The Institution of Tipping as a Source of Employee Agency: The Case of Restaurant Servers

Abstract

Authors have called for concerted scholarship on how service workers strategically express agency in their work. This article furthers our knowledge of service workers' experiences by analyzing qualitative data derived from in-depth interviews in which restaurant servers discussed how they experience the labor process of serving. We delineate the various ways servers exercise control in an otherwise constraining and emotionally demanding field. We find that servers experience considerable “interactive control” in their dealing with customers by employing techniques strategically to manipulate patrons' dining experiences. Much of servers' behavior is an adaptation to their dependency on patrons' tips. Thus, we advance Rosenthal's (2004) conception of management control as an employee resource rather than a constraint by locating servers' opportunity to express agency within the context of the institution of tipping.

Notes

The authors would like to thank Jon Brauer and David Fasenfest for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article.

¹These are usually veteran servers that have been certified by management to train new waiters/waitresses and they receive slightly higher hourly wages for doing so.

²This respondent is probably referencing her ability to speak with an African American vernacular accent.