The Tipping System.
Tipping is a direct drag upon wages. When the public is perfectly willing to contribute part of a waitress’s wage, why should not the employer take advantage of this fact and pay her less? That is surely to be expected and is almost universally the case. Many girls, accustomed to making a good deal in tips or “scale,” as they call it, would not be willing to work for $9.00 a week and no tips, for they can often make more than this amount. But the better class of girl would prefer a living wage and no tips. As matters stand now, however, they are a very necessary part of a girl’s income.
Comparing the weekly wage and the weekly income of waitresses as shown in [Diagram 10], we find that without tips only 8 per cent. make as much as $9.00 a week, while with tips 50 per cent. receive $9.00 or more. The custom of tipping has two distinct disadvantages. First, it is an unreliable source of income. A girl may reasonably expect to make a certain amount in tips, but she cannot count upon doing so. The danger here is not only that she will receive less than it is possible for her to live on, but that she will get into debt, trusting to luck that her tips will be large enough to get her out. It is very easy to be over-confident. A tea-room waitress said: “Sometimes I make $12.00 a week in tips, sometimes almost nothing. You can’t depend on people.” Tea-rooms are the greatest sinners in respect to making their waitresses depend upon tips. The usual wage in several of the well-known New York tea-rooms is $3.50 a week for full time, which is ten or twelve hours a day.
The other aspect of tipping presents a more subtle danger. The girls need the money and they deliberately work for it, partly by good service, and partly by adopting an intimate personal tone toward their men customers. This leads naturally to familiarity on the man’s part and establishes a personal relation between them. Most of the girls quite frankly admit making “dates” with strange men. In one restaurant a woman was pointed out in incredulous admiration by the other waitresses. “Her husband has been dead four years, and she hasn’t gone out with a man yet,” they said. These “dates” are made with no thought on the part of the girl beyond getting the good time which she cannot afford herself, but the outcome is often a tragedy. The restaurants in one city of the state forbid unnecessary conversation between waitress and customer because conditions resulting from the practice became so flagrant. The result of this custom is that girls are approached to whom any attention from their men customers is most distasteful. The report of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says: “Many of the waitresses complain of the annoying attention of male customers. Many girls said, however, that if they speak sharply to a customer or offend him, they are likely to be reprimanded by the head waitress and may even lose their position.”[10]
The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago considers tipping a vicious system. “The giving of tips should be abolished because of their pernicious effect. A young girl who under any other circumstances would not dream of accepting money from a man will accept it in the guise of a tip. In the hands of a vicious man this tip establishes between him and the girl a relation of subserviency and patronage which may easily be made the beginning of improper attentions. The most conscientious girl, dependent upon tips to eke out her slender wage, finds it difficult to determine just where the line of propriety is crossed. Thus, in addition to the other dangers surrounding the girls employed in hotels and restaurants, they encounter the lack of respect which curiously attaches itself to one who accepts a gratuity.”[11]
Diagram 11.—Length of Time Unemployed in Past Year.[12]