The debate about tipping culture will rage on until legislation is passed to actually pay servers and restaurant staff a living wage .
Until then, customers will continue to struggle with calculating their tips, and servers will continue trying to find ways to secure bigger tips.
One TikToker has shared her tips for, uh, tips. As it turns out, it doesn’t have anything to do with service or friendliness. Instead, it all comes down to hair.
Servers don’t typically make much money.
While one can make a good living working at a higher-end restaurant (or a restaurant that pays well ), most servers don’t make much money. Even top earners tend to make just a little over $40,000 a year .
Could pigtails be the answer?
Most people would agree that a combination of factors can influence how much is tipped: the quality and speed of the service, and the attentiveness of the server.
There’s another, grosser side to this, though: many people will base their tips on the appearance of their server.
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One TikToker put pigtails to the test.
In a video captioned “pigtails are a fan fav,” TikToker Bella set out to prove something: namely, the fact that she could get better tips in her server job if she wears her hair in pigtails.
After applying some hair product and braiding her hair, Bella showed off her pigtailed look.
Bella clearly doesn’t usually wear her hair this way, but she’s doing this as an experiment.
“I literally look insane right now,” she said. “If this works, I’m just gonna say that this is so weird and gross, but I’m down for more tips.”
Plenty of commenters said that pigtails are a surefire way to get better tips.
Commenters discussed the pigtails strategy as if it was something that’s common knowledge. It’s news to me, but it sounds like it’s well known in the serving world.
It’s kind of a sad reflection of the world we live in.
Do people give better tips because pigtails make a server look young and vulnerable? That would be tough to prove, but what can be proven is that customers tend to give better tips to servers who they believe to be attractive.
Bella returned with the results.
“Y’all were not lying. I got a $135 tip by one guy tonight,” said Bella in a short clip recorded after her shift. “Wear pigtails to work. I’m about to be doing this every day.”
It might not work for everyone.
Pigtails are a bold look for sure. They worked for Bella and they’ve worked for other servers (at least as a way to get tips), but some users reported that they simply weren’t pigtail people.
Bella’s turning this into a full-blown experiment.
In tangentially-related follow-up videos, Bella shows that she’s currently trying out different hairstyles at work to see which one gets the best tips. It’s an ongoing project, so it’s a good idea to follow her account to see how things turn out.
What do you think of this?
There’s a lot to unpack here, from the basic debate around living wages and tipping culture to the inherent objectification that comes with many serving jobs, particularly for women.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
