The history of tipping and why it persists

HostIt happens every time I go out for a coffee now. I buy a simple drink, the person behind the counter turns that little plastic screen around, and there it is. The screen asks me if I want to add twenty, twenty-five, or even thirty percent on top of the price. It feels like such a huge part of our lives, but I realized I have no idea how we got here. Why is this just the way things are now?

GuestIt's funny because most people think it has always been this way, or that it's just a nice way to say thanks for good work. But if you look back, tipping was actually something Americans used to hate. In the early days of the country, people thought it was wrong. They saw it as a European habit that didn't fit with the idea that everyone is equal. If you gave someone a tip, it meant you were their better, like a lord giving a coin to a servant. It was seen as a bit demeaning to the person taking the money.

HostWait, I always heard that TIP stood for To Insure Promptness. Like, you would put money in a jar at the start of a meal to make sure the waiter moved fast. Is that not where it started?

GuestThat's a great story, but it's just a myth. People made that up much later. The word tip has been around for hundreds of years as a slang term for giving or swapping something. The habit itself really took off in the Tudor times in England. If you stayed at a grand house as a guest, you were expected to give a bit of extra money, called vails, to the host's servants. It was basically a fee for the extra work you caused. When wealthy Americans started traveling to Europe in the eighteen hundreds, they saw the rich folk over there doing it. They brought the habit back home because they wanted to look sophisticated and show off how much money they had.

HostSo it was a status symbol. But if we started out hating it because it felt like a master and servant thing, what changed? Why did it go from something we looked down on to something that's basically forced on us?

GuestWell, this is where the history gets pretty dark. After the Civil War ended, the country was trying to figure out how to handle work and wages for people who had been enslaved. A lot of businesses, especially restaurants and railroad companies, didn't want to pay these new workers a real wage. They realized that if they let customers give tips, they could pay the workers next to nothing. The tip became the wage. This was a way for business owners to shift the cost of labor onto the guests. It turned a gift into a way to keep people poor and dependent on the whims of the person they were serving.

HostThat's a huge shift. It went from a little extra gift to a way for the boss to avoid paying their own staff. But if it started that way, why did we not just pass a law to stop it?

GuestPeople actually tried. In the early nineteen hundreds, there was a massive push to ban tipping. Several states actually passed laws making it illegal to tip. There was even a group called the Anti Tipping Society of America that had over a hundred thousand members. They argued it was a form of bribery and that it created a class of workers who had to beg for their pay. But those laws didn't last. The restaurant owners fought back hard. By the time the first federal minimum wage laws were written in the nineteen thirties, the industry had enough power to make sure tipped workers were treated differently. They created a two track system that we still have today, where some workers get a much lower base pay because tips are expected to make up the rest.

HostSo it became baked into the law. But it still feels so different depending on where you go. If I go to a cafe in Italy or a restaurant in Japan, the whole vibe is different. Why did it stick so hard here while other places moved on?

GuestIt mostly comes down to how we think about service and who's in charge. In many parts of Europe, service is seen as a professional career. The cost of that service is just built into the price of your steak or your wine. In Japan, doing a job well is a point of pride, and offering extra money can actually be seen as an insult, like you think they only did a good job because they wanted a bonus. But in the States, we have this idea that the customer is the boss. We like the feeling of being the one who decides how much a worker earns for that hour. It gives the customer a sense of power.

HostI don't know if I feel powerful when that screen flips around. I usually just feel guilty. If I don't hit the big button, I feel like I'm hurting the person's paycheck, even if they just handed me a muffin.

GuestAnd that guilt is a huge part of why it stays. The system relies on that social pressure. We know the person behind the counter might be making a low base wage, so the choice doesn't feel like a choice anymore. It feels like a duty. Even when people try to open tip free restaurants where they pay a higher flat wage, they often fail. Customers get sticker shock when they see a twenty dollar burger, even if it ends up being the same price as a fifteen dollar burger plus a tip. We would rather see a lower price and feel like the extra bit is our decision, even if we feel bad about it.

HostIt's strange how we keep a system that seems to make everyone a little bit uncomfortable just to keep those menu prices looking low.

GuestThe most telling thing is that even as we complain about it, the percentages we give keep creeping up because nobody wants to be the one who breaks the unwritten rule.

HostThe next time that little screen flips over, I'll be thinking about those grand English houses and the old laws that tried to stop this whole thing from happening.