To add one more twist, I am lucky enough to have spent the spring semester in London. In England, tipping is often frowned upon! One magazine article I read while there bemoaned the practice of tipping, blaming the influx of American tourists and American ideas about paying servers. Wait staff in the UK have apparently not been paid with tips 'figured in' as they are here, and the article complained that that was all changing. A tip for great service in London was 10%, with some leaving less or even nothing, depending the restaurant (here I always tip 20%, as I spent 6 summers during high school and college working in a restaurant).
bob k. Robert Keefer Psychology Department Mount St. Mary's College Emmitsburg, MD 21727 [speaking for myself] > -----Original Message----- > From: Scott C. Bates [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, August 08, 2003 11:54 AM > To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences > Subject: RE: Tips on Tipping > > Patrick O. Dolan pondered: > > > Huh. Interesting topic! When I lived in an area where tax was ~7-8%, > > people used the heuristic of "doubling the tax" and adjusting from > > there. I calculate 10%, double it, and go from there. As an aside, > > my experience over the past ~5 years is that 15% is a minimum and > > closer to 20% is more typical. Is that just the 25-35 set I spend > > time with? > > Interestingly, I've not come across any data on tipping by demographic > group (my mother is generally aghast at the 20% I generally put down). > What I've seen in the literature is that the relationship between > wait-staff performance and tip size (as proportion of bill) is a bit > blurry. For instance, while Lynn and Latane (1984) found tipping > unrelated to service quality (based on customer interviews), Bennett > (1983) found that accurate memory of cocktail waitresses (a measure of > performance, no?) led to higher customer satisfaction and tipping. > > In teaching large intro psychology, I often preface my discussion of > tipping by asking who has worked or currently works in a food service > industry; there are always plenty of student who have (or do). It turns > out that for people who work in the industry there ARE heuristics (word > choice?) for which customers tip and which don't: age is perceived to be > a big factor, as is size of the party (as these go up, tips go down). I > always end up asking the class what other factors they think could > possibly lead to differences: sex? ethnicity? language? dress? > > I have no data, but I've used this to introduce social-psych in my > intro-psych classes for some time and it ALWAYS generates good > discussion and allows me to pin useful material back to the examples > (stereotyping, prejudice, conformity (as resisted by Professor > Coleman!), social facilitation/interference, social norms, even group > polarization/groupthink and, if considered from the perspective of the > wait-staff, self-fulfilling prophecy). > > It hadn't occurred to me that this as useful (pedagogically) as it is: I > always just 'did it.' Does anybody think that this, as an exercise, is > worthy of a Journal Teaching of Psych submission? Would anybody like to > implement it, collect some data, and pursue this as a > project/publication? Let me know. > > Scott > > Lynn, M. and Latane, B. (1984). The psychology of restaurant > tipping. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 14(6), Nov-Dec 1984. pp. > 549-561. > > Bennett, H. L. (1983). Remembering drink orders: The memory skills > of cocktail waitresses. Human Learning: Journal of Practical Research & > Applications, 2(2), Apr-Jun 1983. pp. 157-169. > > > ---------------------------- > Scott C. Bates, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor > Department of Psychology > Utah State University > (435) 797 - 2975 > ---------------------------- > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
