Adam Ruins Everything — Tipping & Wage Discrimination

 

Adam Ruins Everything is a half-hour informational comedy were host, Adam Conover, debunks popular myths. Each episode is divided into 3 segments with some common theme. In the Spring of 2018, James Tierney and I sat down to go through all three seasons of Adam Ruins Everything to pick out examples in each episode that could be used in an economics course. If you’re curious about the paper, you can read about it here.

In this scene, Adam discusses the discrimination aspect of tipping in restaurants. While the segment focuses on the history of tipping in the United States, this scene is poignant because so many students work as waiters or at least have been waited on. Subconsciously, they may be discriminating against minorities without realizing it.

There’s a great scene from Reservoir Dogs that covers the issue of tipping as well as an in-depth Freakonomics podcast asking whether tipping should be illegal.

Reservoir Dogs — Why tip?

Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) describes why he doesn’t tip waitresses. His associates try to convince him along an equity argument by saying it’s the right thing to do and how they are exploited because their tips are taxed. Mr. Pink argues from an efficiency standpoint that if the waitresses aren’t happy with their pay then they need to relocate. He eventually concedes to tip $1 when he’s reminded that he didn’t pay for his food.

Film: Reservoir Dogs

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