The Institution of Tipping as a Source of Employee Agency: The Case of Restaurant Servers

Brewster, Zachary W.; Wills, Jeremiah B.

doi:10.1080/00380237.2013.797260

Cited by 16 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Such research might find, for instance, that interracial differences in perceptions of server sincerity reflect morphological differences in the smiles conveyed to white and black customers that we were not able to detect in this study (cf. Frank 17 It is interesting to note that restaurant servers are likely to experience a sense of agency in an otherwise constraining labor process as a result of their ability to choose the extent of emotional energy they devote during service transactions (Bolton and Boyd 2003;Brewster and Mallinson 2009;Brewster and Wills 2013;Erickson 2004;Gatta 2009). Paradoxically, then, racial discrimination in service delivery can be understood, in part, as a latent consequence of the organizational control structures (e.g., company-specified interactional scripts) that are intended to ensure equitable service delivery.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer Racial Profiling in U.S. Restaurants: Exploring Subtle Forms of Service Discrimination against Black Diners

2014

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In this article we advance scholarship on consumer racial profiling (CRP), in general, and the practice as it occurs in restaurant establishments, in particular, by presenting findings from a survey of restaurant consumers that was designed to ascertain the degree to which discriminate service is evident in black and white customers' perceptions and evaluations of their servers' behaviors. We found no evidence of interracial differences in subjects' perceptions of being the recipients of subtle server behaviors that are discretionally conveyed (e.g., recommend entrée, compliment food choice, joke with, etc.) or those that constitute standard markers of service quality (e.g., eye contact, smiling, expressing appreciation, etc.). We did, however, find some evidence of CRP in customers' perceptions of their servers' attentiveness/promptness. Additionally, we found that African Americans tend to subjectively appraise their servers' performance less favorably than their white counterparts and this is the case even when other indicators of service discrimination are held constant. Findings taken as a whole suggest that servers' extend similar cues of hospitality but do so in qualitatively different ways (e.g., less sincere) across racial groups. We discuss the implications of these findings and conclude by encouraging additional scholarship on the subtle nature of racial discrimination in consumer settings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer Racial Profiling in U.S. Restaurants: Exploring Subtle Forms of Service Discrimination against Black Diners

2014

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“…Research finds that tipping may be more related to implicit racial bias than to quality of service since it is typically done without much thought 28 . In fact, a study that included only white participants found positive association with the tipped wage and found it as a source of empowerment, highlighting the disparities in experiences concerning the tipped wage 109 . The structure of the restaurant exacerbates an existing earnings imbalance with service work in which workers who interact directly with the customers receive tips directly while those working in the kitchen and back of the house are “tipped‐out” and given only a portion of the overall tips the servers and bartenders receive 110 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The health of restaurant work: A historical and social context to the occupational health of food service

Lippert

Rosing

Tendick-Matesanz³

2020

American J Industrial Med

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The United States currently has over one million restaurants, making food service one of the largest workforces and industry sectors in the nation's economy. Historically, concern for the health of early restaurant workers was tied largely to the hygiene of the food and thus the wellbeing of the customer rather than the individuals preparing the food. The landscape of occupational illness and injury that resulted is fraught with some of the starkest health disparities in wages, discrimination, benefits, injuries, and illness seen among US laborers. These disparities have consistently been associated with social class and economic position. Conditions identified during the early years of restaurant work, before the introduction of occupational safety and health protections, persist today largely due to tipped wages, dependence on customer discretion, and the management structure. Research and intervention efforts to control occupational health hazards should be directed toward the socioeconomic and structural roots of health problems among food service workers in the United States. Such efforts have important implications for enhancing worker protections, improving wages, and restructuring working conditions for restaurant and food service workers.They also suggest opportunities for occupational health practitioners and researchers to contribute to system-level change analysis to address centuries-old occupational health challenges still facing one of the largest sectors of workers in the country. K E Y W O R D Sfood service, kitchen, occupational health, restaurant, service industry, United States

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“…84 In capitalist economies, argue sociologists Zachary Brewster and Jeremiah Wills, tips arise because managers cannot adequately monitor service, and so they delegate this function to the customers. 85 Some Literaturka writers suggested ways in which customers could help managers to assess performance, without resorting to "individual bonuses" or tips, and without having to dip into their own pockets. Batisheva and Senkevich from Moscow suggested that bonuses to waiters could be based on evaluations left in the restaurant's comments book.…”

Section: From Incentives To Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tips, Bonuses, or Bribes: The Immoral Economy of Service Work in the Soviet 1960s

Koenker

Bamberger

2020

The Russian Review

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This article focuses on the role of the service sector in the planned economy during the 1960s, a period of transition in Soviet consumer culture. In February 1969, Literaturnaia gazeta published a widely read article on the utility of tipping service workers, arguing that such practices were not incompatible with communist morality. Readers strongly disagreed, and wrote hundreds of passionate letters in response to the editor of the newspaper. Utilizing these letters in combination with archival sources from service sector trade unions, we argue that the responses illustrate some of the fundamental tensions between a society that celebrated productive labor yet promised consumer satisfaction. Soviet citizens expected courteous and efficient service from waiters, taxi drivers, and salesclerks but refused to see such labor as equal to that of workers in factories, instead gendering the service sector as a place for women and thus innately inferior. The Soviet public continued to believe in the rightness of the socialist project, but was uncertain about the contradictions between personal consumption and collective values.

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The Institution of Tipping as a Source of Employee Agency: The Case of Restaurant Servers

Cited by 16 publications

References 38 publications

Consumer Racial Profiling in U.S. Restaurants: Exploring Subtle Forms of Service Discrimination against Black Diners

Consumer Racial Profiling in U.S. Restaurants: Exploring Subtle Forms of Service Discrimination against Black Diners

The health of restaurant work: A historical and social context to the occupational health of food service

Tips, Bonuses, or Bribes: The Immoral Economy of Service Work in the Soviet 1960s

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