We live in a world where the way you look, and whether or not it matches the conventional beauty standards of each period in time, will definitely affect the kind of life you end up having.
It can affect the type of friends that surround you, your partner, what kind of job you can get, as well as how you’re treated in it.
One server says she experienced a version of this phenomenon in an isolated way when she saw how much the same customers had tipped her colleague versus her.
In a TikTok video with over 64,640 views, creator Kate (@kruss3ll) offers up theories about why she thinks this happened.
Can your appearance affect your income?
“Your appearance can absolutely affect your tips in the service industry,” she begins.
She makes it clear that she likes her job and doesn’t experience this type of situation often.
Kate describes herself as “alternative,” pointing to her red hair and nose ring. She says the typical customer at her workplace looks very different from her.
“The average person that goes to my work is a 50-year-old golfer,” she says.
That day had otherwise been going well. Kate says her tables had consistently tipped around 25% to 30%.
Then she got a table of around nine or 10 people.
“I’m ready to help them. I’m excited,” she says. “They were joking around, we’re having a good time.”
The group eventually ran up a tab of around $150 and asked Kate to split it evenly between two checks.
Before the customers left, she says another server started her shift. Kate noticed the group might want to order more, so she told her co-worker to take that table.
“I let my new server that has just come in… know that there’s a table in her section that may want to reopen,” she says. “And she should definitely drop on that because they’re super nice people.”
Later, after the group left, Kate checked both servers’ receipts.
Her co-worker received a $20 tip on a $40 tab.
“Which is amazing,” Kate says. “Like she totally deserves it. She’s a great server. Absolutely.”
Then she opened her own checks
“I proceed to open my books, you know, like I said, $150 tab split down the middle, $75 a piece,” she says. “I was a little surprised to see I’d been tipped $5 on both of those.”
That works out to around 6.7% on each $75 check.
Kate says she initially questioned whether she had done something wrong.
“I reflected and I thought about like, maybe I did something wrong,” she says. “I watched her interaction, I watched my interaction, they were the same.”
There’s only one obvious difference between them.
“She is a very conventionally beautiful young girl,” Kate says. “And I am attractive, but I’m not attractive to someone that’s not open-minded to this appearance, you know what I mean?”
She says her other tips that day only reinforced her theory.
“And you guys might say, ‘Oh, but it was your service,’ but it wasn’t, ’cause all my other tables for the day were 25 to 30% tips,” she says.
“My job is wonderful and this is quite rare. It happens :)” she added in the caption.
Other servers say they’ve seen it too
Several servers in the comments said they had also noticed their appearance affecting how much customers tipped them.
“This is facts! I track my tips and the days I do makeup vs no makeup, even down to full face vs eye makeup, and ponytail vs cute,” one commenter wrote. “TOTALLY different tips. I always make more with a full face and cute hair.”
Another said there’s some research on the subject.
“There are studies about this. Specific (controllable) traits like red lipstick and pigtails generate more money,” they wrote.
It’s true that some research studies the effects of appearance on servers’ earnings. One study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology in 2015, for example, found that servers considered “attractive” make roughly $1,261 more per year. It also found that beauty standards affect women servers’ earnings more than men servers’.
One server said some customers have directly commented on her appearance.
“Yeah I have older men tell me my septum piercing and my tattoos are a ‘turn off’ and I’m like gooood I’m doing something right then,” she wrote.
Not everyone had the same experience, though.
“I’m pretty ‘alternative’, face is full of dainty piercings and I have massive gauges. I live in a small town that is very judgmental,” another server shared. “A lot of the time it isn’t the look. It’s how you interact in their conversations and feel out their vibes. I make triple what most at my work make, and it’s purely how I gauge my table. Rarely do I get a crappy tip based on my style. And that includes my older folks.”
@kruss3ll
Subplot News has reached out to Kate via email for comments.
