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(quote - Nietzsche)

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If you look closely you can see the face of Karl Marx as the sun, shining the light of scientific socialism on the Chinese Communists. (photo - Jake Werner)

The end of tipping?

A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.
-Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian

We explain agreeable general feelings as produced by our trust in God, and by our consciousness of good deeds (the so-called "good conscience"--a physiological state which at times looks so much like good digestion that it is hard to tell them apart).
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Stephen Shaw wrote an op-ed for today's New York Times about a fancy restaurant in New York that is abandoning the tipping system that almost every eatery in america subscribes to. This system, while viewed favorably by all parties involved (servers, restaurant customers, and restaurant owners) is actually deeply flawed, Shaw argues.

He produces evidence that tipping is not related to service so much as how likeable a server is, and is skewed by gender. Furthermore, tipping can lead to servers aggressively pushing more expensive items. Beyond consumer concerns, this practice keeps servers in relatively high-paying jobs (compared to jobs with similar requirements, i imagine,) but with little security and often no benefits. Shaw suggests that treating servers as regular salaried employees will produce a more loyal and harder working staff, so restaurant owners will also benefit.

Shaw makes some good points, and even comes to the right conclusion, but his analysis is typical for a liberal, supposedly examining all involved parties' interests without allowing class to really enter the picture. In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell's memoir of fighting in Spain during the civil war, he remembers that the first thing that occured in Barcelona after the socialists had taken control was that businesses began displaying large signs announcing that tipping would no longer be tolerated. Apparently this sufficienty alarmed the bourgeois (although the worker brigades marching thorugh the streets in arms must have helped) that they started dressing like the proletariats and generally making themselves scarce.

The point is that not only is tipping not necessarily a smart way of doing things, it's also fundamentally demeaning, and the workers of Barcelona recognized this. It's often said that waiting tables is one of the few careers that allows a woman without a college degree to support a family. Assuming this is true, should tippers really be able to threaten this merely because they don't think the service is good? And as the study Shaw cites may suggest, undertipping could be the result of customers not liking a server, even if they receive satisfactory service.

Presumably the logic behind tipping is "the customer's always right;" that is, you be the judge of the service and tip accordingly. But customers in a restaurant are not the best judge of the service there. If you wait a long time for food, isn't it more likely that the delay is related to understaffing than laziness on the part of the servers? So undertipping would doubly punish the worker: work harder with less support for less money. If a server is slacking off, this is best judged by co-workers who can appreciate the conditions under which she/he works.

But i'm sure that most people, most of the time, do tip well, even generously. What's at issue here, moreso than the economic element is the debasement of the worker. Isn't tipping a fundamentally condescending act? A pat on the head to servant eager to please? This is not how we treat equals, and we must see all workers as our equals if there is any hope of attained a society not imprisoned in the chains of a class system.

Tipping isn't a good deed or an act of charity, it's merely paying for a service (the wages of servers are always below the national or local minimum, so they certainly aren't being compensated there.) So how is it that we hold the power to deny compensation to servers, merely because they serve us?

If society is to allow for both human equality and the complex relations that come of necessity with large populations, there must be the capacity to serve others without ones' self being lowered in the act. This will demand structural changes at the most basic level of daily experience, for example in the way that we relate to our co-workers and order our economic system. Can there be true equality between a doctor and the custodian of a hospital building, given the vast differences in economic remuneration, levels of education, and social prestige attached to each job ?

There will need to be new ways to relate to other humans, to serve and be served (in the broadest sense,) without shame. Martin Luther believed that all Christians were the equal not only to priests but to Christ himself, in their capacity to be justified before God. For Luther, this was the greatest freedom imaginable, but a purely spiritual one. The earthly body, on the other hand, was full of weakness, and needed discipline to prevent it from corrupting the faith of the "inward man," on which salvation depends.

This discipline was attainable only through service towards others, "when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for nought, himself abundantly satisfied in the fullness and riches of his own faith." (Luther, The Freedom of a Christian) So humans are radically free in spirit, subject to none and saved before God. All this comes merely from the simplest faith in God. But the demands of this faith are servitude towards all humanity without reservation or selfishness.

Isn't the echo of these words easily apparent in the philosophy of many socialisms from Marx to the anarcho-syndicalists? Humans are freed through their labors, which under ideal circumstances appear as unfettered and unmediated service towards fellow humans. We need an outlook which poses no contradiction between service and freedom, perhaps one which even sees service as the surest road to freedom.

I'm glad that Shaw raised this issue and i hope that many more restaurants join their European counterparts in banning tipping and incorporating the service charge into menu prices. But this issue shouldn't be reduced to a utilitarian calculation of greatest benefit to all parties, as Shaw suggests. The fundamental issue here is the right of wokers not to depend on the generosity of others.

However, Shaw is right that abandoning tipping won't just benefit workers. It will allow us all to relate to our fellows, even when they serve us, as equals, and do away with the guilt and opression created by this paternalistic social relation. So the next time that you feel a warm sensation of contentment after a meal you'll know that it's not from your supposed "good deeds," it's just good digestion.