Employers, particularly in hotels and like public places, will have to give more attention to seeing that employees are not mistreated by the swaggering, blatant, selfish type of patron. This type abounds and has been developed largely by the tipping custom, that is, the extremely servile attitude assumed by servitors in order to stimulate tipping has brought out the opposite quality of domineering pride in the patron.
THE SORE SPOT
No feeling so rankles in the mind as the sense of uncompensated labor. The thought that patrons have gotten something for nothing leaves a sore spot in the thought of servitors. And if they are employed in places where the only compensation they receive is from the gratuities of patrons, this soreness is incurable. The next time the patron appears he will be made to feel the displeasure of the employee. Thus, in one sense, it is the system that is wrong, a system which does an injustice to both employee and patron.
Every employee has a fairly clear idea of his duties. Most employees scrupulously refrain from doing more than the duties for which they are paid expressly. Hence, when an employee over-steps this boundary he has fixed in his own mind, he has the sense of uncompensated labor. He feels a grudge either against the employer or the patron. He looks to one or the other to supply the extra remuneration for the extra service.
As a consequence, personal service workers are nursing a grievance much of the time. Their conversation and thoughts are about some patron who has failed to compensate them, or has, in their judgment, inadequately compensated them. They devote little time to thinking of a reform in the system that would give them an adequate compensation from the employer and do away entirely with the patron-to-employee form of compensation.
THE MARTYR
The tipping system is so established now that the individual who opposes it must be prepared to play the rôle of martyr, whether employee or patron. Employers who profit by the no-wage system dislike employees with a degree of self-respect that makes them rebel at gratuities. Such wages as are paid are so nominal that the employee cannot subsist upon them alone. He either has to quit that line of work or enter it and conform to the conventional methods.
In Chapter V the equity of tipping certain employees was considered and the claim of other employees as to their rights will be considered briefly here.
BAGGAGEMEN
Tipping men who call for and deliver trunks has become a fixed custom in the cities and is expected, though not so often practiced, in the smaller towns. The transfer company theoretically charge for the complete operation of moving the trunk from the home or hotel to the railroad station. But the men on the wagons or trucks exact tips for carrying the baggage up and down stairs or elevators. The question is, are they entitled to this extra compensation? The baggagemen argue that their business, strictly interpreted, is to carry the trunk from the house to the station and that going up stairs and into rooms is an extra service. Hence, they stand around and make it evident that they expect compensation from the patron, in addition to their wages from the company.