I used to be a waiter but, I am so done with tipping

Last week, my wife and I had a great meal of mussels and fries on the terrace at a quaint little seaside restaurant. The food and service were both excellent and it was wonderful to listen to the seabirds and smell the salt air. As we finished our meal, we got up to enjoy a nice walk along the sea wall But we did not leave a tip!

You may be wondering just what kind of jerk I am! I told you that the food and service were both excellent, which ought to be worth at least a 20% tip. Well, you, dear reader, may disagree, but I am not a jerk. The reason I didn’t leave a tip is because the restaurant was in France! My wife and I are housesitting for an in-law in Calais, France on the English Channel.

I remember my first trip to France in high school. It was 1978, and one of the phrases that my French teacher drilled into me was, “Est-ce que le service est compris?” In English that means, “Is the service included?” At the time, some French restaurants included the service in their pricing, so tips were not required. In the 1980s, France passed laws that essentially made tipping obsolete. In France, servers are paid a decent wage and good service is expected at restaurants. Since then, across almost a dozen trips and from sidewalk cafés to Michelin-starred restaurants, I have stopped tipping altogether.

Of course, it is different in the United States. In the United States, servers are paid a lower wage, and the expectation is that tips will make up the remainder of their income. Here in the states, I am generally a good tipper. In a restaurant, I almost always leave at least 20%. I have been a restaurant server myself, not just as a part-time job but as a full-time job while raising a young family. So, I know what it is like to make my living from tips.

But recently tipping has gotten out of hand. Electronic payment systems are asking for tips in places where most of us would not have tipped before. The person who scoops your ice cream, the service that mows my lawn, even the buffet restaurant where there are no servers, and you have no contact with the bussers are asking for tips. In many cases, an employee hands you a device or turns a screen in your direction so they can see whether you leave a tip. Even the tip amount is getting out of hand! The place that cuts my hair has a payment system that places the default amount tip at 20%.

I am so done with tipping! I am still a good tipper in sit-down restaurants where a server interacts directly with me. I know that the server is receiving a lower wage and making up the difference in tips. But I will not tip counter service, hotel housekeeping staff or any others who do not receive that lower wage.

I appreciate the idea of reducing taxes for anyone, but the Republican plan, backed by President Donald Trump, to make tips tax-exempt is not a real solution. In many restaurants without tip-sharing policies, servers are often among the highest-paid employees. Giving them a break that doesn’t also apply to bussers or hosts seems odd. This proposal seems like the Republican equivalent of student loan forgiveness—a strategic, albeit cynical, attempt to win votes in the upcoming elections.

Let the consumers pay what services are worth and let employees choose what wages they will accept to do a job. It is time to end tipping culture in the United States.

David Chung is a Gazette editorial fellow. david.chung@thegazette.com