[A_COMPUTER]

I love the commenters describing it as being like a scene from Bonfire of the Vanities or serving Egyptian pharaohs. Speaking from experience, there are plenty of poor people that are at least as aloof, entitled and rude to service staff as rich people, often times even worse. And corporate restaurants/stores mimic the same patterns as shown here, you just get paid less and treated worse.

[wtbob]

> Speaking from experience, there are plenty of poor people that are at least as aloof, entitled and rude to service staff as rich people, often times even worse.

Yup. One of my brothers was a waiter for many years in a town where it was easy to tell the lower classes from the upper; it wasn't just common for him to receive no or little tip when he waited on members of the lower classes, it was the rule. In years, I don't believe he could count on one hand the number of times he received more than a dollar (on tabs of tens or hundreds) or a piece of mucus smeared on the receipt (yes, you read that right).

People are people, and many people are jerks. Money or lack of money just gives them different outlets to be jerks.

[milspec]

Japan does this right: nobody tips. Customers pay the restaurant, and the restaurant pays the waiters.

Tipping is one small step away from paying bribes. Don't do it. Don't encourage it. Don't accept it.

[jnbiche]

OK, but this is not Japan, and if you are skipping or skimping on tips here in the US, chances are you're screwing over a relatively poor person. US law allows restaurants to pay waiters and waitresses well below minimum wage, under the assumption that their tips will make up the difference.

But I suspect I'll not convince you.

[lazaroclapp]

How about doing it the other way around? The restaurant includes a fixed percentage charge for the service on all items, announces it prominently, requites waiters to refuse any additional tips.

One can argue that, because the advertised prices would be, say, 18% higher, the restaurant would fail due to customers preferring restaurants with lower advertised prices. But at least the experiment could be run in this case in a more or less ethical manner (costs to the business itself could be absorbed by a speculative insurer that is convinced business will not decrease for that particular restaurant). Might not even matter for really high end restaurants, since they don't advertise prices anyways.

[jnbiche]

Yes, that would be ethical, I believe. In fact, in many restaurants, this is how things are now for tables of 6 or more.

[meestaahjoshee]

If you make less than minimum wage because you're not getting enough tips, your employer is legally supposed to pay you the difference so that you would still make the minimum. Whether places actually abide by those laws is a different story I imagine.

[redblacktree]

While this is true, waiters, particularly in higher-end establishments tend to make much more than minimum. It's small comfort that your manager has to create a floor if you're used to $15/hr and due to some bad tippers you end up at $10/hr for the night.

[greeneggs]

"US law allows restaurants to pay waiters and waitresses well below minimum wage, under the assumption that their tips will make up the difference."

Except on the West Coast... Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Minnesota and Montana all have the same minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped employees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...

[derefr]

If everybody stopped tipping, wouldn't the law change?

It's sort of the same as the problem of automation: the people at the bottom get screwed for a while while the system self-corrects.

[bmelton]

Probably not, because assholes like me make it a point to tip anyone who does me any personal service, even when abroad, and even when it isn't of a profession that typically demands it.

I don't know why I do it, and I don't really attempt to justify it beyond "This guy did something nice for me and made me believe he enjoyed it, so that is worth at least something" mixed with not wanting to worry about whether or not a tip is expected.

Apologies if I'm screwing up life for everybody else. I do at least pocket tips when I'm told that they aren't required/desired/expected/wanted, but I would much rather err on the side of over-tipping than under.

[hueving]

Yes, your behavior is insulting in many cultures and is the reason we even have a law in the US that allows minimum wage exceptions for waiters. Over-tipping is worse than under-tipping on a macro scale.

[Ollinson]

And when the system inevitably doesn't self-correct it just turns out that the people at the bottom get screwed. Nothing new there.

[everyone]

Most developed countries have a minimum hourly wage. Here in Ireland for example it would be illegal to pay someone less. I still tip the pizza delivery guy though. I guess cus they are providing a service directly to me. I suppose pizaa delivery is a pretty low paying job and I have a pretty cool decently paying job so I'm just being nice.

[tptacek]

OK, but then don't eat at restaurants in the US.

[wpietri]

For me, there are two big differences.

One, I'm more willing to forgive those with less privilege for errors of ignorance or misplaced reactions to trauma. Part of what privilege gets you is space to learn and to work our your issues.

Two, poor people can't afford to buy much in the way of service, so their ability to mistreat other poor people is limited. The richer the person, though, the more personal service they can consume, and the more power they have over those workers.

[protomyth]

No. Just no. Poor or rich, if you go out then human decency is a requirement. If you go out, have the cash for the tip. Justifying poor behavior because someone is poor or rich relieves them of personal responsibility. My family was poor for a while, and I was always taught to respect people[1].

1) unless they became a danger or acted like fools, then protect everyone else from them

[wpietri]

If I were justifying bad behavior, that would be a reasonable concern. Good thing I'm not.

Yes, one should always tip. But my brother, who was a waiter for many years, was very tolerant of poor people from subcultures where tipping was uncommon or mysterious. Accepting that not everybody can yet play at your level isn't justifying bad behavior.

[hueving]

Tipping is poor behavior. It's a disgusting practice in the US that really kills the experience.

[icanhackit]

there are plenty of poor people that are at least as aloof, entitled and rude to service staff as rich people

We need a reverse Yelp that reviews humans rather than businesses. So many people fail to follow the Golden Rule in simple, everyday interactions for no discernible advantage to themselves at the cost of dignity, respect and efficiency.

Some customers you don't want. And the customer is not always right. A sort of trade embargo in response to poor behavior would be interesting.

[quesera]

> We need a reverse Yelp that reviews humans rather than businesses.

I'd like that for drivers. My vehicle should be aware of the vehicles nearby and the likely drivers thereof, and present me with a HUD showing the poorly-reviewed in red.

[wpietri]

I have often imagined a dashcam that does license plate recognition and lets you know when shitty drivers are nearby. And of course, it would have voice response so you could give nearby cars compliments and public grumbles. Presumably you'd also want it to be geosensitive and real time, so that it could say, "Hey, there's a lunatic coming up behind you."

Seems like it would be easy to put together a dash stand, some OpenCV magic, and a little glue logic to get a prototype together.

[msie]

No no no! Hopefully you guys are joking. This is another case of geeks thinking technology and public shaming will cure us all of bad human behaviour. Cynically I think you'll get funding.

[rwallace]

Actually that's a bloody brilliant idea. In an ideal world, morality or enlightened self-interest would convince everyone to behave well. The real world falls far short of that ideal, but social pressure is often a powerful tool for filling in the gaps. You'd think "you might die" would deter drunk drivers, but it didn't. "Everyone will think you're an asshole" was more effective. Let's extend that to other forms of misbehaviour on the road. The point here isn't the technology. It's using the technology to save lives.

[wpietri]

Our current version of this in the US is a system where there are a much smaller number of observers (cops). Too many bad observations and you face license suspensions.

In practice, the small number of observers means that there are plenty of bad drivers who have long periods of bad behavior with no negative feedback. Basically all I'm suggesting here is increasing frequency of observation while reducing the size of the penalty from "large ticket" to "mild shame".

It's also approximately equivalent to what happens in a small community. There if you are a bad driver, word will get around and eventually get back to you. That doesn't seem like a terrible dynamic to me.

[hueving]

It worked with Uber rating drivers and riders. Care to elaborate on why this wouldn't work?

[bmelton]

A big, obvious concern would be having a system that alerted you to drivers previously seen exhibiting bad behavior, and the social justice network taking that as an opportunity to avenge the bad behavior and inadvertently causing danger to themselves, their "adversaries" or other drivers on the road.

On top of that, everybody drives poorly at some point, and for some reason. A roommate of mine wrecked his car once like, one block from our house. I couldn't stop laughing at him long enough for him to explain that while he was driving, a spider was crawling out of his ear, and it justifiably freaked him out enough to hit a telephone pole.

If I was a random passerby that didn't get to stick around for the explanation, I would have flagged him as a clear danger to other motorists, which would have been undeserved. To boot, I think he reacted as well as he could have, and probably better than most, given the circumstance.

[detaro]

Wasn't there a "report my driving for everybody" or something along those lines on HN in the past few days?

[bcook]

You two have my support.

A psychiatrist acquaintance told me some people almost reflexively lose control and must take advantage of a chance to belittle someone in a customer/server scenario.

[waterlesscloud]

Autonomous cars will almost certainly do this in that transitional period before all cars are automated.

I bet they'll even do it after, at least between manufacturers.

[natrius]

I think this reverse Yelp you describe is coming soon, partially because I plan on helping to build it. A "trade embargo" can be an effective punishment of last resort for any sort of bad behavior, from crime to a failure to contribute to a particular public good. You could use it to take collective action where the state won't, or maybe eventually to replace the state without needing to use force.

You could store people's cryptographic identities and reputations on a global computer than anyone can access, but with rules that no one can break. That now exists, and it's called Ethereum.

An embargo is a pretty harsh punishment, though. In practice, you'd probably only use it when someone fails to provide some lesser form of restitution.

[geofft]

I can totally see why you want that, but a cross-business blacklist on consumers sounds absurdly dystopian.

(Maybe this means normal-Yelp is dystopian, and maybe I should have more empathy with small businesses complaining about unfair reviews.)

[tene]

I've considered this several times before, with similar concerns. The solution that seems like it would mitigate these problems is to have contextual social ratings, rather than global ratings. If I indicate the people that I trust, and transitively trust, then I can see indications of misbehaviour from my social network, rather than "some abusive asshole is rating people poorly for not indulging him enough".

Unfortunately, this reminds me of PGP's web of trust, and that never really took off. It may be that it failed entirely due to other issues (pgp's terrible UI, encryption is hard and nobody cares), but it's not a great sign.

[geofft]

Someone (Airbnb?) was trying to use Facebook login as a similar web of trust, as a proxy for real-world social pressure to be a reasonable human being. I don't think PGP really says anything here, positive or negative, when we have Facebook, which is far far bigger and much more tuned to actual, ongoing social connections.

(and this coming from someone with a key in the strong set, and no Facebook account)

[mst]

Many metropolitan areas in .uk have a shared blacklist used by a group of bars - get thrown out of one permanently, don't try and join any of the others.

I've encountered a number of people sanctioned by that system who still believe in it overall.

[otoburb]

>Some customers you don't want.

An Uber driver told me that customers are rated for exactly this reason. If a customer score is deemed too low when requesting a ride, then Uber drivers will tend to be a tad slower to accept the ride in the hopes another driver will pick it up instead.

[freshhawk]

I assumed the difference they are picking up on and the one that prompted the comparison is the culture of pretending that excellence at this job is meaningful. The large teams of people and the rules of the dance also make it very clear that you are not there to ensure a pleasant and efficient "dining experience". You are very much also there to act subservient and to be used as the object of a status display. The fact that you have a "bullshit job" is constantly thrown in your face.

And there is certainly one difference I've noticed between the crap treatment of employees at an average place and top end. The entitled lower or middle class asshole will berate a server because they screwed something up that is simple, with the assumption that they could have done it correctly if they cared. Much more likely to get the reaction of "oh dear, you aren't even of good enough breeding to be an acceptable servant" at the high end places.

And the people who act that way at an average restaurant are disliked by the majority of people, another table might say "Wow, what an ass. Sorry you have to deal with that." At somewhere like this you get treated that way by the people who your entire society has decided are worth listening to and who's opinions and judgement are highly valued.

[gyardley]

This comment doesn't mesh at all with my experience at any high-end NYC restaurant, including the place where this guy worked.

The staff isn't subservient; they've got some expertise, so they steer and make recommendations so you'd have a better experience than you'd have deciding independently.

The patrons quite evidently aren't just 'the people who your entire society has decided are worth listening to', since they also include people who sit around reading Hacker News (as well as a good smattering of tourists and couples celebrating their anniversary.)

And finally, if you're an ass to the staff, everyone around you still unambiguously knows and thinks you're an ass.