Unseasonable

There was a bit in The Beverly Hillbillies where Jed Clampett and Mr. Drysdale were doing something or another, and were aided by a young man, who is seen standing off to the side with a hand out. Mr. Drysdale turns to Jed and informs him: "He wants a tip." At which point Jed turns to the young man, and says: "Plant your corn early in the Spring."

My father found that uproariously funny, for a reason that I never quite understood, finding it only mildly amusing, once I was old enough to get the joke. But with tipping now being a hot topic of conversation, my father's reaction to the joke keeps coming back to me.

With the city of Chicago (sometimes known as "home") looking to end the practice of a separate, and lower, minimum wage for tipped employees, "restaurant owners say that would put too much stress on businesses already struggling to recover from inflation and the pandemic, forcing them to raise menu prices and even cut staff." Which I understand. But I am of the opinion that if the only way to remain open is to push some of your labor costs onto customers in the guise of a "voluntary" gratuity, maybe there really isn't a business there to begin with.

Tipping culture in the United States has become a way for business owners (since this goes beyond just restaurants) and employees to collude in seeking to draw in price-sensitive customers by basically lying about the costs of providing service. Because it's not only business owners who lobby against the end of the current practices of tipping. Servers in upscale bars and restaurants, who have little fear of only making the minimum wage (and are, according a friend who used to be a tax attorney, more than willing to hide the money from authorities), are also against the idea.

It all makes the debate over tipping higher-stakes than it needs to be, and fairly disingenuous in the bargain. People arguing for low-wage workers point out that the lower minimum wage means that untipped workers lose out on pay, despite the fact that employers are required to make up the difference if not enough is given in tips. Employers claim that people would be unwilling to pay new prices that would need to be charged, despite the fact that customers are already paying them to some degree or another.

And, believe it or not, even self-serve kiosks sometimes ask if customers want to tip.

The whole thing makes tipping etiquette (and its often-unspoken requirements) confusing as the expectations for tipping expand. And when race enters the picture, things become even worse:

Expecting skimpy gratuities, waiters resist serving African Americans, or they provide poorer service, which discourages blacks from patronizing table-service restaurants.

Study shows blacks tip less -- but they may have good reason

For me, though, it all goes back to pricing. The price of a good or service should be reasonably clear, and not reliant on unwritten rules. The experience of the pandemic pushed employees to ask for higher tips, due to the risks they understood themselves to be taking, but that also helped their employers hide what would otherwise be price increases.

I don't know how it's all going to work out, but I do suspect that the current system will need to change. It's simply not set up to align the interests of everyone involved.