颠覆传统，拒收小费？

颠覆传统，拒收小费？

“小费”制度在美国几乎被视为基本礼仪。而餐饮业风云人物 Danny Meyer宣布：将展开历史性的变革，在集团旗下的美国餐厅全面取消小费。因为小费导致不公平 —— 尽管贡献巨大，但厨师、预订服务员和洗碗工还是拿不到小费。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

bestow 赋予

aristocratic 贵族的

obnoxious 讨厌的

appraisal 评价

ornament 装饰

ineradicable 根深蒂固的

relic 遗迹

The demeaning custom of tipping is outdated （608words）

By Leslie Hook in San Francisco and Shannon Bond in New York

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“To Insure Promptitude”, printed upon a bowl in an 18th-century coffeehouse, may explain how “tip” came to stand for that small gift bestowed upon a servant by those being served. Tipping originated as a somewhat aristocratic custom, a reward for deference and decent service. Now influential restaurateur Danny Meyer has shocked his New York patrons by vowing to ban it. Henceforth, waiting staff will be paid greater hourly rates, but with no space on the bill for a gratuity.

This is welcome. It is strange how a tradition with such unAmerican origins should be so pervasive in that country. Indeed, a historian of tipping has noted 19th-century revulsion in the US towards a practice that smacked of a European obsession with class. But in 21st-century America, gratuities are big business. Economywide figures are hard to find —— tips slip under the taxman’s radar —— but about a decade ago tips were estimated to be worth $42bn. Using the same method, they may now amount to $100bn a year.

Tipping may have become a more accepted custom, but this does not exclude it from being an obnoxious one. The arguments against are numerous, while the case in its favour is weak. Setting aside the incentives provided by the tax system, defenders of tipping claim that the promise of a gratuity encourages staff to greater efforts. Customers benefit from high-quality service, and are best placed to tell if it is delivered. Hence their feelings of obligation and gratitude match perfectly the incentives of the establishment. Essentially, patrons are being delegated a quasi-managerial role, and presumed to perform it better than the real management.

But the link between tips and good service is weak. It turns out that what serving staff receive reflects more the size of the bill and a sense of social obligation. Rather than an act of employee-appraisal, patrons shell out partly as a display of virtue and to satisfy a need to “do their bit”.

This urge can be manipulated with embarrassing ease. Various studies find that tips increase when a waitress wears an ornament, learns cleverly how to touch the customer, or has the good fortune to be blonde. Tipping encourages staff to seek out good tippers, not provide smooth service.

It also introduces ineradicable uncertainty to many working lives. If business is slow or customers are stingy then serving staff bear the risk rather than the restaurant. Many will also find it humiliating to rely for their living on a temporary sense of noblesse oblige in a satisfied diner.

Managing a restaurant is also harder when the client-facing staff are remunerated by one method, those in the kitchen by another. Cooks are barred from being paid in tips and (in New York at least) have progressively lost out as restaurant bills have steadily risen. Ostensibly, the major reason behind Mr Meyer’s decision is concern about losing valuable kitchen staff.

The prices on the menu will rise where tipping is ended, but most of the public will do the maths and understand the logic. Even in America, this is a custom that is less loved than accepted and one positively loathed by those unused to it. Those new to the practice are in fact best placed to see tipping for what it really is: an awkward social imposition, depending on the guilt or embarrassment of one party to remunerate the labour of another.

An earlier pioneer of the no-tip restaurant provoked one customer into complaining: “How are we supposed to punish our server for mistakes?” It is hard to think of another industry built upon a premise so demeaning to all concerned. Time that this relic ended.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. What the tip stood for in the18th century?

a. noble blood

b. great reward

c. a small gift

d. status symbols

2. How about the link between tips and good service?

a. weak

b. strong

c. neglected

d. inexistent

3. What are encouraged by tipping for staff in this article?

a. to provide smooth service to be blonde

b. to seek out good tippers

c. to serve aristocratic custom only

d. to be waiter rather than cook

4. What is the major reason behind Mr. Meyer’s decision superficially?

a. improve work efficiency cut cost

b. put up price of food

c. retain valuable kitchen staff

d. attract customers without money

[1] 答案 c. a small gift

解释：期初小费是作为对服务者得体表现表达感谢的小礼物。

[2] 答案 a. weak

解释：文章第五段开头。

[3] 答案 b. to seek out good tippers

解释：小费制度促使服务人员寻找可能出高价的顾客，而非提供流畅的服务。

[4] 答案 c. retain valuable kitchen staff

解释：表面上看，是为了留住有价值的厨工，避免他们由于无法直接接触顾客获取小费而离开。