As a foreigner, I have been introduced to many new and different concepts during my time in America. Although I believe one of the most confusing and stupid of those ought to be the tipping system. 

The tipping system is just too inconsistent. Although the tipping system encourages a higher quality of work, the customer could easily just decide not to tip and screw up some waiter or waitress’s day. 

Consumers are expected to pay 20% of their total purchase as a tip, which seems absurd to me. Companies in general have stuck their employees’ salaries onto general consumers via tipping, and this allows them to abuse the system and get out of paying their employees an actual bloody wage. 

Whilst I have done a great deal of complaining about the tipping system, I don’t think it should be entirely removed. As I’ve said before, the tipping system provides incentive to the workers to give high-quality service. Although, the expectation for tipping should be little to none, and the salaries of workers should be much higher to accommodate for the smaller tips.

IN THE HALLS:

“While I do think it is nice to have some form of people getting paid for the quality of their work, or how well they treat people in the service industry, it’d be nice if there was a little bit more consistency.” – computer science teacher Tanner Crow

“I think it could be better. It doesn’t work well because it’s unreliable, and I think the employees should be paid more and not have to rely on tips.” – honors English language arts student teacher Maryn Brown