By Cassidy Liu

Copy Editor

Imagine dining at your favorite five-star restaurant one day, only to be horribly served food that you did not order by a snarky, rude server; all the while, being expected to give a generous tip. Although most feasting experiences do not end up in this manner, being served by an ill-mannered server should be reflected by the customers’ choice of tipping. Therefore, tipping should not be a mandatory gesture in restaurants because waiters should be rewarded with gratuity for their performance.

  In the past, tipping was not as technical as it is today, and tips were extra rewards for the servers for their superb execution. However, in today’s society, giving tips, regardless of performance, has become a norm, and disobeying this norm results in disapproving looks from others. Thus, people are practically being pressured to tip, even if they end up receiving improper treatment from servers.

 “People often say [service quality is] their major motivation for tipping if you were to ask them,” stated Michael Lynn, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, to PBS. “But when we ask people how much they tipped and how they would rate the quality of the service, less than four percent of the differences in tips left by different dining parties can be explained by their ratings of service quality.”

  When servers know that they are going to get tipped no matter how they act, it causes disorder within the workers since those that are hardworking will practically be getting the same pay as those that are not as refined. This may impact the food industry because workers can become complacent, which will yield bad service, and bad service will result in a loss of customers and revenue in a long run.

  “Tipping needs to be at the client’s discretion and based on performance,” said Greg Geronemus, the co-chief executive of Smartours, a New York tour operator, to Washington Post. “Otherwise, you remove a key motivator for various people contributing to [the clients’] experience during the tour.”

  There are many restaurants that already add gratuity into the bill even if one does not have a large party, and scam customers, since the customers are not notified that their tip was already included. Other restaurants are more sly and the percent used to generate the tip includes tax, which means those individuals are being deceived into paying more than what they have to.

  One way to fix the current situation is to completely ban tipping in restaurants. According to a 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute, tipped workers and their families depend on welfare programs to survive at a significant higher rate than non-tipped workers. Thus, by having tips in place, it pushes servers to poverty because they rely on an inconsistent main source of income.

  Giving tips has proven to be detrimental. Tips should not be mandatory for customers, but should be encouraged when a server is outstanding.