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The Itching Palm, A Study of the Habit of Tipping in America, a non-fiction book by William R. Scott |
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Chapter 10. The Employee Viewpoint |
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_ CHAPTER X. THE EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT From a waiter, or a porter, or a janitor's point of view, tipping is wrong only when it is meager. They regard this form of compensation as not only just but usually too sparingly bestowed. Unquestionably, with any reform in the manner of compensation to persons engaged in domestic or other serving capacities, must go a reform in the attitude of the public toward servitors. The patron who abuses his privileges, who exacts of employees far more than he has the right to ask, who treats them as automatons without sensibilities or self-respect--such a patron must be handled simultaneously with the change in manner of compensation. Employers, particularly in hotels and like public places, will have to give more attention to seeing that employees are not mistreated by the swaggering, blatant, selfish type of patron. This type abounds and has been developed largely by the tipping custom, that is, the extremely servile attitude assumed by servitors in order to stimulate tipping has brought out the opposite quality of domineering pride in the patron.
No feeling so rankles in the mind as the sense of uncompensated labor. The thought that patrons have gotten something for nothing leaves a sore spot in the thought of servitors. And if they are employed in places where the only compensation they receive is from the gratuities of patrons, this soreness is incurable. The next time the patron appears he will be made to feel the displeasure of the employee. Thus, in one sense, it is the system that is wrong, a system which does an injustice to both employee and patron. Every employee has a fairly clear idea of his duties. Most employees scrupulously refrain from doing more than the duties for which they are paid expressly. Hence, when an employee over-steps this boundary he has fixed in his own mind, he has the sense of uncompensated labor. He feels a grudge either against the employer or the patron. He looks to one or the other to supply the extra remuneration for the extra service. As a consequence, personal service workers are nursing a grievance much of the time. Their conversation and thoughts are about some patron who has failed to compensate them, or has, in their judgment, inadequately compensated them. They devote little time to thinking of a reform in the system that would give them an adequate compensation from the employer and do away entirely with the patron-to-employee form of compensation.
The tipping system is so established now that the individual who opposes it must be prepared to play the role of martyr, whether employee or patron. Employers who profit by the no-wage system dislike employees with a degree of self-respect that makes them rebel at gratuities. Such wages as are paid are so nominal that the employee cannot subsist upon them alone. He either has to quit that line of work or enter it and conform to the conventional methods. In Chapter V the equity of tipping certain employees was considered and the claim of other employees as to their rights will be considered briefly here.
Tipping men who call for and deliver trunks has become a fixed custom in the cities and is expected, though not so often practiced, in the smaller towns. The transfer company theoretically charge for the complete operation of moving the trunk from the home or hotel to the railroad station. But the men on the wagons or trucks exact tips for carrying the baggage up and down stairs or elevators. The question is, are they entitled to this extra compensation? The baggagemen argue that their business, strictly interpreted, is to carry the trunk from the house to the station and that going up stairs and into rooms is an extra service. Hence, they stand around and make it evident that they expect compensation from the patron, in addition to their wages from the company. Their position is not tenable. A patron pays the company to get his trunk from wherever it may be and to deliver it to its destination. Whatever operations are necessary to get the trunk are the natural duties of the company and its employees. The charges of the company are, or should be, based on the complete service. The exaction of extra compensation in the form of tips by the employees, therefore, is an imposition. In calling the company no person, tacitly or openly, agrees to the argument that the trunk is to be moved from curb to curb. The understanding is that your baggage is to be removed from its customary place in the home to the customary place in the station or other destination. It would be as reasonable for baggagemen to dump a trunk outside a station and demand a gratuity from the railroad for bringing it inside, as to demand a gratuity from the patron for taking the trunk up or down stairs. Tipping to baggagemen is unnecessary. If the company pays inadequate wages the remedy lies not from the patron through tips but from the employer through the payment of increased wages.
Of late years the custom has grown up to tip bootblacks. This is in addition to the regular charge paid for the service and has no justification except in the false plea of the servitor that if the patron does not tip him he will have no compensation. Here it may be stated that the thought that the tip constitutes the only compensation the employee receives is the chief influence in the mind of the patron. He feels a pity for the employee even though he objects to the bad economic system that enables employers to engage workers on such a basis. The employees exploit this thought in the mind by leading the conversation with the patron into the channel of compensation. At some time during the service he lets the patron know that the tips he receives are his only compensation and this arouses the sense of obligation in the patron who does not like to have his shoes shined for nothing, even though the payment at the desk covers the transaction. Any one who has patronized a restaurant regularly, or a bootblack stand, or a barbershop, or manicurist, or any public place, will recall how invariably the servitors bring up the subject of tipping and always with the suggestion that they would be disabled financially if it were not for the generosity of the public. This is all a carefully and skilfully planned campaign to exploit the patron.
Patrons who do not tip barbers frequently tip the porters who brush them down. On the surface it seems that the porter's attentions in a barber shop are extra and deserve extra compensation. Yet, theoretically, no master barber would admit that a patron of his shop has any other charges to pay than the regular tariffs. The porter is there as an extra measure of service from the shop. Practically, however, the shops all proceed on the assumption of tipping. The porter is a much-aggrieved individual if he is overlooked. In any sound economic system, the porter's compensation should come exclusively from the shop. If his attentions are decided to be extra, there should be a regular scale of compensation, as for a hair cut, which the patron should pay. So long as his services are furnished by the shop without being included in the regular shop tariffs, the patron owes the porter nothing for his attentions. The solution of the whole tipping problem lies in the foregoing postulate--that if any employee is in a position to render an extra service there should be a regular scale of charges for such service. It is the irregular compensation, depending upon the whim of the patron, that makes the practice economically unsound. No hotel, or other employer, should have on the premises any employee whose compensation depends upon chance. If a hotel stations an employee in the washroom he should be there distinctly as part of the service for which a patron pays at the cashier's desk. A porter in a barber shop should be engaged exclusively at the shop's expense as part of the complete service for which a patron pays to the cashier. Employers, however, are much too shrewd to scatter employees around on the formal understanding that the patrons are to compensate them. They pretend that they are engaged as an extra measure of courtesy or service from the employer and then are educated to exact, through tips, their compensation from the patron.
It would seem that if there were any place where the patron might feel free to forget his coin pocket, it would be in the use of doors. But it is customary now to tip door men. That is, you have to pay to enter a hotel, a restaurant or other public place in order to spend money with the employer. The employer will smile blandly and assure you that no patron need tip the door man, but the door man will give unmistakable evidence to the contrary. The tipping of door men shows how the custom grows with what it feeds upon. To the devotee of the custom every underling has an itching palm that must be scratched with a coin and the employer rejoices because it relieves him of wage-payments. Tipping doormen is incomprehensibly weak. Elevator men are in the same class.
In parks and other public places where the employer or the Government furnishes guides and where patrons pay a regular fee for being shown the sights, the guides carefully cultivate the tipping propensity. Their most common method is to start a conversation about how inadequately they are paid for their work and the high cost of living. They play upon the sympathies of the sight-seers until at the end of the trip the feeling is strong that the guide should be remembered. He pockets the gratuity and looks for other game. The patrons overlook the fact that if he is underpaid the employer or the Government is at fault. He often works in the appearance of extra attentions to create the sense of obligation. It is clearly a case of double compensation for one service.
The cloak-room is one of the best devices for throwing the item of wages to the shoulders of patrons. For some one to check and guard your hat and overcoat while you see a show or dine has a speaking likeness to a real extra service. But it is as counterfeit as the other pretenses of extra service. It is every restaurant's or theater's duty to provide for hats and coats of patrons. The meal or the show cannot be enjoyed unless this preliminary function is performed by the proprietor. When two dollars is paid for a theater ticket it also pays for this service, and extra compensation to the attendant in charge may be defended as charity but not as an obligation. A patron who buys a meal in a restaurant owes the cloak-room attendants nothing. He paid for their service in paying for the meal. Tips to hatboys are superfluous.
The autocrat of the basement is a man with a grievance even when generously tipped. From his viewpoint he is called upon to do a score of things outside his duties. Must he do these for nothing? He must not. The only question is who shall pay him. The janitor should be hired by employers upon the understanding that the renters have the right of way in utilizing his services. Or, apartments should be leased with a clear understanding of the janitor's duties, so that he will have no lee-way to exploit the renters. On the face of it, the idea of defining a janitor's services so that everything outside of the regulations would be extra service for which the renter should compensate him, seems difficult of execution. But the difficulty is less real than apparent. And in the meantime, the janitor regularly is tipped to do things for which he is paid by the employer. He is "out for his" as eagerly as the waiter or the Pullman porter. Hallboys in the apartment houses are equally avaricious. Now and then the metropolitan papers contain letters to the editor complaining of their exactions--pathetic letters from well-to-do persons paying thousands of dollars' rent for apartments! One way out would be to insert in a lease that the renter shall receive full and equal service without extra compensation to employees.
These young women have the best psychological opportunity to exact tribute, particularly where the patrons are men. The personal contact is influential, and the plaintive tale of meager salary and small tips which she purrs into your ears, the meanwhile flashing a languishing smile--it's a great little game which she plays for all it is worth! Some of them receive eight dollars a week in "salary," and the tips amount to enough to make their income thirty-five a week and more. The employer has the fifty, seventy-five cents or a dollar charge for the service as practically clear profit. Many men tip the manicurist as much as they pay for the service. Perhaps many of them feel that they get their money's worth in social enjoyment--not believing that the young woman bestows the same charm upon every other male victim! "I feel sorry for that little Miss Brown. If it wasn't for the tips she couldn't live on her salary," said one sympathetic man. He objected to tipping as a rule, but here was a clear case where it was worthy! No use arguing ethics with him.
The custom of pay to telegraph messenger boys by the recipients of messages is peculiarly reprehensible because it is fixing a standard of graft in his mind that will work out into worse practices in maturity. A boy given a tip has had his self-respect punctured in a dangerous way. He may grow up and out of such a conception of compensation, but it will be a struggle, and much of our police and other public graft had its origin in the cultivation of the belief that "tips" are proper. A messenger boy has absolutely no claim upon a patron for extra compensation. The price of a telegram includes the cost of delivery.
Public typists often expect gratuities. The regular charges are for "the house." They want something for themselves on the side. Sometimes the tips are so large that the employer gets greedy and requires them to be turned in, as proved by the following extract from a want ad in the New York Times: "Remuneration half of all you make with weekly guarantee of $20; proceeds net more than guarantee. No smoking; tips must be turned in." It seems self-evident that anything given to stenographers beyond the regular charges for the work is pure waste. They cannot possibly give any service in return, and cannot retain the proper self-respect in accepting something for nothing. Many of them, however, take the tips simply to avoid offending patrons. The list of tip-takers is too extensive for individual consideration. Bath attendants, bartenders, house servants, clerks--and so on through a lamentably long list, have the same moral disease. The contagion is spreading in an alarming way. Of course, the whole system is riding for a fall. The spurious and specious arguments of employees in behalf of the custom and the timorous acquiescence of the public will alike yield before a robust and elemental Americanism. _ |
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