One of my occasional rants is about higher wages. I’m not a member of the Chamber of Commerce and I am not a small business owner, though a church does often operate in some ways like small businesses. Our employees are all motivated by faith and our wages tend to be low because we are a nonprofit organization without much extra money. A church, like ours, that is blessed with abundant generosity of the members has to make choices and we often choose mission and outreach rather than increasing institutional operational costs. What I am trying to say is that while I believe that workers should be fairly paid for their time, I know it is a complex issue.

Having said that, I have been known to be a bit vocal about South Dakota’s consistently low wages for almost all of its vocations. With some notable exceptions, South Dakotans tend to earn the lowest wages for their work. We consistently lead the nation with low teacher pay and governor after governor touts their work to attract new jobs to the state as they woo out of state businesses with promises of low wages. The result is that there are plenty of jobs in South Dakota where the workers don’t earn enough to pay rent and buy groceries. We did, as a state, vote to raise our minimum wage last year, but the new minimum wage is insufficient for a lone wage earner to provide for even a modest lifestyle for a family.

So with all of my talk, I feel it is important for me to back it up with generosity when I go out to eat. Having had family members who worked as restaurant servers, I was schooled early on about the need to tip a minimum of 15%. In most cases, when I go out to eat, I tip 20%. That tip amount, however, is for sit-down service. All around town, however, there are tip jars and other suggestions that we leave a gratuity for servers in fast-food and counter-serve restaurants. I know that those jobs aren’t inherently better than the jobs at other businesses, but at the same time I struggle with knowing what is appropriate for a tip. First of all there is the problem of not knowing who gets the tip. With a generic tip jar, all of the people working behind the counter ought to share the tip. The person operating the cash register isn’t somehow serving me more than the one who prepares a sandwich. But I don’t know how those countertop tip jars work. In a coffee shop, where I am already paying a very high price for a product that is very inexpensive to prepare, the percentage of profit on my purchase is much higher than some other businesses I frequent. Is the person who makes custom coffee beverages somehow more deserving of a tip than the retail clerk working for minimum wage in a convenience store?

I don’t often ride in a cab, and when I do it is in a city far away from home. I’ve heard that if you ride a cab in New York City these days and pay with a credit card, the screen gives you the choice of a 20-, 25-, or 30-percent tip. Thirty percent on top of a service that seems to me to be already over priced is not an option I’m likely to choose.

I’ve not experienced it yet myself, but I have heard of those who have dined in fancy restaurants where the credit card statement now has a line for a tip for the server and another line for a tip for the kitchen workers.

I think there is a bit of tip inflation going on. In the 1940’s a 10% tip was standard. Now we’ve increased the percentage, and we are steadily increasing the number of people we tip. When we stay in a motel there is usually an envelope encouraging tipping of the cleaning staff. What about those who clean other public buildings we frequent?

When we traveled in Europe, we found many establishments where the tip was included in the price. It solves the dilemma for the purchaser. You either decided to buy or not to buy the product, and you don’t have to think about the tip.

I’m well aware that higher wages for workers means higher prices for some of the things we purchase. The money has to come from some place and it is unlikely that consumers will have much say about wages for management or the margins of profit for owners. The concept of equal pay for equal work is nice in theory, but we are so far from it in application that a practical way to make changes isn’t clear to me.

We are planning a trip this week to a conference about faith formation and church vitality. We will be staying in a motel that was chosen by conference planners and is more upscale, and more expensive, than our usual. We’ll also eat a lot more meals in restaurants than typical. So we already know that we’ll be spending more than usual. And we are traveling out of state, so the workers we’ll be supporting with tips are likely better paid than the workers at home. Still, we will at least consider percentages in our tips - the higher the cost, the bigger the top. I’m not sure that quite translates to higher wages, higher tips, but I suspect there is a relationship there as well. We don’t make the system more fair by giving more to those who already earn more. Still, I don’t know how to reinvent the system and I suspect that there are plenty of workers in the places we will visit who could certainly use a little more income for their families.

I remember being a bit embarrassed when, as he got older, my father steadfastly kept to his standard 10% tip in a restaurant. I would sometimes sneak a few more dollars under my plate as I left. However, my children may have the same reaction to me. I’m ready to cap tips at 20%, even if the “industry standard” creeps up to 30%.

After all, I’m not exactly in the high wage category myself.

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