ls and like public places, will have to
give more attention to seeing that employees are not mistreated by the
swaggering, blatant, selfish type of patron. This type abounds and has
been developed largely by the tipping custom, that is, the extremely
servile attitude assumed by servitors in order to stimulate tipping has
brought out the opposite quality of domineering pride in the patron.
THE SORE SPOT
No feeling so rankles in the mind as the sense of uncompensated labor.
The thought that patrons have gotten something for nothing leaves a sore
spot in the thought of servitors. And if they are employed in places
where the only compensation they receive is from the gratuities of
patrons, this soreness is incurable. The next time the patron appears he
will be made to feel the displeasure of the employee. Thus, in one
sense, it is the system that is wrong, a system which does an injustice
to both employee and patron.
Every employee has a fairly clear idea of his duties. Most employees
scrupulously refrain from doing more than the duties for which they are
paid expressly. Hence, when an employee over-steps this boundary he has
fixed in his own mind, he has the sense of uncompensated labor. He
feels a grudge either against the employer or the patron. He looks to
one or the other to supply the extra remuneration for the extra service.
As a consequence, personal service workers are nursing a grievance much
of the time. Their conversation and thoughts are about some patron who
has failed to compensate them, or has, in their judgment, inadequately
compensated them. They devote little time to thinking of a reform in the
system that would give them an adequate compensation from the employer
and do away entirely with the patron-to-employee form of compensation.
THE MARTYR
The tipping system is so established now that the individual who opposes
it must be prepared to play the role of martyr, whether employee or
patron. Employers who profit by the no-wage system dislike employees
with a degree of self-respect that makes them rebel at gratuities. Such
wages as are paid are so nominal that the employee cannot subsist upon
them alone. He either has to quit that line of work or enter it and
conform to the conventional methods.
In Chapter V the equity of tipping certain employees was considered and
the claim of other employees as to their rights will be considered
briefly here.
BAGGAGEMEN
Tipping men who call for
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