No doubt there will be some tipping going on during NYC Restaurant Week (which has actually been running for a while now).
It’s an awkward time for tipping: people are concerned that workers who rely on tips aren’t getting what they deserve, while also criticizing what’s been called “tip creep,” those requests for tips when there isn’t really any service to tip for.
Well, complaints about tips aren’t new; in fact, in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, many Americans thought tipping was about as un-American as it got!
There wasn’t one reason behind the backlash against tipping in this country.
There would have to be, to have Leon Trotsky of Russian Revolution fame on the same side of an issue as business leaders like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.
Tipping is a custom that came to the US from Europe, or more accurately, tourists saw Europeans tipping at restaurants and they brought the custom back to the US with them.
But some people were convinced what actually happened was that European immigrants came to the United States and then tried to convince everybody to tip them.
So there was an anti-immigrant component to the anti-tipping movement.
But there was an argument against tips from almost the opposite position: others said that tips were part of the European class system, that there were people higher up who gave tips to those further down who served them.
But the US believed that everybody got to be equal and tipping went against that.
There were also a lot of concerns that tipping created an incentive for, say, a waiter to only give you good service if you paid for it.
These critics thought people who couldn’t, or didn’t, tip would get shoddy treatment even if they were still paying for a meal.
Several states actually outlawed tipping, though they gave up those bans not too long after.
Tipping grew more and more common, and again, for sometimes opposing reasons.
As the 20th Century went on, some restaurant-goers wanted to support staff who worked hard for low wages, so they tipped.
Some of their bosses were fine with that, because it meant they could keep their own costs down.
And for all those who were tipping, say, to support women or people of color, there were others who were giving tips to workers in those same groups essentially to put themselves above those groups.
Money sure can complicate things.
It’s National Financial Awareness Day, so we wanted to make you aware of a new silver coin issued by Samoa.
It’s a five dollar piece that features Wonder Woman.
So it’s a silver coin with a golden lasso.
When Tipping Was Considered Deeply Un-American (NPR’s The Salt)
Samoa issues silver coins featuring Wonder Woman (Coin World)
We don’t ask for tips, but how about a monthly contribution on Patreon?
Photo published by Paul Reichelt, via Joe Haupt, Flickr/Creative Commons
