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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Julian who wrote (21351)	5/6/1998 1:10:00 PM
From: Michelino	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

>heard this same stereotype repeated by bartenders and servers on numerous occasions< This is as it has always been: just another symptom of an underlying prejudice. Twenty years (and another career) ago, I was a waiter. The same lie was often repeated. I didn't believe it and it never seemed to apply to my customers. If I offered good service, I was rewarded with good tips. Often to the "astonishment" of co-workers who believed the canard. This is no more complex than any other distortion attendant to bigotry. Prompt seating and proper service would, in fact, be a big step towards a remedy. Treat all customers equally (and treat them well!) and they will return respect and tips aplenty. Michael

To: Rick Julian who wrote (21351)	5/6/1998 1:14:00 PM
From: DScottD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I always thought the worst tippers were students and lawyers! Seriously, this stereotype has never been proven and I would guess, based on my own experience, that the size of a tip has mostly to do with the quality of the service and not the color of the skin of the person being served. This just goes to show you that no matter what an institution does to remove prejudice from its culture, it cannot control the individual bias of its employees.

To: Rick Julian who wrote (21351)	5/6/1998 5:39:00 PM
From: LoLoLoLita	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Rick, I can't speak to the differential demography of tipping in restaurants as a function of skin color, but I worked as a taxi dispatcher many years ago in NYC, and heard from the cabbies (universally!) that the best tippers were male homersecksuals, who were also, BTW, regarded highly in the politeness department. David

To: Rick Julian who wrote (21351)	5/9/1998 3:39:00 AM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Rick, I am not sure exactly what to say in regard to your post. First of all, even if all black people never tip at all, which is certainly untrue, they are still entitled to the same level of service that is accorded everyone else. When I heard that part of the 60 Minutes segment, my first impression was that this was a weak justification to excuse treating them badly, probably with a grain of truth in it, like everything else that allows us to create stereotypes. Still, I think it is important to resist anything that puts all people who happen to have the same skin color, or national origin, in the same category automatically. My friends in San Francisco who work for tips think that over the last few years, computer people in town for conventions are probably the very worst tippers. Psychologists are relatively good tippers, but doctors in some medical specialties are better tippers than in others. Nurses and teachers are not very big tippers generally, but they are polite and friendly. Salesmen are very big tippers. English people are not. The very, very rich used to be, but after the last recession in the early nineties, a lot of tip-dependent employees feel that almost everyone is more cautious with money. Because we get conventions of very specifically selected people here, for example orthopaedists or junkyard owners, it is somewhat possible to draw flimsy but amusing conclusions about who tips best. I have not heard any of my friends say much about tipping as it is broken down by race, however. What I hear over and over and over again is that if the employee who is hopeful of a tip manages to form some connection with the tipper--common background, a rapport with the tipper's child, anything really that makes the server a real human being to the tipper--then the tip is usually larger. Of course, it goes without saying that good, thoughtful service is the very basis for receiving a generous tip, and it does not seem from the complaints that were filed that this kind of service was offered to black people consistently.