Is tipping a thing of the past? With robots serving foods in restaurants, the tipping culture may be on the way out.
Many people consider tipping as a courtesy for the service in restaurants. While some countries like China don't have the norm of tipping, Bangladesh, just like the American culture has its own rationale and would tip 10-15 per cent of the total bill to the waiter. Parting with tips helps establish trust and provide an incentive to serve better. But it's not a very interesting institution if everyone pays 15 per cent of the total bill. It becomes fascinating when someone pays a very small tip to send a waiter a signal that the service was unsatisfactory. If people feel more generous or feel very pleased and satisfied with the food or service, they may enhance the amount of tip.
There's a subtle art in performance, and not always the performance can be monitored by the restaurant managers. Only the customer has the proper information if the server is doing a good job. So waiters usually try to provide the best service as much as possible. Tips are sometimes a very important part of earning for many servers in a restaurant, so customers sometimes feel obliged to tipping. In contrast, some people shred this off and don't tip at all. Socialists believe that the norm of tipping should be spread broadly. At times, tourists come from a country where tipping culture isn't that popular. On the one hand, waiters in one corner suffer from the dilemma as to who should serve that table as they know that they won't get tip for their service.
On the other hand, with the introduction of robots in restaurants, customers are expected not to face such discrimination. Robots will serve customers irrespective of any emotional fluctuation, incentive or feelings, so the performance will be consistent and need not be monitored unless there is some technical problem in the machine. Many customers who don't prefer tipping over the service charge and other charges will be relieved with this technology-employment paradigm. The tipping culture might be in decline in the future in Bangladesh due to this paradigm shift. However, the arrival of robots has posed threat to employment of waiters. Many waiters even might feel threatened by the machine's arrival and would improve their performance over robots out of fear of losing their job and would serve irrespective of customers tipping them or not. Nonetheless, if the recent initiative of the restaurant in Asad Gate area in Dhaka happen to be highly efficient and performs as a cost-saving mechanism, then more and more restaurants might opt for this strategy. Firstly, customers will visit those restaurants out of curiosity and excitement to experience the new hype. Secondly, restaurant owners don't have to pay robots any monthly salary, but only incur the cost of machine maintenance.
Furthermore, technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, and nanotechnology are not only sharply advancing, but their rate of advancement is also increasing in most countries, where Bangladesh is no exception anymore. The machine algorithms are adapting to picking up cognitive tasks. In a limited sense, the replacement of human waiter to robots can be expanded to robot cashiers and cleaners too.
However, to what extent this fundamental shift will take place and on what timescale are still very much up for debate. With existing unemployment in Bangladesh, the people might be still unprepared for such a change, as it poses threat to their earning.
