There is a fundamental. urge in human beings to feel and express gratitude to the people who feed us. In a traditional household, this role is filled by the mother, and so within North American society, there is still a heavy association between feeding and motherhood, and hence, the feelings we have towards food (especially “comfort food”) and our feelings towards our mothers tend to intermingle and cross-pollinate.

This aspect of our deep and irreversible social instincts explains much. It explains why in North America we heavily favour waitresses over waiters. In other areas of the world, food tends to be both cooked and served by men, but in Canada and the US, waitresses outnumber waiters by a considerable margin.

As an incidental effect, this is also why waiters tend to be gay men or are seen as such. We simply cannot handle the idea of being fed by a masculine figure. If a man is doing a “female” job (like waitress, nurse, or secretary), that can only mean that they are, in essence, “female-men”, and in our culture, that translates into “gay”.

Just try to imagine a very manly man taking your order and serving you. You would assume that something had gone wrong. You’d assume that he was the cook and the waitress was late, or that he was the manager, or you would be trying to find indications that he really was gay after all.

And the irony is, if you are a straight man and you were convinced that he was too… it would all feel kind of…. gay.

But back to the ladies. This connection between motherhood, food, and gratitude also explains the North American tradition of tipping people who bring us food. The depth of our feeling is too intimate and tender to be expressed in the cold terms of a financial transaction alone. We feel the need to express our appreciation to the person who fed us on a personal level in the form of money that will go to them personally.

This need runs so deep that we even tip food deliverers, who are traditionally men, and who are presumably paid per delivery by their employers. It doesn’t matter. They are giving us food, and therefore we tip.

Note also that every other service with tipping is also a caretaking profession of some sort. The bellboy looks after you by carrying your bags and making sure you are settled in. The hairdresser grooms you. The cabby drives you places.

All of those are the sort of thing we subconsciously associate with parental care, and to treat these transactions as coldly and detachedly as we treat other purchases strikes us as not merely rude but ungrateful.

As if the person had showed up for Xmas, picked up their presents, and left.

Other cultures do not have this issue. Tipping is virtually unknown outside of North America and servers consider any attempt at tipping to be a bizarre form of bribery that implies that the server will only do a good job if paid extra to do so.

As such, servers in other places in the world are downright insulted by people trying to tip, and anyone trying to tip their waiter comes across as as inappropriate and bizarre in their behaviour as someone trying to tip their nurse would seem to us.

At this point you might be inclined to haughtily declare that our tradition of tipping simply means we are more cultured and civilized than other, more barbaric realms.

To which I would point out that in places without tipping, the servers (who can be of either gender equally) are paid a great deal more and enjoy a much higher status in society.

But here, where they tend to be women, they are paid less and treated worse.

Makes you think about who the barbarians really are, doesn’t it?

This tendency for what is socially right according to our instincts to override the purely commercial nature of transactions is nothing new. I have talked about it in this space before, some time ago.

Technically, the rules of society only dictate that we pay for what we get. Everything else is optional. You could order, eat, and pay for your meal without even making eye contact with your server and without paying a single penny more than the bill says and there would by absolutely nothing wrong with that in the eyes of the law.

But it goes against our grain in a very harsh way to see other human beings treated like machines and this, then, reflects back into our own morality.

Not that I am saying I have never done it myself. On the contrary, in my days of deep depression, I was so terrified of other people that it was all I could do to make it through the checkout lane without freaking out and bolting. Treating the cashier like a human being was not even in the top five things on my priority list.

Nevertheless, we are an intensely social species, and therefore the difference between people and things is of vital important to us. To refuse to socially engage with another human being by ignoring them is, therefore, one of the most profound insults known to humanity. It strikes even fairly insensitive people as grotesque, and to sensitive souls like myself, it is downright monstrous. Worse than malice.

Note how in society, it is never acceptable to treat people as machines or parts of a machine. Especially if one’s individuality is also insulted by being treated like “just another cog in the machine”. If accusations of such are leveled, they must be denied or ignored.

It is unthinkable for someone to simply say, “Yes, I treat people like interchangeable cogs in a machine because that is all they are to me, and I am fine with that. ”

Even fairly sociopathic corporate types would cringe at that from the social unacceptability of it alone.

Finally, to bring it back to the point, we tip because we associate food with our mothers.

It’s really that simple.

Now don’t get me started on how female-associated professions are treated….

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.