Jay Porter

I thought part 1 (http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… was particularly insightful: "A certain small number of very vocal men (and it was always men) resented that we were not letting [them] try to exercise additional control over our team members. This was true even though compelling research has shown that servers do not adjust quality of service as a result of tips; instead the idea that the restaurant was not offering our servers up as objects of control, was heresy. For these people, the primary service they wanted from the restaurant was the opportunity to pay for favors from the server..."

While this the restaurant case, not the taxi case, it does give some useful overview aspects: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…

Living in a country where tipping is not a big part of the culture, I must admit I've always found it one of the stranger customs in the USA. I found the series of articles, "Observations From A Tipless Restaurant" was a really interesting analysis. http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…

Despite your personal anecdote, I found Porter's 6-part series last summer on tipping in the restaurant industry quite fascinating and enlightening: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… I remain unconvinced that tipping culture improves service, and it's most certainly sexist, racist, and ageist.

This restauranteur thinks that tipping makes it harder to reward staff fairly, and that this is a direct cause of acrimony in the kitchen. Some of his arguments are dependent on CA state law, though: (part 1) http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… (part 2) http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…

Here's a restaurant owner that agrees with grandparent: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…

I found the series of articles as a whole to be an enlightening account from the perspective of a restaurateur who tried new things in San Diego. This was Part of 5 of a series that begins here: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… Prior to this aside from being a patron of restaurants my only knowledge of the restaurant biz was based on Setting the Table which Fred Wilson blogged about here: http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/01/setting_the_tab.html

FYI: The "just add it to the item price" was covered in Part 4. Its linked at the bottom of the article, or here it is directly: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…

If you missed part 1, here's the first half of the story: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…

That topic was discussed in part 2, at http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… : In a tipout system, what started as one enterprise (a restaurant selling its food & hospitality to its guests), has now spawned two completely new, concurrent businesses: the business of the server selling the perception of extra attention to the guest for tips; and the business of the kitchen workers selling favors to the servers for tipout. These additional, parasitic businesses are not focused on improving the quality of the original enterprise. Instead, these secondary businesses are focused on maximizing income using short term, and proven effective, means. ... Over the last couple years, another alternative has started to emerge — the lawful tip pool. In this model, the business is permitted by the law of the land to distribute its tips among every member of its team, including kitchen workers. In the Ninth District (the western US), one court decision (Cumbie v. Woody Woo) has paved the way for this, but the US Department of Labor has attempted to nullify that decision by issuing new regulations. It’s not clear that the Labor department is actually allowed to trump the court, and the matter is not yet clearly resolved. Back in 2006, however, it was still definitely illegal for a tip pool to include back-of-house workers. The only legal way that tip revenue could be distributed among the whole team was for it to not be tip…

This article from the chef at the Linkery (mentioned in TFA) is required reading on the subject. I think the fact that there is good evidence that tipping is often racist and sexist is perhaps the strongest argument against it. Part 1: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… Part 2: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… Part 3: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… Part 4: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… Part 5: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant… Part 6: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant…