How to Cover Wall Street

Greg, Steve and Damian all make good points. I’ll use my own experience to illustrate my take. When I was a waitress at a diner near the U.N., we had a steady trickle of international customers, most of whom were bad tippers (please excuse the broad national stereotypes for the purposes of instructional parable). The most extreme in their penuriousness, it must be said, were Brits, who would often nurse a $2.99 bowl of soup or $1 cup of tea for ages, and then leave a five or 10 percent gratuity.

The Comfort Diner

The reason wasn’t some unresolved resentment toward the colonies, nor do I think it can be attributed entirely to a lack of familiarity with local custom (Yes, tips are much more modest in your country, I wanted to scream, but you’ve got a guidebook – read it!).

It came down to this: Brits knew that they were expected to tip more, but they often didn’t realize why. In Britain, you see, waitstaff are paid a living wage, so tips are just an added perk for great service. In the States, of course, tips are anticipated and factored into wages, allowing restaurants to pay their staff less than minimum wage (to my recollection, it was around $2.50 an hour). So Brits visiting my diner thought a 15 to 20 percent tip was an example of profligate and unnecessary American spending; when in fact their refusal to add gratuity was a direct knock to my salary.

A wholesale elimination of bonuses is kind of like stripping servers of their tips – by doing it, you’re messing with the structure by which they get paid, and as Greg argues, that’s not really fair. Just like tips in the service industry, for many, Wall Street Bonuses are something of a hedge against cyclical instability in the industry and a lack of job security. Taking them away on principle fails to account for how entwined with the salary structure they are.

That said, I think that points to a problem with the structure. Wall Streeters, be they C.E.Os or entry level, choose to take risks (the risk that their job will fall victim to market fluctuations) in the hopes of great reward (the $.5 million – or more – bonus). It turns out, as we all know too well, that they were also gambling with risky financial instruments, to their (and our) great misfortune. Maybe the pay structure on Wall Street shouldn’t be so inherently risky, nor the bonuses so immoderate. And of course, we can’t forget about those at the top who got us into this mess, and to whom bonus should really not be given. Just like when a waitress spills a bottle of wine in your lap or a waiter unapologetically forgets your order — in some cases, a tip should simply be withheld.