I'm the kind of person who "reacts to the inefficiency of The System"[0], but I also have a bone to pick with a lot of the worthless, inauthentic symbolic "rituals" that most people perform unquestioningly. it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly.
with tipping, it is simultaneously vaguely some "meritocratic" dimension to the waiter's job, but then it's also basically just a tax, but then it's also a social ritual in which people can boast or be shamed for their ignorance or largesse. I don't like it at all.
All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it.
[0] I'd also say this is putting it mildly, almost like a euphemism. It is a way of exploitation that happens to benefit a visible minority of waiters so that the overall impression for those not in the know is one of neutrality. It is definitely a pro-employer law, that dukes the clients against the employees.
> All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it.
I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure that social "rituals" are really inherently something to be worn down just because many of us find them hard to navigate.
Social rituals are a side effect of existing in a society with other people and so they never really go away, they just change into other things. As such it's not really a good idea to solve the problem of such rituals by trying to eradicate them, when what we really should be doing is getting better at living in a world with social rituals that pop up and go away. Plasticity should be the goal, and while streamlining rituals can certainly work with that goal, streamlining should not be the goal itself.
> it's kind of like when people are surprised that a standard way of saying "hi" in North America is "how are you?" even though the person doesn't actually wanna hear it and will be weirded out if you reply honestly.
A thousand times this! I've had a lot of personal trouble with the long and drawn out experience of learning that the right answer to "How are you?" is to _lie_ and just say "Good, and you?", regardless of how I really feel.
with tipping, it is simultaneously vaguely some "meritocratic" dimension to the waiter's job, but then it's also basically just a tax, but then it's also a social ritual in which people can boast or be shamed for their ignorance or largesse. I don't like it at all.
All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it.
[0] I'd also say this is putting it mildly, almost like a euphemism. It is a way of exploitation that happens to benefit a visible minority of waiters so that the overall impression for those not in the know is one of neutrality. It is definitely a pro-employer law, that dukes the clients against the employees.