Petty Extortion. America Online offers its visitors "The Definitive Tipping Guide" to tell Americans what types of people should be bribed to do their job, in what dollar amounts or percentages. When will Americans revolt and put an end to tipping?
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Every customer deserves good service. Every service employer deserves a decent and secure income.
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It is wrong for customers to feel they must bribe someone to do his or her job, or risk getting lousy service.
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It is wrong to make people in service industries — some service industries, in some positions, but not others — feel they must grovel and fawn in order to be paid. The institution of tipping should be abolished by law.
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In much of the world, a service charge is included in the price people pay, in all industries, or is automatically added to the check (at a restaurant, for instance). There's no question how much you should pay. It's right there on the bill. If you have bad service, you complain to the manager.
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But the retention of tipping by the United States has contaminated service industries in many countries where Americans travel in substantial numbers, because some of those tourists do not inquire whether they should tip or not tip, but simply tip as habit. That's got to stop. And to stop it abroad, we must stop it at home.
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Beyond the corruption of other societies and the pressure that Americans feel to leave a tip even if they get atrocious service, there is the obvious fact that many people whose income derives mainly from tips cheat on their income tax by underreporting their tip income. There are insufficient checks on this very common form of cheating, and the rest of us, who have income tax deducted from our checks so can't fudge the numbers, make up the difference. We are involuntarily paying higher taxes to make up for tip-dependent tax cheats. That's got to stop too.
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Ideally, the Federal Government should abolish tipping as a national labor-law and tax-law matter, and require all employers to pay their employees a living wage and report their employees' total income to the taxing authorities. But if the Federal Government won't do it, then state or local governments should do it.
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Enforcement would be very simple: proclaim very publicly that any tip left is the property of the state, and any private person who appropriates a tip is subject to arrest and punitive fine and/or imprisonment. Fines should be at least three times the size of the total of government moneys stolen, with a minimum of $500. Judges would be authorized to impose jail or prison time for egregious thievery, be it by waiters and taxi drivers or their employers. Periodic, random "stings" and infiltration of suspect establishments by police or tax agents posing as day laborers, busboys, waiters, taxi drivers and the like, could produce very public embarrassment for violators. It wouldn't take long at all to break the tipping habit by instituting a uniform service charge.
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In this way we can end the extortion and tax cheating that the present system of tipping involves.
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Petty bribery is still bribery, petty extortion is still extortion, and the tax cheating that people who make tips commit is anything but petty.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,163.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:11 AM