Act of Discrimination

Everyone has heard stereotypes about how people tip when eating at restaurants. The idea is that African Americans and young people do not tip well. I worked at a restaurant as a server for 2 years, and I have seen people discriminated against multiple times because of this silly stereotype. I worked at a very nice restaurant and we generally did not receive any tips less than 20-25%. So never once did I witness any individuals of color get discriminated against by any of our servers. Who did get discriminated against, then? Young people. All the time. Anytime a server got a table of anyone who looked younger than 25 (unless if they were with a parent) they would complain about it in the back. Make comments about how they probably won't tip well anyway. And most times, the table of young people was more neglected than the other tables. But in my personal experience, it was NOT the young people that tipped poorly; it was the elderly. Whenever tables of very elderly people would pay their bill, they usually left about a 10% tip. This is not because they received bad service or that they are rude, but because their generation is not used to the recent standard of tipping between 18-20% on a bill. So, while tables of older people generally get the most attention, it almost always ends up that the elderly tip less money than the young people or people of color who often get ignored. Since working at a restaurant and understanding the server's mentality, I now notice how often my friends and I will not get very good service when out to a restaurant, unless we are accompanied by our parents. The servers automatically make the assumption that since we are young we won't tip well, so they don't bother wasting their time being friendly or prompt. Which, of course, ends up leading to angry customers who do not tip well. So the stereotype causes poor behavior on the server's part, which in turn leads to the low tip.