Tip or Trick?

During the weekend, my family and I decided to go out for dinner at Olive Garden. In that restaurant each part of the restaurant has waiters that are assigned. Our waiter was nice and he did his job right by taking our order and giving us what we needed to have a good dinner. So when we were done eating and we were about to leave my dad gave a tip to the waiter for his services. Once we were out I started to think of why my dad and most of the people give tips to the waiters. I mean why it is that when we go to a “fancy restaurant” we give tips to the workers but when we go to a fast-food place we tend not to give anybody a tip for their service. Think about it both of these places take my order and give me my food. They are basically the same thing as each other and yet we think that a fast-food restaurant worker does not deserve a tip like the worker at Olive Garden.

It has to with ideology. According to Webster Dictionary, ideology is an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation. It is basically an unwritten rule of some sort that we, humans, follow like the one of tipping at a restaurant. There is no written rule that states that when we go to a restaurant you have to tip them for their services. But still we tend to do it because we were taught to do it by our parents and so on. Since we were kids we have seen our parents do it therefore we believe we should do it as well because it is the right thing to do. It is also a way of thanking them for what they did for us.

In my English 155 class we read “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1968) by Louis Althusser. In this chapter the author, Althusser states what he thinks about ideology and how it came about. He states that ideology is manmade and that it is imaginary. He also said that ideology is material existence because we depend and live around materials in order to be happy. He thinks that it is material existence because we use “I” but what is I then. Althusser says that ideology is an institution state apparatus. An ISA is an institution that propagates an ideology, like my example of tipping a waiter.

Tipping someone is something that was man-made, we were taught to do it by generation to generation. We believe that if do not tip the waiter then we were ungrateful for their service. Even a waiter believes that if he does not get tip then he did not do a good job. Therefore the waiter always has a smile on their face and an uplifting attitude towards the customer. Now in day we live more in material and money base object then in what really matter. Instead of tipping someone we could just say thank you but we believe that money is more gratifying than a simple thank you. I guess the way society is made has led us to believe that money is more important.