Former lawprof and author of The New Jim Crowe, Michelle Alexander, opens with the mandatory anecdote.
The first week on the job, one of my white co-workers, a middle-aged woman from rural Oregon, pulled me aside after she watched a group of rowdy white men, who had been rude and condescending to me throughout their meal, walk out the door without leaving a tip. “From now on, dear,” she said, “I’ll take the rednecks. Just pass ’em on to me.” This became a kind of joke between us — a wink and a nod before we switched tables — except it wasn’t funny. The risk that my race, not the quality of my work, would determine how much I was paid for my services was ever-present.
Alexander succinctly makes her point, that these “rowdy white men” stiffed her because of her race, not the quality of her service. She also misses the irony of her tale, that she, a collegian black woman, was working the same job as a middle-aged white* woman.
Not only does Alexander enjoy the courtesy and comfort of this middle-aged woman, who likely has children to feed and yet is working the same job as this collegian who is working for beer or book money, but she’s got a job “working at a burger and burrito joint called Munchies during the summers when I was a college student.” It’s possible that the owners of Munchies were making millions and billions off their burritos, but it doesn’t seem likely.
Yet, they hired this college student as a waitress. And this college student chose to work at Munchies, making tips from all the other diners, the non-rowdy white men and other diners, or she wouldn’t have been working there. And that meant some other middle-aged woman, who maybe had mouths to feed at home, didn’t get the job that Michelle Alexander chose to take and complains about now.
Alexander explains that tipping, which means paying wait staff below minimum wage salary and relying upon the social norm and largesse of diners, to make the job worthwhile, was born of racism and sexism.
Never did it occur to me that it was fundamentally unjust for me to earn less than the minimum wage and to depend on the good will of strangers in order to earn what was guaranteed by law to most workers. I had no idea that tipping was a legacy of slavery or that racism and sexism had operated to keep women, especially Black women like me, shut out of federal protections for wage labor. I did not question tipping as a practice, though looking back I see that I should have.
The basis for this belief was a book by Saru Jayaraman, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining.
After the Civil War, white business owners, still eager to find ways to steal Black labor, created the idea that tips would replace wages. Tipping had originated in Europe as “noblesse oblige,” a practice among aristocrats to show favor to servants. But when the idea came to the United States, restaurant corporations mutated the idea of tips from being bonuses provided by aristocrats to their inferiors to becoming the only source of income for Black workers they did not want to pay.
Whether, and to what extent, this is accurate, I can’t say. I didn’t read the book and don’t know whether this is why tipping in America came about or this is another 1619 Project version of history, a theoretical tenuous connection like a thousand others, elevated to a primary claim despite the overwhelming weight of historical fact to the contrary. But since I didn’t read the book, and can’t refute the claim, and won’t presume Michelle Alexander to be making a disingenuous argument, I will accept her premise the tipping was nothing more than a way for white business owners to steal black labor.
So what?
The subminimum wage for tipped workers isn’t simply born of racial injustice; it continues to perpetuate both race and gender inequity today.
Today, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is just $2.13 an hour — a just over $2 increase — and a mostly female, disproportionately women of color work force of tipped workers still faces the highest levels of harassment of any industry. Women restaurant workers in states with subminimum wage report twice the rate of sexual harassment as women working in restaurants in the seven states that have enacted One Fair Wage — a full minimum wage with tips on top. The women in these seven states — California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Montana, Minnesota and Alaska — can rely on a wage from their employer and are not as dependent on tips and thus feel empowered to reject the harassment from customers.
There’s a bit of game playing here, as “disproportionately” doesn’t mean majority, but Alexander goes on to proffer a litany of racist and sexist allegations nonetheless.
For Black women, the situation is especially dire. Before the pandemic, Black women who are tipped restaurant workers earned on average nearly $5 an hour less than their white male counterparts nationwide — largely because they are segregated into more casual restaurants in which they earn far less in tips than white men who more often work in fine dining, but also because of customer bias in tipping.
Sounds horrible to be a black woman working as a waitress. If restaurants were required by law to pay wait staff the full freight minimum wage, and increase prices to do so, it might have an effect on eating out, on who gets hired to be a waitress and be the end of tipping for good service. For those of us who tip well, it frankly sounds as if we would save money by paying wait staff $15 per hour. But would collegian Michelle Alexander have been working at Munchies over the summer if that was required? Does she think black women will get paid the full minimum wage and 20% tips on top, at least by the non-racist diners if any such beast exists?
*Initially, I failed to read that the co-worker was white. After my error was pointed out to me, I edited the original text.
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She does mention that her middle-aged co-worker was white: “one of my white co-workers, a middle-aged woman from rural Oregon . . .”. But beyond that, so many assumptions that we’re just expected to swallow (and since it’s the NYT, most readers probably do): (1) that the diners in question were racists, rather than just garden-variety assholes; (2) there was nothing in her service (or lack of service) justifying failure to leave a tip; (3) that there’s any sort of nefarious intent behind the claimed fact that fewer black women work in fine vs. casual dining… But of course it’s about race, because everything’s about race. Every human interaction is affected by racism, we just need to figure out how.
I can’t explain how I missed that the co-worker was white, but I somehow did.
Must have been distracted by the content of her character. We have programs to fix that.
You only tip 20%? Cheapskate.
I order the wine with the cork, LY. It changes the equation.
The bottlecaps on mine have a cork lining, that counts.
But Dan, of course she gave tip-worthy service her first week on the job. Everyone knows that college students are inherently good wait staff. I mean, for a highly educated woman like Ms. Alexander, for us to imply that she needed more than a week to become the perfect waiter would be an insult. And racist.
Or not.
Is there anything in existence that isn’t a legacy of slavery or Jim Crow?
Like you I’ve always been a generous tipper, and especially during Covid because I recognize that without tips waitstaff would be severely underpaid and I feel like I need to pick up some of the slack while restaurants are half empty.
But if they do change the law to make waitstaff subject to normal wages and raise prices to compensate (which has to happen) I won’t be tipping any longer.
There comes a point where trying to make businesses take care of all their workers’ needs becomes counter productive. On the morning news, there was a story about Long Beach, CA passing an ordinance to require special “hazard pay” for grocery workers. Kroger promptly closed two of its local groceries because of the new obligation. Now, the employees who worked at those stores don’t have “hazard pay” and also don’t have jobs. Two neighborhoods that had local groceries don’t have groceries now. But, the heroic city leaders at least prevented grocery employees from being paid unfairly during the pandemic. Indeed, now the workers can stay home, where they can better control their odds of exposure to the virus.
I’ll understand if this comment doesn’t post as it is not “Tuesday” and it might not make the cut even then.
My liberal daughter went to a progressive university in a coastal town. Her and some of her friends worked at the quality seafood restaurants at the pier on week-ends for good tips.
She came home up the first summer a new born racist. She (and her friends) tried to avoid serving black families or tables of black females only. A quick set of rock-paper-sisscor and the loser went out to serve the patrons of coler.
Why? Because of a strong belief that these patrons left little or no tips stiffing the waitresses. (Tables of black men only – very rare – were desirable as solid tippers) Perhaps it was confirmation bias when the exception being strongly remembered. Or perhaps these patrons enjoyed stiffing privileged young white girls. That was certainly my daughter’s belief.
I should trash this comment for numerous reasons, but I won’t. On the one hand, this proves nothing. On the other hand, it reflects how perceptions skew either way and manifest in reactions which may be good, bad or neither. Is your (and your daughter’s) expectation accurate? Maybe yes. Maybe then and there. Maybe no. We all have our prejudicial beliefs, including black women.
It wasn’t my experience. It wasn’t my reaction. I don’t know if it was substantially true or not.
My main take away was how quickly my nice sweet daughter had “turned”.
This was probably supposed to be a reply to something, right? Yes, that’s one of the many reasons your comment deserved to be trashed. It still can be.
She also overlooks the fact that, with tips included, it’s common for waiters/waitresses to earn more money than the dishwashers, busboys, and cooks. If a restaurant is forced to raise the wages of the servers than they will have less money available to pay those other employees.
Indeed. If you put it to a vote and offered wait staff tips or minimum wage, they would overwhelmingly prefer tips. I suspect that what she really wants is minimum wage plus tips, getting the best of both worlds. Will that happen?
Back in the day when my sister was a waitress at a mid-upscale chinese place in Austin she used to take home 1000+ a night in tips. This was after the split for the runners and bussers, no way would she have settled for straight wage, no matter what it was.
People always misrepresent the tipped minimum wage law when these discussions pop up. If a writer’s tips plus tipped minimum wages are less then the regular minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. No matter what happens, tipped employees will always make at least the regular minimum wage.
Alexander makes reference to that in her op-ed, but says it’s rarely honored. Whether that’s true, I dunno.
Yeah, I don’t think college-aged females working in the service industry are exactly the most harmed by tipping culture. They seem to inspire the most generosity in customers, in fact. Not so for the guys working back-of-the-house in the sweltering hot, steamy dish tank all day who emerge after closing time drenched in sweat with water squishing in their shoes. Do “BIPOC” Hooters girls make less money in tips than the middle-aged white women who wait tables at other establishments? Somehow I doubt it, having worked in both kinds of places.
Every time I read another tear-splotched thinkpiece by a grievance major who has taken it upon themselves to advocate for the working class at a dollar per word, it leaves me genuinely wondering what ails their editors and why none of them seem interested in keeping quality control anymore or even putting out content that has any basis in reality.
Is she really “advocating” for the working class?
I may not be qualified to comment on Brady or Gideon but restaurant tipping I am certainly qualified to comment on.
If the $15 minimum wage is passed for servers and the extra cost is absorbed into the menu pricing then guests would be more inclined to leave a minimal tip then the expected 15, 18, or 20 percent. Think along the lines of an European custom of tipping. You had good service so leave a Euro or two.
One issue not being raised is that competent service is hard work and to have competent servers requires them to be satisfied in their compensation. To prevent employees from leaving to go to less emotionally strenuous jobs the employer may have to pay above the minimum wage. The restaurant I currently manage would need to pay at least $20 to $25 an hour to keep some service staff on board. And they would be leaving with far less than they would make on a typical night.
Of course, this cost would have to be absorbed into the menu price. Who is going to pay for a $28 pizza with no toppings?
With that out of my system I need to get back to work and complete payroll.
Many of these progressive solutions depend on fundamental ignorance of how economics and business work. The irony is that if they get what they want, they’re going to find out.