7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Opportunity
Many American workers in the restaurant and service industry rely heavily on the act of tipping by American consumers, resulting in a lower minimum wage, which is legal for employers to give out.
Who: American service workers
What: Rely heavily on tips to make most of their wages
Why: Culture implemented over many years makes tipping seem moral, but service workers most of the time suffer from this cultural impact.

Hypothesis
Testing the Need: The service workers who receive tips are the main subject of people who share the need.

Testing the What: The boundaries of this need are whether or not all American workers feel this way, because some may be happy with their wages. Also, it depends a lot on the specific industry in which they are working, because some consumers tip more in specific areas rather than others, which makes this situation dependent on setting, and more of a problem.

Testing the Why: Some workers may not believe that tipping is an issue in America, and some may believe that they make way less than they should and should not have to be fully reliant on tips. Some customers may even not want to tip servers, or would rather avoid the situation in which they feel obligated to tip. Either way, customers and service working suffer from the cultural idea of tipping.

Interview Reflection
Considering that the subject here is any American who works in customer service or restaurants, I just interviewed five people who have had experience working as a server or someone who receives tips. I also interviewed people whose pay rate is affected based on whether tips are accepted or not. After the interviews, I concluded that the majority of workers interviewed felt that the main issue is the drop in wages, but also acknowledge that the lower wages are affected by the tipping ideology. Some, however, had no problem with tips or the difference and wage, but I noticed that this was also because the average tips a night that these people would make were much higher than those who had an issue and the opportunity.

Conclusion
After learning about my opportunity and extensively interviewing five subjects who are affected by this opportunity, I can conclude that the opportunity of tipping in America still remains an opportunity, but it can vary between each individual in question. I realized that more people than I thought believe that tips have a bad affect on their working lives. Usually, when I thought of tips, I thought of them as a good thing, but if consumers do not feel the need to tip, then the worker suffers. I believe that this opportunity could be solved so that customer and workers are equally happy.