Huh? Apparently, restaurant customers tip for all sorts of reasons, and the main reason we’re supposed to tip—good service—actually has little to do with how much we’ll leave on the table.
Here’s what’s up with this odd consumer behavior, per an interview with Steve Dublanica, author of Waiter Rant and the new book Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper’s Quest to Become the Guru of Gratuity, over at Salon:
When I was researching for my book, I read a reader survey by Zagat where 80 percent of people said, “I tip based on the quality of service,” but self-reported behavior isn’t always true. No one’s going to say, “My girlfriend left me, I’m in a bad mood, and I’m a cheap tipper.” But a study by Professor Michael Lynn at Cornell found that the customer’s perception of service affects the tip only 2 percent of the time. He said, “Service affects tipping as much as whether the sun is shining outside or not.”
So, if not for good service, why do we tip? Dublanica says:
One is the social norm of tipping. For most people, they don’t want to stiff a waiter even if the service is bad because they don’t want to seem cheap, or they don’t want to feel guilty, or they don’t want to upset the waiter. Other people wanna be down with the working man. Or they want to reduce the server’s envy, like, “Here I am having a good time and you’re working.”