there’s a great citations needed episode on the shitty origins of it and the shitty circumstances it creates: soundcloud.com/…/ep-118-the-snitch-economy-how-ti…
Waiting tables. Bartending. Hospitality, food delivery, beauty salons, rideshare driving. The service industry, as anyone who has worked in it knows all too well, is notorious for relying on tipping to undercut employee wages and deputize individual customers to determine how much money a worker should be able to take home. Amid increasing recognition of these injustices, a number of campaigns and new laws surfaced, pre-pandemic, to abolish or meaningfully reduce the practice of tipping.
But despite the best efforts of these campaigns, tipping remains the industry - and American society - standard. Indeed, the perverse logic of tipping has broadened into an ever-present ‘snitch economy’ - an ecosystem of tactics like mystery shoppers and Uber and Yelp rating systems designed to police the behavior of workers while outsourcing the costs of said supervision to customers and other workers.
In the process, our snitch economy pits those being surveilled against those doing the watching, and the judging. Through a ubiquitous public-facing network of rating and reviewing other people’s labor - and often the behavioral disposition they exhibit while working - people with otherwise very little power are elevated to temporary positions of authority over others, fostering a culture of surveillance rather than one of solidarity. The snitch economy serves the dual purpose of not only giving working people a false sense of power when they’re the ones being served, but also reducing millions of human interactions to opportunities for not only snap judgments, but subjective rewards and retribution.
EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Worshiped? What country do you live in? The biggest argument I see for it is ‘its absolutely bullshit but some jobs that’s almost all they make’
I don’t think I’ve ever, in my 41 years here, seen a single human being say it’s an amazing system.
bl4ckblooc@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You obviously haven’t been talking to servers that make $200 a night in cash tips they don’t pay taxes on. My fiancé works in marketing for a large winery, and some of the kids they would bring in to work the restaurant would be making tons of money from it. Those are the people who love it
dangblingus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You don’t talk to enough servers that aren’t 20 year old blonde chicks. And even then, there are slow nights where they bring home $50 in tips. It’s a predatory system for all involved except the owner class.
bl4ckblooc@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Okay? The point is that there are people who like the system, and those are the people I outlined. That’s the point of my comment as a reply to the comment above. No one here has said it’s not predatory.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Or the people in the back of the house that bust their ass, are sometimes highly trained, and take home less than the person carrying food back and forth.
Blaster_M@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They’re supposed to pay federal income tax on their tips in the USA. However, it being cash, most people take it as “under the table” wages.
bl4ckblooc@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I know they are supposed to, but most places don’t. Some business will even give out your debit/credit tips in cash so you don’t have to claim them.
danielton@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 8 months ago
You’ve never gotten into an argument with someone who says they tip their mechanic and doctor and thinks everybody should do the same?
There absolutely are people in the US who believe that everybody you interact with as a customer should be tipped because they believe all the propaganda from the likes of Readers Digest and Wall Street Journal. They believe everybody must be tipped because covid and “How are those jobs any different from being a server? It’s a SERVICE!” It’s beyond ridiculous. I worked in retail and food service (not tipped) for a long time and would have been embarrassed to have to resort to begging for tips.
Tip culture worship is real. I’ve run into plenty of people online and offline who think that tips should be mandatory everywhere, of all walks of life.
elscallr@lemmy.world 8 months ago
People tipping their doctor? I don’t even pay my doctor, my insurance does that.
danielton@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 8 months ago
Yup, I’ve seriously gotten into arguments with people who insist on tipping the doctor.