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.
DOOR MEN
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.
GUIDES
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.
HATBOYS
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.
JANITORS
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.
MANICURISTS
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.
MESSENGERS
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.
STENOGRAPHERS
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.
XI
THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT
"We face a condition, not a theory," assert those employers who defend
their adaptation of wages to the tipping custom. "The public seems
determined to bestow gratuities, and if we paid full wages in addition,
our employees would be the highest paid workers in the world."
But two wrongs do not make a right.
THREE KINDS OF EMPLOYERS
Employers who profit by tipping are classified as follows:
1. Those who pay living wages and positively forbid gratuities.
2. Those who pay average competitive wages and maintain a
passive attitude toward gratuities.
3. Those who pay minimum, or no, wages, and aggressively exploit
the propensity to give.
At present the first class constitutes almost an infinitesimal minority.
Here and there in large cities there are barber shops which advertise a
"No-Tip" policy, and occasionally a hotel or restaurant.
In the second class are most of the moderate-price places catering to
the public. The employers and employees welcome gratuities but do not
make them the prime object in their relations with patrons.
The third class includes the high-grade hotels, sleeping car companies,
expensively conducted restaurants and like enterprises. This is the
class which sets the pace through the patronage of the socially or
financially prominent.
A few of the more noteworthy employers who profit by the custom follow:
The Pullman Company,
The Hotel Company,
The Taxicab Company,
The Transfer Company,
The Steam Ship Company,
The Master Barber,
The Apartment House Owner,
The Restaurant,
The Telegraph Company.
That an organized conspiracy exists between employers and employees to
exploit the public is realized vaguely, if at all, by the average
patron.
Proof of this allegation may be found at the cashier's desk of almost
any restaurant or hotel. The waiter invariably is given change that will
make it easy for the patron to tip. He returns with the change arranged
in such a way on the tray that the patron must fumble over all of it if
he wants the full amount. The employer's and the waiter's theory is
that, rather than do this, he will leave a dime or a quarter in one
corner. In a barber shop the patron always receives small change so that
it will be easy to "remember" the porter.
Yet, such a practice is the mildest indictment that may be brought
against employers for entering a conspiracy to exploit patrons.
SELLING THE TIP PRIVILEGE
In New York and Chicago particularly, many employers went so far (and
still maintain the practice) as to sell to outside persons and companies
the privilege of collecting the tips in their places of business. That
is to say, these outside parties were to furnish waiters, cloak room
attendants and other employees to the hotel or restaurant and depend
upon the tips for their remuneration.
So large was the sum realized from tips that the hotels and restaurants
actually charged the outside parties thousands of dollars for the
concession. In Illinois a law was passed in 1915 aimed directly at this
organized phase of the custom. It prohibited hotels and others from
selling tipping privileges. The men who owned such privileges promptly
went to law to test the constitutionality of the act. To the tip-taker
anything is unconstitutional that interferes with his graft!
At the time the law went into effect, the situation was reported in the
Chicago _Tribune_ as follows:
"The state will have a fight on its hands before the Chicago tip
trust ... releases its clutch on the pocketbooks of hotel and
restaurant patrons.
"At midnight last night ... there was no indication the largess
was going anywhere else than it has gone before ever since a
commercial genius capitalized the well-known generosity of the
dining and wining public--straight into the coffers of the
trust."
The manager of one of the leading hotels said that lawyers for the hotel
had served notice on the head of the biggest of Chicago's three tip
trusts to withdraw his minions.
"Do you contemplate returning part of the money paid for the
concession?" he was asked.
"That," the manager replied, "is a detail."
"Do you think it possible (the head of the tip trust) will
resist expulsion?"
"Hardly. We'll just put in a crew of our own and that will end
it."
"Have you heard a report that the tip trusts contemplate
standing by their guns and, if necessary, charging a 10 cent fee
for checking hats and coats, anticipating the tip?"
"That's preposterous."
After such evidence, patrons of hotels and other public service places
hardly will feel as cheerful in giving tips as they may have felt before
being enlightened. Here was a typical instance of a hotel advertising
such and such rates for rooms and food with the plain inference that
patrons had no other obligation. Then the management goes out and sells
the right to exploit the patrons, thereby filling its dining rooms and
cloak rooms with employees who must exact tips if they are to be paid at
all for their work!
ARE YOU A BENEFACTOR?
A small part of the public cares nothing about this and will tip
regardless of the conditions of employment of the servitors. This
element simply enjoys the grandiloquent role of Bestower of Largess. But
the vast majority of Americans has followed the custom under duress.
This majority finds it repugnant to tip on the assumption that the
employee alone profits by its generosity; and to discover that the
employer as well profits by it--in fact secretly devises methods of
encouraging the tipping--will confirm the majority in the thought that
the custom is wholly bad.
Under which school of economics, or ethics, can such a system be
justified?
The assertion of employers that tipping is the spontaneous impulse of
patrons and that they cannot afford to pay living wages in addition is
seen to be without foundation in conspicuous instances. Such spontaneity
as exists they stimulate and exploit for their own profit.
Conceding that the development of tipping has thrown employment upon an
abnormal basis, the question arises, if tipping is abolished should the
increase in wages be borne exclusively by the employer?
To the extent that employers make extraordinary dividends out of the
custom the extra cost of operation through normal wages should be borne
by them without increased tariffs to patrons. Competition in the hotel
business, for example, has been adjusted to the custom of tipping and
the sudden throwing of a bona fide wage system upon such employers,
without an increase in revenues, would be disastrous.
A REASONABLE SOLUTION
The solution in certain instances might be found in a joint obligation
of patron and employer. The employer says: "I have been able to give you
food at such and such a price because I have not had to charge to it the
cost of waiter hire. If the public discontinues gratuities to my
employees, I must raise the price of food to cover this deficit." The
patron replies: "Upon proof that your food tariffs have not included
the item of waiter-hire, I will pay more for my meals if they are served
free."
The goal of a reform in tipping is to make one payment--and that one to
the employer--cover every expense of the patron.
Even if the public should have to pay more for food, lodging and other
service, if tipping is abolished, an immense advance in sound economics
and democratic ethics would be made in eliminating the double-payment
system. Where two payments are made--to employer and employee--it is
inevitable that the patron will lose.
It should be understood, however, that a large part of the $200,000,000
or more given annually by Americans in gratuities is sheer waste because
it is given for absolutely nothing in return. Such waste should be
eliminated without consideration of employer or employee.
So long as employers assume that the public will pay part or all of the
wages of employees, so long will the employees be under the necessity of
resorting to outrageous tactics--coddling the patron who does tip,
insulting and neglecting the one who does not tip--in order to obtain
pay for their services.
Employers must come to the viewpoint that tipping is morally wrong, and
therefore of necessity, economically unsound. The money they make out of
tipping is tainted money. Employees should be engaged on wages that are
adequate without regard to any gratuities that may be given.
XII
ONE STEP FORWARD
When the Hotel Statler, in Buffalo, announced that a guest need not tip
its employees in order to get satisfactory service, a sensation was
sprung upon hotel managers and the traveling public. Nothing more
emphatically shows the abnormal state of mind toward tipping than that
such an elementary right should be affirmed and cause surprise in the
affirmation.
A SOUND CODE
Following is its Code to employes on the practice of tipping:
"The patron of a hotel goes there because he expects to receive
certain things served with celerity, courtesy and cheerfulness.
"The persons who are to fetch and carry him these things will be
those whose portion it is to render intimate, personal services
to others. Since time immemorial, this class of servitors has
been of the rank and file.
"Now and then a server is found--a waiter, a bootblack, a barber
or a bell boy--who adds a bit of his own personality to his
services. Such a one shows a bit more
intelligence--initiative--perspicacity--than his fellows. The
patron finds his smaller wants anticipated, and is pleased. He
feels that the servant has given him something extra and
unexpected--and he wants to pay something extra for it.
"He tips.
"Of course there are abuses of the tip. A rich bounder wants
something more than other hotel guests, and he futilely tries to
get it by throwing money about.
"His tips are insults, and his reward Servility instead of
service.
"Or--
"An individual wishing to be thought a 'good fellow' ADMINISTERS
tips with the advice to 'buy a house and lot,' etc.
"Or--
"An infrequent traveler, having the time of his life, tips out
of sheer goodheartedness.
"These types help to constitute the 'Public.'
"It is the business of a good hotel to cater to the Public. It
is the avowed business of the Hotel Statler to please the public
better than any other hotel in the world.
"Statler can run a tipless hotel if he wants to.
"But Statler knows that a first-class hotel cannot be maintained
on a tip-less basis, for the reason that a small but certain per
cent. of its guests will tip, in spite of all rules.
"Statler can and does do this: He guarantees to his guests who
do not wish to tip, everything--EVERYTHING--in the way of hotel
service, courtesy, etc., that the tipper gets.
"Let's make that a bit stronger--guests do NOT have to tip at
Hotel Statler to get courteous, polite, attentive service.
"Or, for final emphasis, we say to Statler guests: Please do NOT
tip unless you feel like it; but if you DO tip, let your tipping
be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous
custom.
"Any Statler employee who is wise and discreet enough to merit
tips is wise and discreet enough to render a like service
whether he is tipped or not.
"And he is wise and discreet enough to say 'thank you' when he
gets his tip.
"In this connection let this be said:
"The man who takes a tip and does not thank the tipper does not
feel that he has earned the tip any more than a blackmailer
feels that he has earned his blood money.
"Any Statler employee who fails to give Service, or who fails to
thank the guest who gives him something, falls short of the
Statler Standard. We always thank any guest who reports such a
case to us. Statler does not deal summarily with his helpers,
any more than he deals perfunctorily with his guests--but the
tip-grafters get short shrift here."
FOR THE BENEFIT OF GUESTS
To understand the spirit of management which could issue such
instructions to its employees in the face of the opportunity to exploit
the public, as most hotels do and so throw the whole cost of wages upon
the patron, it is necessary to consider other sections of the Code
treating of professional hospitality.
"Hotel Statler is operated primarily for the benefit and
convenience of its guests. Without guests there could be no
Hotel Statler. These are simple Facts easily understood.
"The Statler is a successful hotel. The Reason is, that every
Waiter in this hotel, every Hall-Boy, the Chambermaid, the
Clerk, the Chef, the Manager, the Boss Himself, is working all
the time to make them FEEL 'at home.'
"Hotel service--that is, Hotel Statler service--means the limit
of Courteous, Efficient Attention from Each Particular Employee
to Each Particular Guest. This is the kind of service a Guest
pays for when he pays us his bill--whether it is for $2.00 or
$20.00 per day. It is the kind of Service he is entitled to,
and he NEED NOT and SHOULD NOT pay ANY MORE."
NOT HOSPITALITY
Compare the attitude of management toward guests as revealed in this
code with the bristling, belligerent attitude of employees in other
first-class places where tipping is undisciplined! In the average hotel
where the management encourages the tipping for economic reasons the
bell-boy will make a scene if you fail to tip him after he carries your
suit-case from the lobby to your room. Every other employee has the same
spirit--he has to have it if he is to be compensated at all, for the
employer puts it squarely up to him to work the guest for his wages.
Apparently this hotel reached the conviction that this was not
hospitality.
Then the conviction was reached that a guest "need not and should not
pay any more" for hotel service than the rate paid at the desk. From
this it was logical to bring the employees to a new conception of
service and to stop the piratical practice toward guests who do not
tip.
It is particularly significant to note the assertion that the proprietor
can run a tipless hotel if he wants to. That is an interesting
declaration. It proves that those managers who exploit the tipping
propensity deliberately do so for reasons of greed.
Then the reason for not running a tipless hotel is stated to be that "a
small but certain per cent. of its guests will tip in spite of all
rules." Here is evidence that the public has its measure of blame for
the custom as well as the avarice of managers. This hotel declares that
its conception of hospitality is to leave the guest free in his relation
toward employees. But note this! _It does not leave the employees free
in their attitude toward guests._
UP TO THE EMPLOYER
The foregoing distinction is the crux of the whole tipping problem. If
managers will restrain and discipline employees so that they will not
run riot in their eagerness to exact toll from patrons the tipping evil
will be reduced to a minimum.
THE FIRST STEP
It is not the idea underlying this discussion to consider that a
satisfactory disposal of the tipping custom has been made when managers
insure equal treatment for those who do not tip in comparison with those
who do tip. Nothing short of the complete abolition of the custom can be
the goal in a republic. But as a long stride toward the goal, the Code
cited above is noteworthy. It constitutes the first immediate step that
any hotel may take.
The public would find immense relief in the general adoption of the
foregoing idea--that tipping must "be yielding to a genuine desire--not
conforming to an outrageous custom." Inasmuch as the vast majority of
Americans who tip do so only because they are afraid not to conform to
an outrageous custom, this plan, honestly enforced upon employees, will
reduce the followers of the custom to the small percentage of the public
who tip because of pride or moral obtuseness. A way can be found to
handle this element when the majority have been freed.
Once the proof is at hand that tipping can be handled the conclusion is
unescapable that the managers who knuckle to the custom are "corrupt and
contented." They are on precisely the same moral level as their
employees.
THE GUEST'S RIGHTS
In the meantime, the individual patron has the right to and should
proceed on the theory that he is entitled to EVERYTHING in the way of
service for the one payment. This is his common law right even if no
special laws regulating tipping are in force.
The public is at a great disadvantage in combating the tipping evil when
the managers leave the issue to be settled between the patrons and the
employees. A bell boy can commit an offense to a patron who does not tip
that is perfectly tangible to the patron but difficult to report to the
manager. Unless the manager takes a positive hand and instructs his
employees in a manner similar to the above Code it is likely that most
persons will continue to pay tribute rather than be insulted and
neglected.