip right? Unless it's extremely shitty, you tip. And you completely missed my analysis of it apparently. Leaving a tip at all, as it was meant to be, was for upper echelon service. You didn't tip for customary, expected good service. It was for when your server went above and beyond but now you tip for sub-par service and leave even more for upper echelon service or because you're trying to put a $ sign on it. Why can't the owner just add a dollar onto the prices and give it to the employee?
I don't think basic etiquette need involve money. You hold the door open for a lady, should she give you a dollar? That's basic etiquette right?
So if the customer takes care of you, you take care of the customer, where does this leave the employer? A little closer to the top .01 percent?
Since you're bringing up the "free market" I'll just throw out the 3 models psychologists have created to try and "naturalize" consumerism:
*Human nature + free markets = consumerist capitalism
*blank slate + oppressive institutions + Invidious ideologies = consumerist capitalism
*human instincts for trying unconsciously to display certain desirable personal traits + current social norms for displaying those mental traits through certain kinds of credentials, jobs, goods and services + current technological abilities and constraints +certain social institutions and ideologies + historical accident and cultural inertia = early 21st century consumerist capitalism.
If we're going to carry on this debate, let's deep into it. Pick your model and explain.
That's funny. I love how people just say "if you don't like it then you can geeeeeet out". I have to be here for work, and yes, I tip fine when I go out.