The method that has enabled us to describe the interaction between servers/customers and the participation of the TransBank POS machine is ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967; 2005) and the systemic turn that Robles (2002) and Yu Cheng (2012) have built upon this approach. This type of study has been used in organizations to account for the different mechanisms they employ to open and expand (Lynch, 2015). The assumption that ethnomethodology has is that it is in the organizations themselves, as social formations different from the systems of interactions and society (Luhmann, 2013), where those practical meanings that comprise their actions and configuration originate.

Garfinkel (1967) understood that interactions are where individuals deploy rational findings as a source of social normality. For the case in this text, postures and accounts deployed in the interaction system (Robles, 2002) with distinctive organizational configurations are seen in the operation of servers and customers in the specific organization of the restaurant.

To complement ethnomethodological and systemic approaches, an object-based analysis proposed by Marres and Lezaun (2011) leads this study to understand sociality centered on the TransBank POS object. Underneath Marres and Lezaun it is the work of Serres (2007) that is being use as a crucial epistemological resource for the empirical analysis of the tip phenomena.

Serres’ philosophy allows the visualization of the person who delivers the service as a quasi-subject, who stands in relation to the tip devices, which would be defined as quasi-objects. However, the solution does not end there. An object-centered approach must empirically review on a case-by-case basis and remain open to the reformulation of both the subjects and devices that are part of the technologies managing this service and its related payments. The interrelation between subjects and objects has a strong connection with the work of Yu Cheng (2012), who has tried, uniting the theory of social systems with ethnomethodology, to better understand micro-macro relationships and individual-society interactions. The authors propose that, in directing the gaze towards objects, one does not stop looking at the individual and society, and the analyst can reach an understanding of the postures and accounts of those who participate in the tipping phenomenon.

The research used two data collection techniques: semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The goal was to delve into the reality, systematize the distinctions of the actors based on observation and then problematize them through interviews. These techniques were applied in Santiago, Chile during 2016, due to the fact that the highest productive concentration of the hotel and restaurant industry is in this region of the country.

With respect to the selection of organizations, servers and customers, the research employed theoretical sampling (Glaser, & Strauss, 1967) to select two cafés and restaurants and interview eight customers and eight servers. This was done by taking advantage of the convergence of the Labor Directorate (2014) and the SII (2015) regulations that assume the existence of table service and a presence of tipping in such organizations. Finally, organizations, servers and customers were selected based on access criteria, willingness to participate and viability of time spent on research.

This study uses theoretical sample. Author’s decision to select theoretical sample it is based on Urquiza and coauthors (2017) who claim that: ‘theoretical sample techniques serves well to systemic research, because allow to operationalize theoretical selected constructs for observation and interviews’ (Urquiza, et al., 2017, p. 28-29), in this study for the interactions related with tip phenomena. This theoretical selection leads to a robust development of new theory based on the scenario mixture where researchers study distinctions of any phenomena under study (Gibson, et al., 2005).

Taking care of ethical aspects, researchers follow a strict protocol based on the Chilean University Bioethics Committee, where organization owners, waiters and clients signed consent forms before observations and any explanatory interview. Researchers follow ethical general accepted procedures to guarantee that all human subjects are choosing to participate of their own free will and that they have been fully informed regarding the procedures of the research project and any potential risks, confidentiality and anonymity.

This research looks to present its results analytically. Authors describe events, presenting pieces of information, whether it is explanatory interview transcriptions or fieldwork notebook.

Authors performed thematic analysis methods (King, & Horrocks, 2010). The central idea of thematic analysis is to identify patters of themes in qualitative data generated by the methods being at use in the field. Additionally, thematic analysis allows authors to gain systematic knowledge and empathy about interactions in dyads, that are the base of tip phenomena, always considering the situation singularity and organization specific local aspects.

Data shows that each organization under study seeks to establish its own seal in offering products and services. On the one hand, each manager and/or owner seeks to provide unique products on their menu to differentiate their offering from the competition’s. On the other hand, one can observe that organizations seek to differentiate themselves based on good service, managing their workers not only in the preparation of products but also in provision of table service. It should be noted that the managers and/or cafés and restaurant owners make selections according to individual abilities in order to guarantee good service for customers.

Through the notion of good service, money mobilizes organizations in the way that the tips are distributed. In consequence, distinctions between money as utility and money as tip arises. There are two mechanisms that lead to this distinction: on the one hand, there is the notion of service areas, defined as arbitrary divisions of the service space, where each server has the monopoly, responsibility and exclusivity of the tips obtained at these tables. A second distribution mechanism is referred to as a “tronco” (literally: trunk), or an accumulated tip pool. This money is distributed among the organization’s workers, allocating symbolic percentages to the kitchen workers and dishwashers. The rest of the tips are divided among the servers according to the hours worked. Thus, distribution of tips is mobilized based on the Area and Tronco mechanisms.

As can be seen, behind this distribution there are economic motivational components, which are associated with the employer’s differences in the perception of good service (Saunders, 2015). While allocation by Areas is anchored in the server’s individual work and can be considered an individual motivation mechanism for good service, the Tronco mechanism is a collective way of handling customer service and therefore a motivation for the team as a whole. With this method, the organizations prioritize customer service in order to provide efficient service and get more tips for everyone, as presented in the following statement:

‘it puts you much more at ease, because you’re not making your salary, and you’re also not going to create bad blood by having more money, and therefore be stealing money. So you end up working more as part of a team’ (Interview with Server No. 2, Restaurant No. 2)

Interestingly, the server is justifying, in this discourse, the Tronco mechanism as a form that produces teamwork. The server positions this mechanism with recourse to a categorization operation (Edwards, 1995). In this categorization, the interviewee shows that on the one hand there are servers who are ‘at ease’ and on the other those who need to ‘steal money.’ Teamwork is built based on the ‘at ease’ waiters, therefore, good service is built with money that is based on both mechanisms that allow the peace of mind necessary to build teamwork.

Now, directing attention to the customers, researcher observes that money is functional when it is considered a mechanism of access to good service. For customers, it is a different experience to eat in organizations that are considered fast food restaurants than organizations that have menu and table service. Customer prefers the latter when it comes to having a culinary experience, while the former is cataloged as simply ‘convenience food.’ However, for customers, money is not the only motivator of communication; its translation as price is as well. This element is pointed out by Mascareño (2009) via the constriction property, in the sense that money should be considered a limited but attainable means in complexity reduction processes. Through price, customers distinguish and make judgments about the quality and quantity of products. In addition, through price, customers categorize the organizations, generating loyalty towards those where they feel payment/consumption compatibility. Other options are considered for special events, and the most extreme price options are discarded due to a distrust in the service -low prices- and the exclusion of not being able to pay -high prices-. These judgments can be observed when an interviewee comments on a coffee payment, and the size or portion of the coffee itself:

‘The amount, too, from my perspective, as someone who drinks a lot of coffee, it’s important for the price to be reflected in how much they serve you’ (Interview No.1, Café No.1)

The last actor mentioned is the server. Servers understand that the tip is the main daily source of money in their work. However, there are differences, according to their trajectory in the trade and how this can be related to treatment of the saving and spending of tips. On the one hand, new servers in the field -students and workers, with little experience in the trade- put a distinctive mark on the money (Zelizer, 1997), with the tip differentiated from salary in terms of its possibilities of spending. Here, it is worth pointing out how Muniesa (2009), building on Zelizer (1997), demonstrates that money can be considered an ‘attachment device,’ that is, the intermediary ‘actant’ -as it is name in actor-network approaches- that allows different activities to be mediated and reconfigured, as in the case of servers marking tip money. These servers spend their tips on daily consumption products, while salary money is designated for the payment of bills, savings and spending on higher value products, generating two monies that fulfill specific functions in their monthly budgets.

It is not the same with the more experienced servers. Authors observe similarities in their understanding of salary and tip money. However, for this to happen, they have to receive an informal education from the most experienced servers, and this education leads to ordering mechanisms and money saving. Thus, and consciously, the marking of money (Zelizer, 1997) equates the tip with the money obtained by way of salary:

‘in this field it’s tough to get organized and save money, because you get 30 thousand pesos, and boom, sometimes you get 35 thousand pesos, I take out 30 and save it, and you save all week and keep depositing’ (Interview with Server No. 2, Restaurant No. 1)

It is interesting how, in this quotation, one can see the use of the externalization mechanism (Potter, 1996) when the server talks about the job in the first part of the speech, generalizing the problem seen by the experienced servers who attest to, with a high degree of reflexivity, the variable money received in this field. Thus, the server is also categorizing his situation as part of those who have experience, those who are the central actors -servers- of the restaurant industry. It is thus observed that the process of marking money is a phenomenon that, although carried out in micro-level interaction, has macro borders. The server’s externalization, giving an account of what is happening in the industry, shows that the tip becomes a stabilized mechanism.

For the context analyzed, tip money is an intermediary that motivates, whether for organizations, customers or servers. However, the research shows that this motivation is not only differentiated according to the actor’s position, but also in the actor’s meanings. It is different to think of money as a utility -to attract customers, to choose a restaurant, or as salary- have as a tip- access to and guarantee of good service. In this sense, the analysis is in full agreement with what Zelizer (1997) has shown about money -in this case tips- being imbued with certain social understandings that imply results that may or may not be related to its economic value. Next, the text will delve deeper into the elements that motivate the giving and normalization of tip money.

The fact that the tip money has different meanings according to the actor’s position does not yet explain its normalization process and the process of leaving a tip. In effect, the data collected indicate the existence of a high regularity in both the realization and amounts of tipping.

A first instance of normality that mediates in the context and that enables regularity in tipping evokes the artifacts (Latour, 2005) that participate in the relationship and, also, how they are characterized by their members. Both the tip and the TransBank machines, as indicated in the previous sections, are based on the organizational premise of the restaurant and/or café, since it is the managers and/or owners who allow for the introduction of these devices. Interactions between servers and the customers, using TransBank POS machines are configured, allowing the distinction and introduction of money as a tip. This action is normally performed by the server, who enters the total cost, and from there calculates the suggested 10% tip.

TransBank machines for customers align with the everyday reality that money that is no longer in their possession, but in their bank accounts. In this sense, the TransBank POS machine becomes an object that mobilizes an external world to the customer/server transaction when the payment and tipping occurs. This element of comfort creates a classification, by customers, cafés and restaurants, with a preference for those restaurants that have mediators of payment.

The case of the TransBank POS machines provides a deeper understanding of the material composition that shapes the economic-social life of the actors involved in the tipping phenomenon. In line with Deville (2013, 2016), POS mediation is understood enriching Zelizer insights, insomuch as the materiality of the POS machine allows for certain tip money forms a priori, in which the actions of the servers and customers are intimately united. In other words, the materiality of the payment system allows for certain values and ways of acting that shape the actions related to the tip. Certainly, and as Deville points out, this is a specific case, and in many situations the material mediational aspects of sociotechnical assemblages -artifacts and systems- have less relevance for the socio-economic phenomena under study.

Nonetheless, for the servers interviewed, POS machine is an intermediary that allows for regularity in tip payment. POS machine as an intermediary entail what the ethnomethodologist Woolgar (1996, p. 725) calls ‘constitutive reflexivity,’ where the intermediary exist in a close interdependence between what they ‘superficially’ show and what is ‘associated with the underlying reality.’ In this case, POS machine is supporting the whole techno-normative infrastructure of the tip, as a result of its use in payment for goods and services. As a result, POS machine acquires a ‘constitutive characteristic of the scenario that makes it possible to observe’ the tip of the iceberg of the entire network that enables payments, and specifically, tipping (Garfinkel, 1967, p. 8).

As a device, the POS machine reconfigures the payment space, and with it, makes obtaining a tip equal to 10% of the total cost much more secure, and this is indeed observed more evenly. With this mediating effect in the system, contingency (Luhmann, 2013) in tipping decreases. Furthermore, with the expansion of payment types, two concatenated situations can be seen: a) the machines enable the question of the tip to be asked more frequently, since the functionality of the machine means servers must ask about the inclusion/exclusion of the tip; b) the machines allow greater calculability, in addition to digitalization of the tip value, granting greater asymmetric power, since the server is typically the one to enter the tip amount. In addition, this asymmetry in entering information leaves the customer in a more passive position, being limited to acceptance/rejection.

This can be seen in the following observation:

‘The first customer leaves the restaurant and the other asks the server for the bill, and says that he’ll pay electronically. The server comes to the table with the machine, and as soon as he gives the server the card the customer says, “I’ll pay and add the tip” (Observation of participant No. 5, café)

This type of operation is observed with a high frequency in the fieldwork. It can be clearly seen that POS machine participates by bringing in the complete network, that is, the payment space at the time of the transaction. In doing so, it normalizes the operation, and allows for a certain calculability of the tip. However, it is not the TransBank machine that has resulted in, due to its materiality, this normalization and calculability. In fact, a similar phenomenon occurs when customers decide to pay for products with paper money. Just as the TransBank machines can be configured to separate payments by consumption and tip, bill receipts can also do so. According to the data collected, the type of payment the customer makes does not matter, since the organizations configure the payment mediators to separate consumption and tips. Below is a quotation that addresses the inclusion and separation of the tip without the help of cash registers:

‘In the restaurant, the bills are written by hand by the cashier, who writes what is consumed at the table, its monetary value, the number of the table. These bills are calculated by hand, and always include 10% tip. That is, on the bill there is always room for two totals, one without and the other with a tip’ (Observation No. 22, restaurant)

This technology of calculating by hand, as Deville (2013, 2016) has already said, shows that it is not always materiality that operates ex ante in configuring the valuation of a socio-economic transaction. In fact, ‘the regularity of 10%’ became a category of analysis in the study that gave rise to the present text, since the servers interviewed -in the vast majority- recognize that this element gives the tip a ‘quasi-formality,’ due to the combination of the freedom of thematization of current regulations and their regularity in electronic payment interactions. In this regard, both the technology of calculating by hand and POS technology enable the normalization of the tip.

Thus, the tip can be understood as an assemblage that is built on payment devices, both ‘manual’ technology as well as information systems. The important thing in the suggested conceptualization is that it is the ‘quasi-formality’ characteristic that allows the aforementioned socio-technical assemblage to stabilize. Where the explanation is found is in the fundamental component, the payment device not being sufficient. This research hypothesizes that a definitive explanation seems to be found in the way in which the regulation has penetrated, whether in manual technology or in POS-based technology: in other words, the introduction of the SII regulations in 2015.

The phenomenon is palpable when customers and servers recount their personal stories, where although the tip has been present “forever,” the 10% currently suggested by the SII regulations (2015) has not. According to personal accounts, tip amounts used to be a vague phenomenon, since there was not a premise, consensus or mechanism for transparency concerning the tip amount. This ended up favoring the client, who would leave the ‘change’ from the transaction or the ‘extra coins’ as a reward for the service. This can be seen in the following quotation:

‘Right, the coins leftover from the change, for example it would cost 5700 and they gave you 300, like to get rid of the change. So back then when you left 10% it was like, “Oh!” But using cards, I think that’s helped a lot, to make people aware of the 10%, and also restaurants itemize it on the bill, when you ask for the bill they add on the 10%. That’s new, only a few years old’ (Customer interview No. 1, café No. 1).

However, nowadays the accounts of tip regularity are such that the servers interviewed classified customers according to how much they tipped. A preliminary analysis of the interviews shows that the amounts of tips follow a normal behavior, with 10% as the densest center. While customers who leave 10% are characterized as regular customers, there are also isolated cases: customers called ‘stingy,’ who are not called this for not tipping, but rather for only leaving the ‘change,’ i.e. not following the normalized regularity. Finally, and on the other end of the spectrum, the customers identified as ‘generous’ are those who not only give the 10% associated with the normalization and organizational distribution, but they give it to the server who attended to them. This tip is given directly and as an additional reward on top of the 10%.

Autor para correspondencia: juan.espinosa@unab.cl