In response to a NYT article (2008) yesterday, the blog Consumerist (2008) is discussing whether, how, and if women are treated as "second-class citizens" in upscale restaurants. Commenters on the Consumerist thread, many of whom claim to have waited tables in the past, point out that women do not tend to tip as well as men, and order less food.
In April (4/7/08), we discussed that although waitstaff report differences between men's and women's tipping, a tip-diary study at a casual restaurant did not find any gender difference in average tip rates, and women were more likely to report awareness of the 15% "rule." An unpublished meta-analysis of several tipping situations by Lynn and McCall (1999) reports that (when controlling for bill size) men leave larger tips than women. This effect is modified by the fact that men leave smaller tips than women for male servers, but larger tips for female servers. The overall effect is explained by the fact that most tippers are male, and most servers are female. Liu (2008) suggests that when servers are customers, they are better tippers than non-servers.
Now I have to wonder what percentage of men and women have ever worked as servers. It seems like if more women have been servers, and former servers tip better, then women should be (on average) better tippers. I know that I am a better tipper now than I was when I was a server: I was poorer then.
Dan4th copies comments to and from DifferenceBlog.com and Diffblog on LJ.
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4 comments:
Hmm... if women are more aware of the 15% rule, they may be more consistent tippers. Perhaps men and women tip with roughly equal expected value but differing probability distributions.
In this case, I can imagine three ways that this would lead to women being treated as "second-class citizens". For the sake of these cases, I assume that tip and perceived service quality are independent random variables.
1) The servers might perceive a stochastic tip as more than a predictable tip with the same expected value. Perhaps the guy who left 30% has a bigger mental impact then the next few leaving 10%.
2) If polled, servers might say that they preferred consistent tips, but if given the choice they may take the the slot machine.
3) Even if the tip is independent of quality, the higher randomness of male tipping would lead to more attention being paid to male patrons, since the tip is a more interesting number.
Now, if we relax the assumption of independence between tip and perceived service quality, we can open a whole other can of worms. I started to describe this in a bit more detail, but this comment is already way too long. Let me just list two hypothesis:
1) Men and women might have equivalent distributions of perceived service quality for a given meal, but men might have a higher correlation between tip and perceived quality.
2) Men and women might have the same correlation between tip and quality, but men might have a broader distribution of perceived quality.
WARNING, extreme geekyness ahead:
In case others want to use them, let P = price of meal in $, T = tip in $, Q = perceived quality of service, Gs = gender of server, Gp = gender of patron.
I'm tempted to re-write everything above in equations, but I really should get back to work.
This seems relevant to me, as I was out with a group of 5 young women, and on young man last night. In my option we definitely got the short end of the service stick, despite not taking up space they would have otherwise been using. I chalked it up to our being young more then anything else.
I’ve also often paid when I’ve been out with my (male) partner, and I’ve taken to giving and extra $2 to any server who notices it was my card, not his. It is most often given in a neutral way, but I’ve only twice had the card giving back to me specifically. In ~6 years of this.
I think the how large will the bill be has to be a big factor.
I've always thought there was a perception bias in the stereotype that women are worse tippers, and I've felt supported in that whenever I've seen statistics showing similar tipping behavior. As long as women have a reputation for being worse tippers, they're going to be perceived that way because servers will look for behavior that supports their impression, just like emergency room staff who notice more crazy behavior around a full moon.
Have been a server. Always tip 20% on the post-tax total. Genetically female, mentally male-ish.
I find that people I'm with often don't know how much they are supposed to tip...or how to do the math.
My partner is a doctor (and female) and still hands me the bill to figure tip. She always pays it (because she always pays when we eat out because she's got more money)...but seems totally freaked out about the figuring.
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