New Zealand's absence of tipping is a leftover from its social history -
tipping didn't happen (a) because it was redolent of condescending
master-servant relationships that NZ's early settlers sought to escape, and
(b( because there was an expectation that employers were respinsible for
directly paying the actual cost of the labour.
But the question remains, if tipping is an essential mechanism in shaping
the social transactions that are involved in serving food, how come those
social transactions are pretty much the same in NZ and Australia's non
tipping environments?
By the way, there was a period of my life when I did not leave NZ for over
10 years. At the end of that period, when I started travelling
internationally regularly, I had to consciously LEARN how to tip again. Not
just learn to do it, not just learn how much to tip, but learn how to manage
the social transaction. This is because it had become deeply ingrained in my
fundamental belief system that to tip someone was an insulting signal that I
was better and more powerful than the recipient was.
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
-----Original Message-----
From: Diane Hodges [mailto:dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu]
Sent: Saturday, 18 August 2001 18:25
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Tipping in restaurants
this is fascinating!
i've been a waitress in several contexts - a donut stand in a suburban
mall, a cowboy bar in Calgary, a steak house (Calgary),
and in these situations , the tips were contingent upon our pay. if we
were paid minimum, it was assumed we'd make up the difference in tips: in
the donut stand, the tips were pitiful so the pay was better:
in the bar and steakhouse, the pay was worse but the tips were much
better...
and the tips were contingent upon familiarity, no more no less. regulars
have always tipped more than wanderers-in;
men tip women more than women tip women,
drunks tip more than social drinkers,
and service is usually directed towards the tipping in all waitressing
situations. Americans are not as good tippers as Canadians, and in my
experience knowing waitresses (from everywhere, including NZ and
Australia; Europe, Africa, Caribbean), socialist economies produce better
tippers because of a shared sensibility in the cost of living.
socialist economies produce more of a community than the independent /
individual perspective advanced by so-called free capitalist/democratic
economy.
diane's 2 cents, two dimes for a tip on that 2 pennies of expense. ;)
"If you never try, you'll never be disappointed."
Homer Simpson
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:11 PDT