Quote:
Originally Posted by QuadsOverQuads
Your entire post reads like a lawyer trying to convince a jury to evade their own common sense.
"no clear moral high ground"
"not ethically required"
False equivalence after false equivalence.
blah blah blah.
When you knowingly employ people to perform labor for you, knowing that those people work for tips, and, in the course of performing their job for you, they provide you with good service, as per their half of the arrangement, you should also honor *your* half of the arrangement and pay them for the services you have knowingly and voluntarily used.
There is absolutely no moral equivalence between (1) paying for the services you use and (2) getting someone to perform labor for you and then walking out without paying the check.
I read like I'm equivocating because I am — I'm trying not to let my own view on tipping affect greatly what I say, because I think that I can advance the discussion more by pointing out flaws in arguments than by making my own.
You want me not to equivocate, to state a clear position? Fine. The moral question is whether there is an implied contract that a player violates by tipping much less (including not at all) than the social norm. Because we're talking about something that in the grand scheme of things is insignificant (distribution of very small amounts of wealth), there's no basis for claiming it's horribly wrong either to tip or not to, unless the player has implicitly promised to do so by playing and is therefore breaking a promise by freeloading.
My view on that is that there sort of
is such a promise, such an implied contract... but that that contract is often violated by the casino and the dealer, too. I have worked a service job myself (waiting tables, for years) and I know that it is possible to work speedily and smilingly at a crappy job even on one's bad days, and efficiently and rapidly even when one's boss let's one get away with a lot less. And many dealers don't. I am perfectly comfortable (morally — it's socially uncomfortable a lot of the time) stiffing dealers who are not doing their job well, and that applies pretty often — perhaps one down in two, in my experience. On the other hand, with those who do their jobs well, I follow the social custom and I think it would be (mildly) immoral not to do so, given that I know the compensation model when I sit down to play.
In tournament play the contract tends to be different, because the casino is explicitly claiming to be compensating the dealers adequately — but I know they're really not. And this is messy because the social norm isn't as clear, with for more people declining to tip after tournament wins than would do so at a cash table. I think this is a much harder question.
There. Is this discussion furthered more by my saying that, or by my trying to remind people to be civil? Probably no effect either way, I guess.
Your own argument is crappy, by the way. "When you knowingly employ people to perform labor for you..." — fine and dandy except that I, the customer,
didn't employ anyone to perform labor for me or anyone else. I elected to consume a service that is offered me by a commercial entity that I happen to know undercompensates its employees and hopes that I will quasi-voluntarily supplement that compensation. It would be lovely if the situation were as simple as you think, but it just isn't.