A new restaurateur in Parksville is making waves by planning to abolish tipping in his restaurant. When Smoke and Water at the Pacific Shores Resort opens in June, its staff will not be permitted to accept tips; instead, David Jones plans to pay his cooks and wait staff a living wage and will provide them with medical and dental coverage.
How very sensible.
It’s so sensible, in fact, that it makes you wonder why it hasn’t been tried before — until you remember that in other countries, the skip-the-tip model is standard.
“Tipping is a broken business model,” argues Jones, and I wholeheartedly agree. The idea that diners should pay a percentage on their meal to reflect the quality of their service is unfair to both diners and servers.
The idea that tipping promotes better service is archaic. It’s insulting to think that restaurant staff won’t do their job properly unless they’re given Pavlovian incentives.
This is because servers, like most people with jobs, have a work ethic. The emotional labour involved in being friendly, accommodating and helpful (and make no mistake, that is labour) is part of their job description.
When I go to a restaurant or a café, I want my servers to be happy. I want my servers to come in to work and feel good about the job they do and get paid properly for it. Employers should value their employees’ labour, and compensate them fairly, not export that responsibility to diners’ tips.
Paying restaurant staff properly “allows them to carve out a career,” argues Jones, and that for me is the crucial point. A job’s a job, but “career” connotes stability, security and respect, and respect can be hard to come by in the service professions. Working in service often means facing people’s preconceptions that you aren’t skilled, educated or ambitious, and that your labour just isn’t as valuable as other people’s, even though you’re doing work that people appreciate.
Some people will argue that servers are unskilled labour and therefore don’t deserve to be paid that much, but why not? Servers are skilled — they have skills that employers pay for. They just don’t need a bachelor’s degree (though many have one).
Everyone deserves a living wage, surely. We’re talking about the difference between minimum wage plus tips and $22 an hour, not minimum wage and an MD’s salary. That can mean the difference between living at the poverty line and being able to save for your kid’s college fund. This won’t bring the economy to a crashing halt.
But really, the key reason why wages are better than tips is the power dynamic involved. A living wage says: “Just as good as the rest of us.” Tips say: “Good girl.”
But if servers deserve a living wage instead of tips, what does that say about other service workers (such as hospitality and cleaning staff), who make tips rarely, and retail and fast-food workers, who often aren’t allowed to accept tips, and also make minimum wage? Do they also deserve a living wage?
The answer is yes (see Point A: everyone deserves a living wage, and if you disagree, then you’re not invited to tea in my socialist utopia).
That’s not going to happen, of course. Most of us think of our servers as talented people who do good work, but that attitude doesn’t extend to other service workers. We very simply think — either consciously or unconsciously — that people in fast food and retail deserve less. We have less respect for the work they do, and less respect for them as workers.
The other day at work, I was called “dear,” “girl,” “kid,” and “love.” I am 27. Most adults don’t get called pet names at work. You’d never call your accountant “dear.” “Girl” floored me. It wasn’t meant unkindly, but it sure wasn’t a mark of respect.
The implicit assumption is that if we were worth more, we’d be able to find “better” jobs. This is, of course, untrue. There aren’t better jobs. If you think there are better jobs, you’ve been living under a rock since 2008.
So yes, servers deserve to be treated fairly, and that includes being paid well for good work, not jumping through hoops for tips. And I hope this dialogue will serve to remind us that just as servers deserve a living wage and professional respect, so do all workers.
