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Comment by dagw | Hacker News Reader

And as tips are paid at the end of service, the waiter doesn't know if you'll tip well or not while serving you.

At bars on the other hand the 'corruption' is much clearer. Tip badly for a round of drinks and you'll get slow/bad service for the rest of the evening. Tip well and you'll get priority service and perhaps even free booze. Especially with spirits and mixed drinks the corruption is obvious. Tip well and the bartender will pour you a double while charging you for a single, essentially 'stealing' from his employer and selling you the stolen goods at a discount under the table.

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*At a discount relative to the insane markup spirits have at a typical bar.

It's not totally implausible that the owner is fully aware of the situation and accepts the status quo as a local maximum of profitability, why mess with standing social norms -- much how most restauraunteurs in the states wouldn't dream of paying a living wage for their wait staff because they know customers are going to tip sufficiently regardless of wages and that enough potential employees are fine with the situation (or prefer it) that they won't have staffing issues.

If you're going to pay by credit anyway, you can usually open a tab when you start, and then pay all at once at the end. That's how I've always done it, maybe it's regional?

I've only seen that in local places. Otherwise its too easy to just leave from bigger venues without paying.

The non-local places around the USA will take your card when starting a tab and many automatically add gratuity if you walk out without closing it (unsure if they place credit holds based on each order). At venues like concert arenas you may not see this, but I always suspected it was more due to the logistical challenge arising from people all wanting to leave at the same time.

I took a cruise with a large group of friends once. We all had the drink package and prepaid gratuities, but we tipped extra for all of our drinks at the two bars that were our favorites. For only an extra $0.50/drink, I was getting 2-3x the alcohol and the wait staff would ignore other patrons to go straight to us. It made me feel kind of bad, but the service was outstanding and I knew the money was going to a good cause since many of the workers on these cruise ships send money back home to family.

TLDR: It’s remarkable what tipping and basic human decency can do to the quality of service you receive at a bar.

It’s remarkable what tipping and basic human decency can do

Of course we now need an experiment to disentangle those two variables! One team tips very well, but treats the staff badly , one team treats the staff with plenty of human decency, but doesn't tip. Then we measure the quality of service received by the two groups. I wonder if I can apply for a research grant?

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