We have a transatlantic Wanker this week. His name is Chris Fehlinger, and he's a New York waiter. Fed up with people giving him stingy tips, he created the Shitty Tipper Database. Waiters and waitresses who feel they've been short-changed by their customers take the names off their credit cards and post the details on the internet.
Their idea of a Shitty Tip is anything less than 17% of the bill total. There are some poor saps listed in their database who were misguided enough to give only 15% - how mean of them. But leaving aside the question of what constitutes a Shitty Tip and what doesn't, the whole concept stinks.
OK, no doubt waiters and waitresses are poorly paid. Boo, shame. But why is that our problem, exactly? The GOS was a teacher once, and he was poorly paid but it never occurred to him to ask the children for tips to make up. When he goes to a restaurant he pays a very handsome price for the food he eats and the service he receives - when was the last time you ever found a restaurant that was actually cheap? So if the management are not paying their staff properly, why should the staff look to the GOS to make up the difference? They should be visiting their annoyance on the management, not on him!
Then there's the question of quality. If the GOS gets poor service or poor food, he certainly wouldn't tip - that's fairly obvious. Fehlinger says that as most places pool tips, not tipping a slapdash waiter means penalising the bartender, the busboys (whatever they are) and the other waiters as well. But if you follow that argument to its logical conclusion, you get some ... well, pretty strange results. For instance, if the goalie makes a blunder during a football match and the ball ends up in the net, would anyone suggest that the goal should be disallowed for fear of penalising the rest of the team? In 1939 did anyone suggest that although Hitler was a criminal lunatic we shouldn't fight him for fear of penalising the rest of the German nation? If you're part of a team, you benefit from the good actions of each member of the team, and suffer from each one's mistakes. Unless you're an American waiter, apparently, when the world owes you a living regardless.
If the Shitty Tipper Database existed in the UK, it would probably be illegal under the terms of the Data Protection Act, because they're taking information off the customer's credit card and publicising it without permission.
The database website does give Shitty Tippers the opportunity to contact them and "apologise". That's great - Fehlinger has invented an offence (giving a tip less than 17% of the bill), ripped confidential information from the customer's credit card, publicised it on the internet, and he expects the customer to apologise? If the GOS ever found himself on this list, his apology would be more likely to involve a baseball bat and some reconstructive surgery.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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