Do You Tip on Precedent?

I would make a reference to the movie Reservoir Dogs, but I’ve already done that the last time I wrote about tipping your waiter or waitress. So, I’ll give you a few minutes to reread that and then come back to this story about an app that could completely eliminate the gender pay gap through tips alone.

All right, so it won’t completely eliminate the gender pay gap, but it will bring attention to people who dine out. A new iPhone app called Toothpick is showing people what it’s like to be a woman in the workforce. This isn’t just the usual tip calculator. This new app shows you what a female server would make if the gender pay gap applied to servers as well. Because, let’s be honest, we don’t generally tip waitstaff based on gender; we tip them based on service. Right? Hopefully!

According to the Toothpick website, “For some of you, this new standard of tipping may take some getting used to. But here’s the thing. In the United States, women and men are not persons of equal stature. Check the Constitution yourself. In the workplace, on average, women get paid 22 percent less than their male counterparts.”

The app works by putting in the dollar amount of the bill and then selecting the tip percentage. Next, you select whether your server was a male or a female. The app will then adjust the tip based on the gender gap and that’s—hypothetically—what you’re supposed to tip your server. So, for a $45 bill with a 20 percent tip, you would end up tipping your female server $7.02 after the gender deduction has been applied (a male server would get $9.00).

Not only was this app designed to alert the masses about the gender pay gap, it was also created to help elicit change. The Toothpick website offers a petition you can sign that will help eliminate the gender pay gap. The amount of people who have actually signed the petition (at the time this was written) is pretty dismal compared to the amount of signatures that are actually needed. It doesn’t look like the pay gap will be ending any time soon, but at least this app uniquely raised awareness for it!