Tipping is slavery

[Ming]

There was a dumb picture posted in the OT about some culture war figure or someone saying tipping is rooted in slavery.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/post-an-image-because-its-funny-interesting-whatever.855675/post-28167259

This didn't go over very well with the OT but my understanding is the tweet is technically, but unhelpfully correct. (In the same sense that the onetime popular claim of 'Slave patrols were the first police forces in the United States. ' is Technically correct but also completely unhelpful as they are unrelated to modern policing with no direct line of influence.)

Culise kind of touched on this,

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/post-an-image-because-its-funny-interesting-whatever.855675/post-28167886

But my understanding is a little different.

What I was taught: tipping originated in Europe as something the aristocracy did as an extra reward for work that was obligated, lord and serf type stuff.

Early Americans thought this was a terrible thing for free people to engage in, but there was one sector of society that had both a workforce with obligatory labor as well as a hardon for emulating European aristocracy: Southern plantation owners.

Slave owners would rent out the skilled slaves to other parties. If this second party had means, they liked to show their appreciation for good work as well as motivate the workers. Since the slaves' negotiated wages went entirely to the master this required some informal, under the table sort of arrangement. Thus, tipping.

After emancipation this may have migrated to cities with urban freedman labor as @Culise suggested*, but my understanding is that the shift in service industry culture was an unrelated event that happened in the early 20th century where it was fashionable to ape fine European dining service that subsequently died out over there but didn't over here and trickled down to even the greasiest spoon along the loneliest freeway.

* I also understand that this is the root of why African Americans as a community have a reputation for being poor tippers. To them the practice was demeaning. This makes more sense if it followed them into the cities after emancipation than if they just kept some memory of slave times alive.

So what's the truth? Anybody have an resources on the history of tipping?

 

[Director]

I spent many years in Mobile Alabama, the mother of American Mardi Gras. A lot of 'royal' alms-throwing goes on as members of the parading crewes hurl doubloons, candies, beads and other trinkets at the 'commoners' along the parade routes.

(As an aside... once you get home with your bag of 'stuff' you wonder what you were thinking... but in the moment, you really, really want it.)

I have not read the original articles but I would consider the assertion a stretch-too-far: never, in all of my reading, have I come across an ante-bellum master tipping a slave. And I have heard that in some of the very old, very grand restaurants in places like New Orleans that it was considered bad form to tip the waiters since it implied their employer didn't pay them well, and that they would not provide good service unless bribed.

my understanding is that the shift in service industry culture was an unrelated event that happened in the early 20th century where it was fashionable to ape fine European dining service that subsequently died out over there but didn't over here and trickled down to even the greasiest spoon along the loneliest freeway

My understanding parallels yours - with the addition that, from about 1880 onwards, there was a large number of newly-prosperous middle and upper-class Americans who studied 'how to behave' and thought tipping was part of that - the nouveau riche aping their betters, as it were, and hoping to fit in.

In my experience (from owning and running a bar) the good tippers are people who have worked in service jobs and worked for tips... doctors, lawyers, professionals, women and, yes, some African-Americans, are notoriously bad tippers.


The only 'slavery' I see in tipping is the appalling decision to pay service workers a separate, lower minimum wage and to tax their tips (whether they make them or not). I always paid my bartenders and such at full minimum wage or better.

 

[AjayAlcos]

An OP shop that I volunteer for used to have a manager from Quebec.

When she was still working in hospitality back in Canada, she'd mention how she'd regularly make $1000+ a week based purely on tips that were given ($1k being the minimum figure). Heck, she remarked how she and the other waiting staff we're earning more than strippers, which at first sounded ludicrous but upon further inspection started looking rather plausible. Once in Australia however (where tipping is haram), those earnings dropped off quite significantly by comparison.

I've personally worked most of my professional life in hospitality, and trust me when I say the job security in the industry is just as crap as in North America. Though unlike North America, you get no tips at the end of the day. That said, if someone is looking for well-paying work with a good deal of job security - hospitality is the wrong field to be working in - unless they're a highly qualified and sought after professional (like a chef or experienced bartender). At least where I live, the industry in question is highly competitive and profit margins pretty tight and as a result; notorious for the prevalency of wage-theft.

In the end, I can definitely see the finer benefits of tipping for hospitality workers. But to be honest, I can also see workers in the industry getting shafted either way - tip or no tip.

I would say that, on an individual level, how much one can get out of tipping is highly dependant on both the type and how successful establishment is they're working for.

Though that's just my two cents.

 

[Grandpa Maur]

"What I was taught: tipping originated in Europe as something the aristocracy did as an extra reward for work that was obligated, lord and serf type stuff."

I doubt serfs were serving aristocracy as a serfdom obligation in last 500 years, tbh.

"In my experience (from owning and running a bar) the good tippers are people who have worked in service jobs and worked for tips... doctors, lawyers, professionals, women and, yes, some African-Americans, are notoriously bad tippers."

Isn't it women who work the service jobs mostly? Maybe the confounding factor is that women don't get prestige from spending lavishly, like men.

 

[Acheron]

Tipping certainly is not slavery. Whether or not it has or has not its roots in feudalism or actual slavery is completely immaterial, Slavery, literally considering people property, is just something completely else.

 

[Ming]

This podcast went over the roots of tipping in America and touched on many of the points the thread has gone over. (See also this article, which the interviewed guest wrote a few years earlier)

It agreed with me that the practice was rooted in European aristocracy. Although the hosts actually do say the words 'medieval' and 'serf' the actual evidence they present begins in the modern period, with Samuel Pepys' Diary. (He tipped servants when dining out and kept meticulous notes of the amount)
At that time, restaurants weren't very common, so the place that tipping most often occurred were country estates. When visiting or staying at someone else's estate, you tipped their servants that attended to you. People hated doing this, but were afraid not to tip for fear the servants would not do a good job/take revenge. (~6:30)


Seems both Europe and ex slaves are where the shift began.

There was almost no tipping in America until the gilded age. Rich Americans traveled to Europe & brought the custom back, but poor immigrants from the continent who were used to the system also were a vector. Natives saw it as a 'feudal', 'degrading' reinforcement of old world 'class' and 'servility', a refutation of 'all men are created equal'. (~9:50)

Newly freed slaves without jobs, land, or education found employment as unpaid laborers in restaurants, only being compensated through tipping.
Pullman car company only hired southern black porters, because the plantation trained them to be 'servile'. (Conductors were always white)
They were paid an unlivable wage ($27.50 a month) the rest had to be made up in tips. (About $50)
Middle class Americans who would otherwise never be exposed to 'servants' were introduced to tipping by riding in Pullman cars. (~14:50)


They don't mention any tipping of slaves before emancipation, so perhaps I'm wrong about that, but I will note if English aristocrats tipped someone else's footmen for fear of bad service I wonder why plantation owners wouldn't have the same incentive?

Though tipping does take on a racialized character.
Southern Journalist John Speed writes it's natural to tip negroes due to their inferiority but complains about having to tip white men, thinking it defiled both of them.
"Tips go with servility, but no man in this country who is a voter by birthright is in the least justified by being in service." (~23:00)



Perhaps most interesting is what actually caused tipping to become enshrined in American culture.

By the early 20th century a massive backlash against tipping formed and started to politically organize, even passing anti tipping laws. This all fell apart because of those perennial twin boogeymen of American politics: The NRA and Prohibition.

Prohibition caused restaurant revenues to tank from the loss of alcohol sales, so there was no chance of increasing worker pay in those industries.

The NRA (National Restaurant Association) lobbying arm was started in 1919, and it worked to get the anti tipping laws repealed.

When the New Deal was crafted and a minimum wage was passed, the NRA got a carve out for restaurant workers.

These are the evil twins behind how tipping survived to the present and became an enshrined cultural touchstone: Lobbying by the NRA and Prohibition.