Tim Harford looks at evidence that men get served faster than women in coffee shops and wonders of female customers are being discriminated against. My guess would be that this is our old friend the double-standard, rather that specific discrimination on the part of baristas. Basically, men in coffee shops are more likely to act visibly impatient and demanding. And this, in part, is because aggression is generally seen as a good, socially-approved trait in a man and a bad, frowned-upon attribute in a woman.
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Coffee Shop Discrimination
15 Nov 2007 08:09 am
Comments (88)
Apart from the relative 'preference for wet-skinny-soy-macchiato with low-carb marshmallows', has anyone factored in the number of bags/wallets the average women carries? It probably takes a couple of seconds for the average woman to navigate her way through the various bags (within other bags) to find her cash/card.
But seriously who gives a s*** about 20 seconds?
The delays facing women were larger when the coffee shop staff was all-male and almost vanished when the servers were all-female.
You don't even have to read the academic work, just click on the link.
2cynicalbyhalf -- the 20-second difference is not only insignificant, it is also not possible. Have you heard of Adam Smith's invisible hand?
OK, so male customers are more likely to be aggressive towards male baristas, and so get served faster.
There's probably something to this but it's also probably more likely that the man is ordering a simple cup of coffee as opposed to a specialty drink. When I was working behind a food-service counter I just wanted to kick the orders out.
Shrike58, you have also failed to read the link. That was asked and answered in the freakin' article.
I know whenever I see a female heading my way needing help, I slow the fuck down, just to piss her off.
Was this study large enough to actually be statistically significant?
In college I sometimes (very rarely actually) went to a bar where after 7 (because it was really croweded) you basically HAD to be a woman to be served--especially an attractive one. Ones best strategy was to find a female friend to buy your beer. This was because this bar, for some reason, had almost only young male fratty bartenders--which explains the problem. Of course this doesn't prove the cafe example wrong, rather, it shows once again gender playing a role. Men may have had a hard time getting a beer, but women got treated as objects. lovely, eh?
Now John, that's actually a good question. So is whether or not it's a localized phenomenon to Boston...
Shrike58's comment was addressed only superficially in the article. The classification scheme was very crude -- a latte with XYZ and without ABC counted the same as an espresso, for example. Couldn't tell if black coffee counted the same as coffee with cream / sugar / etc.
If women tend to order more complicated beverages within the two general classes, then their wait times would be longer, but the orders' complexities would not be accounted for in the analysis.
It's the tipping. Women over the age of thirty DON'T tip. No exceptions. None. Become a barista; you'll see.
Clearly we need a baseline differential analysis of drink complexity by feature and then compare the curve for male and female patrons. Did they publish the raw data?
And this, in part, is because aggression is generally seen as a good, socially-approved trait in a man and a bad, frowned-upon attribute in a woman.
Forget about socially-approved, the men are all hopped up on testosterone. Almost all men have testosterone delivery devices implanted right in their bodies constantly dosing them.
1. No one bothers to write up a paper if they can't get a "statistically significant" result.
2. The paper acknowledges limitations in controlling for drink complexity ("unobserved heterogeneity").
3. If it's just the tipping, or just the drink complexity, it's bizarre that the gender of the coffee shop staff should matter.
Looking at the histograms, I'd say there might be an interaction between "fancy drinks" and gender. It looks like a small proportion of the women who ordered "fancy drinks" took an extremely long time to get served. Again, the numbers were small but they may have been influential enough to skew the results. I'd have to actually do the number-crunching to be sure, though.
It's the tipping. Women over the age of thirty DON'T tip.
I hardly tip at coffee shops either, and I'm a man over 30. Look, unless you're ordering 4 half-caf, half-skim mocha lattes with extra cinnamon on three of them and no cinnamon on 1, which also needs to be a regular with whole milk -- which I would never order in the first place -- there's little reason to tip a cashier much more than pocket change for my medium coffee.
If there is a double standard working against women in coffee bars, I have observed that it works in exactly the opposite fashion in actual bars.
During my partying days, it was almost impossible to get a male bartender's attention when there were women waiting to order drinks at the same time.
Is it sexist of me to argue that it balances out?
Is it really so surprising that people just respond to mens' requests faster? I would be kind of shocked if that were not the case, especially for the typically young employees of coffee shops who are used to ignoring their mothers.
In the case of bars, there's an obvious interest in favoring women; more women makes a more successful bar (the reason for ladies' nights and discounts). Maybe baristas really have observed that women don't tip ... but maybe they don't tip because they get paid less for the same work. Or, you know, because the baristas are 20 seconds slow with their drink.
Is a shorter wait preferable in all cases? In restaurants, waiters are expected to give diners a reasonable amount of time between ordering and serving, as well as between courses. I don't know if that is the case in coffee shops. But customers who want their drinks quickly could signal different expectations from those who prefer to sit around and gap for a while. And it may just be that women are more likely to want to sit around and gab and men just want their coffee and go.
John, the results were "statistically significant," although they seemed to be the only SS results in the paper. If they were data-mining this could be an issue; replicating the study would address the problem.
Actually, just looking at the tables, I'm not sure where people got the idea that the staff gender seemed to matter. Staff gender never had a statistically significant result, as far as I can see.
Go to the Slate article and download the PDF - there are answers for a lot of these questions.
As far as statistical significance is concerned, the size of the sample is plenty - 295 observations (this is not the same as saying it's necessarily valid). And the difference between "fancy" and "non-fancy" drinks is taken as extremely important in the article itself.
Figure 1 - "Wait Times by Gender and Order Type" - is very illuminating. It shows time distributions that match up fairly closely, except for "fat tails" on the extreme right (long wait time) in both of the charts "female" charts.
This means a couple of things: 1. a comparison of medians would show much closer results than a comparison of the means, and
2. a few jerk male baristas, jerk female customers, or jerk observers could be throwing the whole thing off (which goes back to the sample size question).
Note that the tallest bar in that whole Figure is showing that the highest proportion of women get their non-fancy drinks in the fastest time. Sure, they could be the ones served by all-female staffs... but the picture that shows in the data is definitely more complicated than "any given female will walk into any given coffee shop, order any given drink, and it will take 20 seconds longer."
What do I really make of it overall? I don't really know. I think they really did a good job of exploring the obvious potential problems with their data. I'd just really like to know a lot more about those outliers. Oh yeah, and I'd really, really like to have blind observations, or even observations by people who weren't specifically doing it for a class on discrimination.
More study is needed!
You tip when ordering coffee? Do you tip when the Blockbuster guy rings up your DVD also?
Al, have you ever been to a coffee shop? I can only name one (DC's Tryst) in which table service is the norm. The standard coffee-shop procedure is to go to the counter, order a drink, and then bring it to your table.
Maybe it's because men make up their minds more quickly.
Tyro, that's the Starbucks standard, but it wasn't clear to me that that was the case with respect to the observed coffee shops.
This paper comes from an undergraduate seminar at Middlebury College taught by an assistant professor. It is unpublished and not likely to be published. As some have pointed out elsewhere, it is rather less than rigorous in its methodology and design, and that's apparent as you read it (I did). None of that is a knock on the students or the professor, who I imagine didn't expect this sort of attention for a college term paper.
It's hard to tell whether this says more about the limits of social science or the media's relentless and uniformed search for the meaningless story of the day.
Come to think of it, it's not hard at all.
Tyro's perspective, while understandable, is nicely suggestive of the more basic issues at play. Tyro thinks tipping is a mere gratuity proportional to effort rendered and price of drink. But for the average barista size of tip is a secondary concern. What is most valued, and what the tip confers, somewhat regardless of size, is the *respect* of the served for the server. Tipping is a gesture, a commitment to equality, a means of leveling--an emotional balm for small indignity that is serving others. Size matters less than the thing itself.
It's difficult for someone who hasn't served coffee, or other food things, to understand the complex of resentments and antagonisms that the average barista brings to every shift. But consider: Coffee shops cater to a relatively elite clientelle. As a barista, I am a college educated person caterring to other college educated people. I am a peer--and yet I'm not. Inwardly I know my own worth--that fundamentally I'm of the same status as those I'm serving, that I could be one of them but for whatever reason am not--but outwardly I am miniscule. I have no way of convincingly signaling to the professional across the counter our essential equality; I'm thoroughly debased.
But tipping is a signal, from the professional to the server, that peership is recognized. And it's this act of conciliatory giving--or giving up--that the barista really values, not money per se. Of course, the amount isn't trivial--ten cents on a 6 dollar order, or worse, a fucking euro (as I was once offered) is more disrespectful than nothing at all. But proportionality is not fixed, and the proper amount is informally decided--we all *know* how much we should give.
With all of this in mind we can see what's deficient in Matt's explanation. An aggressive male (or female) has, in the process of ordering, already subtly made clear his position of superiority. The barista notices and responds accordingly--slowing down, fucking up the order, acting sullen. The signal is clear--and that's that. If women are served more slowly than men, and that seems likely, it's because women, by their gestures, clothes and accoutrements, (and my own misogynistic sensitivity to female status) more quickly establish and affirm, by their very presence, their status superiority. Chic women spark resentment. And, as I said above, they virtually never tip. They merely ingest their luxuries, casually and carelessly, and walk away, leaving the barista stewing in his juices. Repeat enough times and the barista develops a reflex. Thus the trend is set.
I couldn't find this in the paper, but something tells me if the gap "nearly vanishes" when it is all female baristas, I wonder if the more telling variable isn't gender, but attractiveness. (The "double standard" argument is less compelling when the thing changes based on the gender of the barista.)
For instance, what if the service time for males is X seconds. The service time for attractive females is X-10 seconds- attractive females are getting served quicker than males. The service time for not attractive females is X+30 seconds, 30 seconds more than males.
As you can see, the average service for females is +20 seconds, but that stat, while true, does violence to the actual dynamic at play.
People have made excellent points about "women at bars", but again, I wonder if it is attractiveness and not femaleness that is the more telling variable on your service. Perhaps women get quicker service in bars, but I'd be willing to bet you a drink that attractive women get even quicker than average service...
I wonder if they controlled for this little-known fact: anyone who regularly goes to a coffee shop and orders something other than plain old coffee is not, actually, a man.
Also, I've been a waiter and a bartender, and I think this is bullshit:
"But for the average barista size of tip is a secondary concern. What is most valued, and what the tip confers, somewhat regardless of size, is the *respect* of the served for the server. Tipping is a gesture, a commitment to equality, a means of leveling--an emotional balm for small indignity that is serving others. Size matters less than the thing itself."
Servers are people. They understand that it takes a lot more skill and effort to make a ridiculous half-caf vanilla latte thing than it does to pour a cup of coffee. Therefore, they expect a tip for the latte and not for the coffee. Tips aren't about "respect." They're about money.
Could the "Oh wait" factor account for some of the difference? I'm thinking of the situation, personally overheard on more than one occasion, which occurs when after placing his or her order with the cashier, the customer makes a last-minute request to the barista as the latter is preparing the order. "Oh wait! Could you add just a little more skim milk?" That sort of thing. Last-minute requests would slow down the process, and it would not surprise me in the least if women are more likely to make them.
Why would people assume that attractive women would be served more quickly by men? If the man were to dawdle, he'd have more time to chat her up.
Mark, what a great point! May I now send you some money in recongition of our inherent equality and peership?
I think you'd have to rate both the attractiveness of the female customer being served and the female waitress in order to account for all the variables. And you'd need pictures for the purposes of objective peer review.
Too many steves,
Tips are about money. But a waiter stiffed on a tip--the most egregious offense--isn't struck only by the prospect of a few less dollars at the end of the night. More saliently, he feels, "how could a person do that" and "why did he do it to me". The slight is personal; you take it personally (*it's a slight*). It grates all out of proportion to the economic loss. Money matters, not just because it has purchasing power, but because it's a signal--and in the context of service, tip money primarily signals respect.
I'm a barista. I don't sweat it when a person doesn't tip on a cup of coffee (as I said above, we all know how much we should give). But when a person does I feel a kind of gladness that doesn't approximate to the real value of a couple of dimes. Whether this is rational or not is a seperate question.
Well that's dumb Barbar because we're not in currently in a server/served relationship. Don't be dumb.
Mark, I worked at a college book store all through college. Usually what happened was someone would give me their schedule, and I'd run around the store getting all their books for them. This was more time consuming and undignified than just making a cup of coffee, but I never expected a tip, least of all out of a sign of "respect".
In many countries tip are a sign of disrespect, that the served believes himself to be superior to the server.
And of course every job involves a served/server relationship.
Mark, unlike waiters and bartenders, for cashiers/baristas, tips are truly in the category of "gratuity" -- not part and parcel of your salary, but simply a gift. And, in part, a bribe for not becoming known as "that jerk with the obnoxiously complicated coffee orders."
Al, presumably this is about standard coffee shops that you call the "starbucks standard."
Seriously, outside of SoHo and Tryst, I don't think I've ever been to a place I would term a "coffee shop" where table service was the norm. The exception would be places normally referred to as "diners."
mad6798,
You never expected to get tipped because in the bookstore trade there is no custom of tipping. Not expecting a tip, you weren't offended when tips were not forthcoming.
Which leads me to Barbar. Respect is in large part a matter of upholding good customs and delivering what's expected. If in another tradition a tip is *not* what's expected, then tipping in that situation would raise eyebrows.
Tyro,
Objectively you're correct. A tip is a gratuity. But to deny the social meaning and psychological import of the process, as a matter of custom, seems crazy to me.
I'm not sure why this is so controversial. Out of custom and practice we develop expectations and meanings. Whether these developments are rational or not is a seperate question.
Yes but I would also never expect to tip someone at McDonald's, or someone making a cup of coffee.
You never expected to get tipped because in the bookstore trade there is no custom of tipping.
And there's no custom of tipping at a coffee shop either, outside of when one requires some level of special attention-- and even then, it's more of a bribe to ensure they don't screw up your order or spit in your cup out of frustration.
Placing a "tip cup" by the cash register does not create a "custom of tipping."
The study says:
In order to randomize the sample of observed customers, enumerators were instructed to follow a single customer from the time she walked in the door until the time she received her order and, once the observation was completed, to select the next customr who walked in the door. The enumerator noted the customer’s gender, estimated age range (less than 25, 26 to 40, or over 40), and categorized his or her race as white, black, or other (Asian or indeterminate non-white).
It seems to me that this methodology ignores the potential influence of customer groupings on wait times. Consider what might happen if women are more likely to patronize coffee shops in groups of two or more and men are more likely to patronize coffee shops alone (which, in my anecdotal experience, seems at least plausible). Because he is more likely to be alone, a man coming through the door of a coffee shop will be more likely to reach the front of whatever line exists in the fastest possible time. A woman coming through the door, who is more likely to be part of a group, may have to wait for some or all of her companions in addition to the prevailing line.
There may be other theories as well, but as I read the study, I don't think they completely isolated the staff response time from other factors . . . so the evidence for discrimination is fairly weak.
If you look at the actual paper itself,
http://www.middlebury.edu/services/econ/repec/mdl/ancoec/0711.pdf
they basically found that they wasted their time...but wanted to justify that waste of time by trying to get their study published. I'm in research...I know how that goes.
One of the partially discussed caveats in this paper is the potential bias for drink order "fanciness". In fact, once included as a control in their model, they nearly lose their significance and when controlling for the line length, their significance is totally lost (models 5 and 6). A Pearson's Chi-square test on their data shows a significant difference in how fancy an order was in relation to the gender too (p
Without having the actual data that generated their statistics, I can't be certain, but I'd bet a good regression analysis would show little to no difference in their wait curves (Fig 1).
Finally, especially given that their mean/SD for wait times overall was like 99s per order, give or take 59s. That gives 68% of the orders being between 40 and 158 seconds...and then you're going to quibble over 20 seconds when the average order for anyone could vary by nearly 2 minutes? It's not like their data was fully bimodal (with all male orders equating for the 40s data and all female orders equating for the 160s data to give the mean/SD of 100 +/- 60).
Whoops, the p-value for the Pearson's Chi Square was p
Ed, you can't use the "less than" symbol in html . . . everything after it will be assumed to be a formatting code.
I think you're all missing the key graph here:
The delays facing women were larger when the coffee shop staff was all-male and almost vanished when the servers were all-female.
It isn't about coffee shops belittling women or male customers acting more aggressively or who is the better tipper.
Male baristas just like spending more time with women.
Thanks. I'm having a tough time here. If anyone cares, the p-value was less than .001, aka statistically significant.
I can rock the SAS, but html not so much.
"And there's no custom of tipping at a coffee shop either, outside of when one requires some level of special attention-- and even then, it's more of a bribe to ensure they don't screw up your order or spit in your cup out of frustration."
Tyro,
I could make two responses: 1) Go to twenty coffee shops not located in Barnes and Noble and Borders and see whether or not they have tip jars. If twenty out of twenty do, you may be forced to conclude that there is in coffee service a custom of tipping.
2) If you're forced to tip a person "so that they don't screw up your order" ask yourself why. Why would a person sabatoge your order if they weren't tipped. Is it because they're expecting to be tipped? Is expectation a product of custom? Do you know what custom means?
Mark,
Sure there are tip jars, but what percentage of people are putting spare change in there? At the coffee shops I've been to, my guess would be less than 10%. And those who do tip are typically friendly and conversational with the staff - they aren't tipping in order to get out of the door faster.
In addition to the points southpaw and Ed make, I think there was a fundamental flaw to the study. Following a customer from the time they walk through the door to the time they get their order adds too many variables to the equation (unless the baristas are letting men skip ahead in line, which would be pretty flagrant discrimination).
What they should have done was time the transaction from the moment the customer becomes "next" in line to the time the order is complete. Even better, time how long it takes for any customer to get a specific drink.
From the authors of the study (students in an undergraduate seminar) and it's description as a "Middlebury Economics Discussion Paper", my guess is this study was meant to be instructive - have the students design an experiment, analyze the methodology and see if it was satisfactory to answer the question posed. Given that they can't make a firm conclusion themselves, it wasn't.
Seriously, outside of SoHo and Tryst, I don't think I've ever been to a place I would term a "coffee shop" where table service was the norm.
And Chelsea, apparently. Seriously, the place around the corner from me when I lived in Chelsea would always bring the order to you. Of course, ever since I got a super-automatic espresso maker, I frequent coffee shops a lot less.
So I take your point.
The exception would be places normally referred to as "diners."
Which would include, I guess The Coffee Shop.
Can you use escape characters in the comments here? This should be a less than: < if it did, it was done by typing < .
And Mark, cry me a river. Some of us have technical degrees and don't consider English majors/lazy fucks our peers.
The hypothesis floated up there somewhere that males get served faster because they are more aggressive seems silly. What do they do, lean over the top of the espresso machine and growl at the barista, "I need that drink PRONTO, motherfucker!"
I worked in coffee shops for 3 years and go to them all the time and cannot report any such anecdote. If anything, women tend to be pushier, or at least more condescending, when ordering.
I thank anonymous for giving me the opportunity to clarify my point--which, by the way, is not that you should tip a cup of coffee (my feeling: it's up to you). As a barista, I'm an "english major/lazy fuck". Or, probably so most people think. Thus the resentment which is sort of the default complex among many baristas (and probably other service industry types). The original question is why women are served less well than men. My suggestion is that women, for whatever reason (misogony, demeaner, sunglasses, whatever) more often inflame barista resentment and thus are served more slowly/incompetently/spitefully. As for aggressive men--contra Matt, they inflame resentment too and suffer for it as a consequence.
My point about tipping is that is serves to alleviate the resentment/status tension that comes into play in certain service relationships. The economic value of the tip is somewhat secondary.
My point about tipping is that is serves to alleviate the resentment/status tension that comes into play in certain service relationships.
So you start off feeling resentful of a perceived status gap, and then are bought off / mollified when the higher-status person deigns to give you some extra money that they won't miss -- a gesture that itself reinforces the status gap? Hm.
My own experience was that it was in fact all about the economics. Many baristas, like waitstaff, get paid crap (at least in the US) and tips are a significant part of the income.
I suppose tipping could be considered an act of noblesse oblige. But as a matter of custom, in a society with egalitarian values, I think tipping is a gesture of respect--or more precisely, not tipping is a sure sign of disrespect. The waitress who is stiffed her tip isn't upset because the customer refused to "buy her off"; she's upset, most acutely, because she feels she's been slighted--and rightly so.
Placing a "tip cup" by the cash register does not create a "custom of tipping."
At pretty much all the coffee shops I frequent there's a pretty clear custom of tipping. Maybe this is a regional thing (I'm in Seattle).
While I'm agnostic on his gender analysis, Mark's general views on tipping and respect seem completely and totally accurate and uncontroversial to me. It's rather odd that they're generating such resistance.
As a public law librarian, I would be insulted if the patrons I work with offers a tip.* And it's precisely because it implies that we are not on equal footing. Now, I don't pretend to be equal to Judges/Attorneys, but we also serve large portion of pro se/self-representing litigants.
Personally, I loathe the tipping culture of U.S. and have more fun travel to counties where it's not the norm. Not surprisingly, the services are much better in Japan, most EU county, Australia, etc.
As a data point, I am 30ish male. If I have to pre-paid for my food/drink at counter, I don't tip, as I am doing majority of the grunt work.
*However, if my regular patrons feel like to give boxes of chocolates around this holiday season, I am all for it.
This all reminds me of a study that was done to justify building a new elevator in the King County (Washington) Administration Building.
The study found that most people were perfectly happy to wait 50 seconds for an elevator, but when the second hand ticked over 59 the angry muttering began. Even worse, people were already frequently waiting 63 seconds for elevators in this building! (Cue angry mobs.)
Yea verily, and so it came to pass that a new elevator was built and benign peace descended on our county administration.
But I'm here to tell you, if waiting another twenty seconds really gets your goat, you're drinking too much coffee already.
Oh, and, Mark: if you think receiving a gratuity for behaving in a servile manner makes you my equal...you're not my equal.
"if you think receiving a gratuity for behaving in a servile manner makes you my equal...you're not my equal."
What do you mean by "servile manner"?
Wow, where's all this hostility for tipping coming from.
Tipping is an expected part of the compensation for some jobs (particularly in the food-service business). We all know this and we pay for services rendered.
That doesn't mean the waiter or barista is subservient any more than my plumber becomes subservient when I hand him a check for fixing my kitchen sink.
"My own experience was that it was in fact all about the economics. Many baristas, like waitstaff, get paid crap (at least in the US) and tips are a significant part of the income."
My wife used to be a Starbucks barista in college, and tips were only a small portion of her income. Waitstaff get paid like crap because we tip them which supplements their income. Starbucks baristas get paid like crap because they are easy to replace.
God save us from barristas like Mark - people like you just make life incredibly difficult and needlessly annoying. I don't care about your perceived resentment/status tension, it's ridiculous, it's in your head, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I used to go to this coffee shop every day on my way to work for years and after a while they'd ask me if I wanted "the usual" alternatively with or without a pain au chocolat, they'd make a remark if I was late or looking a bit unkempt or ask why I hadn't been there for a while when I had gone on holidays. And sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday when it was quieter we'd exchange a few friendly words. Never ever was there even a hint of status anxiety or resentment - it was casual and friendly and that was that.
I don't give people reason to feel bad and if I sense such stuff (that peculiar mixture of servility, snobbery and resentment) in the people pouring me a coffee or a drink, I immediately return the favour by not going there anymore.
I'm not against tipping. I tip waiters. I tip barbers. I tip valets. I tip hotel maids. I tip the super in my building at Christmas. I don't tip someone who stands at a counter and makes a cup of coffee. I also don't tip the guy at subway that makes a sandwich.
Well, novakant, I have congenial relations with most of the regulars--greetings, some conversation, laughter (and then...a tip). Naturally, tensions fade as the service becomes something personal.
Please note that I'm not defending anything, just confessing. These are tendencies I try to mitigate (and I'm looking for other work), but they exist. And they exist among customers as well. See, for example, anonymous and serial catowner above.
anonymous is an asshole, one encounters them occasionally in life (I used to take and subsequently teach sailing lessons and you could be sure that out of the 10-15 people in the group there was always one asshole) and I'd say you'd be well within your rights to treat him with a certain amount of resentment. The problem in your case seems to be that you are making it difficult for perfectly average or even nice people who just want to buy a cup of coffee to establish some sort of rapport. As I said above, if I felt I was being treated with underlying resentment I wouldn't be coming back and there would be no chance to establish a more personal relationship. I don't think you're an asshole, I just think you're massively overcomplicating things with the whole social status and tipping complex and thus creating the tensions that wouldn't otherwise exist with the vast majority of customers. Or maybe it's just not your thing.
Maybe this is a regional thing. Is it normal to tip for coffee on the East Coast? I've never seen anyone do it in California. Yeah, there's always a tip jar out with a few bucks in it, but I always assumed the baristas put that money in themselves, to "prime the pump," like the winos on the street corner do.
I'm having a hard time digesting the idea of pervasive male coffee-house aggression. It sounds like an SNL sketch.
As for the tipping conversation:
Mark, you're a pussy giving a pussy's confession. For most young people in America, working shit-taking food-service jobs is a rite of passage, a stop-over on the way to a more lucrative, shit-taking office job. The job and the customers are things to be endured and resented.
When I served I hated customers who wanted to "make a connection," just like I now hate waiters who feel the need to make service "something personal." It's not personal, it's a transaction -- a passing in the night. The only time a conversation should be struck is when you have a chance of getting laid.
re: chance of getting laid.
As a commenter said above, this is a highly plausible explanation for the time-discrepancy. When I was a waiter, I spent way more time at a table if it had a hot girl. When I worked at a theater, it was girls, not guys, who got in for free. When I worked at Blockbuster, the same rule applied regarding who I chatted up.
This is a universal phenomenon, methinks.
I am so glad I associate with simple people who don't have all that education like Mark does.
Mark, when you are serving people, you are acting in a servile manner.
I happen to be a nurse. We serve people. We wipe their bottoms and hold urinals for them. We do not accept tips and we treat them all alike no matter what they think of us. Some people are quite snooty and some people are quite humble, but that has nothing to do with how we do our jobs.
Your ability to make a judgement about me, when in fact you know nothing about me, shows that you probably should be searching for another job. Good luck with that.
Unless the baristas are gay. If that's the case, maybe they automatically revert to quick in-and-out behavior when they have a male customer.
I'm kidding, of course.
For most young people in America, working shit-taking food-service jobs is a rite of passage, a stop-over on the way to a more lucrative, shit-taking office job. The job and the customers are things to be endured and resented.
And exactly that attitude is ruining a whole segment of the gastro industry. God, how I hate it when waiters exude the feeling that they're on to higher things, that what they're doing is beneath them and that they really shouldn't be there. What is wrong with taking a break from studying for a couple of hours, why not have a good time while doing it, there are plenty of aspiring young people who manage to do just that and it's a relief for everybody involved. The best places, though, are those were they employ people who like to be waiters, who don't want to be anything else but a waiter and take a certain pride in their profession. Should you ever come to Berlin go here to see what I mean. I wish I could find a place like that in London.
Serial Catowner:
I really don't know what the fuck you're talking about or how it relates to anything I've said.
But as for this:
"Mark, when you are serving people, you are acting in a servile manner."
Not really. Here's a dictionary definition:
"slavishly submissive or obsequious; fawning: servile flatterers."
Is this what you do?
As a former barista, I agree that tipping is more about the respect than the money. However, I think it has less to to with ameliorating the sting of the subservient relationship, and more to do with an internalized snobbishness on the part of the barista - tipping is a marker that one is more like a waiter than like a fast food worker.
It's not pretty, but there you go.
"For most young people in America, working shit-taking food-service jobs is a rite of passage, a stop-over on the way to a more lucrative, shit-taking office job. The job and the customers are things to be endured and resented."
Novakant laments the prevelance of this attitude among servers. But its just as common to the customers, and with insidious effect. For both actors it serves as an excuse to treat the other badly.
But of course this attitude is merely a by-product of a competitive capitalist culture, where worth is commensurate with status, judged by acquisition. Of course any mildly self-esteeming person would disavow lowly food service as a career, whatever their actual prospects--to do otherwise is to admit your degeneracy.
When people are in positions of servitude, it's often necessary to compensate for lowliness by adopting certain kinds of poses (sincerely or not), such as humility, charity and givingness, as a matter of preserving social and self-respect. A good example is the caretaker--poorly paid but virtuous in spirit. The problem with food service is that in most cases such poses cannot apply. I cannot as a barista argue for intrinsic worth. As I've emphasized above I serve luxury goods--some of them quite ludicrous--to a generally elite class. Everything is dispensible and nothing missed; the whole things smacks of frivolity. And meanwhile the country is falling apart.
But I agree with novakant on this: Waitering at least has a tradition and can be practiced artistically. We could close the coffee shops tomorrow and nothing would really be missed. But restraunteering really is a fact of the good life, and waiters play an esteemed role in preserving this hallowed custom.
"But as a matter of custom, in a society with egalitarian values, I think tipping is a gesture of respect..."
I've gotta be honest here: I don't feel any particular respect towards the person who makes me a cup of coffee (or tea). It's your job. You get paid for it. I'm not going in there to show peerage or respect to some guy I don't know and have no inclination to know as he completes a one minute function for which he's being compensated. I just want my cup of tea. The idea that you're doing something for which you have earned some deep and abiding respect is silly; I think it comes from the same odd mentality that proposes menial everyday functions are heroism as much as policing or military work.
Why are we so obsessed with finding a way to explain it away without invoking discrimination? We already know that discrimination against women is very common from many studies involving many things besides coffee shops. Sure, there could be other explanations of why women get slower service, but subtle discrimination seems fairly parsimonious to me. Or are we just speculating on more complex causation chains because it's more fun as an intellectual exercise?
One of the things I've noticed about becoming an old fart is that when I was Matt's age, "aggressive" didn't really have any positive connotations at all, even for linebackers or medical treatments.
I'll add my rationale for why the study was balderdash: neither baristas nor coffee-shop customers are necessarily attempting to produce all coffee orders at maximum speed. There are many utilities that either can extract from the transaction: the satisfaction of making a drink well/getting a well made drink, brief conversation, the frequently-mentioned special request, taking a break from work, etc. Why whould we assess this transaction as if it is unidimensional when it transparently is not?
Furthermore, as southpaw mentioned, the possibility that women might come in together and order/pay separately (I noted that the authors eliminated people who ordered in a group) could explain some of the variance. I can tell you from restaurant experience in Boston that men are VASTLY more likely than women to arrive as a party of one. I don't know why this is, but it would skew data unless tracked very carefully.
To add to the service/tipping discussion, I'll point out that the job of a waiter is qualitatively different from the job of a barista. A barista is like a cook - he or she produces a food product. A waiter is like a servant - you ask him or her for things and he or she has to go fetch them. He or she WAITS so you don't have to - when the food is ready, he brings it to you in your chair, where you can be reading/talking/sleeping/whatever you want, so that you don't have to stand around. In a coffeeshop, on the other hand, the customer stands and WAITS for the barista to produce the product that he or she has paid fair market price for.
Why would I tip someone who's making me something to consume? Why wouldn't we just add the cost of their labor into the cost of the product? Starbucks uses the absurd profits from 4.00 coffees to pay their baristas well over minimum wage - not the same as a deli waiter, who gets paid 2 bucks an hour and has to keep walking over to pour you more coffee.
I'll add my rationale for why the study was balderdash: neither baristas nor coffee-shop customers are necessarily attempting to produce all coffee orders at maximum speed. There are many utilities that either can extract from the transaction: the satisfaction of making a drink well/getting a well made drink, brief conversation, the frequently-mentioned special request, taking a break from work, etc. Why whould we assess this transaction as if it is unidimensional when it transparently is not?
Furthermore, as southpaw mentioned, the possibility that women might come in together and order/pay separately (I noted that the authors eliminated people who ordered in a group) could explain some of the variance. I can tell you from restaurant experience in Boston that men are VASTLY more likely than women to arrive as a party of one. I don't know why this is, but it would skew data unless tracked very carefully.
To add to the service/tipping discussion, I'll point out that the job of a waiter is qualitatively different from the job of a barista. A barista is like a cook - he or she produces a food product. A waiter is like a servant - you ask him or her for things and he or she has to go fetch them. He or she WAITS so you don't have to - when the food is ready, he brings it to you in your chair, where you can be reading/talking/sleeping/whatever you want, so that you don't have to stand around. In a coffeeshop, on the other hand, the customer stands and WAITS for the barista to produce the product that he or she has paid fair market price for.
Why would I tip someone who's making me something to consume? Why wouldn't we just add the cost of their labor into the cost of the product? Starbucks uses the absurd profits from 4.00 coffees to pay their baristas well over minimum wage - not the same as a deli waiter, who gets paid 2 bucks an hour and has to keep walking over to pour you more coffee.
Mark -- it's a freaking job. Every job in the world involves serving somebody else, generally multiple people.
Tipping = less payroll tax for employers.
When I was in college I worked behind the counter at an on-campus eatery, and we had a tip jar. If you felt like tipping, great. If not, there was no expectation to tip, and none of this class resentment stuff.
The dividing line seems to be standing at a counter vs. waiting at a table. If you stand at a counter and hand me stuff, the tip is optional. If I sit at a table, the tip is expected.
When you think about it, the existence of a tip jar correlates pretty well with whether the tip is optional or expected. Restaurants with table service don't need tip jars.
Tipping is a gesture, a commitment to equality, a means of leveling--an emotional balm for small indignity that is serving others.
Is it bollocks. Tipping is, and has always been, a cultural designator of class superiority: it's what betters give to lessers for services rendered. You can rationalise it as a mark of 'peership', but that just means you're in denial.
The waitress who is stiffed her tip isn't upset because the customer refused to "buy her off"; she's upset, most acutely, because she feels she's been slighted--and rightly so.
No, she's upset because she's paid sub-minimum wage and being stiffed means she doesn't get as much money. In saner cultures, where there's less reliance upon enforced pseudo-charity, you don't get the resentment.
I like the Italian model: standing at the bar for quick service, table for something more leisured. And no moral blackmail over tipping, especially at the bar, since the up-front pricing is already differentiated for bar and table service.
Oh, and the idea of tipping before you consume something? That really is protection money.
Comments closed November 29, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
The common wisdom at the coffeehouse I ran was that men tipped much better than women.
Posted by Kelly Coyle | November 15, 2007 8:33 AM