I’ve worked in the luxury hotel sector casually for about a week, in one of my many painful iterations of self, and have received a few tips as a concierge. When I’m sent on some errand to the less visible parts of the hotel, however, I’m struck by how unequal the procedure of tipping most probably is. There is the laundrette, where continuous hard work is taking place unseen by any of the clientele but is less “customer-facing”. There’s also the housekeeping, who surely don’t have the opportunity to mop up tips.
Tipping certainly has no place in a socialist economy, and even when workplaces share tips, they’re shared within the context of (from what I understand) one individual team. This means no tips for the various invisible people who make our world function, who we cosmeticise out of view. I’m obviously thinking symbolically of the hotel. Careworkers, however, must subsist largely on minimum wage, with no prospect of tips in sight. When I worked in care, for years, I did not receive one tip, and had to work long night shifts in order to elevate my income to something more in line with a “living wage”. There are also millions of underpaid workers with no prospect of being tipped – TAs, cleaners, etc. etc. They are barred from the dubious honour of being able to be tipped possibly because of not personally dealing with the wealthy, because of their inability to provide sustained banter (this could be because of a disability), or because they do not provide the temporary paroxysm of banter, but a more sustained and sensitive social service (dealing with the vulnerable, for example.)
In reality, though, the minimum wage will never be adjusted by particularly reckless governments in line with inflation, so that makes me appreciate the practice of tipping more. It’s one of the only examples of “trickle-down” economics, but a sort of presenteeist trickle-down. If tips were able to be shared equitably among everyone, then one imagines that society would be slightly more equal. Alternatively, the government could just intervene to make everything a little more equal.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/poems-sketched-upon-the-m60/sam-hickford//9781912412334
TBC
Squidditas 