Is Tipping a Nonsense Way to Expect People to Earn a Living?

To many people who don't live in North America, they find the business of tipping people who are doing their jobs a nonsense way for them to earn a living. When you stop to think about it, isn't it a way of making debt slaves? All the owner of the restaurant is doing is giving them a place to work and for this 'privilege' they get to clean up the restaurant, keep the owners customers happy, take the abuse of angry customers and put up with rowdy, rude ignorant and bad mannered people for the princely sum of $2-3 per hour? OK, so some restaurants would have to pay more than this but if the legislated rate is $2-3 then that is probably what the majority would be paying staff.

In most countries outside America and Canada, people get paid an hourly rate to do whatever they are employed to do whether that is waiting on tables and serving them food or beverages, hairdressing or any service oriented occupation. People get paid for their work and if they are good at it, often pick up a tip as well, as a sign of real appreciation for a job well done. This is extra on top of their hourly rate that has been determined by an Industrial relations tribunal so that people don't get abused and taken advantage of in an effort to earn a living wage.

The idea of earning a living wage being determined by so many variables as being dependant on people's 'generosity' is appaling. Isn't this what charity is? These people work hard and take a lot of unpleasantness on behalf of the restaurant owner when things go wrong and this often happens even in the best run restaurants. Also, rarely do people pay full price for something if they aren't 'encouraged' to do so. Depending on people who no longer need anything from you and expecting them to leave you a reasonable 'tip' is a disgusting way to expect people to be rewarded for their work.

OK, so it's often students who do this kind of work but during my 5 visits travelling around the US and my year of living in Canada, and eating out daily, my experience showed me that the good wait staff in these restaurants and diners, and now more often in the fast food chains, are older people, with a higher than average number being women.

Talking with many of these mistreated souls in my travels, I found the majority of them to be single mums with kids who have delinquent Ex's who aren't paying child support regularly. In the meantime they all have to survive and depending on tips to make up a livable income is unreasonable and quite unfair for their hard work.

Why is the service industry in North America thought so little of? Without these services, life wouldn't be nearly so comfortable. If a person does an apprenticeship of 3-4 years and learns to become a qualified hairdresser, why shouldn't they be paid for their labour, knowledge and experience? To expect them to be paid the lowest rate possible of $8-10 an hour is unfair.

Would a person with a business diploma work for that wage? They couldn't do more damage than a disgruntled hairdresser. If you are a beauty parlour owner and are under paying staff, just remember the price you may have to pay some day if one of them takes an extreme dislike to one of your regular customers and gives them a hair colouring or hair cut that becomes the talk of the town? Employer and employee is a symbiotic relationship that is certainly not appreciated in some North American industries.

The other thing I found to be total nonsense is how can retailers and business people expect a consumer driven economy to continue to thrive and prosper when the very people they want to sell their goods and services to, are the very ones they are determined to pay as little as possible for their work?

To those who live outside North America, this idea of staff being paid by customers "tipping" to make up a livable income is too much like "having your cake and eating it too" and as it is not the magic pudding formula, it has to stop sometime simply because it is devouring itself.

Nonsense Website

Hi everyone,

Do you sometimes get fed up with all the nonsense that we find on the internet. It's not just on the internet but in our media and all around us.

Well now we want to give it a special place to park so we welcome your contributions as and when you come across it. See the contact page on our website for details.

English Nonsense:

English words are not really nonsense even though they sound the same, spelt differently or have different nuances to the same word and often these differences sound just plain nonsense sometimes. Our language has developed over the millenniums since man first got beyond the grunting stage.

What was once commonplace language yesteryear is no longer applicable today but we have converted many of the expressions and words from yesterday into similar meanings that relate to activities of today.

As many of our ancestors go back to the sea-faring days when ships were powered by sail, many of our sayings come from that era. This highlights the fact to me that I’m rather glad I was born in this time because I don’t think I would have enjoyed life very much aboard a sailing ship.

By and Large, this is probably the case but even in saying that it probably originates from those days. It probably would have meant sailing too close or at an angle to the wind and I could well end up being stuck hard and fast on a reef or sandbank somewhere which is what I would have been if I had been born in the above era.

So I’m going to give that thought a wide berth but once again, it’s back to those sailing days which would put me in the same boat.

Here I’m probably sailing too close to the wind for plain sailing. Which would have meant that I was too close to capsizing for comfort and there was nothing easy about the way I ‘m writing this article.

I have every confidence that there’s probably a reader out there somewhere who would like to take the wind out of my sails and turn me on my beam end.

This is likely to put me between the devil and the deep blue sea which would not be a comfortable place to be.

Interestingly, the devil in this instance refers to a seam between the planking on a wooden sailing ship which had to be caulked with Tar to seal it. If a leak could not be repaired with tar from inside the ship, then some unfortunate individual was hoisted over the side of the ship to repair the caulking. This, if you haven’t already guessed it, put him between the devil and the deep blue sea.

This may sound like nonsense but the origin of words has developed and evolved over time and we have managed to include their meaning into life today and to enlarge on their original meaning.

It highlights to me that there was absolutely no nonsense aboard a sailing ship

Regards all,

Jan