Nathan Wuertenberg
Commentary Editor
How much do you tip your waitress? Fifteen percent? Twenty? Feeling generous? What about twenty-five? In a recently overheard conversation on campus I learned something very interesting about someone I’m sure everyone is familiar with: Oprah. It seems, out of the generosity of her spirit, that Oprah has advised her audience of nearly 4.5 million men and women to only tip their servers ten percent to save money in the middle of the economic crisis.
Intrigued, I decided to do a little research. So, I rounded up a few waitress friends I knew and asked for their opinions. One, who had already heard about Oprah’s advice, was none too pleased. I can’t repeat what she said for the purposes of this article. Another, however, did tell me something very interesting indeed. It seems that, at the restaurant she works at (a national chain) if a server makes an average of less that twenty percent tips, they’re no longer a server. Could Oprah really have said something that could cost even more people their jobs in this economic climate?
No. After a little cruising through various online forums, Oprah’s official website, and YouTube I discovered the traces of a very revealing rumor. That’s all it really was. One more harmless Internet rumor. Seemingly harmless anyway. Oprah never told anyone to tip their servers ten percent. No evidence, despite how much people insist, exists to the contrary. In fact, her website recommends tipping servers fifteen to twenty percent (generous enough to make any waiter or waitress happy).
However, in the course of my Internet research, I did find out that many people, including servers, wrongly believe that African American customers tip less that other customers. There have even been psychological studies published to attempt to prove this. Personally, I think this belief, and those studies, are worth about as much as a horse’s end product.
It’s interesting that, of all the celebrities that could have been in a rumor about poor tippers, the one that society and the Internet pick is one of the most influential African Americans in the United States today. It’s discouraging that these kind of thoughts still exist, even in a “harmless” Internet rumor.
