Did you know it was once a misdemeanor to leave a tip in Washington state?
Long before there was a tip line on your credit card receipt and the nagging internal debate between leaving 15% or 20%, there was a whole anti-tipping movement, and advocates in Washington ranted against what they called the moral failing of tipping.
In 1909, they managed to pass a law that made it illegal to tip. The law, which lasted until 1913, was mostly laughed off as tipping continued unabated.
The law may have died, but the controversy, the moral questioning and the legislation around tipping is still a noisy conversation today as U.S. society continues to debate the fundamentals of tipping: Who gets tipped and why? How much do you tip? Is tipping demeaning? How much should tipped workers get paid?
... “The uncomfortable history is that [tipping] is rooted in race and gender. It’s essentially a legacy of slavery,” said Kim England, the Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies at the University of Washington.
“Freed former slaves found it really difficult to find work and this economic desperation meant that they were more easily exploited than other workers,” England said. “White [employers] could pay very very small amounts of a regular wage, even no wage, and say that Black folks needed to work for tips.”