September 3, 2026 • 42 mins
While tipping is widely accepted (and expected) in the United States today, this wasn't always the case. In the second part of this special two-part series, Ben, Noel, and Max learn how scheming corporations used tipping as a way to exploit newly-freed employees... and how the anti-tipping movement became prevalent enough to end up as part of Presidential campaigns.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you, as always, so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it. For the man,
the myth, the legend, our super producer, Max 20% or better, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
That was sort of like the roar of the crowd,
but also the satisfying sound of taking a sip of
an ice cold beverage served to you.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
By a lovely human who you reward for their service.
Reward is the wrong word. It's so complicated. It's so complicated.
That's Noel Brown. I've been bullied.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
This is part two of an exploration on the practice
of tipping, which has baffled, fascinated people. irritated, and saved
so many folks here in the United States. And Noel,
as you, Max, and I were discussing at the very
(01:21):
end of our first episode on this, tipping in the
United States comes from a very problematic place.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
It sure does. Are we talking about the racist part?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
We have to talk about the races part. We have
to introduce– Max, Nolan, I don't know what kind of
sound cue you're going to do here, but I know
it's going to be perfect because you're a genius. We
have to introduce the Pullman Palace Car Company founded by
a guy named George Mortimer Pullman Jr. In the late 1800s. And, Noel,
(02:09):
these dudes were super dupes, fancy. They made high-end luxury
cars for railroads.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Carriages, right? Carriages, yeah, just so.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Also, can we bring back the name Mortimer and Poindexter, please?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I like a Mortimer. I like a Mortimer.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Not a Poindexter so much?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I point Dexter. I haven't met one personally, but if
I met, cause they're not around, I'm saying bring it back.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
But if I know that the three of us do
our best to be cool, empathetic, hang. So if we
met a point Dexter and they had the cojones to say, uh,
I am, they call me point Dexter. I would have
so much respect. And Max is throwing his hand up here.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I would mock them relentlessly. Cause I'm a bad guy.
I'm kidding. I wouldn't do that. Do you know a Poindexter, Max?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Oh, I was going to just jump in. There is
a former NBA player by the name of Quincy Poindexter.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Now, as a last name, it's acceptable and it's around,
but as a first name.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
But what about his first name's Quincy? Quincy Poindexter. And
he is in the news because he just like recently,
like this week, was hired as the new G League
head coach of the Chicago Bulls. He's also six foot seven.
So I'm not going to make fun of his name
to his face.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
No, no.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I mean, you couldn't even see his face. It would
be towering above you.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
And because this is an audio-only podcast, people don't know
what I look like, so I won't say it on air.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Well, congratulations to anybody with the cargo to say my
name is Poindexter with your chest. You know what I mean?
I have such respect for that. I also am fascinated
to hear what the short version of your name is.
Like if you're a Max Jamin, an old Jamin, or
(03:56):
a Benjamin, you usually go with something shorter. So it's
just Dexter, right?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Is Dexter short for Poindexter?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
In some cases, it must be statistically.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I guess it's got to be.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
It must be.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Okay. So back to the Pullman Palace Car Company and
George Mortimer Pullman in the late 1800s. Big time, fancy schmancy,
what we might call bespoke carriages for, you know, highfalutin
passengers traveling by rail. And I know that we must.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Have talked about this aspect of tipping or at least
the railroad system either on Ridiculous History in some other
context or on stuff they don't want you to know,
our sister show. But this company hired thousands of black
men to essentially attend to the passengers. on these fancy
(04:47):
railway lines. And they were called porters. There were sleeping cars.
They would attend to the guests or the passengers, move
around their luggage, cargo, all of that kind of stuff.
It was not easy work, but they were kind of,
weren't they sort of more, like a porter was almost
kind of like a valet?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Like it was an upstairs job, right?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It wasn't like they were down shoveling the coal or
like working, you know, Like bag tossers on an airline.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
These folks were interacting with the public. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Often there would be public interaction. I do appreciate that upstairs,
downstairs idea here. These folks are.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Because they wear little suits. They make them wear little outfits, right?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yes. And they had to pay for that on their own.
Their uniforms were not provided by the company. And like
you said, this is very physically demanding work. On top
of this, you have no rights as an employee. You
are going to suffer intense racial discrimination when you run
(05:55):
into not just customers but your management. And this is
so messed up. Okay, so our buddy or someone's buddy,
George Pullman, he– is on record multiple times saying he
specifically sought out formerly enslaved people to do this Porter
(06:18):
job because he believed in some very nasty eugenics and
social Darwinism. He said these folks are already conditioned to subservience,
to working long hours without rest or a past, and
they will obey white authorities. Pretty gross stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, man. Yeah, this notion of them being particularly suited
for this level of treatment and acceptance of, let's just
call it what it is, a slave wage. I mean,
a slave wage would be free, but it's still about
as low as it goes.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Next to free.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
And because these United States are, if imperfect, definitely aspirational, right,
and have some good ideas— We do want to acknowledge
that Pullman's villainous practices, which we're about to get into,
were so insanely out of the Overton window that he motivated.
(07:24):
We'll go to Max with this one. One of the
largest strikes in all of U.S. history, even up to
the modern day. Max, can you tell us a little more?
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Yeah, the Pullman strikes. It was a massive strike where
they effectively shut down, I think, 25% of the rail
industry in the United States during the Gilded Age. Because,
I mean, just across the board, Pullman and his company
treated their employees terribly. And this actually gave rise to,
as a guy who I've referred to before as my daddy,
(07:58):
Eugene V. Debs, who was the president of the union
at the time, He helped lead this strike and this boycott. So, yeah,
thank you for helping give rise to Debs.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Guys, it just occurred to me that we have one
of these sort of gentrified, redeveloped, big old industrial complexes
here in Atlanta called Pullman Yards that was absolutely owned
by the Pullman Company.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Pullman.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, it's sixth and final national company. overhaul facility for
these luxury sleeping cars, uh, where hundreds of these folks
labored and toiled, um, and who became the brotherhood of
sleeping car porters is a very, uh, important location for
exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And now it's like, You know, they have, like, festivals
and stuff there. It's cool. It's, like, it's historical, and
I'm sure there's plaques and stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Around, but it is kind of funny whenever you see
something with this sort of historical connotation being turned into, like,
a place where the frickin', you know, Monet experience comes
on tour.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
This is the period of monopolies where, you know, you
have the guy who makes the sleeping car, the guy
who makes the oil, the guy who makes the railroad,
the other guy who makes the not railroad, but close
enough to it. And the guy who makes steel.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yes. And with the rest, the great unwashed. Now, we're
talking about these folks. We're talking about George Mortimer here
because he is a big part of why tipping exists
in the United States in the modern day. The Pullman Company,
being very racist and targeting a vulnerable demographic of employees,
(09:43):
they loved, loved, loved, adored the idea of tipping because
it let them massively underpay employees. Those employees, things were
super terrible for these guys already. Their salaries were way below.
what would qualify as a living wage, even as a
(10:04):
single person, much less if you have a spouse or children.
They had to, as I mentioned earlier, they had to
pay for their own uniforms and food. You could not
be employed if you didn't have the uniform. They were
also expected to This is kind of similar to airlines today.
They were expected to do a lot of unpaid work.
(10:26):
So they would have to prep the cars for trips.
They would have to clean the cars afterwards. That did
not qualify as part of their paid employment. And a
lot of folks don't know this. I didn't know this
until my girlfriend told me about it with her experience
in the airline industry. Did you guys know that flight
(10:46):
attendants are not paid? in the US until the flight
has left the ground?
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I heard that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I was dating a flight attendant for a little while
and she told me something similar and I thought it
was really bizarre.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I don't understand the logistics of that.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
What does that accomplish? Why did somebody push for that?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I have no idea, guys, but we know that as
a result, the Pullman Company made a lot of money
by underpaying these porters And it meant that these employees
in particular had to rely on tips to survive, which
means they are in turn dependent on the generosity of
(11:29):
these customers, these strangers, all of whom, as you and
I said earlier, Noel, were not technically required to pay
these porters one red cent. And they also might be
super racist to them. They will call them things like boy.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And not to mention, I mean, these outfits that they
had to pay for themselves were kind of meant to
like sort of gussy them up a little bit for
the white folks.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I mean, right?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Like it was a little bit of a demeaning kind
of uniform, right? Like a little bit of a, I
don't know, it had a certain, I don't know, man,
kind of minstrel quality to it, frankly.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It was dehumanizing for sure. I agree with that. And
there's some great resources to read more about this from
our friends at the Jim Crow Museum, and they note
that the sheer economic realities here led to porters often
working more than, get this, guys, 400 hours per month.
(12:31):
And that was not allowing them to save up a
bunch of money. That was allowing them to have a
basic income such that you could survive.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Not good.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So essentially, they pivoted the idea of tips being bonuses.
provided by these fat cats to their underlings or their inferiors,
how they viewed it, to becoming the only source of
income for these black workers that they did not want
to pay. And we brought up at the top of
(13:01):
the first episode just how, and I know it's more
complicated than that, but maybe to the untrained observer, it
can certainly feel like that's a very similar arrangement for
the restaurant owners. I mean, I get it when it
comes to like smaller, more independent, you know, restaurants where
the margins are so slim and it's really, you know,
(13:22):
restaurants fail all the time, but for like these big
corporate chains and stuff, it just, it really just seems
like this exclusively benefits the folks.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
At the top rather than the folks doing the work.
A hundred percent. Yeah. Nailed it.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
And this would later become normalized in multiple service industries.
But even in the time of this deep blatant racism
and discrimination, the concept of tipping was a divisive issue.
Maybe not for the reasons we would assume today. Up
until the early 1900s or so, there were a lot
(13:58):
of normal, non-wealthy Americans who said, hey, tipping as a practice,
as an expected thing, is that not inherently contradictory to
the values of a democracy? Is it not like a
backhanded compliment? Are you not forcing an aristocratic framework upon us?
(14:21):
Are we not, when we are having these well-to-do people
tip us, are they not saying, Your job's not good enough.
You are inferior to me. NPR has a great article
on this.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Well, I love the word flunkyism.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Can I just say that they drop in their very
astute description. When tipping began to spread in post-Civil War America,
it was tarred, reference not lost, on us as a
cancer in the, this is a quote from the time,
cancer in the breast of democracy, flunkyism is, and a
(14:58):
gross and offensive caricature of mercy. But the most common
insult hurled at it was that it was just offensively un-American.
This idea of a day's wage for a day's work,
you know, it just really did fly in the face
of that and seemed inherently designed to benefit, as I
(15:18):
was just saying a minute ago, the folks at the top,
the folks pulling in all the profits, you know?
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So the question then becomes, or, not to be too
Dennis Reynolds about it, the implication becomes you are not
a person just doing your honest job. You are somehow
my servant, my social inferior. This great debate became a
(15:54):
huge issue across the country. It was such a big
deal that it would show up in political campaigns. The
author we mentioned in episode one, Seagrave, points out that
William Howard Taft had this entire plank of his platform
about this in 1908 during his presidential campaigns. He wanted
(16:18):
to be seen as the patron saint of the anti-tipping crusade.
He also, by the way, bragged about, he did this
multiple times, he bragged about how he would never tip
his barber, and I think, honestly, it shows.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Guy's not famous for his good haircuts.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Um, all my positive things I've ever said about William
Howard tough.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I mean, he did do some good stuff, but this
is pretty gross.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Uh, so this debate over tipping became a huge deal,
became like almost like a political talking point. Um, so
much so that six separate States made tipping illegal for
a period of time. And that was Washington, Mississippi and Arkansas. Um,
followed by then a handful of other States, Iowa, South Carolina,
and Tennessee, um, in 1915, not too far after, uh,
(17:07):
Georgia even tried some tipping or we find ourselves, uh,
prohibition for a time. Um, but you know what they
say about prohibition. We say it all the time. It's
not really, uh, the way to, to enact change. Um,
you tell someone a thing they can't do and they're
going to double down on wanting.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
To do it and find a way to do it
despite you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah. Yeah. By, uh, you know, the last holdout on this, uh,
fad of anti-tipping laws was Mississippi, a famously problematic place.
By 1926, even Mississippi had left their tipping prohibition laws behind.
These had all been abolished. And the reason they were
(17:51):
abolished was similar to the reason so many prohibition laws
get passed by the wayside in other milieus. The authorities
just can't enforce it. Tipping is normalized now. Some employees are,
with validity, saying, I can't make a living without tips.
(18:13):
Pullman is not going to ever pay me enough. And
then on the other side, you have customers who are saying, well,
gosh darn it, it's my money, right? I already pay
you taxes, so why should you get to tell me
who I can or cannot give money to. Those are
good points, but the entire time, tipping is still deeply,
(18:36):
deeply rooted in racial prejudice and the shadow of chattel slavery.
There are journalists who, and I hate to say it,
they were quite respected for their day. They would write
at length about how tipping black people was fine because
it was a token of black inferiority, And they would say,
(18:58):
in contrast, tipping white people was embarrassing to everyone, which
is such a weird bit of mental parkour, is it not?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
The Pullman Company that we've been talking about and others
may have gotten away with this practice forever, but the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and all the black porters involved,
led by Philip A. Randolph, said, fought against this in 1925.
This organization became the nation's first Black union to be
(19:31):
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and they fought
for and won higher wages and were also still able
to take their tips.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
A little bit of have your cake and eat it, too.
And we have to do an episode maybe in the
future on the American Federation Federation of Labor. This is
a huge historic milestone for the porters, for their union.
And it is a big win. We cannot take that
(20:01):
away from the tremendously courageous people who at this time
were literally risking their lives for equality. But we do,
at the same token, have to say there were a
lot of restaurant workers who were also being victimized for
their race or for their gender. Many of these restaurant
(20:24):
workers were women. They did not see the same success.
We're doing a setup here, folks. It'll take us to
the present day. In the restaurant industry, The concept of
tips replacing wages was still very much a thing, even
after Congress passed the first minimum wage law in 1938. Right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This allowed states to set a lower wage for tipped workers,
but it excluded restaurant workers. In 1942, the Supreme Court
ruled that employees had an exclusive right to their tips
and that their employers couldn't force them to share their
tips with kitchen staff.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Like that pooling concept I was talking about. Tip out.
Pretty divisive today. Yeah, exactly. I think pooling is a
little different than tip out.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
You're right, Bennett.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
It is more of the tip out situation.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In fact, in 1966, when our nation's minimum wage was overhauled,
restaurant workers were even more formally cut out of the conversation.
And Uncle Sam greenlit a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers,
calling this tip credit, which allowed employers to pay tipped
employees a sub-minimum wage on the understanding that the rest
(21:41):
of that wage would be made up, subsidized by the
customers themselves, who, again.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Were gently asked.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Expected-ish, but not required to leave that money on the table.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
So basically, we're right back where we started. Yeah, boom.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
We're back to Pullman at this point. Congress and the
SCOTUS in their infinite wisdom said, everybody but you. It'll
be fine. There is no law that says a customer
needs to pay anything more than the official price for
(22:21):
a good or a service. And that's part of why
this is so befuddling and bedeviling to people who are
not from the United States and As you can tell, folks,
the three of us are still baffled about this today.
There's a grand debate that continues. Tipping is now ubiquitous
(22:42):
in U.S. culture. It was once seen as un-American, as
a moral malady, as one journalist called it. And then
there was a lot of victim blaming, too, at that time.
Like in the 1800s, 1900s, there were, I'll say it,
there were more well-to-do people, journalists, authors of note, who
(23:05):
would say that your local server is overly entitled. There
were a lot of accusations of what they called itchy palms, right?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Oh, gosh.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah. Yeah. Which is where, you know, like you— Sounds
like a disease.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
They were portrayed just as that. Thankfully, that's fallen to
the wayside. And guys— Maybe this is naive on my part,
or maybe we're all too optimistic, but I'd like to
say that most people in the United States today understand
that servers, in particular, people working at restaurants, they're not
(23:43):
the real beneficiaries of this awkward system. They, like the
customers complaining about itchy palms, are instead the victims of
the larger system. Because tipping is... I was reading some
really upsetting studies about how discriminatory tipping can be. Like
(24:03):
a customer will make a subjective call, not on the service,
but on how they feel an employee looks or how
they feel their background is. Profile. They'll profile them. Yeah,
that's a perfect word. And there's not really a recourse
for the workers who are victimized, right? Like, I mean, no,
(24:29):
you and I both worked at restaurants, I think for
a brief time. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah. I worked in the kitchen. I've never been a server. Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
You were at a, yes, yes. I remember that story.
I had worked as a server, but not, not officially
in a kitchen. So Max, you have more experience than
Noel and myself. What is the recourse? Like you could,
you could quit the restaurant. if you're a victimized employee
or you could maybe convince management not to let that
(24:57):
customer come back?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, that's about it. That's about all you get. Because,
I mean, some places like, you know, but like, honestly,
if it's just like, oh, this person doesn't tip well,
that's not going to fly because they don't care. At
the end of the day, like that's money. I mean,
I've had, I mean, I worked at smaller restaurants. I
worked with some bigger ones. I did not like it.
I usually worked at pretty small ones where I knew
the owners as well and stuff like that. You get
(25:21):
a lot more leeway there. If you have somebody who
has like a pattern of just not tipping or just
being a total, just, I don't know, insert 37 different
words that I have to beep right here. Then, you know,
they'll usually get your back. I would usually, I mean, I,
(25:41):
I would, I ended up doing a good bit of
management management as well. And, you know, if somebody was awful,
I would do my employees, I would throw them out.
We usually had the back. of our employees but you
don't really get much recourse especially here's the truth too
a lot of times you're picking up the check after
the person's gone so like you you you can pick
(26:03):
it up like i i still remember the the the
the one that pissed me off the most ever i
was like this is probably my first year or two
of me waiting tables in city atlanta i uh i
got this guy's car i picked up the guy's check
and went and swiped his card his card was like
falling apart and i swiped it and it broke you
know the guy's card was like literally falling apart and
(26:25):
he wrote on the line like he didn't tip me
he's like thanks for breaking my card and i'm like
and i'm still they like you know resentments are dangerous
things to harbor And I've tried to process, but bring
that one up right now. That's about 12, 13 years
in the past. And I'm still pretty pissed about that.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, no, I get it. That's rough, man. That's like
someone looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
And then his friend didn't tip me as well, basically
because I broke his friend's card, which was already broken.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Oh, well, hopefully we will.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
I'm angry now.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
I have to go punch a wall. We will see justice.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Uh, we do know, um, God, yeah, that guy sounds
like a pill, man. I'm sorry that happened to you.
We do know that guy's going to have to walk
around being him the rest of his life. So that's
a pretty damning consequence. We also know... that there are
(27:28):
real winners of the tipping system, at least according to
the anti-tipping critics, one of whom is Leon Trotsky, famously.
That guy? Yeah, from earlier. Famously a resident of the
Bronx for a while, and he did some other stuff
with Russia. He said the winners of this system are
(27:50):
restaurant owners, cough, cough, capitalists, because he had this whole
thing about capitalism.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, Trotsky actually had hot soup poured on him by
a waiter for his refusal to tip.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, yeah, because he was a guy who never shied
away from a speech. So can you imagine, just to
exercise empathy, can you imagine being the server and expecting
some sort of gratuity, and all of a sudden this
guy is not only not tipping you, but he's making
you listen to his TED Talk about capitalism? you know,
(28:25):
and you have other tables.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Don't take it with Lanwell. Maybe he deserved the soup.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I mean, you know, time and a place, right? Just
slide your book across the table and say thank you.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
I mean, this is a Sir, this is Wendy's moment
right here. That's the best way to think of it. Sir,
this is Wendy's. What are you doing about this? You
have this giant rant about this. It's still not going
to pay my bills.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You can't pay me in poems and diatribes and jeremiads.
Maybe this is a good way for us to start
to wrap up this episode in the present day. I
don't know about you guys, but I was fascinated to
discover how deep the tipping versus anti-tipping debate went in
(29:07):
the United States, especially because it is so normalized today.
Like we mentioned Taft, a president. We mentioned Trotsky, a
legendary thought leader. what about tight-fisted millionaires rockefeller carnegie they
hated tipping which is kind of predictable.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Actually yeah i mean honestly it's kind of a trope
that like rich people are some of the worst tippers right.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah yeah i i think they earned that stereotype too.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
I will jump in here and say there is an
Instagram account that gained fame. Their names were Tips for Jesus,
where they would go to places and rack up these
massive tabs and dip like $ 100, 000. And I think they
figured it out, but I believe they were supposed to
be like connected to like paypal the people who made
(29:59):
a bunch of money off of paypal so.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
More like tips for clicks am i right.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Exactly like you know we would always dream like oh
man i really hope that they come in here because
they rack up a massive tab buy everything in the
restaurant and then like tip an insane amount of.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Money performative altruism i think we call that not to
diminish you know people doing good work but it is
sometimes easy to take To take issue with it when
it's done for the gram or, you know, like Mr.
Beast kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Look at me being good.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
We also we also have to give credit where it's due.
I don't know how you guys feel about Dave Matthews band,
but apparently the front man, Dave, is a really good tipper.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Good.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah. He's making up for all that poop he dumped
on those poor people in Chicago. He didn't do that.
He did.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
The bus did.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
It wasn't even his bus.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
It was his bus. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Dave Matthews' band.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Unloaded a septic tank over.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I thought it was the violin player's bus.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
No, it was the band. I was like, he had
his own bus, the violin player.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
I found out about this thing live on an episode.
How detailed do you think I know this story?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Maybe I don't have all the facts, Max. They are
big enough that perhaps each member could have had their
own bus, but it was my understanding that it was...
the Dave Matthews band and the people commemorate the, this
fortuitous date in history. Ben, you, you included for the
wrap up here, kind of a little table of some
expectations around tipping. And I just thought in setting that up,
(31:28):
I did have a question and Max, maybe you can
shed some light on this too. If you're eating at
a fancy restaurant and the bill is really expensive, like
really expensive, like, I guess it still eludes me as
to why just standard waiter treatment deserves, earns like the
(31:50):
$ 300 tip. Like, it's like, where does that, I mean,
is it like, okay, you lucked out. You got a
job at a really fancy restaurant. Therefore, you're entitled to
like way more tips than someone working at Waffle House
doing the same job gets?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Interesting. Yeah, I defer to Max here.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm just saying in some situations, there's definitely extra stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
There's more volume and all of that stuff. I get it.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
But it's also like sometimes it confuses me or eludes
me when I go to a fancy restaurant and the
person is just doing the lease.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
And then they expect to get that 20% of a
$ 200 bill.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Yeah, that is a tricky particular man right there because
I have worked– I never worked like fine dining. I
worked what was called casual dining. I hated it. I
went back to working bars as soon as possible because
the churn and burn of a bar is you're just
doing so much more volume that it's just easy and
that's kind of like a Waffle House server. You're just
doing so much volume that like– When you're working at
(32:45):
a place like that, you're doing so many less tables,
so you're so much more dependent on it.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I guess what I'm saying is at a place like
that with an experience like that where the bill is
that high, I guess I sometimes expect the wait staff–
to be a little more like a maitre d' or
like to really have some interesting information or to like,
you know, share details about the dishes or really give
you an expertise, a level of expertise about the wine pairing.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And I mean, I'm not trying to be Mr. Bougie boy.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I don't eat out fancy that often, but I just
feel like if you're expected to pay 25% or whatever
on a massive bill like that, this person should have
a little extra bona fides as well.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
And that's where I'm kind of getting to the whole
like thing where you probably heard me waffling and like
hedging a little bit at the beginning because you're supposed
to do that because it's like, you know, hey, you
have this really small section. You are supposed to be
at this table explaining stuff, bringing down like I've I've
had a lot of friends who like worked like. like
as like nice steak houses and stuff like that, who,
(33:45):
you know, are routinely, and they're bringing home really good
money and they have like, and they're like, you know,
SA server assistants are super knowledgeable would be like running
other restaurants. They're doing this because they're making good money.
So it is tricky in that way. But I mean,
I think the, at the root of the problem, it
goes down to this whole thing of just, you know,
(34:05):
the person's livelihood being dumped on the customer.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, that's the onus of it. And to respond to
these points, which you can tell, again, folks, we're reiterating
the great U.S. debate about tipping. If you go to
a very high-end dining establishment in other countries, there will
be a service charge included typically, right?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Oh, about that. It complicates things. It decomplicates things. things
so significantly. And Ben, in this list of yours here,
I mean, I was, you know, maybe, I don't know,
maybe 10 years ago that I realized you're supposed to
tip hotel housekeeping, a service that goes largely unnoticed. It's invisible,
you know, at its best. You're supposed to like, it
(34:53):
happens and you come back and your room's clean. You
don't see these folks interact with these folks often. And
there is an expectation of tip, but like nobody tells
you that. You kind of have to just learn that
through like societal mores or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Another unwritten rule, man. And if you're in a fine
dining establishment in the United States, you'll often see automated
service charge only kicks in if you have a certain
number of people at your table, right? So that's where
you'll see the little note that says parties of five
or parties of six or more will have an automatic
(35:29):
gratuity added.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
And the legality of that has been challenged.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, the legality of that is tricky. It's kind of
like when you go to a gas station and they
want to charge you extra for using a credit card, right,
below a certain threshold. That's also technically illegal in a
lot of places.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
I know friends who have worked at restaurants where basically
they have– the way that they're making their money is
they're doing so many large parties and their entire night
is just working this party. And then– They take away
the gratuity coverage on that. So then now they can work.
I remember my friend Jessica, she worked this, it was
like a high school graduation party. It was like a
50-person party. She got tipped 20 bucks on it because
(36:09):
they took away the gratuity on it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Wow. Was Michael Jordan in the party? The famous anti-tipper
from the Chicago Bulls?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
Probably.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
We also, here's one. No, I feel you on the
housekeeping idea. Valet parking. is another one where it's complimentary
parking if you're a jerk. That's the implication, right?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, but it's almost never complimentary. Valet parking almost exclusively,
in my experience, especially if it comes with a hotel stay,
it's a daily charge, right? to valet your car and
have them return it to you and keep it in
the garage. But then if the valet is literally going
and fetching your car, driving it out, returning it to you,
they absolutely deserve a tip. But sometimes these services are
(36:57):
so overpriced that it's almost a sticker shock that probably
keeps a lot of people from tipping.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, what I'm talking about here more is going to,
back to the restaurant idea, going to a restaurant that
has complimentary valet parking.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
You know, and then, uh, if you don't tip it,
as you can see, folks, there's a whole regimen of
relatively unwritten rules that the United States is still trying
to figure out. We definitely understand that a lot of, uh,
areas in other parts of the world that get American
(37:34):
tourists are having versions of the same conversation, you know, like, uh,
You'll see a lot of expats say Paris is getting
ruined by Americans who are exporting tipping culture, right? You'll
see that happening in cities throughout the world. And a
big part of this also here at home goes back
(37:57):
to the idea that there is a wide spectrum of
minimum payment in the United States today. depending on which
state you're going in. Like Washington, you're going to make
more money than you would in, say, oh, what's the
worst one, guys? West Virginia, maybe?
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the minimum wage for tipped employees
is a very divisive topic, to say the least. It's
one of these things where, so I guess, like, the
common thing is, like, important thing to know beforehand is
while there's the federal minimum wage, you can obviously go
above it. You just can't go below it. And a
(38:42):
lot of States have actually been pretty proactive about increasing
this minimum wage, uh, mostly on the West, uh, coast
or the Western part of the country, such as like California, Nevada, Arizona,
and Washington, Washington's highest in the country at $ 17 and
13 cents or a clear $ 15 more per hour than
the federal minimum wage. Um, But there are some interesting ones.
(39:08):
So like Montana has one if you're a business over
$ 110, 000 gross annual sales. It's $ 11. Under that, it's $ 4.
There's a big thing about like, oh, you're going to
drive these companies out of business if you increase the
tip wage to make tip employees actually make a real wage.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Well, like I was saying earlier, too, like, I mean,
I can see how maybe with smaller independent run, you know,
businesses and restaurants, they're so in danger of, you know,
closing often.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I mean, like the margins are really, really slim. And,
you know, what did I say?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Like new restaurants, there's the ratio of new restaurants closing
after a very brief period of time is pretty high.
But with like, you know, like massive, like Applebee's and
TGI Fridays and stuff like that. It just seems like
it benefits the, you know, the corporations more than it
does the individuals.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
It very much. So, uh, I do also want to
point out Oregon for being the extra little diva they are.
That's just how Oregon is on things. And I love Oregon.
You guys know that where they have different wages, depending
on what part you're in. So statewide has one, uh,
Metro of Portland has one. And then, uh, rural counties
are not urban ones have one, but, uh, I found
(40:20):
that 12 states slash territories have now a federal tip
minimum wage of $ 10 or more per hour. So that's
the good. Started with the good. There are 19 states
slash territories that still have $ 2. 13 an hour, including our
home state of Georgia.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
That's insane. It's true.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
We never said out loud what that number is. To
hear it, I had no idea that was still a thing.
I remember that being the case when I was working
in restaurants. That is indefensible.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It's unfathomable for sure. We also know that a lot
of famous authors were against tipping, including Mark Twain and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who I accidentally put in the notes
as Ralph Walso Emerson, which is funny. But we have
so much more to get to. We do have good
(41:11):
news for you, folks. We are not ever going to
ask you for a financial tip. If you do want
to tip us, why not head over to your podcast
platform of choice and hit us up with a nice review.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
It does make a difference.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Yes, we greatly appreciate you. We're super grateful for everybody
tuning in. Big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams,
for lending some firsthand experience. Big thanks, of course, to
to Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. The Quister, who, as we know,
(41:50):
outside of podcasting, has fought for the entirety of his
life to keep Georgia's minimum wage at $ 2. 13 an hour.
Where do you get these things, man?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Where does this come from? It comes from him. That's true.
But not true. He's actually an okay guy. But we
hate him!
Speaker 1 (42:09):
We hate him so, which is why we keep hanging
out with him on this show. Do tune in for
future episodes with the quizster. In the meantime, big shout
out to AJ Bahamas, Jacobs, AKA the puzzler, as well
as a Dr. Rachel, big spinach, Lance.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Oh, big spin herself.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Christopher Osiotis needs Jeff codes here in spirit. The rude
dudes and ridiculous crime. If you like our show, you're
probably going to like them. And Hey, We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(42:51):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you, as always, so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it. For the man,
the myth, the legend, our super producer, Max 20% or better, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
That was sort of like the roar of the crowd,
but also the satisfying sound of taking a sip of
an ice cold beverage served to you.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
By a lovely human who you reward for their service.
Reward is the wrong word. It's so complicated. It's so complicated.
That's Noel Brown. I've been bullied.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
This is part two of an exploration on the practice
of tipping, which has baffled, fascinated people. irritated, and saved
so many folks here in the United States. And Noel,
as you, Max, and I were discussing at the very
(01:21):
end of our first episode on this, tipping in the
United States comes from a very problematic place.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
It sure does. Are we talking about the racist part?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
We have to talk about the races part. We have
to introduce– Max, Nolan, I don't know what kind of
sound cue you're going to do here, but I know
it's going to be perfect because you're a genius. We
have to introduce the Pullman Palace Car Company founded by
a guy named George Mortimer Pullman Jr. In the late 1800s. And, Noel,
(02:09):
these dudes were super dupes, fancy. They made high-end luxury
cars for railroads.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Carriages, right? Carriages, yeah, just so.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Also, can we bring back the name Mortimer and Poindexter, please?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I like a Mortimer. I like a Mortimer.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Not a Poindexter so much?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I point Dexter. I haven't met one personally, but if
I met, cause they're not around, I'm saying bring it back.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
But if I know that the three of us do
our best to be cool, empathetic, hang. So if we
met a point Dexter and they had the cojones to say, uh,
I am, they call me point Dexter. I would have
so much respect. And Max is throwing his hand up here.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I would mock them relentlessly. Cause I'm a bad guy.
I'm kidding. I wouldn't do that. Do you know a Poindexter, Max?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Oh, I was going to just jump in. There is
a former NBA player by the name of Quincy Poindexter.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Now, as a last name, it's acceptable and it's around,
but as a first name.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
But what about his first name's Quincy? Quincy Poindexter. And
he is in the news because he just like recently,
like this week, was hired as the new G League
head coach of the Chicago Bulls. He's also six foot seven.
So I'm not going to make fun of his name
to his face.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
No, no.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I mean, you couldn't even see his face. It would
be towering above you.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
And because this is an audio-only podcast, people don't know
what I look like, so I won't say it on air.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Well, congratulations to anybody with the cargo to say my
name is Poindexter with your chest. You know what I mean?
I have such respect for that. I also am fascinated
to hear what the short version of your name is.
Like if you're a Max Jamin, an old Jamin, or
(03:56):
a Benjamin, you usually go with something shorter. So it's
just Dexter, right?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Is Dexter short for Poindexter?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
In some cases, it must be statistically.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I guess it's got to be.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
It must be.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Okay. So back to the Pullman Palace Car Company and
George Mortimer Pullman in the late 1800s. Big time, fancy schmancy,
what we might call bespoke carriages for, you know, highfalutin
passengers traveling by rail. And I know that we must.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Have talked about this aspect of tipping or at least
the railroad system either on Ridiculous History in some other
context or on stuff they don't want you to know,
our sister show. But this company hired thousands of black
men to essentially attend to the passengers. on these fancy
(04:47):
railway lines. And they were called porters. There were sleeping cars.
They would attend to the guests or the passengers, move
around their luggage, cargo, all of that kind of stuff.
It was not easy work, but they were kind of,
weren't they sort of more, like a porter was almost
kind of like a valet?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Like it was an upstairs job, right?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It wasn't like they were down shoveling the coal or
like working, you know, Like bag tossers on an airline.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
These folks were interacting with the public. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Often there would be public interaction. I do appreciate that upstairs,
downstairs idea here. These folks are.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Because they wear little suits. They make them wear little outfits, right?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yes. And they had to pay for that on their own.
Their uniforms were not provided by the company. And like
you said, this is very physically demanding work. On top
of this, you have no rights as an employee. You
are going to suffer intense racial discrimination when you run
(05:55):
into not just customers but your management. And this is
so messed up. Okay, so our buddy or someone's buddy,
George Pullman, he– is on record multiple times saying he
specifically sought out formerly enslaved people to do this Porter
(06:18):
job because he believed in some very nasty eugenics and
social Darwinism. He said these folks are already conditioned to subservience,
to working long hours without rest or a past, and
they will obey white authorities. Pretty gross stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, man. Yeah, this notion of them being particularly suited
for this level of treatment and acceptance of, let's just
call it what it is, a slave wage. I mean,
a slave wage would be free, but it's still about
as low as it goes.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Next to free.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
And because these United States are, if imperfect, definitely aspirational, right,
and have some good ideas— We do want to acknowledge
that Pullman's villainous practices, which we're about to get into,
were so insanely out of the Overton window that he motivated.
(07:24):
We'll go to Max with this one. One of the
largest strikes in all of U.S. history, even up to
the modern day. Max, can you tell us a little more?
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Yeah, the Pullman strikes. It was a massive strike where
they effectively shut down, I think, 25% of the rail
industry in the United States during the Gilded Age. Because,
I mean, just across the board, Pullman and his company
treated their employees terribly. And this actually gave rise to,
as a guy who I've referred to before as my daddy,
(07:58):
Eugene V. Debs, who was the president of the union
at the time, He helped lead this strike and this boycott. So, yeah,
thank you for helping give rise to Debs.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Guys, it just occurred to me that we have one
of these sort of gentrified, redeveloped, big old industrial complexes
here in Atlanta called Pullman Yards that was absolutely owned
by the Pullman Company.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Pullman.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, it's sixth and final national company. overhaul facility for
these luxury sleeping cars, uh, where hundreds of these folks
labored and toiled, um, and who became the brotherhood of
sleeping car porters is a very, uh, important location for
exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And now it's like, You know, they have, like, festivals
and stuff there. It's cool. It's, like, it's historical, and
I'm sure there's plaques and stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Around, but it is kind of funny whenever you see
something with this sort of historical connotation being turned into, like,
a place where the frickin', you know, Monet experience comes
on tour.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
This is the period of monopolies where, you know, you
have the guy who makes the sleeping car, the guy
who makes the oil, the guy who makes the railroad,
the other guy who makes the not railroad, but close
enough to it. And the guy who makes steel.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yes. And with the rest, the great unwashed. Now, we're
talking about these folks. We're talking about George Mortimer here
because he is a big part of why tipping exists
in the United States in the modern day. The Pullman Company,
being very racist and targeting a vulnerable demographic of employees,
(09:43):
they loved, loved, loved, adored the idea of tipping because
it let them massively underpay employees. Those employees, things were
super terrible for these guys already. Their salaries were way below.
what would qualify as a living wage, even as a
(10:04):
single person, much less if you have a spouse or children.
They had to, as I mentioned earlier, they had to
pay for their own uniforms and food. You could not
be employed if you didn't have the uniform. They were
also expected to This is kind of similar to airlines today.
They were expected to do a lot of unpaid work.
(10:26):
So they would have to prep the cars for trips.
They would have to clean the cars afterwards. That did
not qualify as part of their paid employment. And a
lot of folks don't know this. I didn't know this
until my girlfriend told me about it with her experience
in the airline industry. Did you guys know that flight
(10:46):
attendants are not paid? in the US until the flight
has left the ground?
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I heard that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I was dating a flight attendant for a little while
and she told me something similar and I thought it
was really bizarre.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I don't understand the logistics of that.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
What does that accomplish? Why did somebody push for that?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I have no idea, guys, but we know that as
a result, the Pullman Company made a lot of money
by underpaying these porters And it meant that these employees
in particular had to rely on tips to survive, which
means they are in turn dependent on the generosity of
(11:29):
these customers, these strangers, all of whom, as you and
I said earlier, Noel, were not technically required to pay
these porters one red cent. And they also might be
super racist to them. They will call them things like boy.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And not to mention, I mean, these outfits that they
had to pay for themselves were kind of meant to
like sort of gussy them up a little bit for
the white folks.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I mean, right?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Like it was a little bit of a demeaning kind
of uniform, right? Like a little bit of a, I
don't know, it had a certain, I don't know, man,
kind of minstrel quality to it, frankly.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It was dehumanizing for sure. I agree with that. And
there's some great resources to read more about this from
our friends at the Jim Crow Museum, and they note
that the sheer economic realities here led to porters often
working more than, get this, guys, 400 hours per month.
(12:31):
And that was not allowing them to save up a
bunch of money. That was allowing them to have a
basic income such that you could survive.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Not good.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So essentially, they pivoted the idea of tips being bonuses.
provided by these fat cats to their underlings or their inferiors,
how they viewed it, to becoming the only source of
income for these black workers that they did not want
to pay. And we brought up at the top of
(13:01):
the first episode just how, and I know it's more
complicated than that, but maybe to the untrained observer, it
can certainly feel like that's a very similar arrangement for
the restaurant owners. I mean, I get it when it
comes to like smaller, more independent, you know, restaurants where
the margins are so slim and it's really, you know,
(13:22):
restaurants fail all the time, but for like these big
corporate chains and stuff, it just, it really just seems
like this exclusively benefits the folks.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
At the top rather than the folks doing the work.
A hundred percent. Yeah. Nailed it.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
And this would later become normalized in multiple service industries.
But even in the time of this deep blatant racism
and discrimination, the concept of tipping was a divisive issue.
Maybe not for the reasons we would assume today. Up
until the early 1900s or so, there were a lot
(13:58):
of normal, non-wealthy Americans who said, hey, tipping as a practice,
as an expected thing, is that not inherently contradictory to
the values of a democracy? Is it not like a
backhanded compliment? Are you not forcing an aristocratic framework upon us?
(14:21):
Are we not, when we are having these well-to-do people
tip us, are they not saying, Your job's not good enough.
You are inferior to me. NPR has a great article
on this.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Well, I love the word flunkyism.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Can I just say that they drop in their very
astute description. When tipping began to spread in post-Civil War America,
it was tarred, reference not lost, on us as a
cancer in the, this is a quote from the time,
cancer in the breast of democracy, flunkyism is, and a
(14:58):
gross and offensive caricature of mercy. But the most common
insult hurled at it was that it was just offensively un-American.
This idea of a day's wage for a day's work,
you know, it just really did fly in the face
of that and seemed inherently designed to benefit, as I
(15:18):
was just saying a minute ago, the folks at the top,
the folks pulling in all the profits, you know?
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So the question then becomes, or, not to be too
Dennis Reynolds about it, the implication becomes you are not
a person just doing your honest job. You are somehow
my servant, my social inferior. This great debate became a
(15:54):
huge issue across the country. It was such a big
deal that it would show up in political campaigns. The
author we mentioned in episode one, Seagrave, points out that
William Howard Taft had this entire plank of his platform
about this in 1908 during his presidential campaigns. He wanted
(16:18):
to be seen as the patron saint of the anti-tipping crusade.
He also, by the way, bragged about, he did this
multiple times, he bragged about how he would never tip
his barber, and I think, honestly, it shows.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Guy's not famous for his good haircuts.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Um, all my positive things I've ever said about William
Howard tough.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I mean, he did do some good stuff, but this
is pretty gross.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Uh, so this debate over tipping became a huge deal,
became like almost like a political talking point. Um, so
much so that six separate States made tipping illegal for
a period of time. And that was Washington, Mississippi and Arkansas. Um,
followed by then a handful of other States, Iowa, South Carolina,
and Tennessee, um, in 1915, not too far after, uh,
(17:07):
Georgia even tried some tipping or we find ourselves, uh,
prohibition for a time. Um, but you know what they
say about prohibition. We say it all the time. It's
not really, uh, the way to, to enact change. Um,
you tell someone a thing they can't do and they're
going to double down on wanting.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
To do it and find a way to do it
despite you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah. Yeah. By, uh, you know, the last holdout on this, uh,
fad of anti-tipping laws was Mississippi, a famously problematic place.
By 1926, even Mississippi had left their tipping prohibition laws behind.
These had all been abolished. And the reason they were
(17:51):
abolished was similar to the reason so many prohibition laws
get passed by the wayside in other milieus. The authorities
just can't enforce it. Tipping is normalized now. Some employees are,
with validity, saying, I can't make a living without tips.
(18:13):
Pullman is not going to ever pay me enough. And
then on the other side, you have customers who are saying, well,
gosh darn it, it's my money, right? I already pay
you taxes, so why should you get to tell me
who I can or cannot give money to. Those are
good points, but the entire time, tipping is still deeply,
(18:36):
deeply rooted in racial prejudice and the shadow of chattel slavery.
There are journalists who, and I hate to say it,
they were quite respected for their day. They would write
at length about how tipping black people was fine because
it was a token of black inferiority, And they would say,
(18:58):
in contrast, tipping white people was embarrassing to everyone, which
is such a weird bit of mental parkour, is it not?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
The Pullman Company that we've been talking about and others
may have gotten away with this practice forever, but the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and all the black porters involved,
led by Philip A. Randolph, said, fought against this in 1925.
This organization became the nation's first Black union to be
(19:31):
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and they fought
for and won higher wages and were also still able
to take their tips.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
A little bit of have your cake and eat it, too.
And we have to do an episode maybe in the
future on the American Federation Federation of Labor. This is
a huge historic milestone for the porters, for their union.
And it is a big win. We cannot take that
(20:01):
away from the tremendously courageous people who at this time
were literally risking their lives for equality. But we do,
at the same token, have to say there were a
lot of restaurant workers who were also being victimized for
their race or for their gender. Many of these restaurant
(20:24):
workers were women. They did not see the same success.
We're doing a setup here, folks. It'll take us to
the present day. In the restaurant industry, The concept of
tips replacing wages was still very much a thing, even
after Congress passed the first minimum wage law in 1938. Right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This allowed states to set a lower wage for tipped workers,
but it excluded restaurant workers. In 1942, the Supreme Court
ruled that employees had an exclusive right to their tips
and that their employers couldn't force them to share their
tips with kitchen staff.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Like that pooling concept I was talking about. Tip out.
Pretty divisive today. Yeah, exactly. I think pooling is a
little different than tip out.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
You're right, Bennett.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
It is more of the tip out situation.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In fact, in 1966, when our nation's minimum wage was overhauled,
restaurant workers were even more formally cut out of the conversation.
And Uncle Sam greenlit a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers,
calling this tip credit, which allowed employers to pay tipped
employees a sub-minimum wage on the understanding that the rest
(21:41):
of that wage would be made up, subsidized by the
customers themselves, who, again.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Were gently asked.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Expected-ish, but not required to leave that money on the table.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
So basically, we're right back where we started. Yeah, boom.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
We're back to Pullman at this point. Congress and the
SCOTUS in their infinite wisdom said, everybody but you. It'll
be fine. There is no law that says a customer
needs to pay anything more than the official price for
(22:21):
a good or a service. And that's part of why
this is so befuddling and bedeviling to people who are
not from the United States and As you can tell, folks,
the three of us are still baffled about this today.
There's a grand debate that continues. Tipping is now ubiquitous
(22:42):
in U.S. culture. It was once seen as un-American, as
a moral malady, as one journalist called it. And then
there was a lot of victim blaming, too, at that time.
Like in the 1800s, 1900s, there were, I'll say it,
there were more well-to-do people, journalists, authors of note, who
(23:05):
would say that your local server is overly entitled. There
were a lot of accusations of what they called itchy palms, right?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Oh, gosh.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah. Yeah. Which is where, you know, like you— Sounds
like a disease.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
They were portrayed just as that. Thankfully, that's fallen to
the wayside. And guys— Maybe this is naive on my part,
or maybe we're all too optimistic, but I'd like to
say that most people in the United States today understand
that servers, in particular, people working at restaurants, they're not
(23:43):
the real beneficiaries of this awkward system. They, like the
customers complaining about itchy palms, are instead the victims of
the larger system. Because tipping is... I was reading some
really upsetting studies about how discriminatory tipping can be. Like
(24:03):
a customer will make a subjective call, not on the service,
but on how they feel an employee looks or how
they feel their background is. Profile. They'll profile them. Yeah,
that's a perfect word. And there's not really a recourse
for the workers who are victimized, right? Like, I mean, no,
(24:29):
you and I both worked at restaurants, I think for
a brief time. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah. I worked in the kitchen. I've never been a server. Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
You were at a, yes, yes. I remember that story.
I had worked as a server, but not, not officially
in a kitchen. So Max, you have more experience than
Noel and myself. What is the recourse? Like you could,
you could quit the restaurant. if you're a victimized employee
or you could maybe convince management not to let that
(24:57):
customer come back?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, that's about it. That's about all you get. Because,
I mean, some places like, you know, but like, honestly,
if it's just like, oh, this person doesn't tip well,
that's not going to fly because they don't care. At
the end of the day, like that's money. I mean,
I've had, I mean, I worked at smaller restaurants. I
worked with some bigger ones. I did not like it.
I usually worked at pretty small ones where I knew
the owners as well and stuff like that. You get
(25:21):
a lot more leeway there. If you have somebody who
has like a pattern of just not tipping or just
being a total, just, I don't know, insert 37 different
words that I have to beep right here. Then, you know,
they'll usually get your back. I would usually, I mean, I,
(25:41):
I would, I ended up doing a good bit of
management management as well. And, you know, if somebody was awful,
I would do my employees, I would throw them out.
We usually had the back. of our employees but you
don't really get much recourse especially here's the truth too
a lot of times you're picking up the check after
the person's gone so like you you you can pick
(26:03):
it up like i i still remember the the the
the one that pissed me off the most ever i
was like this is probably my first year or two
of me waiting tables in city atlanta i uh i
got this guy's car i picked up the guy's check
and went and swiped his card his card was like
falling apart and i swiped it and it broke you
know the guy's card was like literally falling apart and
(26:25):
he wrote on the line like he didn't tip me
he's like thanks for breaking my card and i'm like
and i'm still they like you know resentments are dangerous
things to harbor And I've tried to process, but bring
that one up right now. That's about 12, 13 years
in the past. And I'm still pretty pissed about that.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, no, I get it. That's rough, man. That's like
someone looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
And then his friend didn't tip me as well, basically
because I broke his friend's card, which was already broken.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Oh, well, hopefully we will.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
I'm angry now.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
I have to go punch a wall. We will see justice.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Uh, we do know, um, God, yeah, that guy sounds
like a pill, man. I'm sorry that happened to you.
We do know that guy's going to have to walk
around being him the rest of his life. So that's
a pretty damning consequence. We also know... that there are
(27:28):
real winners of the tipping system, at least according to
the anti-tipping critics, one of whom is Leon Trotsky, famously.
That guy? Yeah, from earlier. Famously a resident of the
Bronx for a while, and he did some other stuff
with Russia. He said the winners of this system are
(27:50):
restaurant owners, cough, cough, capitalists, because he had this whole
thing about capitalism.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, Trotsky actually had hot soup poured on him by
a waiter for his refusal to tip.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, yeah, because he was a guy who never shied
away from a speech. So can you imagine, just to
exercise empathy, can you imagine being the server and expecting
some sort of gratuity, and all of a sudden this
guy is not only not tipping you, but he's making
you listen to his TED Talk about capitalism? you know,
(28:25):
and you have other tables.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Don't take it with Lanwell. Maybe he deserved the soup.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I mean, you know, time and a place, right? Just
slide your book across the table and say thank you.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
I mean, this is a Sir, this is Wendy's moment
right here. That's the best way to think of it. Sir,
this is Wendy's. What are you doing about this? You
have this giant rant about this. It's still not going
to pay my bills.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You can't pay me in poems and diatribes and jeremiads.
Maybe this is a good way for us to start
to wrap up this episode in the present day. I
don't know about you guys, but I was fascinated to
discover how deep the tipping versus anti-tipping debate went in
(29:07):
the United States, especially because it is so normalized today.
Like we mentioned Taft, a president. We mentioned Trotsky, a
legendary thought leader. what about tight-fisted millionaires rockefeller carnegie they
hated tipping which is kind of predictable.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Actually yeah i mean honestly it's kind of a trope
that like rich people are some of the worst tippers right.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah yeah i i think they earned that stereotype too.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
I will jump in here and say there is an
Instagram account that gained fame. Their names were Tips for Jesus,
where they would go to places and rack up these
massive tabs and dip like $ 100, 000. And I think they
figured it out, but I believe they were supposed to
be like connected to like paypal the people who made
(29:59):
a bunch of money off of paypal so.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
More like tips for clicks am i right.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Exactly like you know we would always dream like oh
man i really hope that they come in here because
they rack up a massive tab buy everything in the
restaurant and then like tip an insane amount of.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Money performative altruism i think we call that not to
diminish you know people doing good work but it is
sometimes easy to take To take issue with it when
it's done for the gram or, you know, like Mr.
Beast kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Look at me being good.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
We also we also have to give credit where it's due.
I don't know how you guys feel about Dave Matthews band,
but apparently the front man, Dave, is a really good tipper.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Good.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah. He's making up for all that poop he dumped
on those poor people in Chicago. He didn't do that.
He did.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
The bus did.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
It wasn't even his bus.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
It was his bus. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Dave Matthews' band.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Unloaded a septic tank over.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I thought it was the violin player's bus.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
No, it was the band. I was like, he had
his own bus, the violin player.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
I found out about this thing live on an episode.
How detailed do you think I know this story?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Maybe I don't have all the facts, Max. They are
big enough that perhaps each member could have had their
own bus, but it was my understanding that it was...
the Dave Matthews band and the people commemorate the, this
fortuitous date in history. Ben, you, you included for the
wrap up here, kind of a little table of some
expectations around tipping. And I just thought in setting that up,
(31:28):
I did have a question and Max, maybe you can
shed some light on this too. If you're eating at
a fancy restaurant and the bill is really expensive, like
really expensive, like, I guess it still eludes me as
to why just standard waiter treatment deserves, earns like the
(31:50):
$ 300 tip. Like, it's like, where does that, I mean,
is it like, okay, you lucked out. You got a
job at a really fancy restaurant. Therefore, you're entitled to
like way more tips than someone working at Waffle House
doing the same job gets?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Interesting. Yeah, I defer to Max here.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm just saying in some situations, there's definitely extra stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
There's more volume and all of that stuff. I get it.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
But it's also like sometimes it confuses me or eludes
me when I go to a fancy restaurant and the
person is just doing the lease.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
And then they expect to get that 20% of a
$ 200 bill.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Yeah, that is a tricky particular man right there because
I have worked– I never worked like fine dining. I
worked what was called casual dining. I hated it. I
went back to working bars as soon as possible because
the churn and burn of a bar is you're just
doing so much more volume that it's just easy and
that's kind of like a Waffle House server. You're just
doing so much volume that like– When you're working at
(32:45):
a place like that, you're doing so many less tables,
so you're so much more dependent on it.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I guess what I'm saying is at a place like
that with an experience like that where the bill is
that high, I guess I sometimes expect the wait staff–
to be a little more like a maitre d' or
like to really have some interesting information or to like,
you know, share details about the dishes or really give
you an expertise, a level of expertise about the wine pairing.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And I mean, I'm not trying to be Mr. Bougie boy.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I don't eat out fancy that often, but I just
feel like if you're expected to pay 25% or whatever
on a massive bill like that, this person should have
a little extra bona fides as well.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
And that's where I'm kind of getting to the whole
like thing where you probably heard me waffling and like
hedging a little bit at the beginning because you're supposed
to do that because it's like, you know, hey, you
have this really small section. You are supposed to be
at this table explaining stuff, bringing down like I've I've
had a lot of friends who like worked like. like
as like nice steak houses and stuff like that, who,
(33:45):
you know, are routinely, and they're bringing home really good
money and they have like, and they're like, you know,
SA server assistants are super knowledgeable would be like running
other restaurants. They're doing this because they're making good money.
So it is tricky in that way. But I mean,
I think the, at the root of the problem, it
goes down to this whole thing of just, you know,
(34:05):
the person's livelihood being dumped on the customer.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, that's the onus of it. And to respond to
these points, which you can tell, again, folks, we're reiterating
the great U.S. debate about tipping. If you go to
a very high-end dining establishment in other countries, there will
be a service charge included typically, right?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Oh, about that. It complicates things. It decomplicates things. things
so significantly. And Ben, in this list of yours here,
I mean, I was, you know, maybe, I don't know,
maybe 10 years ago that I realized you're supposed to
tip hotel housekeeping, a service that goes largely unnoticed. It's invisible,
you know, at its best. You're supposed to like, it
(34:53):
happens and you come back and your room's clean. You
don't see these folks interact with these folks often. And
there is an expectation of tip, but like nobody tells
you that. You kind of have to just learn that
through like societal mores or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Another unwritten rule, man. And if you're in a fine
dining establishment in the United States, you'll often see automated
service charge only kicks in if you have a certain
number of people at your table, right? So that's where
you'll see the little note that says parties of five
or parties of six or more will have an automatic
(35:29):
gratuity added.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
And the legality of that has been challenged.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, the legality of that is tricky. It's kind of
like when you go to a gas station and they
want to charge you extra for using a credit card, right,
below a certain threshold. That's also technically illegal in a
lot of places.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
I know friends who have worked at restaurants where basically
they have– the way that they're making their money is
they're doing so many large parties and their entire night
is just working this party. And then– They take away
the gratuity coverage on that. So then now they can work.
I remember my friend Jessica, she worked this, it was
like a high school graduation party. It was like a
50-person party. She got tipped 20 bucks on it because
(36:09):
they took away the gratuity on it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Wow. Was Michael Jordan in the party? The famous anti-tipper
from the Chicago Bulls?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
Probably.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
We also, here's one. No, I feel you on the
housekeeping idea. Valet parking. is another one where it's complimentary
parking if you're a jerk. That's the implication, right?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, but it's almost never complimentary. Valet parking almost exclusively,
in my experience, especially if it comes with a hotel stay,
it's a daily charge, right? to valet your car and
have them return it to you and keep it in
the garage. But then if the valet is literally going
and fetching your car, driving it out, returning it to you,
they absolutely deserve a tip. But sometimes these services are
(36:57):
so overpriced that it's almost a sticker shock that probably
keeps a lot of people from tipping.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, what I'm talking about here more is going to,
back to the restaurant idea, going to a restaurant that
has complimentary valet parking.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
You know, and then, uh, if you don't tip it,
as you can see, folks, there's a whole regimen of
relatively unwritten rules that the United States is still trying
to figure out. We definitely understand that a lot of, uh,
areas in other parts of the world that get American
(37:34):
tourists are having versions of the same conversation, you know, like, uh,
You'll see a lot of expats say Paris is getting
ruined by Americans who are exporting tipping culture, right? You'll
see that happening in cities throughout the world. And a
big part of this also here at home goes back
(37:57):
to the idea that there is a wide spectrum of
minimum payment in the United States today. depending on which
state you're going in. Like Washington, you're going to make
more money than you would in, say, oh, what's the
worst one, guys? West Virginia, maybe?
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the minimum wage for tipped employees
is a very divisive topic, to say the least. It's
one of these things where, so I guess, like, the
common thing is, like, important thing to know beforehand is
while there's the federal minimum wage, you can obviously go
above it. You just can't go below it. And a
(38:42):
lot of States have actually been pretty proactive about increasing
this minimum wage, uh, mostly on the West, uh, coast
or the Western part of the country, such as like California, Nevada, Arizona,
and Washington, Washington's highest in the country at $ 17 and
13 cents or a clear $ 15 more per hour than
the federal minimum wage. Um, But there are some interesting ones.
(39:08):
So like Montana has one if you're a business over
$ 110, 000 gross annual sales. It's $ 11. Under that, it's $ 4.
There's a big thing about like, oh, you're going to
drive these companies out of business if you increase the
tip wage to make tip employees actually make a real wage.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Well, like I was saying earlier, too, like, I mean,
I can see how maybe with smaller independent run, you know,
businesses and restaurants, they're so in danger of, you know,
closing often.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I mean, like the margins are really, really slim. And,
you know, what did I say?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Like new restaurants, there's the ratio of new restaurants closing
after a very brief period of time is pretty high.
But with like, you know, like massive, like Applebee's and
TGI Fridays and stuff like that. It just seems like
it benefits the, you know, the corporations more than it
does the individuals.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
It very much. So, uh, I do also want to
point out Oregon for being the extra little diva they are.
That's just how Oregon is on things. And I love Oregon.
You guys know that where they have different wages, depending
on what part you're in. So statewide has one, uh,
Metro of Portland has one. And then, uh, rural counties
are not urban ones have one, but, uh, I found
(40:20):
that 12 states slash territories have now a federal tip
minimum wage of $ 10 or more per hour. So that's
the good. Started with the good. There are 19 states
slash territories that still have $ 2. 13 an hour, including our
home state of Georgia.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
That's insane. It's true.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
We never said out loud what that number is. To
hear it, I had no idea that was still a thing.
I remember that being the case when I was working
in restaurants. That is indefensible.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It's unfathomable for sure. We also know that a lot
of famous authors were against tipping, including Mark Twain and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who I accidentally put in the notes
as Ralph Walso Emerson, which is funny. But we have
so much more to get to. We do have good
(41:11):
news for you, folks. We are not ever going to
ask you for a financial tip. If you do want
to tip us, why not head over to your podcast
platform of choice and hit us up with a nice review.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
It does make a difference.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Yes, we greatly appreciate you. We're super grateful for everybody
tuning in. Big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams,
for lending some firsthand experience. Big thanks, of course, to
to Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. The Quister, who, as we know,
(41:50):
outside of podcasting, has fought for the entirety of his
life to keep Georgia's minimum wage at $ 2. 13 an hour.
Where do you get these things, man?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Where does this come from? It comes from him. That's true.
But not true. He's actually an okay guy. But we
hate him!
Speaker 1 (42:09):
We hate him so, which is why we keep hanging
out with him on this show. Do tune in for
future episodes with the quizster. In the meantime, big shout
out to AJ Bahamas, Jacobs, AKA the puzzler, as well
as a Dr. Rachel, big spinach, Lance.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Oh, big spin herself.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Christopher Osiotis needs Jeff codes here in spirit. The rude
dudes and ridiculous crime. If you like our show, you're
probably going to like them. And Hey, We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(42:51):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.