Posted on 07/11/2003 3:48:00 PM PDT by 07055
July 11, 2003 -- A new study finds many waiters and waitresses feel that black Americans generally tip less than restaurant diners who are white. The study, by a researcher at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, found that blacks tip on average 20 percent less than whites. In addition, restaurant workers of all races dislike waiting on black people because they assume the tips will be less no matter how good the service. NPR's Juan Williams reports.
The study found that 63 percent of blacks and 30 percent of whites didn't understand that the standard restaurant tip in the United States is 15 to 20 percent. The difference between how blacks and whites view tipping has serious ramifications for restaurants, including lawsuits and lost profits, Williams reports.
"The average tip from a black customer is about 13 percent of the bill. The average tip from a white customer is about 16.5 percent of the bill," says Dr. Michael Lynn, the study's author.
In some cases the difference in tipping may be the result of poor service, but blacks interviewed in one of Lynn's studies rated the service slightly higher yet still tipped less than whites, he says.
Jerry Fernandez, president of the Multicultural Food Alliance, which represents food servers and restaurateurs, says the expectations of a lower tip from blacks can often lead to poor service.
"If a [waiter] says, 'I don't want to wait on that table because they're black or they're Hispanic, then they tend to give less service and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy," Fernandez explains.
He says cultural elements -- blacks have avoided sit-down restaurants in favor of take out or self-service eateries -- institutionalized racism that exists in the restaurant industry and education about tipping are all behind the discrepancy. "How do people learn about tipping? If you don't go, you don't know."
Lynn suggests that the American restaurant industry begin a campaign to inform people about the basics of leaving a tip. He urges the use of advertisements, educational pamphlets, and even putting tipping information on menus. And Lynn suggests that restaurants could introduce a game in which dining parties would have to tip at least 15 percent in order to be eligible to win a contest.
My kind of woman!
<Maybe we should stop going if it's so dangerous and then they get nothing. I don't like the idea of being strong-armed into tipping.
Yeah, my wife is a stickler for exact math. Seems to me the reward should be for effort. When we were in Mexico, I just wanted to tip the same as up here. But my wife insisted on tipping at the lower rate. Doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
I any large enough group, there is always someone scaming to eat free. Either that or they can't remember how many drinks they had. In big groups I've been in, we always come up short -- the tip is the first thing to go.
Amen to that .......we dreaded the Sunday after church crowd, meanest bunch of people you'll ever find. And not leave a thin dime..... at least the Blacks didn't come in that often, whereas the church crowd was every Sunday like clockwork.
Because when money's tight, you're more likely to "grade" the service you received more strictly (since that saves you money on the tip you think they earned), whereas when you've got money to burn, you're more likely to be magnanimous and tip more extravagantly.
Your perception of how precious each dollar bill is at the moment varies with how many you've got to spare, and that affects your tipping generosity.
So the point is that the apparent "racial" difference in tipping size may not be racial/cultural, it may be economic (and thus further investigation may discover that the real split is poor vs affluent customers, regardless of race, it just looks like a "black" thing because blacks are, on average, less affluent).
You can't really judge who will be a good tipper and who will be a poor tipper. It's usually those who have had all the advantages and never bother to think about what someone elses life is like or can't be bothered to find out what wages are for a profession, who go off and leave 10% or nothing at all. They can't be bothered with the fact that the woman who just ran her feet off taking care of them has 3 kids at home and she refuses to take welfare.
Some are ignorant of the facts, some are cheap, and some are just tacky, thoughtless people. Mostly it's liberals.
Might have been true in the past, but now the government expects / demands that reported tips are at least (my guess) 12%.
What a wonderful thing to do.
May speak to current economics or depression blowback.
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