The UGLY TRUTH About Tipping & Why You Shouldn't!

hey 42 here elvis presley once asked his limo driver do you own this limo or do you work for the company the driver responded that he just worked for the company elvis replied well you own it now the driver's tip from elvis was the limo so if you are not a big baller tipping a goddamn limo every time you leave the house then what the hell is wrong with you at least that's the way that unnecessarily judgmental wait staff hope you feel when you leave whatever shreds of disturbing paraphernalia you found at the bottom of your wallet as a tip but seriously in north america tipping feels like an obligation after finishing your delicious meal you feel an overwhelming sense of guilt where you not to leave a tip and you just know that if you don't then you'll get the steamingly judgmental look from the waiter as you shamefully waddle out of the restaurant it's the same look you would get if you broke into their home and replace their toothpaste with cyanide maybe not quite the same and there's one country that has made it their hobby to give away free money after their gigantic meals america the usa is by far the world's leader in tipping leaving an astonishing 40 billion dollars of tips on restaurant tables every year but the ironic thing is that america imported the idea of tipping from europe where it has since fallen out of custom in europe we usually tip as a convenience to just round up the bill because it's simply easier to leave a two-pence tip than to count out 49 pounds and 98 pence in change yes i have left a two pence tip and no i'm not ashamed of that and hopefully by the end of this video you'll understand why journey back to 17th century tudor england where taverns began putting out jars labelled to ensure promptitude hence the word tip when wealthier patrons put some of their extra money into the tip jar the bartender would be sure to serve them before everyone else by the mid-18th century wealthy american businessmen who thought that adopting european traditions would make them more sophisticated brought back the idea of tipping to america and started to use it in their daily lives tipping any old poor sod from the shoeshine boy to their driver it wasn't long before the railway companies and many restaurants caught on to this new tipping phenomenon and of course their very first thought was oh boy we can use this to be even more racist yay and so restaurant owners and railway operators all over america began hiring newly freed black slaves to work for no wage whatsoever telling them that they would only get paid if they received tips from customers so the business owners didn't have to fork out a single penny the public were against this idea and the unions campaigned against tipping but of course the extremely wealthy railway companies and other corporations eventually won the battle forever cementing tipping as a racist foundation of the american working class economy and brainwashing future generations into heavily integrating gratuity as a social norm the old american railroad tipping makes people feel powerful studies have shown that people enjoy the notion that they can control the level of service they receive because they can hold back tips if they don't receive said service which if you think about it it's slightly disturbing how sociopathic that makes most of us we all secretly enjoy knowing that we can stop another human from being able to afford food if it takes our fancy we probably wouldn't but it's just nice to know we can you know but the cold raw distasteful reality of restaurant gratuities is that the level of service doesn't matter a surprisingly large number of studies and research papers have been done on tipping and why we do it if you have a free afternoon instead of your usual self-loathing give them a read unless of course you're not me and you have some things to do but they all essentially conclude the same result that tipping behavior is completely random there is no logic to when and how much people tip it is certainly not linked to good service it's probably more closely correlated to a customer's shoe size to be honest astonishingly receiving good or bad service only changes the amount people tip on average from between minus one percent and plus one percent so there you go all you wait stuff out there you could literally slap your customers in the face with a ripe salmon and the worst that would happen is you'll receive 50 pence fewer tips and you thought you never learnt anything useful from this channel waiter performance may not have any effect on tipping but there are things that most certainly do have an effect according to various studies waitresses with larger breasts smaller body sizes and blonde hair earn quite a bit more from tips than those without such features as much as 50 percent more and that's from both men and women so it seems most of us mistake our local eatery for a freaking strip club disturbingly white servers are on average tipped more than black servers regardless of the race of the customer but not only is the average diner a racist perv you'll be pleased to find out that they're also completely irrational research has shown that we leave a larger tip if a waiter touches us on the arm draws a smiley face on our bill if they wear red or if they squat next to our table whilst taking our order like a restless ape a modern habit that i find particularly annoying the last thing i want when trying to relax is an overly smiley waiter squatting two centimeters from my actual face and recommending i get a side of every damn thing on the menu with that but hey research shows that it seems to work for most people and if you thought that waitress was being extra friendly towards you because they wanted a larger tip or she found you unbearably attractive then my friend you are delusional there are a set of secret rules within the restaurant industry that everyone working in the food business quickly picks up rules about who tips and who doesn't and who tips the most research shows that couples tip more than groups men tip more than women and businessmen tip even more waiters very quickly find out which demographics and table sizes leave the least and the most in tips and they will adjust their service accordingly waiters will automatically pay more attention and give quicker and friendlier service to couples or businessmen knowing full well that they're likely to leave larger tips than average and they will lower their quality of service for large groups i'm not saying that every waiter does this but researchers found that the vast majority of restaurants admit that their weight staff practice this very kind of favoritism towards higher tippers so before you even sit down your level of service has been predetermined just because of how you're dressed and who you're with just one more reason of many not to dine out naked you can't blame waiters for this when most of their income comes from tips they are of course going to pull every trick in the book to milk every last penny out of the customers so who should we blame for everything wrong with the economic failure that is tipping i'll give you two guesses your own mother no rasputin no why the government of course in america there are two variations of the minimum wage the normal minimum wage that the majority of jobs receive and then the tipped minimum wage which employers are allowed to legally pay their employees if they work in an industry where tips are accepted such as servers the hotel industry taxi drivers and just about a thousand other professions as it seems every year americans like to play a game of who else can we possibly tip hairdressers yeah cleaners yeah drug dealer hitman why the hell not can we all just take a moment to realize how insane a tipped minimum wage is employers can legally pay their hard-working employees less than a third of the minimum wage a measly 2.13 per hour in most states and then customers are expected to pay the employees on the restaurant's behalf let me think last time i purchased a car i didn't sit down for a budget meeting with the management afterwards to decide whether i would be contributing 20 or 25 towards the salesman's salary but that is essentially what you're doing every time you tip in america so long as the tipped minimum wage is a thing call me a maverick but here's a crazy idea should it not be an employer's responsibility to pay their staff a decent living wage why should a customer who is already paying for their meal have to pay the staff's wages too for an employee to legally qualify for the tipped minimum wage they only have to earn 30 dollars of tips per month to put that into perspective in america if i tip someone 30 who doesn't usually receive tips say an electrician their employer can then legally cuts their wage that month from 7.25 per hour to 2.13 for every hour they have worked that month just because i decided to be a generous sod so by tipping in restaurants americans are ensuring that restaurant owners can legally pay their waiters pennies and get away with it the problem is every single american would have to stop tipping overnight to solve the issue and that's like asking bears to stop in the woods because just 30 dollars of tips in any given month will prevent waiters from receiving a normal bloody wage and that is of course never going to happen so it is completely understandable why people who do stick to their morals and refuse to tip in america are seen as jerks and chased down the street with cake forks and steak knives even if their morals do make perfect economic sense because sadly until the laws change tipping is essential to allow wait staff to actually feed themselves but even when everyone tips it's still a really bad deal for employees numerous studies have shown that servers are three times as likely to experience poverty than the average worker and they are significantly more likely to make use of welfare programs to survive although this isn't as much of a problem in some states where the tipped minimum wage has been raised the department of labor in the u.s investigated over 9 000 restaurants and they found that 84 percent of restaurants in the states where the tipped minimum wage is 2.13 abused the tipped minimum wage to enable them to pay their weight staff far less than any non-tipped employee and yes that is also accounting tips into their wages but there is a poor group of victims of the tipping culture who get a far worse deal than the wait staff but unlike waiters never get any recognition cooks as a great lover of the culinary arts i believe that in most countries kitchen staff are underpaid it's an extremely demanding and stressful job working fast-paced in high temperatures for long hours and a high level of skill and training is required but this problem of kitchen staff being underpaid is so many times worse in countries that have a tipping culture for some reason at one point in human history i'm not sure when but some people in a room decided that the people who have spent years of trading at culinary school and who arrive early in the morning every morning to begin meticulously prepping every element of your dish and then after many hours of misen plus these line chefs can finally toil away at a hot stove for many hours to skillfully cook and beautifully plate your delicious dinner those people in a room whoever they were once decided for some ungodly reason that these hidden heroes of the restaurant industry should get paid zero percent of the tips zilch nada booger all yet this teenager with absolutely no training who picks up that dish and carries it five meters to your table should get 100 of your tips well that sounds a bit unfair but unfortunately people don't give a flying sausage because the truth is we all tend to forget that kitchen stuff exists it's easy to go to a restaurant and because you see all the pretty waitresses you forget that there's an army of culinary gargoyles behind the kitchen shutters and they're the reason you actually went to that restaurant to eat their food they say waitressing is a thankless job but it's extremely rare that someone gives thanks to the person who just singed their eyebrows flamblying your tartar tan there are some restaurants who recognise this disparity and collect all the tips and then share them out equally between the front of house and the back of house staff but the vast majority of restaurants still distribute all their tips solely to the front of house staff in certain u.s states statistics show that with tips wait staff earn significantly more than kitchen staff and not just a dishwasher more than the sous chef and the head chef in seattle for example the average waiter earns 28 per hour with tips whereas prep cooks and line chefs earn a prophetic 10 to 12 dollars per hour and the average head chef is just on 18 hour that's right the individual with the highest amount of training skill and expertise in the whole dawn restaurant still only earns 64 of what the waiters do i'm not trying to disparage waiters at all they do an incredibly tough and important job but there's an obvious difference in expertise between waiting and professional cooking there has been a move in recent years by some example setting restaurants particularly in new york to abolish tipping for good some restaurants now openly state that they no longer accept any tips and instead add a 15 or 20 optional service charge to every bill which is evenly distributed between all staff including the kitchen staff but there's a mysterious place that has been setting an even better example for as long as restaurants have existed a place where food is the very embodiment of its culture a country that has been awarded more michelin stars than the uk and france combined and the place where you can be served ramen by a maid where is this magical place you ask of course it is japan not only is tipping not a part of japanese culture but tipping in japan is actually seen as an insult it's funny if you want a waitress to spit in your food in north america you forget to tip whereas in japan you'd have to do the complete opposite and actually tip to get some survival revenge not that the ultra polite japanese would ever stoop that low if you did insult a japanese chef the worst that would probably happen is they would just give you a slightly less enthusiastic bow why is tipping in japan so insulting because it is viewed by japanese people as charity rather than a reward for good service it can be seen as you implying that the restaurant isn't doing well enough to pay their workers the proper salary it's also construed that you may be marking them on their performance and japanese restaurant workers really don't like that because they always believe that they are giving 100 effort in japanese culture people don't just go to work and work tirelessly for money to buy more sushi and manga they also do it for honor a sense of honor for one's boss for the workplace and more importantly for the customers is a deeply held moral in japan so if a japanese waiter knowingly gave a customer bad service then their honor would be impeached upon which is punishment enough upon itself a service charge is already included in the price of your meal in most restaurants in japan in the form of a seating charge called otoshi literally meaning to pass it's a small fee to pay for your table in the restaurant and as a way to indirectly pay for service taking the place of what tips would do in the western world but the nice thing about the atochi fee over tipping is that you actually get something in return for your money and no it's not those wooden chopsticks that you impatiently snap apart as soon as you sit down as a thank you for paying the seating fee you get a small plate of food as soon as you are seated something to nibble upon whilst reading the menu kind of like an amused boot it's usually a tasty little morsel such as endonami beans or some seafood the thief of the otashi is automatically added to your bill and then it's out of the way forgotten about you could enjoy your meal say thank you and leave instead of having to do mathematics after your meal to work out a tip and if you're in a group work out how to split that tip up just creating awkwardness because no doubt everyone will want to tip a different amount and you can guarantee that there will be one member of the group who's gotten so magnificently trollied that they already put their tip into some unfortunate waitress's garments or maybe i've just been hanging out with the wrong sort of people in fact tipping isn't done across the whole of asia it's more of a western well to be more specific north american phenomena in europe waiters are paid living wages the same as any other profession and on the continent service charges are commonly added to bills to replace tips similar to the japanese atashi system in italy for example you are often given complementary bread or even a beverage to start your meal as part of the service charge the italians call this a caperto or cervizio there is just nothing good about tipping in every aspect it is futile unfair it promotes discrimination it creates awkwardness for everyone involved and the end result is customers pay more and staff earn less it's about time we take a lesson from asia and abolish this archaic practice of automatic tipping once and for all of course there's nothing wrong with tipping on occasion if a particular person has gone out of their way to make your night truly special and memorable even i tip in those circumstances just for those of you who now think i'm the most tight-fitted person in all of nato but tipping automatically in the words of mr pink is for the birds thanks for watching if this video has served you well then consider leaving a tip on patreon to help out the channel but if it's any less than 20 i will find you and i will thank you because seriously i'm incredibly grateful

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,144,216

Rating: 4.5214448 out of 5

Keywords: tipping, truth about tipping, truth revealed, documentary, restaurant tipping, gratuity

Id: joM-hQkM-W8

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018