The Itching Palm Summary

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For my informational pages, I read and studied William R. Scott’s “The Itching Palm”. This book is about the effects and fallacies of the conventional methods of tip giving. In the pages I read, he talks about comparing the tip system to the Barbary Pirates, the economics of tipping, and the psychology of tipping. Mr. Scott expresses his opinions and supporting facts of the tipping customs and community in the United States. “The author will be pleased to correspond with any reader who approves of, or has comments to make upon, the attitude taken in this book toward the tipping custom” (Scott 2). From the very beginning, you can see that Scott has quite an abrasive take on the tradition of giving gratuities.

Firstly, he talked on the similarity between the 17th century Barbary Pirates and the 1916 tip system. Scott points out that the Pirates did not rob in the traditional sense. They demanded a fee that was …show more content…
He is of the strong opinion that tipping, is an unsound transaction. (The soundness of a transaction economically being proven by the bargain being an exchange of a service for a value.) The chapter reads that the waiter or shoe clerk has an already set pay and need not be paid an extra sum for a service that has already been paid. The action of the tip has been, in all intents, a charity and nothing more. The employee is given an amount of money to do the job to the best of their ability and to pay them for a service already expected is an act of economic dishonesty. According to Mr. William Scott, of course.

As another point, Mr. Scott covers the psychology of tipping. He states that the origin of tipping lies in pride and a belief that the receiver of the service is fundamentally better off and better than the one giving the service. A belief, he says, that was founded in slave culture. And an idea that all people are created equal unless they provide a menial task for a better
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