Update on the tipless restaurant

[nancylebov]

For a while, a detailed explanation of why it was better to have a no-tips restaurant was being posted and re-posted where I was hanging out.

It was an intriguing piece which claimed that the number of transactions and risk of betrayed trust between the servers and the lack of inclusion of the kitchen staff damaged morale, that servers neglected all customers except for white males because they tipped the most and the biggest tippers were playing out sexual fantasies about waitresses, that good servers didn't track tips individually anyway, and that customers generally tip whatever they usually tip so that service doesn't get fine-tuned by the incentive. Instead, the best strategy for the servers to get more money from tips is to snipe extra tables from other servers, even if service suffers.

The restaurant closed, and it didn't have good service. More exactly, the service was very uneven and apparently, the food varied from excellent to eh.

I don't know what's to be learned from this, except to be a little cautious-- perhaps very cautious-- about cool ideas that you hear about from their proponents. I don't habitually follow up on cool ideas. I only found out about the closing of the Linkery because I wanted to make a point about the cost of trying to fine-tune prices.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

As one of the people who enjoyed Mr. Porter's articles, I'm a little saddened now (although Mr. Pike at San Diego Reader was kind of non-specific on what he considered poor service ["poorly-trained," I get; "quirky" and "off-the-cuff" mean … what?], and the Yelp.com reviews [which took the prices to task far more than either the food or the service] were sufficiently mixed as to invoke the little girl with the little curl).

Maybe I just won't eat out for a while.