Why Do Black People Not Tip? -- LiveWire Teen Forums

Quote: from jakelong at 8:19 pm on Aug. 19, 2008

How many hours did you spend doing all that?

Well, I spent 4 months collecting the data after each delivery at work. I'd record the five things I mentioned onto the ticket for the delivery itself and every night after my shift is over, I'd throw it all on an excel spreadsheet. Once I was done, I'd divide up the races into how I want to organize them, and spent quite awhile getting everything the way I needed it to in order to make graphs and analyze the data. Took me much of the day yesterday, so I'm glad to finally have everything but the sex and age portions done, which I don't think I'll get around to doing since those two variables aren't that important in my opinion.

I mean from the charts you gave it looks like things were consistent pretty much across all incomes for all races.

Well, the general trends stayed the same, however as the socioeconomic class improved, so did the tips (mainly because the stiff rate went down considerably the higher the socioeconomic class). The greatest variation from that I found were among Latinos, where most of them in the working class gave $0 - $2 in tips, in the lower-middle class they gave mostly around $2 in tips, and in the middle class, tipped between $2 - $4 or so. Each scatterplot at the different socioeconomic classes for Latinos looks quite different for them. Aside from Latinos, just about all races maintain their same general trend, although blacks go from stiffing most of the time during the working class to tipping between $1 - $2 in the other two classes, mainly as a result of the general trend of the stiff rate dropping as the socioeconomic class improves it seems.

I gotta say in my family we used to be a bit confused about the pizza delivery tipping deal for the longest time (although Im the one my mom asks to calculate the tip and she always generous when we dine out.) In my hood most ppl dont tip very much but my mom knows that she likes it when she gets tips from the customers when she does extra work so she makes sure she gives a good tip to servers in return.

There's a lot of things going around about tipping pizza delivery drivers, servers, bartenders, etc. Some will say it's optional, some will say it's required, some will say that it's only for extra good service, etc. I find blacks and more people among the lower classes treat it as an optional / extra good service thing, whereas every other race in the lower-middle and middle classes treat is as required. This is all from personal observation, though - I don't have a whole lot other than examples from other posts to back my point up on that.

The deal about the delivery thing is that they already charge you more for the delivery so some ppl are confused about whether that included the driver's tip or not. So I know some ppl might be confused about it.

Yeah, that's an issue, although I gotta admit, from everybody I talk to it's pretty common sense that the delivery charge =/= a tip. Although I suppose for others who are more uninformed of the industry won't necessarily realize that. I, and others, try to highlight that as much as we can, although when you got corporate heads from the Big Three (Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's) telling everybody that all the delivery charge goes to the driver (which is completely untrue no matter where you are), it only creates more confusion.

The fact that the credit card has an extra tip line doesn't mean everything.

It means a lot because if you go to fill out the credit card receipt, you're going to notice that you not only need to sign the thing, but also that you need to tip and total it. You can tip nothing, and people who don't tip will usually put a big fat zero there, but you can't just ignore it - I don't let people ignore it as there have been instances all around the US where people, usually managers and some shady pizza drivers out there, put their own tips on credit card receipts that weren't totalled (ie. credit card fraud). There's no way you can be oblivious to that and that drivers are not tipped.

In latin american countries and culture tipping is usually expected so ppl know about it.

Exactly. In Mexico, you'll have little kids in the grocery stores bagging your groceries, and they don't make any wage at all - their income relies entirely on tips. Thus for Latinos, they understand tipping much better and thus why they tip better than blacks as a whole.

Although I gotta admit, I'd have to say a good portion of Latinos in my area (at least a few in the lower-middle class and most in the middle class) have to at least be second generation immigrants and thus see tipping more in terms of how whites do. Certainly, a few blacks see it that way, too, and those are generally the blacks that tip between $2 and $5. However, among blacks, they are the minority.

We tip according to how much money we can afford and if we have coupons or deals we actually tip more because we have more left over to give out. Thats why thers more variation.

I never considered coupons with these deliveries, nor have I really noticed anything. Though do remember one thing: while it's all good to say you only tip as much as you can afford, be sure to tip properly, because the way I and other drivers / servers see it, if you can't afford a proper tip, you can't afford the meal.

I generally don't have much of a problem with Latinos, though. As you can see from the graphs I've presented, Latinos, for the most part, tip their share of the population (or just a little under it). The main issue here is blacks because when you see they make 20% of the customer base and only 8% of the total tips, there's something going on there.

In the Asian culture they calculate the percent and they stick to that unless somebody really did something that strikes them. Thats why theres not a lot variation for them.

Indeed, many Indians seem to be that way, too. Compared to whites and Latinos, Asians and Indians are far more likely to tip you something like $3.17 exactly. 3 one dollar bills, 1 dime, 1 nickel, and 2 pennies. Whites and Latinos usually seem to say fuck it and round up.

In white American culture they tip according to service quality and other stuff. I know my mom's friend who's white tips sometimes a lot sometimes a little but the way she does is always abit of a mystery for me like how she grades the waiter on what criteria.

Indeed, that's why you see the extreme variation among whites that you do in the scatterplot I presented. Personally, the way I do it and was taught to do it was to tip 20% always unless I either felt offended or thought that the service sucked, which is where I'd lower the tip down to 15% or 10% and leave a note as to why I didn't tip a full 20%.

Thing is, I'd consider that now and judging from how everybody else tips, 10% isn't too shabby - certainly not enough to catch a server's attention, I think. Which is why I've sorta redone how I tip, and I now tip $5 if the bill is under $30, $6 if between $30 - $35, $7 for $35 - $40, etc., which leaves the tip around 17 to 20% no matter how high you go (plus I'd always round up for change), and perhaps I'd tip a little more if I liked the service and a little less if I didn't, and if I felt truly offended or pissed by it, I'd leave maybe a dollar with a note. It's often those single $1 tips that get people going WTF more than a stiff itself.

I can't answer for blacks because im not in their head but I think they feel they already paid enough for the food and like you said they feel the driver is PART of the same company so it like they're paying the company more. I don't say all blacks do that. But its possible thats whats going on.

If you review the scatterplot for black tips, you'd notice that certainly not all blacks do it. I'd agree with you here, too - blacks don't seem to see the sense of a hidden cost like tipping. They don't seem to understand why Americans tip and why that is supposed to cover the cost of labor, and not the employer. Not every black is like that, no doubt, but judging from my data, that kind of thinking seems to be much more widespread than in all the other races.

But I dont think its right at all to say "they dont care". its more that they feel the employee is already part of the same company.

Mmm, I dunno. If I told a black person that he or she tips like shit and should tip me more, I'd most certainly get told that they couldn't give less of a damn. Personally, I don't think any other race truly cares either - it's just that the moral obligation for tipping does not exist so much among blacks as it does among all other races. This, as well as what you said in the point above, is the main reason, I think.

When you do the grouping on behavior stuff like tipping you should think that alot of the stuff we talk about is culture NOT race.

Of course, although the culture is defined by the race. "Black culture" wouldn't be a culture and could not exist if it were not black. You cannot deny that.

694 users online 186852 members 1267 active today Advertise Here